70 books like Someone Who Isn’t Me

The gold standard of rock and roll oral histories. Two authors, years and years in the making, chronicling one of music's most incendiary eras. "Will you die for the music?" Lou Reed asks in the early pages. In other words, how many knife fights, sleepless nights, and dead friends would it take to stop you from chasing artistic salvation?

Reading this book while I wrote my own made me realize just how sterilized my scene (like much of America) had gotten by the turn of the millennium. Third-wave emo wasn't famously dangerous or gritty, but many of its icons grappled with life-threatening addiction and mental health issues (even more than I expected going in). Yet, thankfully, almost all of those band members are still with us. Please Kill Me illuminated this. It's no accident the final word in my book is "survive."

This book gave me a drive. Goodman’s account of the Strokes’ debaucherous rise in 9/11-era New York City ignited my passion for oral history and to tell the story of the music that made me. Downtown cool kid garage rock shaped popular culture immensely, but so did My Chemical Romance and their cohort (even more so, I’d argue). Up to this point (MMITB was published in 2017), 2000s emo was frequently misconstrued by those too old to have understood its impact or left out of the conversation entirely.

As I conducted interviews for my book, I challenged my own hypotheses (and personal biases) about these two scenes. I learned they intermingled more than I thought. I talked to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz about DJing the ultra-hip downtown party Misshapes and My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way about trying to catch a glimpse of Madonna at the same place.

Reading Shea Serrano is like kicking back with an old friend... who can expertly trace rap's evolution from the Bronx and "Rapper's Delight" to the LA vs. NY rivalries, to the rise of the South, the bling era, the blog era, and up to the present (or at least 2014, when this book was published).

Equal parts conversational and cunning, this book is a master class in voice from which I still pull inspiration. Whenever I'm thinking, "How could this thing I'm writing sound less like an online encyclopedia article but still harness all these arcane details I want to squeeze in?" I think of this book, which is often.

John Lurie makes me think of what it means to be an artist. It’s funny, though, because after watching three seasons of his TV show, I still wasn’t entirely sure who John Lurie was or why he had an HBO series.

Painting With John is hosted by a 60-something Lurie living in the Caribbean, slowed by chronic illness, musing on past misadventures with New York City icons like Basquiat and Bourdain while getting lost in his dreamlike paintings. Lurie's 2021 memoir fleshes out his story just enough: jazz saxophonist turned reluctant art house film star who side-stepped significant fame and money by unfortunate events and steadfastly chose creativity over compromise.

On the page, Lurie’s telling of these events is mystifying. I’m looking forward to a life of creativity with his voice in my head.

If you like small town settings with big old houses and hints of a ghost, intrigue, and simmering romance, you’ll love Storms of the Heart.

The story’s female main character, Emerson Lane, finds herself right in the middle of a raging thunderstorm at night on her way to her Uncle Wayne’s house in Twin Creeks, where she lived when her parents died in a car crash. She’s on a mission to reconnect with her uncle after leaving abruptly years ago to live in New York City. Trouble is waiting for her in the name of Sheriff Max Lomax, who she left behind.

Max has his own problems, but he is secretly but begrudgingly thrilled to see her, but questions whether this time she’ll stay. I liked the interesting characters in this story and the pleasant descriptions of Emerson’s hometown. The writing was so nice it felt like I could just… show more.

While I was writing my novel about Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, I heard that Renée Rosen was writing about Estée Lauder and couldn’t wait to read it.

She perfectly captures the pushy, driven, hilarious character of Estée, who was known for accosting strangers in the street to tell them they were wearing the wrong shade of lipstick for their skin tone. Renée Rosen is one of the authors whose books I always preorder: I love everything she writes.

Steamy slow-burn with tension you can feel rolling off the page? This one is for you! This new-to-me author was an epic find and I cannot get enough. The world-building is beyond exceptional, the characters and their struggles–both physical and mental–are realistic even as it’s a fantasy! I one-clicked the rest of the series even before I finished the first book! 

Books on the war’s campaigns usually aggregate large numbers of people into bland terms like “regiments” and “refugees,” singling out only a few key players as individuals.

This book takes a refreshingly different approach, examining one of the war’s major operations from the level of participants of all sorts, from senior government officials down to the soldiers, civilians, and spies caught up in the fighting. The campaign itself has heretofore been almost entirely overlooked, or seen only in terms of a few of the battles that were part of it.

The result is a vivid account of the many components of a major campaign, and the legions of individuals involved.

Claire is seven years old when her college-age sister is found dead at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X.

Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with a man originally suspected of murdering her sister. This book is not your standard Thriller; the cast of characters is large and the plot complex, but the author pulls it off.

It’s also not a book to keep you up all night. Try three or four nights. The writing is brilliant in ways not often seen in the genre and I was forced to slow down and give myself over to the story. It’s one I will never forget.

One of the many wistful and beautiful photos in this book caught my eye in an exhibit at the New York Historical Society in 2021.

Her photography, and the attendant essays, evoke not only the isolation of quarantine, but the ways we rediscovered the desire for human connection. What could be easier than meeting a friend, careful to stay 6’ apart? Or sadder?