2025 Book List: Psychology Books that Helped Me Practice
Compared to my husband, I’ve always been an occasional, casual reader, not a real reader. That changed a few years ago when I started the research process for a book I’m currently writing, a book about the psychology of practice.
Because there is not much written about psychology in the musical sphere, it’s general psychology and sports books that have become part of my daily reading diet. I’ve read more books in the last two years than in the previous twenty combined. They’ve helped me practice and also become more disciplined and focused in the writing process.
If you’re struggling more with motivation, empowerment, enjoyment, or focus than with intonation or shifting, here’s a 2025 book list for you. I’ve organized the books by topic, and I’ve purposely left out any super-long books because you’re a musician–you’re busy practicing!
And yes, it’s totally fine to listen to them instead–that’s one of the psychology tricks you need to know about–whatever "gets it done" is perfect. You can also listen to podcast interviews with any of the authors.
Motivation & Habit Building
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhig takes you on a tour of neuroscience and habits – how they come to form or be broken. It has fascinating stories and reminded me this morning to cue up my cue (an anthem "You Can Do This" kind of song by Adele) before writing this blog post.
Atomic Habits by James Clear incorporates Duhigg’s principles, adds some, and neatly arranges them into a concise and highly actionable book. A shorter, punchier version of The Power of Habit, Atomic Habits has helped millions create strong habits without feeling the pain
Empowerment
13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin was originally on my list only because I was investigating templates for good prescriptive non-fiction books (what you might call a "how-to" book). It’s a powerful manifesto, one that reminds me to chart my path and stop feeling guilty about all the things I’m not doing.
Emotional by Leonard Mlodinow is a beautifully written journey about our inner emotional world. I learned the difference between liking and wanting, how to rewire the brain more easily, and found true respect for our inner cosmos.
Chatter, by Ethan Kross, is dedicated to our inner voice, which let’s face it, for musicians can become a liability. This succinct and beautifully written book introduced me to tools for dampening my inner critic and harnessing my inner voice for good.
Enjoyment
Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan made me realize that music is a form of adult play. We all thrive when we lean into playful as a concept and reconnect with what makes us happy. It changed the way I practice, exercise, and go about daily life.
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner is an investigation of the magical feeling we all know but have a hard time describing in words: awe. Our relationship with music lies at the heart of this powerful feeling, and this book reconnected me with its power.
Focus
Essentialism by Greg McKeown is a great read for anyone who is drowning in their to-do list and can’t seem to find a way out. McKeown argues that we can’t "efficiency-our-way-out" our lack of time. If we want to have more time, we must learn how to prune our schedule and align our activities with what’s most important. I read this book many years ago, but it has been on my mind because I used its principles to make time for my writing.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — And How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari is a deeply insightful book about attention in the modern era. When I was younger, my practice habit had to compete with almost no other regular habits – no TV, phone, texts, email, or social media — whereas my practice habit now must compete with everything. This book allowed me to understand the fundamental problem with divided attention, which is not that we "don’t get enough" done, it’s that we’ve stopped daydreaming and sitting with our own thoughts. When I combined what I learned in this book with lessons from Atomic Habits and Essentialism, I successfully changed some of my most nefarious digital habits.
My bookshelf is growing, and truth be told it’s bookshelves, as I just had another one installed. Although I’ve borrowed many books from the library, some I need to have above my desk. They serve as visual reminders of how I want to spend my time on earth and what is important to me.
And how much I’ve learned about music, and about myself.
You might also like:
- Book Review: The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
- BOOK REVIEW: Jeremy Denk’s Musical Love Story
- Review of THE SOLOIST, by Steve Lopez
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Replies
I'm thinking of ordering 'Atomic Habits'. It was also recommended a short while ago by Buri.
I've got Churchill's six-volume history of the second world war that I'd like to read when I have time to read something, which will probably be after I retire. Years ago I read half of the first volume and enjoyed every page. I find myself most inspired to read a book by or about someone who accomplished something special in their own life. As such I enjoy historical biographies and memoirs the most. These days I have enough time to keep up with the local newspaper (which is thinner by the day) and selected articles from The New Yorker.
The author of "Atomic Habits" has provided a summary of his own book on his website.
