Mix Book Review Week: The Stradivari Formula

11/12/2025 5

The colder months of the year are a perfect time to settle in with some hot coffee (or something stronger) and read something that’s not on a screen. There’s any number of bestsellers out there to devour, but audio pros occasionally want to read something that hits a little closer to home. With that in mind, this week, we’re looking at a stack of new books to dig through. Whether you want to check them out for yourself or give them as gifts to your fellow sound mavens, here’s some heartily recommended tomes.

THE STRADIVARI FORMULA

By Grit Laskin (Fitzhenry & Whiteside). While all the books reviewed this week have been non-fiction, sometimes the real world can be a little much (especially these days). For those who prefer to escape into the realms of fiction, check out this pro audio-adjacent thriller—a novel by award-winning Canadian luthier William “Grit” Laskin, whose coveted six-strings are owned by the likes of k.d. lang, Ben Mink, Rik Emmett and Tom Cochrane, among others.

• Mix Book Review Week: How Does It Sound Now?

The old adage goes that you should write what you know, and that’s right where Laskin starts. Antonio Stradivari is revered to this day for the Stradivarius violins he made over 300 years ago, but curiously, he also produced five guitars during his career. The novel, then, tracks a group of modern-day Canadian guitar makers as they discover that the legendary luthier had a secret formula for building exceptional instruments—and then they find out that not everyone wants the secret revealed. What follows is a gripping yarn that crosses the globe from Ottawa to Paris to Sardinia and beyond, as the group “borrow” a fragile guitar neck from a Parisian museum, face MI6 and Russian hackers, and much more.