100 books like The Musical Life

In 1966, I bought a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book which sold all over the world but, like almost everyone in the West, I had no idea of the brutal reality of the Cultural Revolution. In 1991, Jung Chang’s memoir took the world by storm and we could feel that reality. It is not just her story but also that of her grandmother and mother. That is the joy of memoir in all its variety. I later got to know an artist friend of Chang’s called Qu Leilei. Unlike her, Leilei and his family were at the heart of events in Beijing. Similarly, it was Leilei’s untold story that made me want to write a novel inspired by him.

Award-winning novelist Molteno takes us on a mesmerising journey of discovery, tracing the origins of her fictional worlds. From the mountains of Tajikistan to remote parts of Africa, in small English towns or huge Indian literary festivals, she engages with people she meets and is inspired by them. Through these vignettes she threads reflections on the creative process—why we write, and what fiction does for us. Through Marion’s clear and involving writing, we encounter not one but several truly remarkable women, as she weaves the emergence of her writing life into her own much-travelled and absorbing story.

Among a tiny handful of intrepid women travellers in the nineteenth and twentieth century, Freya Sterk stands out. Not only for her courage in going where no woman or man had gone before in remote and dangerous Middle Eastern regions and for her unique mastery of their languages, but also for her own beautiful writing. Largely self-educated, she is adopted by the Royal Geographical Society and lionised as an explorer. And she revels in the limelight. Knighted by the Queen at age 82, Freya emerges as appealingly human and fallible, and unusually democratic in her dealings with the people she meets in these remote regions.  Her biographer has created a brilliant, absorbing, and penetrating picture of this flamboyant woman.

Christabel Bielenberg’s autobiography I find madly inspiring for her courage and clear, perceptive writing. A well-connected Anglo-Irish Englishwoman, she marries a German lawyer in 1934 only to find herself living through the war and the horrors of Nazi rule in Germany. Staggeringly, near the war’s end, she manages to talk her husband Peter out of a concentration camp with the camp commandant after Peter was implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler. It’s that rare book that I would have loved to last much longer, especially for showing how ordinary Germans changed and got corrupted by Nazism—but others managed to retain their humanity. She shows us the triumph of the human spirit, even in the face of a downward slide into evil and corruption.

As the title of this book indicates, Lily Sergueiew was a double agent during World War II. She volunteered to become a spy for the Germans although she never intended to fulfill that role. She was determined to fight the Germans in her own way – as a double agent in the employ of the British. Sergueiew kept a diary of her activities from when she first approached the Germans until she quit working for the British in late June 1944. After the war, Sergueiew used her diaries to write a memoir in French. Before her death in 1950, she translated her memoir into English, and most of it was published posthumously in France in 1966 and in England in 1968. I recommend this book because it provides insight into why a young woman would choose to fight against the Germans who occupied her beloved France, the training that she… show more.

While I direct Penn State’s Holocaust Education Initiative and produce and write documentaries, books, and articles that involve the Holocaust, I am not an expert on this topic. I am a student of it. Studying the Holocaust for 30 years, I gaze in awe at the frontiers that remain to be explored. X Troop offers one of the latest examples. Prior to reading it, I’d never heard of the German and Austrian Jews who became British commandos during World War II. One of the lessons I picked up: We should follow these men’s examples of turning weaknesses—in their case, coming from enemy territories and facing suspicion and persecution—into strengths. This is far from a perfect book. As I read it, I found myself time and again wishing it showed more and told less. In several key spots, I wanted to better understand what these commandoes did and how they did.… show more.

Huw Davies takes a long look at the tactics and training of the British army over a long period, culminating in the victories and defeats in this war. And there were extraordinary highs and lows in these twelve years.

He identifies the innovators, brilliant, hardworking men who changed the way cavalry and infantry worked, and the important decisions made in the Horse Guards in London. A new, well-written analysis.

A memoir that deals with the everyday life of an office worker in 1950s/60s London seems like a joke and, indeed, when it came out, it was treated as such but there is some kind of poetry in this exploration of the humdrum. The manuscript was discovered in the slush pile by a rare editor who grasped the humour of what would appear to be an empty life but a life that Smith is content with. She lived with her parents until her twenties then moved into various lodgings, descriptions, and inhabitants of which are examined in detail. Smith had many short-term boyfriends, usually meeting them at a 'social club'.

Chapters are minimalistic and quirky but I wondered if some could be expanded and if she had missed some opportunities. Not a lot happens as Smith moves through life as a secretary making her observations, some grotesque, some unusual, some… show more.

New Perspectives shows us that Black British history is a complex field of historiography. No longer should we look at it as a sketchy, speculative, politically correct apologia for historical investigation. But rather see, that for more than three generations scholars have worked very hard to establish a vigorous pedagogy. It is a pedagogy that supports wider British histories, but subverts the traditional trajectories of those narratives. This book introduces us to some of the major developments in Black British history and it is an excellent place to start for a reader who knows very little about this subject.         

Finally, one of my recommendations has lots of pictures in it. The Death of Anglo-Saxon England charts the closing century of Saxon England. This book was written for a general audience and is a thoroughly engrossing read. I can remember taking it with me on day trips so that I could find a corner and stick my head in the book, and my version is replete with many, many bits of paper sticking out from the pages. Complete with all the images and pictures, the author presents an easy-to-understand and chronological account of the events that led to the Norman Conquest of 1066. I’m not saying I agree with everything in this book, but it’s a very good starting point for those with a growing interest in the period.