Symphony for the City of the Dead—M.T. Anderson
I first read this book in highschool(in the school library while I procrastinated working on my senior project), but I liked the writing so much that I bought my own copy. This was the first book I bought with my own money.
The full title is Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. It's a narration of Shostakovich's life with emphasis on his troubles as a Russian pianist and composer during WWII. You get to learn about his motivations as a composer and how he used music to reflect his environment. A copy of it is on the Internet Archive. Although the circumstances are intense and violence/threats thereof are sprinkled throughout, it reads a bit like a coffee table book, casual yet captivating.