What readers think of Sounds Like Titanic, plus links to write your own review.

It was hard for me to get into this book, possibly because I started reading it during the holidays, but by the middle I had to find out what happened. Even now, that I'm finished, I find it hard to believe this could happen!

Since Jessica is younger than my grandchildren, I may have had a problem connecting with her experiences. I thought, since I played the violin in grade school, it would be interesting to see how she made out. I did understand what she wrote about the different "classes" (though she didn't call them that, exactly) in America, and I could see her confusion in dealing with them in college.

I enjoy reading memoirs, but to me, it read more like a diary, though it jumped around an awful lot. It was interesting to read about the people she interacted with over the years & how they affected her, and I enjoyed reading her thoughts on the different areas of the country she went to & through.

It was good to see what she ended up doing with her life. I won't say more, in order to keep from giving anything away.

I liked this book, I think it would be an excellent book club read because it brings up a lot of controversial issues –as I read it I found myself really examining my own values.

The main theme is that the author Jessica C Hindman is basically a whistle blower - her purpose is to expose the dishonesty of a famous composer with whom she worked. The book is a diary of all the events and performances that she attends with The Composer. She explains clearly from the beginning that these performances are all fake. She is a fake player of the violin in this orchestra that travels the United States giving fraudulent performances.

Parallel with her judging of The Composer's dishonesty is a display of his ongoing success and popularity in America. The hypocrisy is profound- there is one example after another of his knowingly purposefully cheating his followers (the American public).

The public in turn love the Composer .

The author then segues right into our social system and the hypocrisy that exists regarding race, gender, wealth, privilege, education, etc. She draws a parallel that the audience that loves the fake concerts also loves –or at least tolerates all our social pretenses and empty social talk.

The book is quite a statement of the many social inequitites that are blended into American social structures, and the great public acceptance of these hypocritical values. In exposing the composer she is exposing our own mistruths, and as the audiences (the American public) love his music and we love our social structure – it works very well for those of us who are of the right gender, race, etc.

This book frustrated me at the end because she never exposes the composer. She protects him and thus I think loses credibility, especially when she does expose some other big name performers.

This was an intriguing memoir filled with humor, surprises and inspiration. Not a heavy memoir but filled with substance. I enjoyed this unique storyline and found the author's writing style kept me engrossed until the end.

Very interesting memoir that deals with the way women have to deal with imposter syndrome and simply existing in the world as a body in a world that often views women as a body first and a sentient being second.

It's funny, we tolerate lipsyncing from pop stars without much complaint, but it never occurred to me that I would need to concern myself with artists "faking" classical music since classical music, I thought, was all about skill. Hindman manages to not denigrate the audience for the music that she "played" while getting across the fraudulent aspects of the Composer's body of work. It would be the easy way out to mock the audience for not knowing any better.

Recommended for people who enjoy light memoir. There are some heavier themes touched upon, but this is not as relentlessly grim as some memoirs can be.

Although I don't often read nonfiction I enjoyed this book immensely. Sometimes it was hard to believe it wasn't fiction. Jessica grew up in Appalachia and was instilled with a drive to succeed. Her story is amazing. Faced with buying food, paying tuition and rent the author continues at a job she knows is a scam. She skips back and forth so you know why she is striving to make a go of this job.

I wanted to love the book but just liked it. I am giving it to my granddaughter who is a music major and feel she may like it better than I did.

This is a memoir by a not well-known musical performer. For 4 years the author "played violin" with a group that was not named. Led by "the composer" who also remains unnamed. The author uses the word "played" but really none of the group played for the audiences as the speakers were always turned off and the music came from a hidden CD player. The group traveled the US and "played" in shopping malls, music halls and many times on PBS. I assume that the editors vetted the story as it is presented as the truth. In this age of fake news nothing should surprise us but at the end of the book I am still wondering can this be true and who is the unnamed composer. It's an interesting but sad tale.

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman might not be a great violinist, but she's a very entertaining writer. I was hesitant to read "Sounds Like Titanic" because I don't generally enjoy non-fiction. But her humor engaged me from the start.

In her book, Hindman chronicles four years of her life as a "fake" violinist for an unnamed composer whose music bears more than a little resemblance to the theme song from Titanic. Crowds would flock to hear this music, be it at a farmer's market or a concert for PBS. Listeners threw open their wallets to buy the CDs. But here's the rub -- the musicians' mics were dead and they played along to a CD.

Having read about these concerts, I still don't quite get how they got away with, as Hindman calls it, their Milli Violini performances. Nor, without being able to hear the music myself, do I understand why it was so wildly popular. One of Hindman's conjectures was that people just don't that much attention. I think she has a point. I still haven't reached my conclusion about how "bad" what they were doing was. Yes, it's fraud of a sort, but did it really hurt anyone? Isn't it a good thing to encourage people to embrace classical(ish) music?

Hindman's recollections of the group's travels on their "God Music America Tour" will have you laughing. But the impact on her was not anything to chuckle over. She ended up having panic attacks during every performance and eventually had to spend what sounds like an extended period of time at her parents' home to recover. One of the shortcomings of the book was that I didn't quite understand the connection between her work and the ailment. Why, exactly, was the gig so anxiety-inducing? Guilt, I get. Anxiety, not so much.

The book also became repetitive as the group went to concert after concert after concert. But perhaps that ultimately was the point.

This book was sent to me by BookBrowse to review. Based on its blurb, I found this book to be not quite what I had expected. As I started to read, I soon discovered it was not as humorous as I thought it would be. The storyline jumped all over the place going haphazardly between childhood and adulthood periods while giving the reader an inside look at a musical group that made its living as a lip-syncing orchestra. Fake it until you make it is the basis of this book. That in it is an interesting concept however, it left this reader a bit bored and herself pushing through to the end in order to put this review together.