Here are 100 books that Vinyl Junkies fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up in the eighties, and that means I grew up watching movies such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Say Anything. Thirty years after watching those movies, some iconic scenes have stuck with me: the characters of The Breakfast Club sliding across the hallway to Simple Mindsā song āDonāt You Forget About Me,ā John Cusack holding the boombox over his head while blaring Peter Gabrielās āIn Your Eyes,ā and the Psychedelic Furs āPretty in Pinkā song playing on the soundtrack of a movie by the same name. The books in this list do a lot with those same ingredients of heartbreak, music, and hope that the characters who so often remind me of myself might find love.
The actor John Cusack brought me to this movie, and I read the book after the movie and loved it. One of the key differences between the movie and the book is that the movie is set in Chicago, and the book in North London. As someone who grew up in the ā80s, I started with Cusack as the nerdy sidekick in Sixteen Candles and became obsessed with his Lloyd Dobler character in Say Anything; you know, the guy who dressed in a trench coat and held a boom box over his head outside a girlās window.
The narrator of this novel is a record shop owner in London named Rob, and he starts off with his desert island, all-time, top five most memorable breakups, in chronological order. When weāre in the record shop that Rob owns, the guys are always making lists: top 5 guitar solos, top 5ā¦
"I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time."āZoĆ« Kravitz
From the bestselling author of Funny Girl, About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll.
Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has aā¦
I wrote Leaving the Beach because I was once bulimic and music-obsessed. After seeking help and recovering, I realized I wanted to write a realistic book about a bulimic woman; it was critical that I didnāt unintentionally romanticize any aspects of this insidious, potentially fatal disease.
If youāve ever wondered if humanity could survive without music, Dave OāLearyās The Music Book is for you. Set in Seattle during the post-Nirvana/Pearl Jam period, the story follows earnest, likable Rob through nightclubs, strip bars, and a prison on an alcohol-enhanced quest for love and an answer to his question about what music actually means to the world. A truly unique and compelling story.
What does music mean? Can it be more than the sum of its notes and melodies? Can it truly change you? Rob, a musician turned reluctant music critic, poses these questions as everything important in his life appears to be fadingāmemories of lost love, songs from his old bands, even his hearing. He delves into the music of others to find solace and purpose, and discovers that the chords and repeated phrases echo themes that have emerged in his own life. The music sustains him, but can it revive him?
I wrote Leaving the Beach because I was once bulimic and music-obsessed. After seeking help and recovering, I realized I wanted to write a realistic book about a bulimic woman; it was critical that I didnāt unintentionally romanticize any aspects of this insidious, potentially fatal disease.
When I first read Girl, I thought Blake Nelson was a woman. Thatās how convincingly this male author writesādiary-styleāin the voice of female protagonist Andrea. Andreaās a typical high school student in the Pacific Northwest who lives and breathes music and thrift-store clothing. But through her friendship with another like-minded woman, she becomes way more involved in the Portland, Oregon grunge scene than she ever imagined she would. One thing I love about Girlis the way we experience the world exclusively through Andreaās eyes. She sees the world as it happens, without editorializing or offering any sweeping commentaries. I found this book impossible to put down.
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Meet Andrea Marr, straight-A high school student, thrift-store addict, and princess of the downtown music scene. Andrea is about to experience her first love, first time, and first step outside the comfort zone of high school, with the help of indie rock band The Color Green.
"After I saw Todd Sparrow something deep inside me began to change. It was not a big change and I didn't shave my head and I didn't really think any differently about my life or Hillside or anything like that. But one glimpse of Todd and you immediately realized how limited you were andā¦
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorāand only womanāon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I wrote Leaving the Beach because I was once bulimic and music-obsessed. After seeking help and recovering, I realized I wanted to write a realistic book about a bulimic woman; it was critical that I didnāt unintentionally romanticize any aspects of this insidious, potentially fatal disease.
All the characters in this storyāeven the minor onesāare so three-dimensional and human that they must be based at least partly on real people. The protagonist, Viaāwho lost her parents to gun violence as a child and struggles with substance abuse and other thingsāisnāt a musician or a die-hard music fan, but music and the Seattle music scene play such a huge role in this story that I was compelled to include it on my list. Ina Zajacās writing is impeccable. She doesnāt shy away from the gritty side of reality and demonstrates a deep understanding of musicians, the things that make them tick, and the people who love them.
An emotionally-charged urban cautionary tale with quirky characters who will stay with you: including Grandma Daney, a mystical star child who serves up universal inspiration with her milk and cookies.
Itās September when good girl Via Sorenson stumbles into a Seattle strip club, drunk and alone on her twenty-first birthday. Matt and Nickābest friends, bandmates, and bouncersādo their best to shield her from their sadistic cocaine-trafficking boss, Carlos. They donāt realize her daddy issues come with a forty-million-dollar trust fund and a legacy she would do anything to escape.
She is actually Violetta Rabbotino, who had been all over theā¦
I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, womenās and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. I work to understand how sound and media work because they structure our reality in important ways. Listening as a way of approaching relationships in work and play is key to our survival. So is understanding how media works, where we get our information from, and how to tell whatās relevant, significant, and true, and what is not.
Just as important as thinking about how music sounds and what it means is thinking about where technology comes from and crucially, where it goes after weāre done with it. This book lets no one off the hook and insists that anyone who cares about music should be cognizant of its economies of waste and decomposition.
Music is seen as the most immaterial of the arts, and recorded music as a progress of dematerializationāan evolution from physical discs to invisible digits. In Decomposed, Kyle Devine offers another perspective. He shows that recorded music has always been a significant exploiter of both natural and human resources, and that its reliance on these resources is more problematic today than ever before. Devine uncovers the hidden history of recorded musicāwhat recordings are made of and what happens to them when they are disposed of.
Devine's story focuses on three forms of materiality. Beforeā¦
Iāve been fascinated with the future ever since I watched 2001 Space Odyssey. An amazing spaceship that could help us explore other planets! Then all that weird stuff about an A.I. gone crazy and apes banging sticks around monoliths. What theā¦? That curiosity smashed into a major concern at the age of fifteen on a canoe trip where I was trying to work out how to live and work closely with other humans - and failing. It turns out humans are crazy creatures. We love being together, and doing amazing things together, but that can be really hard. So leadership and the future fused into a lifelong passionate pursuit.
Chromey has a whole different way of looking at generational differences. When I interviewed him on my podcast, he did a fair critique of the typical division of generations by arbitrary birth years.
Far more important, he says, is to look at the technology that shaped the environment, and hence the mindsets and attitudes of the people who adopted and used that technology as part of their growing up during their ācoming of ageā years.
Huh. Itās obvious and makes complete sense to me.
The book outlines the chief technologies that shaped attitudes: transportation-telephone, motion pictures, radio, vinyl, television, space, gamer, cable television, personal computer-cell phone, internet, iTech, robotics. And Iād add coming now - artificial intelligence.
On top of all that is the pattern of swinging between optimism and pessimism across the generations across a spring/summer/winter/autumn cyclical model. Very smart.
Every twenty years a new generation rises, but who and what defines these generations? And could current generational tags mislead and miss the point?
In this insightful analysis of technology history since 1900, Dr. Rick Chromey offers a fresh perspective for understanding what makes a generation tick and differ from others. Within GenTech, readers learn how every generation uniquely interacts with particular technologies that define historical temperament and personality and why current generational labels are more fluid than fixed, and more loopy than linear. Consequently, three major generational constellations emerge, each containing four, twenty-year generations that overlap, merge, and blend:ā¦
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: āAre his love songs closer to heaven than dying?ā Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard itā¦
In second grade my teacher told me I should be a writerāI havenāt wavered in my path since. I was a voracious reader as a child and regularly snatched books off my momās night table. My love for flawed characters grew with each book I devoured. I felt a connection with these characters, which fueled my dream to become a writer. When I was twenty-one years old and studying writing, I wrote in my journal, āI want to write books that make people cry.ā I love to explore the gray areas in life, and Iām honored that readers have told me my books do make them cry (and laugh).
I love this short story collection by Jill McCorkle, because Jill is a master of complex yet subtle emotionsāit left me laughing out loud on one page and crying on the next. The characters in each story are flawed and multi-dimensional and so gloriously human that I rooted for them, despite any shortcomings.
In Your Husband Is Cheating on Us, I sympathized with the unnamed narrator/speaker because her humanity shines through, even though sheās the other woman coming clean to her affair partnerās wife (and I was even hoping for her morally murky proposal to succeed). I love the short story form, and this is one of my favorites, but theyāre all stellar in this collection. Itās a Funeral! RSVP feels like chatting with a best friend whoās made some questionable decisions, but you love her anywayāespecially when the narrator divulges her dark secret. Itās funny and tender and heartbreaking.
