Yes! You may borrow these books!
Circulation staff will be happy to assist you with any title on display or help locate other titles in the main stacks.

See a reference librarian in the Reading Room to find additional reading suggestions or to print out list.

Music Biography

The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats ML420.G7255 A3 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: In the 1970s Grandmaster Flash pioneered the art of break-beat DJing—the process of remixing and thereby creating a new piece of music by playing vinyl records and turntables as musical instruments ...Grandmaster Flash not only transformed and revolutionized the music industry with his innovative turntable genius, he also opened the doors to power, and influenced the hopes and dreams of generations . . . and he did it with class. More about this book:

John Lennon: The Life ML420 .L47 N66 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: Philip Norman set himself the challenge of looking afresh at every aspect of Lennon’s much-chronicled life. He has not just dug deep into the archives, including his own vast collection of tapes and notebooks dating back to the 60s, but spoken to hundreds of witnesses, from every walk of life and every stage of Lennon’s. More about this book:

Journals / Kurt Cobain. ML420.C622 A32 2003  Check Availability From the publisher: ...here are actual notebook pages, filled with [Kurt Cobain's] drawings, thoughts, desires, moods, lists, and declarations, showcasing his many talents, as much as his penchant for morbidity, in an amalgamation of handwriting's. More about this book:

Love, Janis ML420.J668 J6 2005  Check Availability From the publisher: Love, Janis is an intimate, full- blooded portrait that shows both the public and the private Janis, a woman struggling to perfect her art, searching for the balance between love and stardom, and battling her addictions to alcohol and heroin. More about this book:

Billie Holiday: wishing on the moon ML420.H6 C5 2002  Check Availability From the publisher: Clarke was given unrivaled access to a treasure trove of interviews from the 1970's--interviews with those who knew Lady Day from her childhood in the streets and good-time houses of Baltimore through the early days of success in New York and into the years of fame, right up to her tragic decline and death at the age of forty-four. More about this book:

When I Grow Up / Juliana Hatfield. ML420.H35 A3 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: Musician Hatfield, former member of the Blake Babies, recalls both her 15 minutes of fame in the early 1990s and her current, considerably less-glamorous life as a touring musician. The lure of music, making it and performing it, is what keeps her going ... More about this book:

Music Books - General

Musicophilia : Tales of Music and the Brain ML3830 .S13 2007  Check Availability From the publisher: Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people More about this book:

Watch You Bleed: the Saga of Guns n' Roses ML421.G86 D38 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: Davis brilliantly captures the birth of Guns’ raw power, which—despite rape charges, drug-induced rampages, and a general appetite for destruction— launched the band into the pantheon of rock gods such as Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. With a wealth of detail, Davis looks at Axl’s unrelenting quest to release the long-awaited, mystery-shrouded Chinese Democracy album,

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon--and the journey of a generation ML400 .W35 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. More about this book:

When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams ML429.G74 A3 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: For fifteen years beginning in the 1990s, Greene stepped into a universe that, out in the country every summer night, is hiding in plain sight: the touring world of the great early rock bands who gave America the car-radio and jukebox music it still loves best. More about this book:

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession ML3830 .L38 2006  Check Availability From the publisher: Levitin's fascination with the mystery of music and the study of why it affects us so deeply is at the heart of this book. In a real sense, the author is a rock 'n' roll doctor, and in that guise dissects our relationship with music. He points out that bone flutes are among the oldest of human artifacts to have been found and takes readers on a tour of our bio-history. More about this book:

The Soloist : A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music ML418.A96 L66 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: Scurrying back to his office one day, Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times, is stopped short by the ethereal strains of a violin. Searching for the sound, he spots a homeless man coaxing those beautiful sounds from a battered two-string violin....Lopez attempts to help Nathaniel move off Skid Row, regain his dignity, develop his musical talent and free himself of the demons induced by the schizophrenia More about this book:

