Here are 100 books that The Lightning Bottles fans have personally recommended if you like
The Lightning Bottles.
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It’s open, honest, and really helps you get inside the head of someone who wants to play guitar, maybe more than anything. There’s great insight into addiction, too. And, of course, it has the gossipy rock and roll stuff that can’t be avoided when you’re a member of The Rolling Stones.
The book covers many decades; it’s an intimate look at a long, creative life.
As lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics, and the songs that roused the world. A true and towering original, he has always walked his own path, spoken his mind, and done things his own way.Now at last Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, only…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Hoffs is one of the founding members of The Bangles, and one can’t help but imagine that it is all true in one way or another. There’s a character who is an awful lot like Prince and...well, that makes the story particularly fun for me.
A delightfully funny and romantic debut novel from Susanna Hoffs, the celebrated performer and co-founder of The Bangles
'A little bit romance, a little bit rock-and-roll-this isn't just a book, it's a love song, and it should come as no surprise that Susanna Hoffs has crafted the perfect one to put on your playlist.' Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners
'...the smart, ferocious rock-chick redemption romance you didn't know you needed' New York Times
Jane Start is thirty-three, broke, and recently single. Ten years prior, she had a hit song-written by world-famous superstar Jonesy-but Jane hasn't…
I love the ’70s vibe happening in this book. And it takes place in California, where I grew up.
There’s mystery and suspense woven throughout these pages. Jackie, our protagonist, tries to reconcile her memories and past “truths” with what she eventually discovers really happened in those years. You won’t be able to stop reading—this is a fast book that pulls you along like a riptide.
“A delicious daydream of a book.” —Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times bestselling author of 28 Summers
“With lyrical writing and a page-turning plot, this sun-dappled book has it all.” —Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party
ONE ICONIC FAMILY. ONE SUMMER OF SECRETS. THE DAZZLING SPIRIT OF 1970S CALIFORNIA.
For Jackie Pierce, everything changed the summer of 1979, when she spent three months of infinite freedom at her bohemian uncle’s sprawling estate on the California coast. As musicians, artists, and free spirits gathered at The Sandcastle for the season in pursuit of inspiration and communal living, Jackie and her…
Katie's Gamble is an unexpected, unique story about a young woman who's trying to support her younger siblings by keeping her family's confectionery shop open.
In order to do that, she has to take on her older brother, who's a notorious gambler in Louisiana. Additionally, she has to outsmart Rowdy…
This book takes place in Baltimore, which always fascinates me (I lived there for a couple of decades).
There’s a fan (a father, who’s a music teacher), a kid (his son, who wants his dad to be happy), and a female rockstar (the drummer from the music teacher’s favorite band) who’s been in hiding for decades. Of course, they all come together (what more could you want?!).
In the end, this is the sweetest love story I’ve read in years.
When a single dad meets the former rock-star crush of his youth, everything they thought they knew about happiness and love is thrown into chaos in this hopeful, heartwarming romantic comedy.
“Bound to charm readers from page one . . . You’ll root for everyone in this sweet love story.”—Elissa Sussman, bestselling author of Funny You Should Ask
Billy Perkins is happy. And why wouldn’t he be? He loves his job as an independent music teacher and his apartment in Baltimore above a record shop called Charm City Rocks. Most of all, he loves his brainy teenage son, Caleb.
I’m fascinated by angry, feral, primal women. In my book, ten stories feature these women, the ones doing the things we’re not supposed to do, thinking and feeling and saying the things we’re not supposed to. I think we’re beyond powerful when we embrace our anger, nourish and cultivate it, channel it. So I write about these women in the hopes that I’ll get a bit of their strength. The books in this list have inspired me as a writer and thrilled me as a reader.
In the early 1990s, a group of women-centric punk bands and their young fans created a radical feminist movement, one that is still deeply inspiring. This book of Riot Grrrl is a fascinating look at the interplay between music and revolt, as well as an enraging analysis of how media took young women’s anger and turned it poisonous. I have long been obsessed with Riot Grrrl; although I was of the age to participate at the time, I lacked information and access. So I look back now at my Gen X peers and celebrate the music and rage that created this holy thing. And in my book, some of my stories are based on these songs and the spirit of these girls.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the Senate didn't believe Anita Hill, Rush Limbaugh compared feminists to Nazis, and a study found that girls tended to start hating themselves during adolescence. It was a hard time to be a young woman, to be growing up on promises of equal rights that didn't square with reality. Sexual assault rates reached record highs; harassment was rife in the schools; and, boys still would be boys, and girls still had to watch what they wore and where they walked. It was enough to make a girl want to scream. Riot Grrrl roared into…
It was not hard to grow up Goth in an old farmhouse in Norfolk, one of the most haunted counties in England. Age 11, when the Eighties began, I genuinely believed that ghosts, witches, and a demon dog called Old Shuck stalked this land. John Peel's radio show kept the night terrors at bay and replaced them with the music that became my passion. By 19, I was writing for Sounds and would meet and work with many of the bands and artists who saw me through that dread decade. Forty years on, this is my love letter to a most maligned and misunderstood genre – and why it still matters.
While the Ripper was abroad in Yorkshire, New York was stalked by its own phantom killer, Son of Sam, while its rapidly diminishing police force were otherwise engaged giving out leaflets entitled Welcome To Fear City: A Survival Guide for Visitors.
Abe Beame was Mayor over a burned-out necropolis of demolished buildings, crumbling infrastructure and tripling crime rates, a city President Gerald Ford told to "drop dead". This was the stage on which Lydia Lunch began her assault on the senses and sensibilities of her nation, at the tender age of 16.
