100 books like Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

This was one of the first books I ever loved as a teenager and it has always stayed with me.

A professor recommended it to me, and I didn’t know that it would heavily reference Beethoven’s last string quartet, which I was working on at the time.

I love the way Kundera can weave so many disparate things together, including Beethoven’s fate motif and the fate of the character’s relationships. It’s something I find very inspiring and try to do in my own works.

The unexpected cover art was just the beginning of the odyssey that is this book. Abdurraquib masterfully explores the intersection of civics and pop culture, weaving personal history with modern-day ethics, all to a soundtrack that is both memorable and urgent.

This is the sort of book that unlocks a hidden door to our collective compassion. One of the best things I’ve ever read. 

This is the first novel I read by Haruki Murakami and it got me hooked on his writing.

Toru Okada is tasked with finding his lost cat but, as he searches, the past stories of other characters constantly intersect and become inescapable detours, which often foster ambiguity and a sense of becoming lost in a charmed world.

We’re left with an impression of a world slipping into the surreal, where reality becomes blurred like Okada’s memory of what his missing cat looks like, and where “Ten minutes is not ten minutes” because time can stretch and shrink. I was frequently surprised and sometimes confounded by this but, because of Murakami’s skill as a writer, felt pleasantly lulled with the same dreamlike acquiescence as his hero into following Okada’s convoluted journey.

I love Tom Robbins. I love his preposterous plots. I love his audacious metaphors. I love the never-ending details of one world crashing into another.

Like an 8th C King as well as a 20th C “genius waitress,” an aging “Queen of Good Smells,” and the skyscraper-housed “LeFever Parfumarie.” Spanning 13 centuries, bouncing from Bohemia to India to Paris to Seattle to New Orleans, Jitterbug Perfume wonders if Christianity will kill Pan and whether immortality is all it’s cracked up to be.

But, you ask, what about the beets? Yes, through all this Tomfoolery, Mr. Robbins loves him some natural world, and it is through the humble yet enigmatic beet that we learn to “hold onto your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end brown.” I, for one, want to stay rosy, and you, for one, should read Jitterbug Perfume.

This is a compelling, detailed history of three influential singer/songwriters – Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. Their early careers were wildly different, yet intersected in unexpected ways as they each found their unique paths to success. What I love most about this deftly written account is that specific songs are set in their historical context, so you better understand what was happening with the artist at that time and gain new insights into the songs that still resonate today, fifty years later.

I happened to have spent time with Patti Schemel when my band Scarce toured for a month with Hole in 1995. Patti is the real deal when it comes to being a musician. She’s a badass on the drums, and in real life.

I really enjoyed the intimate moments she shared about Kurt Cobain. They are tender and sweet, and show a very different side of his public persona. She takes us into the back scenes of what was like to be in a band as it took off, backing up the very unpredictable Courtney Love onstage, and what it means to be a rock star.

I also loved that she spent time writing about what it was like to be a lesbian in the male-dominated rock world, where women are seen often as simply something pretty to look at.

Her personality really shines through her writing. She’s fierce, honest,… show more.

This book piqued my interest because it was on former President Obama’s reading list. On the surface, this is a story about an interracial rock duo’s rise to fame and their breakup. But it is really about how race impacts black women and the choices we have to make that others don’t.

The story is primarily set in the 1970s, and as a baby boomer, I enjoy reading about this time period. In 2016, they considered a reunion, but of course, secrets and unresolved issues got in the way.

I’ve read this book twice. Both times, I couldn’t put it down. Alice Bag can tell a story, and my neurodivergent ass loves books parsed into bite-sized sections. Alice’s stories begin with her childhood and end with her becoming a teacher. 

I look up to Alice and relate to her a lot. We both grew up in difficult family situations; we were both ambitious teens who were able to befriend just about anybody; and then we both learned to express our creativity and exercise our demons through punk. Growing up a bit and reigning in our talents, we both became public school teachers. Not to mention, we both love to write our memoirs. It’s cool to see her grow and reflect on her experiences, and a perfect read for anyone wanting new stories about all the characters in the early LA punk sphere.

As far as I know, this is the first biography of an all-female or female-fronted band. When I saw it come out, I was thrilled but also thought: how in the world has it taken this long for someone to write a book about The Slits?!

Lucky for me (and for all of you), Zoe Howe was the one to do it because this book taught me that it’s more than possible to write about women in music (even when male journalists and music writers omit women altogether, marginalize them in print, or criticize their work). 

With Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry, Kristin Lieb provides an enlightening but often troubling account of the contemporary pop music industry. By focusing on women artists in the post-MTV era, Lieb demonstrates that female pop singers are judged more than ever on their sex appeal—despite the advances of the women’s movement over the past several decades. Lieb draws from both theorists and music industry insiders, giving her conclusions weight and credibility. Yet despite its frequently disturbing findings, the book is not overly cynical. Lieb, an energetic writer, has managed to maintain her enthusiasm for pop music.