You’re reading the Read Like the Wind newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Book recommendations from our critic Molly Young and others. Credit…Jackie Molloy for The New York Times Dear readers, Let’s get one thing out of the way: I have zero interest in making you do karaoke. Like most enthusiasts (or so I assume), I don’t want to force anyone into sacramental public humiliation, nor do I want to watch from the stage while you silently ponder what kind of repressed loser is driven to sing White Town to a room full of drunk people who wandered in from an advertising convention at the Javits Center. On a Monday night. I don’t know when my entire personality became Someone Who Does Karaoke, and by extension Someone Oddly Defensive. But as exhibitionism goes, it’s pretty harmless — and as therapy goes, pretty cheap. More than this, something magical can happen when a roomful of strangers comes together to (voluntarily) do something that has nothing to do with their real life, for no reason other than the joy of singing. — Sadie “Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke,” by Rob Sheffield Nonfiction, 2013 Credit…Candice Watson via PangoBooks “To enter into that karaoke mind-set, you have to leave behind all your notions of good or bad, right or wrong, in tune or out of tune,” Sheffield writes in this, the “Walden” of karaoke memoirs. “The kara in the word karaoke is the same as the one in karate , which means ‘empty hand.’ They’re both ‘empty’ arts because you have no weapons and no musical instruments to hide behind — only your courage, your heart, and your will to inflict pain.” Sheffield does karaoke for the first time, reluctantly, as a grieving young widower — and promptly finds an escape and a community. You certainly don’t need to do karaoke yourself to enjoy this moving story of love lost and found, but Sheffield does offer a testament to the hobby’s weird comforts, to say nothing of the catharsis of singing the final lines of “Total Eclipse of the […]
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