By Lindy Rybloom

Cover image via AbeBooks

5. Girl In A Band: Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth)

Providing a first-person perspective into the world of 20th-century alternative rock, Kim Gordon grants readers a first-hand account of her experience in Sonic Youth. For those looking for a feminist perspective on life in a band, Girl In A Band is for you. While giving insight on her time as a rocker in an admired musical group, Gordon also sheds light on her marriage with bandmate, Thurston Moore. This book offers a look into the double-life Gordon lived; being a bassist and vocalist as well as her day-to-day identity as a wife and a mother. Gordon is effortlessly cool as she recalls past memories and writes about her journey into the world of music. 

“The 1960s were so beloved. More than any other decade, they embodied the idea that an individual could find an identity in a music movement.” – Kim Gordon

image via amazon

4. Just Kids: Patti Smith

Patti Smith, while having released music in the past, is an author to her core. Her mind works like a writer, filled with words rather than lyrics. Just Kids follows her life with her ultimate muse, Robert Mapplethorpe. In 1960s New York’s crowd of hopeful artists trying to get their start, Smith and Mapplethorpe came into their own as they hoped to pay the bills with art. Smith emphasizes the beautiful connection the two shared as kids trying to understand their place in the world while learning who they are through each other. 

“Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.”  – Patti Smith

Cover image via NPR

3. Crying In H Mart: Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast)

Lead singer of Japanese Breakfast and Pacific Northwest native, Michelle Zauner became a New York Times bestseller with her book, Crying In H Mart. If you’re hoping for the origin story of Zauner’s musical career, I fear you are looking in the wrong place; this book instead follows the life and death of her beloved mother, Chongmi. Raised in Eugene, Oregon, Zauner’s images of childhood in the Pacific Northwest are laced with a sense of familiarity to those local to the Puget Sound. Though fraught with heart-wrenching recollections of her mother, Zauner somehow tells this melancholy story with poise. Along with the story of her mother, Zauner offers insight into her Korean-American roots as well as family traditions that may be intriguing to readers who are disconnected to Korean culture. While this is not a retelling of Zauner’s musical experience, Crying In H Mart reveals another side to this indie pop icon, one that is composed, articulate, and mature and extends her talents beyond being the face of Japanese Breakfast.

“I talked about how love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor.” – Michelle Zauner

Cover Image Via FullStop

2. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: Carrie Brownstein (Sleater Kinney)

Emerging during the “Riot Grrrl” era, Carrie Brownstein is one of the members that make up the all-female punk band, Sleater Kinney.​​ Getting their start during the 1990s Washington indie rock scene, and having close proximity to the University of Puget Sound, this writing feels familiar and relatable. Brownstein writes Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl with a sense of nostalgia and yearning for adolescence often found in young adults. Coming from a complicated familial background, she touches on her journey to musical salvation and how it changes the trajectory of her life. Simultaneously missing the past and looking into the future, Brownstein beautifully composes the effect of music on her life and how it makes her the woman she is. 

“Nostalgia is so certain: the sense of familiarity makes us feel like we know ourselves, like we’ve lived. To get a sense that we have already journeyed through something, survived it, experienced it, is often so much easier and less messy than the task of currently living through something.” – Carrie Brownstein

Cover image Via Abe Books

1. Acid For The Children: Michael Balzary AKA Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

In my opinion, Flea’s memoir Acid For The Children reigns supreme. Drawing consumers in by giving them a realistic view of his upbringing, Flea allows readers to get to know him on a personal level. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1970s, he has his fair share of encounters with drugs and violence, though ultimately finds comfort in his best friend and future bandmate, Anthony Kiedis. Flea’s retelling of his coming of age is written so sincerely, yearning for the forgiveness of his past self. Raised as a jazz connoisseur, Flea recalls his introduction to rock n roll and the ways in which it eternally inspires a spark in him. In the midst of change and instability, music follows Flea through every hurdle and brings him peace in a world of chaos. 

“The greatest of humankind belongs to those who think their view of what’s real is the only truth.” – Flea