Learning to Sing: Hearing the Music in Your Life is a memoir written by Clay Aiken

Clay Aiken

Clayton Holmes "Clay" Aiken is an American singer, songwriter, actor, producer and author who began his rise to fame on the second season of the television program American Idol in 2003. RCA Records offered him a recording contract, and his multi-platinum debut album Measure of a Man was released...

 with Allison Glock. Published by Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 on November 16, 2004, Learning to Sing debuted at #2 on the New York Times Hardcover

Hardcover

A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...

 Nonfiction best-seller list in the December 5 issue, and remained on that list for the remainder of the year.

Synopsis

The book focuses on the people who have been most influential in Aiken's life. He narrates his many conflicts with his birth father and stepfather, and the bullying that he had to endure as a child, then reveals how he eventually learned to accept himself as he was, rather than try to conform to other people's expectations. Not merely a tale of overcoming adversity, Learning to Sing also speaks of ways in which he was positively shaped as he recounts experiences with his mother, grandparents, siblings, teachers, friends, and religion. Along the way, Aiken demonstrates his facility as a storyteller, regaling the reader with tales both humorous and heart-breaking. Contrary to expectations, American Idol

American Idol

American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...

is barely mentioned in the book.

Reviews

In a Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

review (November 22, 2004), David Gates said: "If Aiken were an opera character, he'd be Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's Parsifal

Parsifal

Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...

: the naïf 'made wise by compassion' and armored in his own innocence. He and his co-writer, journalist Allison Glock, have effectively snark-proofed the book by making it totally unguarded...."

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

reviewer Kristen Baldwin said (November 19, 2004), "Clay Aiken is far more interesting a person than a popstar and, God bless him, he's smart enough to know it. ...Behind the polite narration emerges a complex guy with a folksy sense of humor ('I was teased by other kids like it was their job') and an endearing ambivalence about his own insta-celebrity."

Later editions

The book was republished in paperback edition on November 29, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8129-7410-2 (0-8129-7410-7).
An abridged

Abridgement

Abridgement or abridgment is a term defined as "shortening" or "condensing" and is most commonly used in reference to the act of reducing a written work, typically a book, into a shorter form...

 version is also available in audio form read by Aiken himself.. There are minor differences between the audio version and the hardcover edition. There is also an unabridged audio version read by Kirby Heyborne

Kirby Heyborne

Kirby Heyborne is an actor, musician, singer-songwriter, and comedian known for his work in LDS films.-Biography:Heyborne graduated from Alta High School in 1995 where he was student body president. He served a full time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Dominican...

. A short excerpt from the audio book is available on Amazon.com.
An eBook

E-book

An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...

edition is also available for down load from Random House. ISBN 978-1-58836-453-1.