Interesting post at Boing Boing- the new Neal Stephenson book Anathem has its own original soundtrack CD. I’ve long thought that it would be cool if books had soundtracks, either an original score or just a compilation of appropriate music. I know the cost would be prohibitive, unless perhaps you limited yourself to old public domain recordings, but I can dream.
I often listen to music while I read. I don’t pick music according to the book- I have a big CD collection that I just rotate through, keeping about six albums in my changer at a time and listening to each a few times before swapping them out- but sometimes the book and the music synch up in cool ways. During one of the climactic parts of Glen Cook’s Soldiers Live, for instance, I had Amon Amarth’s Fate of Norns on, and it was just perfect- epic military fantasy and Swedish death metal. Can life get better than that? No, sir. Well, not legally.
Though not death metal, I always thought China Mieville's Perdido Street Station would work well with Tool.
ReplyDeleteIf we are going the Death Metal route, then I suppose In Flames would work well with PSS, too.
Yeah, Tool is great for atmosphere. Now that you bring it up, I bet they would go perfectly with a lot of Alastair Reynolds, also.
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