Reads That Rock: Fiction and Non-Fiction Books for Music Geeks

In her new memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani DiFranco recounts her early life from a place of hard-won wisdom, combining personal expression, the power of music, feminism, political activism, storytelling, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, and much more into an inspiring whole.

Science fiction rocks — literally, according to Strange Stars author Jason Heller. In this ambitious work, Heller makes the case that rock and roll was more influenced by science fiction films and literature than has been commonly acknowledged. From David Bowie’s Space Oddity to the cosmic stylings of prog rockers Pink Floyd, Strange Stars is science fiction music mixtape for the mind that bookworms and music fans alike will love.

Lots of rockers read novels, but how many write them? John Malerman is the frontman of the indie rock band The High Strung, but when he’s not performing, he writes electrifying horror fiction. His latest is Unbury Carol: a gothic western about a woman buried alive and the man who sets out to rescue her.

Peter Bebergal’s Season of the Witch peers into the dark, cobwebbed corners of rock and roll for a look at the occult’s hidden influences on popular music, from the wizardly dabbling of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page to the masonic imagery of today’s hottest rap stars. Season of the Witch is the hidden history of rock and roll that you didn’t know you needed. Light some incense, try to play your favorite vinyl album backwards, and find out once and for all why the devil has all the best tunes.

In the nineties, Kris Pulaski was the guitarist for Dürt Würk: a heavy metal band whose one big shot at success was ruined when their lead singer went solo. Now, he’s a superstar, and she’s a washed-up has been working the night shift at a Best Western. When a terrifying act of violence rips apart what she has left of her life, Kris begins to wonder what kind of bargain her old frontman made in exchange for his overnight success. Now she’s getting what’s left of the band together to find out.

Have you ever downloaded a song illegally? It’s okay. You don’t have to answer. But saying that you did — and I’m totally not saying you did — have you ever wondered how that song (and so many others) got on the web in the first place? How Music Got Free is the never before told story about the birth of the digital music era, and the piracy that followed it. Meet the criminals, sound engineers, and music fans who changed the recording industry forever — good and bad.

As the founder of listen.com, Rob Reid was at the forefront of the digital music revolution. In his novel Year Zero, aliens arrive on Earth to confess that they’ve been listening to Earth’s music for decades. It could be the biggest copyright violation ever: Big enough to bankrupt the entire universe, in fact. If the aliens can’t reach what they consider a reasonable settlement, then it’ll be cheaper for them to go ahead and blow the planet up. Can a low-level entertainment lawyer save the world?

M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York’s Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima.