LoFi and synthwave are my normal go-to choices but I’ll also theme it around the style of book I’m reading, like tavern music for light fantasy or space movie soundtracks for sci-fi. Has to be mostly wordless though.
None. Whenever I’m reading a book that I really like, I completely forget that the outside world even exists. It wouldn’t matter whether I’m playing music or not as I won’t hear any of it anyway.
My poor attention span makes it difficult to enjoy longer reads, though I had a blast listening to Anamanaguchi's Endless Fantasy while reading through Ready Player One. I feel like that album was made for that book.
Maybe some people can read a book and listen to music at the same time, but I’m not smart enough. The music bleeds into the book, and it becomes Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Pink Floyd, which is completely different from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, if you catch what I drop.
One year in college I decided to stay at school during one of the long weekend holidays. The dorm would be empty and I’d have the place to myself. Decided Saturday I was going to read The DaVinci Code since it had been sitting on my shelf all semester. I had also just gotten Christopher O’Reilly’s album True Love Waits, a piano instrumental compilation of Radiohead songs. So I popped the CD into my Walkman and walked up and down the empty dorm reading the book and listening.
A few years later I saw the movie and my biggest issue was that the music was all wrong. I already had a great soundtrack in my head.
I don’t like listening to background music while reading. I generally prefer silence or white noise. I’m working on an extremely limited attention budget, so adding more things to pay attention to is often a great way to get distracted from the book I’m reading.
Add comment