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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

There is one book in my collection that has survived a baffling number of moves and culls and trips to the neighborhood little free libraries and purges and oh-god-why-do-I-have-so-many-books impulses. I hate this book. It gets everything wrong from page one.

Yet I can’t get rid of it. I keep it there, in part, to remind me that there’s always a reader for a book. Even a book that’s like nails on a chalkboard for me to even think about reading. For almost every no-I-hate-that-trope feeling, every “that genre is not for me” vibe, every “please not another X thing” burning sensation—there’s almost always an exception to the rule. And it’s really, really fun to find them.

The reason I hate this particular unnamed book is that it’s a book about a band, and most books about bands are unbearable. Like, at rough estimate, at least 81% of band books make me cringe and/or want to throw the book into the wall, hard.

I suspect most people have a kind of book like this. Something they just can’t deal with—maybe because of a great depth of familiarity with a subject; maybe because of a hated trope; maybe because of a style of writing. Maybe it’s heist books where the plan isn’t smart enough. Maybe it’s books with badly written swordfighting. Maybe it’s second person. Maybe it’s cocky male detectives or singularly special girls. You burn out or you get cranky or you just simply cannot bring yourself to turn one more page.

I grew up in music: band, choir, jazz choir, extremely nerdy after-school cover band. I helped run a music festival in college. I started college as a music business major before bailing on a disorganized program in order to spend my time getting hands-on experience putting on shows. My friends were in bands. My partner has been in multiple bands as long as I’ve known him.

My experience with all of this is specific to me, not universal. It’s also, shall we say … dated. I existed in musical spheres before streaming fully took over. But books about bands often exist like this too: they’re historical, or they’re fantastical, or they’re just generally outside of time. I remember reading Gossamer Axe as a kid and having absolutely no idea what anyone was talking about—I was not so much of a music nerd that I learned different kinds of scales—and so I enjoyed it. It was over my head and out of my range, and therefore, the picky-picky part of my brain could not pick it apart.

There are smaller things that give me itchy brain feelings to read. Books that just say “Oregon” like that means one thing, as if it’s not a fairly large state with several very distinct landscapes. Books that ask me to suspend too much disbelief at once. Romances where all problems could be solved if the would-be lovers just had one stinking conversation. (I got my fill of this watching Buffy.) Books in which manipulative men are supposed to be sexy.

Probably there’s someone out there who loves every single one of the things that I bounce off. (Well, maybe not the Oregon one. Maybe?) Probably there’s someone out there who hates every single one of my favorite things to encounter in books (a list that includes but is not limited to: well-retold fairy tales; witches; communal efforts to defeat whatever evil needs defeating; awkward nerds who grow to love each other despite everything; powerful platonic friendships; really well-done ‘90s and ‘00s stories; generation ships where something goes terribly awry; the most biting and arch first-person narration, if done just so; an incredible sense of place; and misfit found families).

But for all my very strong feelings about how much band books are impossibly awkward and need to be removed from my sight immediately… there are always exceptions. And as much as I sort of weirdly enjoy cringing at a bad band book, I absolutely loved being knocked over sideways by a good band book.

(Anyone who read Leah Schnelbach’s recent column about Utopia Avenue can probably guess at least one novel that managed this.)

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Even Though I Knew the End

Even Though I Knew the End

The thing about a band book is that I need it not to try to be too clever. I need it to have all the sincerity and tempered optimism and carefully tucked-away sense of hope that so many musicians have, even when it’s buried under bravado and cool and slightly ridiculous outfits. I need it to feel lived-in and strange and unpredictable even as it follows the well-worn tracks that music stories follow: success, or failure, or one and then the other, in differing levels and at various times. Fights, fall-outs, break-ups, reunions, bonding, clarity, brightness, grief. A band is a series of relationships. You have to believe in all of them.

Music and SFF don’t overlap that often, but they do sometimes, and oddly, those times are among my favorites: David Mitchell’s magnificent Utopia Avenue; arguably, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series; Orpheus variations, including Savrat Hasin’s The Giant Dark and Sarah McCarry’s All Our Pretty Songs; Francesca Lia Block’s books; Michelle Ruiz Keil’s books; Hari Kunzru’s White Tears; Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day. (One of the single best music novels I’ve ever read has not a lick of magic, but deserves a mention here for blowing every shred of my skepticism out of the water: Stacey D’Erasmo’s Wonderland.)

I had moments of skepticism with almost every one of these books. And the thing that keeps me looking for more to add to the list—the reason I’m still skeptical of music books; the reason I still seek them out, if reluctantly—is the specific thrill of having all my doubts overruled. The moment where a singer is exhausted and alone and takes the stage and sings all her tiredness and loneliness into the page. The moment when it’s clear just what a complex role the band plays in a character’s life. The scene in which the least likely members of the band jointly compose the song that will define them. The times when I can all but hear the soundtrack—elusive, faint, like an earworm you can’t quite name.

Whatever it is you hate in books (within reason, anyway; this is not true about traumatic and triggering content!), someone has probably done it well. Someone has probably done it in such a way that you might, despite yourself, find yourself in love. Somewhere out there, someone is writing a book about a magical band that I’m going to adore, and a book in which one special girl saves the world that’s going to absolutely astonish me. And someone is writing a book that might blow up all your expectations, too. Maybe it’s already out there. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find it.

Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.

About the Author

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Molly Templeton

Author

Molly Templeton has been a bookseller, an alt-weekly editor, and assistant managing editor of Tor.com, among other things. She now lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods.
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