Fiction/Classics

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby PR6058.O689 H54 2000  Check Availability From the publisher: Journalist Hornby's very funny first novel ... In a candid, engaging narrative voice, 35-year-old pop-music fanatic Rob, the owner of a vintage record shop who has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend, attempts to ease his misery by giving an account of his top-five most memorable split-ups. More about this book:

Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison. PS3563.O8749 B4 1988b  Check Availability From the publisher: Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the decade. "A brutally powerful, mesmerizing story" More about this book:

A & R : a novel by Bill Flanagan. PS3556.L313 A62 2000  Check Availability From the publisher: One character in Bill Flanagan's sharp, exceedingly funny first novel thinks A&R stands for "Assault and Robbery," but he's wrong. In the music biz, it means "Artists and Repertoire," and an A&R man is a talent scout expected to sign up bands with major record labels, tell them he's protecting their vision, and then rob them blind. More about this book:

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III PS3554.U265 H68 2000  Check Availability From the publisher: Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. More about this book:

Catch-22 : a novel by Joseph Heller PS3558 .E476 C3 1999  Check Availability From the publisher: Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen. ...No novel before or since has matched Catch-22's intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. More about this book:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas PQ2226 .A31 2002  Check Availability From the publisher: Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmund Dantes is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'If. After staging a dramatic escape, he sets out to discover the fabulous treasure of Monte Cristo and catch up with his enemies. A novel of enormous tension and excitement, Monte Cristo is also a tale of obsession and revenge. More about this book:

Animal Dreams : a novel / by Barbara Kingsolver PS3561.I496 A86 1991  Check Availability From the publisher: Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What the finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. More about this book:

Glimpses by Lewis Shiner PS3569.H496 G57 2001  Check Availability From the publisher: Ray Shackleford lives in the ruins of the idealistic 1960s. Veteran of failed garage bands, he works as a repairman of stereo equipment, tending the dying embers of his marriage, and dreaming of bygone days and the music that almost was. When he finds the music he dreams of has been mysteriously recorded by his tape deck, Ray is drawn into the past, to revisit the histories of Hendrix, Morrison, and the Beatles...along with the history of Ray Shackleford. More about this book:

More Suggestions

(all below are located in the Main Library stacks)

Carved in Rock: Short Stories by Musicians PS647.R63 C37 2003  Check Availability From the publisher: Editor Greg Kihn is a popular west coast disc jockey who has spent 20 years as a professional musician. Along the way he has met thousands of fellow performers who share a gift for storytelling and an aptitude for artistic adventure. Storyteller collects the short fiction from the most talented of them. The anthology includes a startling array of musicians, each with stories on a wide variety of topics. More about this book:

Everything I'm Cracked Up to be: A Rock & Roll Fairy Tale ML420.T76 A3 2006  Check Availability From the publisher: After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin took a hard look at herself and gave "making it" one last shot. It worked. Suddenly Trynin became the spark that set off one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vied for her,... Billboard put her on the cover. Everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. But then she wasn't. More about this book:

Best Music Writing 2008 ML55 .D2 2008  Check Availability From the publisher: The ninth entry in the acclaimed series celebrating the best writing on every style of music, from rock to hip-hop, R&B to jazz, pop to blues, and more. Culled from publications ranging from blogs to the New Yorker, the 2008 edition captures a year in music writing as diverse and riveting as the music it illuminates. More about this book:

Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña [ View e-book at NetLibrary]  How do I use NetLibrary? From the publisher: this national bestseller tells the story of how four young bohemians on the make--Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez, and Richard Farina--converged on Greenwich Village, fell in love, and invented a sound and style that is one of the most lasting legacies of the 1960s. --> More about this book:

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story ML394 .K59 2006  Check Availability From the publisher: For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. More about this book:

Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley ML420.M375 W4 1998  Check Availability From the publisher: atch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley delves deep into the life of the lionized leader of a musical, spiritual, and political explosion that still reverberates more than a decade after his death. Almost nothing pertaining to the life of Bob Marley is left out ... the roots of the reggae sound, the Jamaican political and social debacle that informed his lyrics--this is a comprehensive account of the life of the artist and the times that produced him. More about this book: