A review by travis_fili
Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons by Jeremy Denk

3.0

This is a book about piano lessons. Denk introduces a lot of people, places and things that happens between those lessons, but they’re often introduced without any purpose and sometimes quickly forgotten. (At one point, in a section about his junior year of college, Denk introduced 2-3 new people on each page!) We get to know his teachers best.

Denk talked a lot about how he changed his piano playing based on the instructions of his teachers, and I often had a hard time conceptualizing the subtleties in the piano playing. Maybe my trouble is that I’ve never played piano, not even for one lesson.

I’ve personally enjoyed books by laypeople better—pianists who were hobbyists, not professionals.