My mother's music
Paul West
Reading Time
at 250 WPM3h 30m
The average reader, reading at a speed of 250 WPM, would take 3h 30m to read My mother's music.
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7
days at 30 min/day
210
total minutes
My mother's music
by Paul West
Published
1996
Publisher
Viking
Pages
210
ISBN-10
0670867578
Description
In My Mother's Music, acclaimed stylist Paul West has taken on a monumental labor of love in portraying his mother, an English butcher's daughter and concert pianist manque whose magnum opus was her children's lives. Mildred Noden West orchestrated the education of her son and daughter like a grand concerto, shaping, cajoling, haranguing them into capitalizing on their gifts whether they liked it or not. As West puts it with characteristic bravura and humor, "she vented and honed a fearsome amount of nervous energy otherwise channeled into hurling blue bags of sugar at my father's head (she always missed)." She was never boring. West's mother occupies center stage in this exultant memoir ("She stayed put while we went away, and that was how she preferred it."), but his inimitable prose practically constitutes a character in itself: headlong, quirky, sometimes drunk on its own rhythms yet never more precise than at those moments when it threatens to sheer off from sense into pure music. In his matchless rememberings, West recreates the arc of his mother's years, from her youthful aspirations, to her "fierce, harrying love," to her death at the age of ninety. In My Mother's Music he performs the ultimate task of a child - to imagine a parent whole, apart from her effects on him, and in so doing give her a kind of life in death.
Subjects
Frequently Asked Questions
How many pages are in My mother's music?
This edition of My mother's music has approximately 210 pages. Please note, this is an estimate and the exact page count can vary between hardcover, paperback, and e-book versions.
How long does it take to read My mother's music?
For most readers, My mother's music typically takes between 4h 23m and 2h 55m to complete. This is based on the book's length of approximately 52,500 words and common reading speeds.
Here's a detailed breakdown: • Continuous reading at 250 WPM: approximately 3h 30m of focused reading • Casual reading (30 minutes/day): you could finish in roughly 7 days • Estimated word count: 52,500 words
Your individual reading time will vary based on your personal reading pace, the amount of daily reading time, and your familiarity with the subject matter.
What is the word count of My mother's music?
The estimated word count for My mother's music is approximately 52,500 words. This figure is calculated using industry-standard methods that consider genre-specific word density patterns, typical formatting and layout characteristics, and standard words-per-page ratios for published books.
This is an approximation — actual word count may vary based on font size, formatting, edition, and the presence of illustrations or charts.
Who is the author of My mother's music?
My mother's music was written by Paul West.
When was My mother's music published?
The publication date for this specific edition is 1996. The original work may have been published on a different date.