The Melody of Things: On Music, Memory, and Beginning Again (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781324105466)

Ten years after becoming a writer, Nadia Beard experienced a strange, exhilarating longing for something she had not realized she'd missed: playing piano. Having trained seriously to become a pianist but stymied by stage fright, Beard decided to return to her beloved instrument as an amateur. The Melody of Things is a unique combination of memoir, music, and political history, as it charts Beard's journey to study at the renowned Tbilisi Conservatoire in the former Soviet Georgia. Filled with sharp insights about the pleasures and possibilities of discipline and amateurism as an art unto itself, Beard's book reminds us that the term "amateur" comes from the Latin "amare," meaning, of course, to love. The Melody of Things is a gem about falling in love for a second time--with an instrument that came to reshape and reinhabit Beard's life.