Stephanya is a Gifts Inventory Manager here at BookPeople and also one of the moderators of the This Book Could Be Your Life book club. She claims Tom Waits as her personal Lord and Savior.
On The Road With Bob Dylan by Larry “Ratso” Sloman
I’m not sure what was in the zeitgeist this year but I became certifiably obsessed with Bob Dylan. More specifically, I became obsessed with Dylan’s epic 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. When I asked a certain famous friend who happened to be on that tour with Dylan what he remembered from that time, I received the frustratingly vague answer, “That was a crazy time. I don’t remember a thing.” Lucky for me, Larry “Ratso” Sloman was also on that tour and documented it meticulously in this book. On The Road With Bob Dylan is a free-wheeling, gonzo account of one of Dylan’s most creative and energetic periods… any hard-core Dylan fan will find this a joy to read.
Fleetwood Mac: The Definitive History by Mike Evans
I also became quite inexplicably obsessed with Fleetwood Mac this year. Was it Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar playing (and stone-cold foxiness)? Stevie Nicks’ enviable wardrobe? Mick Fleetwood’s utter insanity as a drummer? I still can’t pin-point the reason but something has fallen into place and I’ve been listening to Rumours almost non-stop for weeks now. So when this big beautiful book arrived at the store, I almost fell to my knees in supplication. Beginning from the early days before Buckingham and Nicks joined the band to the recent reunion tours, this book is brimming with beautiful photographs and inside information about one of pop music’s most infamous bands.
Patti Smith 1969-1976, by Judy Linn
Patti Smith’s extraordinary National Book Award-winning book Just Kids absolutely changed my life. What Kerouac’s On The Road was to my adolescence, Just Kids is to my adulthood. Judy Linn’s beautiful book of photographs is the perfect visual companion to Just Kids. Judy was an intimate friend of Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe during their heady and intensely creative years deep in the Village of NYC and documented the minutiae of their everyday lives in gorgeous black-and-white photographs. Just Kids and Patti Smith 1969-1976 belong next to each other on your bookshelf.
Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick
I’ve never been much more than a casual Elvis fan, so when my book-club co-host Bosco choose this giant Elvis biography for our book club, I was skeptical it would hold my interest. But it was so beautifully written and full of scholarly information, that it was a pleasure for even a casual Elvis fan such as myself. I found that it erased the cartoon-y caricature of Elvis and humanized him. It transformed him into a living, breathing human being with very real thoughts, feelings, desires and sorrows.
Tom Waits on Tom Waits edited by Paul Maher Jr.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a hard-core, wild-eyed, unrepentant Tom Waits zealot. I have accepted him into my heart as my own personal lord and savior. This book is a great resource for “crazy Tom Waits people” like me. A collection of interviews, reviews and other flotsam and jetsam spanning his entire career, this book reveals Tom as a wit and provocateur on par with Mark Twain. I also appreciated how the book was organized according to album, so if you’re going through a Bone Machine period or a Blue Valentine period, you’ll be able to quickly find articles and interviews regarding each record.
BookPeople 