I have a strange compulsion to read all the memoirs written by women in music. I’m not exactly sure when it started. Maybe as a sort of research for my own book-in-progress. Maybe it’s because…
Browsing Category Non-Fiction
It Ain’t No Big Thing
In her memoir Living Like a Runaway Lita Ford, writes about how unimportant high school was to her and how she skipped out on her graduation to play a show with The Runaways. This apathy…
Unsatisfied
I feel as though admitting that Carrie Brownstein’s memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl left me a little ho-hum feeling is going to get my something card revoked. Indie cred? Rock & Roll lover?…
Modern Romance
It’s not that Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance isn’t interesting. It’s just that if you’re young-ish, single, and have a smartphone, you already know most of what it covers because you’ve lived it. Ansari was inspired…
The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded
I recently watched the movie “The Imitation Game,” and it’s a great movie, even if it’s not very accurate. For instance, did Alan Turing name his decoding computer Christopher after a childhood friend he crushed…
Love-hate letter to a diary
Here are the circumstances of reading Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness: I am in a mega-reading rut. Nothing looks good. Everything takes too long. I’m tired of buying new books, but I’ve already read at least half…
These Foolish Games
I have zero doubt that I spent large swaths of time in 1995 driving around in my 1979 Chrysler Newport singing along to “Who Will Save Your Soul” with as much sincerity and passion as…
Review Stew: Midwest kitchens, New York rockers and things to quit
Wherein I dump a bunch of reviews into a single post in order to declutter the Unreviewed Lit Nook of my brain. M Train by Patti Smith This ain’t no Just Kids, Smith’s award-winner about…
The Great Rock & Roll Bummer
It would be impossible to measure how excited I was when I first hear that Chrissie Hynde was going to publish a memoir. After all, in their memoirs both Linda Ronstadt and Pat Benatar named…
Scott on Scott
I’m going through a bit of a Scott Jurek phase right now that started with reading Born to Run and was helped along when he recently distance-ran the shit out of the Appalachian Trail. It helps…
Intimacy Idiot
In a few past reviews for this site, I’ve mused aloud whether I didn’t quite enjoy a book as much because it didn’t reflect my life. (See: Dept. of Speculation and The Buried Giant) If…
All the Things I Love in a Music Memoir
I’ve read a lot of music memoirs. A lot. From Jen Trynin to Linda Ronstadt and Jacob Slichter to Pete Townshend. If you ask me, I will tell you my all-time favorite musical memoir is…