Her account of not only surviving but grabbing every last moment of fun to be had in Fear City is rivalled only by mentor Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn as the ultimate in New York stories.
“Paradoxia reveals that Lunch is at her best when she’s at her worst . . . [and] gives voice to her sometimes scary, frequently funny, always canny, never sentimental siren song."—Barbara Kruger, Artforum
Lydia Lunch relays in graphic detail the true psychic repercussions of sexual misadventure. From New York to London to New Orleans, Paradoxia is an uncensored, novelized account of one woman’s assault on men.
Lydia Lunch was the primary instigator of the No Wave Movement and the focal point of the Cinema of Transgression. A musician, writer, and photographer, she exposes the dark underbelly of passion confronting the…
Papyrologist Lisa Emmer's world flips when the Sûreté detains her at her Metro station with news of the savage murder of the esteemed Paris historian Dr. Raimond Foix, her friend and mentor in the study of ancient documents.
Horrified, Lisa finds clues at the crime scene left behind for her…
In 2011, when my all-girl garage band began gigging around Chicago, I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard people call us “riot grrrl.” We weren’t riot grrrls; we were far too late for the movement. But for so many people, riot grrrl was the only reference point they had for scary, brash female musicians. The truth is, women were involved in the movement’s origins in every part of the world. I believe we must understand that riot grrrls weren’t the first women of punk.My book Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 details the stories of lesser-known but highly influential women who helped create punk and its adjacent genres.
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.
The proximity of the East L.A. barrio to Hollywood is as close as a short drive on the 101 freeway, but the cultural divide is enormous. Born to Mexican-born and American-naturalized parents, Alicia Armendariz migrated a few miles west to participate in the free-range birth of the 1970s punk movement. Alicia adopted the punk name Alice Bag, and became lead singer for The Bags, early punk visionaries who starred in Penelope Spheeris' documentary The Decline of Western Civilization.
Here is a life of many crossed boundaries, from East L.A.'s musica ranchera to Hollywood's punk rock; from a violent male-dominated family…
I’ve been thinking about and researching obscured narratives for a long time, now. As a lawyer, I learned about how systems and structures marginalize and hide important voices because of overt discrimination and implicit biases, and I took that knowledge with me while I earned a PhD in literary studies. I’ve learned — and am still learning! — that if we want to remedy exclusions from cultural histories, we’ve gotto learn to think about what voices are missing and why. I hope reading my book and those recommended here will give you a chance to learn with me. Let’s change the ways we think about so-called “definitive” histories of music.
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).
Wild, defiant and startlingly inventive, The Slits were ahead of their time. Although they created some unique hybrids - dub reggae and pop-punk, African rhythms, funk and free jazz - they were dismissed as being unable to play. Their lyrics were witty and perceptive while their influential first album challenged perceptions of punk and of girl bands - but they were still misunderstood. And that infamous debut album cover, with the band appearing topless and mud-daubed, prompted further misreadings of the first ladies of punk. Author Zoe Street Howe speaks to The Slits themselves, to former manager Don Letts, mentor…
Kevin Smokler here. I spent the last three years interviewing women film directors about their complete body of work and journey toward making it. I'm honored to share that with you. My career (4 books, 2 documentaries, countless articles) has always been about how our culture and entertainment are bigger than we think, and that size is an unending gift to us. In honoring the work of women artists here and in this list of books, I'm encouraging you (I hope) to think bigger and wider and more generously with what you see as a worry of your time and attention. This is also just how my mamma raised me.
This book made me want to sing out loud. Here’s why…
I submit that the best way to see something or someone you think you know everything about is to listen to a genius talk about them. This book is filled with the geniuses I learn at the feet of. Taffy Brodesser-Akner (of Fleishman is in Trouble) on Taylor Swift, Novelist Kate Christensen (who could make laundry drying on a line seem fascinating) on Tina Turner, Susan Choi on Stevie Nicks, and Elissa Schappell on Kim Gordon, and so much of this sort of praise and generosity.
It makes you want to listen to everyone in here, read everyone in here, and hug them all first. I love music, great writing, and amazing women doing both. It’s all here and rolling out of the speakers with beauty.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
My expertise as a scholar of the women’s music movement spans 40 years--ever since I attended my first concert and music festival in 1981. A lecturer at UC-Berkeley, I’m the author of 19 books on women’s history, and published the first book on women’s music festivals, Eden Built By Eves, in 1999 (now out of print.) More recently I’ve organized exhibits on the women’s music movement for the Library of Congress, co-authored The Feminist Revolution(which made Oprah’s list), and I’m now the archivist and historian for Olivia Records.
This comprehensive exploration of the women’s music movement in the 1970s and 80s looks at every angle of business and culture, from artists, companies, labels, distributors, publicity, session musicians, and more; the book includes over 100 interviews, and draws upon the author’s personal experience as a popular touring performer and recording artist.
In California, a month before the Stonewall Riots in 1969, Maxine Feldman penned a song, “Angry Atthis,” about the shame surrounding lesbians. She didn’t know where she was going to sing her new song until comedy duo Harrison and Tyler asked her to open their shows. On the other side of the country and three years later, Alix Dobkin released Lavender Jane Loves Women, the first record produced, engineered and played by women.
Maxine and Alix had no business plan. They didn’t fit the mold set by mainstream music but they saw great potential to create a powerful soundtrack for…