I tend to shy away from from this type of book, but this one caught my eye recently. I devoured it over the holiday (it's a pretty quick read), and as a result I can recommend it highly:
"Learn Faster, Perform Better" by Molly Gebrian (Oxford Univ. Press 2024)
It's light on the 'woo' and heavy on summarizing and extrapolating from recently published neuroscience research into what actually contributes to learning and retention, placed in a musical context. It certainly has opened my eyes and has changed my approach to learning fiddle!
In general, it's best to buy books, whatever the genre, singly. Self-help, history, fiction, poetry...it's all the same. Start reading your new book as quickly as possible, and focus on it intensely. Don't put it in the bookcase for a rainy Sunday; those occur too occasionally, and you surely wouldn't buy new music or a CD and store it unplayed or unheard.
When you have read and processed the book, decide whether you should keep it or pass it on to somebody else. If it's a self-help book that you decided to buy, you will have had a reason for doing so, and that's probably your guiding thread for reading it.
Also, if you have one of those bookshops with a café near you, you can pre-assess the book in comfort. Finally, receive reading recommendations in the spirit in which they are offered, then subsequently, quietly, make up your own mind, but don't shut down the channels of book recommendations. I have enjoyed many things that have been reviewed on v.com.
"To my nay-saying friends who have chimed in, yes books are useless to you when you don’t read them!"
So you've cancelled us?
Laurie, I'm shocked to get this treatment from someone whose judgement I previously trusted. I guess nobody likes having their beliefs questioned but that's all I did. For my pains I suffered personal insults and have now had my freedom of speech denied.
Would you at least agree with me that psychology is a science and should therefore be subject to the sceptical scrutiny that other sciences receive? Unfortunately the literature is now overstuffed with works by amateur psychologists offering insights into their personal experience. It's clear even from the titles of these 9 books that most if not all belong in that category. Of course we're all free to read what we like; of course many people find this kind of literature valuable and nothing I say is likely to influence or harm them so what's the problem?
If I can chime in, I believe thanks and respect are due to Susanna for pulling together this blog post summarizing books that have been helpful to her. Earlier I said I tend to avoid self-help books, but on closer examination I can see that there are some potentially useful ideas represented here. And I'm looking forward to your own book on practice whenever it emerges, Susanna!
"Unfortunately the literature is now overstuffed with works by amateur psychologists offering insights into their personal experience. It's clear even from the titles of these 9 books that most if not all belong in that category"
If you actually look at the books (and not just their titles), you'll find that most of them are written by people who are either PhDs or MDs. Not that impressively credentialed people can't also sometimes be cranks.
Scott - "most of them are written by people who are either PhDs or MDs".
Not "most" as far as I can judge from the the seven whose biographies appear on Amazon. I found just one MD, one qualified psychotherapist and two PhDs, one of them in theoretical physics!
This is boring, but:
Greg Mckeown is a doctoral candidate at Cambridge.
Dacher Keltner has a PhD from Stanford.
Stuart Brown is an MD.
Ethan Kross has a PhD from Columbia.
Leonard Mlodinow is the theoretical physicist.
Amy Morin is a licensed clinical social worker, college psychology instructor and psychotherapist, don't know what degrees she has.
I'm not sure what (if anything) this tells us about the content of their books and I am not defending or promoting them, nor do I plan to read any of them. But I will say that I'm not certain Francis Bacon would find your evaluation of these works, based on their titles, to be in the spirit of the scientific method.
I agree with Steve that there's a lot of junk out there. But as a chemist, I can say that there is plenty of junk in chemistry journals, too. Including many that are "peer reviewed." The pressure to publish (and not only in "other" countries) is strongly coupled to all of the perverse incentives to which academic science has become subject. I had a project go entirely bust because it hinged on a paper that reported a certain synthetic procedure that simply did not work at all in my hands, and I have pretty darned good lab hands.
