Bumping this thread...
I am currently reading Playing the Piano for Pleasure: The Classic Guide to Improving Skills through Practice and Discipline by Charles Cooke. The book is many decades old and some of that old timey nature comes through in the writing style.
In terms of overall contents, it's a bit of a mixed bag. However, there are two really important points that I took away.
First, from his chapters on being an amateur, appreciating what a wonderful thing that can be. Professional musicians have demands on their time and don't always get their choice of repertoire. I sometimes lament that I'm not as good as I wish I was (especially starting as an adult learner in middle age), but these chapters remind me of this freedom to explore and play for pleasure that amateurs have.
Second, he talks in great detail about focusing on the most difficult parts of each piece as the best way to improve. Lean in to the individual phrases/measures/notes that are causing you the most trouble, and work on them with laser precision until they're easy.
He uses (overuses?) the metaphor of a broken bone, and how if you set a fracture properly, the healed bone ends up being the strongest at that point of fracture. He refers to trouble spots in pieces as fractures, and how much you need to work to set those fractures. Once you do, the parts that were once hard are now easy, which makes the whole piece more playable, and it slowly raises your ability level as you set increasingly complex fractures in increasingly difficult pieces.
Since reading that description, I've been focusing the bulk of my practice on the "fractures" in each piece I'm working on, and darned if I haven't made a pretty decent amount of progress on those fractures in the span of a few days. I've certainly been guilty of just playing easy things and avoiding/stumbling through the hard stuff, but at least lately I've taken more pleasure in going right for the hard stuff.
Unrelated, but since I saw it mentioned above, I also really enjoyed The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier by Thad Carhart. Such a delightful read. If I didn't already own an acoustic instrument, I think that book would have convinced me I needed one.