When Jill McCorkle feels a short story coming on, she goes right ahead and "wastes" wonderful ideas instead of hoarding them for a novel. The result is another extraordinary collection of stories and characters. In "It's a Funeral! RSVP," the storyteller is a woman who takes up self-styled "careers" that suit her circumstances. Now she's stumbled onto one that's so successful that she just can't quit. It's planning funerals, what she calls Going Out Parties, in which the clients are the soon-to-be-deceased themselves. In "Life Prerecorded," perhaps McCorkle's finest short piece to date, the pregnant narrator finds the real meaningā¦
Hi there, Iām Lucie and Iām a writer (allegedly) but before that Iām a human and I know how hard it is to be a human. Itās a constant battle with yourself, the people around you, the world, and itās exhausting and sometimes it can be too much but we find ways to keep going and books help me do that (as well as crying, screaming, potatoes). I find life absurd most of the time so I have to laugh about it or Iād go insane. And Iām still alive, despite constantly being in a fight with my brain, so I think Iāve got this.
A beautiful book by one of my favourite comics about one manās mental breakdown and how music and the people who made it saved him from the worst year of his life. Itās funny and tender and all the music he references was made by people going through their own shit and about how they used their music to save themselves. Itās a book about how we fall apart and how we put ourselves back together and you donāt have to know about music to be moved by it.
The brand new memoir from James Acaster: cult comedian, bestselling author of Classic Scrapes, undercover cop, receiver of cabbages.
PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER is a love letter to the healing power of music, and how one man's obsessive quest saw him defeat the bullshit of one year with the beauty of another. Because that one man is James Acaster, it also includes tales of befouling himself in a Los Angeles steakhouse, stealing a cookie from Clint Eastwood, and giving drunk, unsolicited pep talks to urinating strangers.
January, 2017 James Acaster wakes up heartbroken and alone in Newā¦
Richard Niles was born in Hollywood but grew up in London where his 50-year professional career as a composer, arranger, record producer led to work with some of the most acclaimed artists of our time, including Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, James Brown, Tina Turner, Cher and jazz icon Pat Metheny. He has worked on 20 Gold and 28 Platinum records. He has published many books on music including The Pat Metheny Interviews, The Invisible Artist, From Dreaming to Gigging, Piano Grooves, Songwriting ā The 11-Point Plan, Adventures in Arranging, Adventures in Jazz Composition, What is Melody?, and How to be an Employable Musician. Dr. Niles' PhD is from Brunel University and he has lectured internationally.
Known as āthe man who invented the ā80sā, Trevor Horn is considered one of the most innovative producers of modern pop.
He revolutionized production from his group The Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star to Band Aidās Do they Know Itās Christmas?, to hits for Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ABC, Yes, Rod Stewart, and Seal. I can tell you this book is the real deal because I worked with him on hits for The Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones, Frankie, and ABC.
This book takes you inside his unique process, and reveals his production concept - at once mind-blowing and surprisingly down-to-earth.
As a renowned recording-studio maven, Trevor Horn has been dubbed 'the man who invented the '80s'.
His production work since the glory days of ZTT represents a veritable 'who's who' of intelligent modern pop, including the likes of ABC, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Pet Shop Boys, Seal, Simple Minds, Grace Jones and Yes - among many others.
This book is Trevor's story in his own words, as told through the prism of twenty-three of his most important songs - from the ones that inspired him to the ones that definedā¦
Iām a Professor of Cultural Sociology at Edinburgh, UK, and have written extensively on contemporary culture and particularly technological mediations of popular music. I have undertaken empirical research on cultures of popular music in places like Iceland, Japan, and the UK, and I have supervised around 25 doctoral students to successful completion. My work is widely cited in the field of cultural sociology, and I am regularly interviewed by national broadcasters and the press. Iām also an amateur musician, making homespun electronic music in my bedroom and releasing it under the monikers Sponge Monkeys and Triviax.
I wasnāt expecting this! One of the most gifted and quirky songsmiths of the age, the lead singer of art pop band The Talking Heads no less, turns his attention to the technological evolution of music.
I found profound insight and erudition on every page, but itās not preachy or overly auto-biographical. Instead, Byrne limns out the changing shapes of music and how it comes into being in composition, performance, and education. He is as much at ease with Hume and Adorno as he is with scales, harmonies, and DJ culture, and the payoff is enormous.
Whenever I pick this book up, which is regularly, it takes me on unexpected journeys and provokes new ideas. My favorite quote on the creative process: āThe idea is to allow the chthonic material the freedom it needs to gurgle up.ā
How Music Works is David Byrne's buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about.
Equal parts historian and anthropologist, raconteur and social scientist, Byrne draws on his own work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators - along with journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music exists - to show that music-making is not just the act of a solitary composer in a studio, but rather a logical, populist, and beautiful result of cultural circumstance.
A brainy, irresistible adventure, How Music Works is an impassioned argument about music'sā¦