I also agree with Jon that it was a positive service for Prof. Klein to have curated a list for those who are interested in the genre. As I wrote before, I have so little time to read for pleasure (and for just staying moderately informed) that I have to be very selective. That said, the book by Molly Gebrian that Jon cited did look interesting. She has enough cred in the subject matter of her book to have been hired by NEC to teach it. Her bio says that she holds "degrees in both music and neuroscience from Oberlin College and Conservatory, New England Conservatory of Music, and Rice University" (and exactly the same phrasing appears everywhere you look) although it does not say how far she got in each discipline. A few mouse clicks revealed that she has DMA from Rice and that her dissertation is entitled, "Rethinking Viola Pedagogy: Preparing Violists for the Challenges of Twentieth-Century Music." The document does not mention neuroscience.
On Molly Gebrian's credentials, she is not a neuroscientist but she has more than just dabbled in the field, as described the opening chapter of her book; the gist is that she had a double undergrad major in music and neuroscience at Oberlin, did independent studies in neuroscience alongside her performance studies at NEC, and took some graduate level courses/worked in a cognitive neuroscience lab at Rice on her way to a Ph.D in the Musical Arts. As she describes it, the COVID pandemic and its temporary freedom from performance obligations allowed her to put to the test some of the learning/memory/cognition concepts she had gleaned earlier, and provided the stimulus for the book.
I should mention that I have no connection with the author or publisher, I just grabbed the Kindle version and was gratified to find it full of practical ideas backed by peer-reviewed studies (all of which are cited in the footnotes).
How much sense does looking for peer reviewed studies make when you're trying out practice/practice mindset techniques? You just need a n=1 and 1 is you... you can try it and see if it works for you. Or however something it inspires when you read it works for you.
Simon Fisher isn't 'peer reviewed'. I mean, he kind of is at this point, but did his book go through peer review before he published it? To the extend that most things have some 'peer review', I suppose.
I'm just saying that while looking for credentials and peer review in this sort of thing might make sense if you need to filter out books before you even read them I don't think looking for high-powered studies makes a whole lot of sense.
Also, also, they kind of have been, for all intents and purposes, peer reviewed by Susanna Klein. If her other content appeals to you it might be a good indication that books she found helpful might help you.
Frankly, complaining about credentials and statistical power in this context seems a bit pedantic to me.
I think this conversation got off on the wrong foot, and it needn't have. All props to Susanna for her suggested reading list (one of which I now have on hold at my library); I added another recommendation and sought to clarify its author's credentials and approach. Some of the findings outlined in Dr. Gebrian's book are surprising and a bit counterintuitive. I don't think the book could be taken seriously if she just went on about 'studies show...'. But on top of that I'll cop to being a bit pedantic. Could be worse I suppose! :-)
I think this conversation got off on the wrong foot, and it needn't have. All props to Susanna for her suggested reading list (one of which I now have on hold at my library); I added another recommendation and sought to clarify its author's credentials and approach. Some of the findings outlined in Dr. Gebrian's book are surprising and a bit counterintuitive. I don't think the book could be taken seriously if she just went on about 'studies show...'. But on top of that I'll cop to being a bit pedantic. Could be worse I suppose! :-)
It's true that the discussion diverted some, but let's face it: Almost every discussion on this site diverges from its main theme.
One thing I hope we can all agree is that having a footnote citing a peer-reviewed article doesn't make something correct. It only means that two or three people with appropriate credentials thought the study was worth publishing. And just because something is correct science doesn't mean it applies particularly well to any given project, especially self-improvement.
Until I have the book (it's in my Amazon cart with a whole bunch of other stuff including the humidistat device recommended by David Burgess!), I won't have any soft of valuation. The presence of footnotes would, however, at least show some inclination toward scholarship on the part of the author. Morever, Gebrian's credentials aren't really that important, either. Mehmet Oz is regarded by his peers as an absolutely brilliant physician, with impeccable professional credentials, and yet he's mostly known to the public as a snake-oil salesman.
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January 1, 2025 at 02:24 PM · I found “The Power of Habit” to be a life-changing book, for myself and the way I deal with students and their practice habits (or lack of them). These are great descriptions and suggestions, coming from an accomplished violinist and teacher whose recommendations have always been spot-on. I definitely would like to read the book by Johann Hari, what a great topic for our current day. People tend to be thinking about self-improvement on New Year’s - so great timing. To my nay-saying friends who have chimed in, yes books are useless to you when you don’t read them!