15 Books For Amanda Palmer And Her Fans

For certain reasons (specifically selling signed copies of The Art of Asking) we’ve been thinking a lot about Amanda Palmer and we’re pretty constantly thinking about books. Thus, by Internet Law we are required to create a list of books for Amanda Palmer and her fans. (Also applicable to readers looking to read about art, rock’n’roll, the badassest badass women, poetry, the struggle of self creation, breaking out of social definitions…)

1. You Animal Machine by Eleni Sikelianos

This is the tale of Melena, five times married, mother of three, burlesque dancer, and “the toughest, hardest-assed woman to ever eat wood and bite nails.” Located in history and memory, the real and the imagined, her life cracks open questions of identity at the heart of an American, immigrant, woman’s experience. You Animal Machine offers a glimpse of both the violence and the beauty of the margins, where “outskirts make their own centers.”

2. I Await the Devil’s Coming by Mary MacLane

MFM. If the world were truly just, that’s how we’d think of Mary Maclane. Think Walt Whitman crossed with Patti Smith with a touch of Goethe. I Await the Devil’s Coming is considered by some to be the first bestselling confessional memoir and it is incandescent with a bravado that is still a little shocking.

3. Out of Easy by Ruta Sepetys

It’s 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer. She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street. Josie is caught between the dream of an elite college and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans lures her in her quest for truth, dangling temptation at every turn, and escalating to the ultimate test.

4. Damascus by Joshua Mohr

Art, politics, protest. Cancer and hope. Dive bars and bitter vets. This lyrical and gritty novel, set in a dive bar in the Mission District, juxtaposes big questions of art and society along with big questions of life and identity. Almost makes you feel like you’ve grown a half-sleeve tattoo.

5. Fly Solo by Teresa Williamson

There's a whole big world out there and despite the efforts of many, it still treats men and women differently. Here's how every woman can get out and conquer it-solo.This is an inspiring guide for women who want to "fly solo"-yet stay safe, sane, and solvent during their travels. With candid advice and insider's secrets about some of the most exciting places on earth. This staff pick is a great place to start your adventure.

6. What Purpose Did I Serve in Your Life by Marie Calloway

How much of the artist as a person should appear in their artwork? Should there be a separation between the work of art and person who makes it? What happens when the person is part of the art? Marie Calloway’s collection of poetry asks all of these questions, while pushing on issues of sex, sexuality, and poetry.

7. Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli

Poetry, translation, narration, novelization, and memory all grapple for your attention in this brilliant debut novel. The narrator is a youngish woman, with a child and a husband, and something of a writing career, remembering her time translating poetry for a small press in Harlem. The voice slips back and forth and even into the mind of an elderly and aging poet, and leaves you with more questions than answers.

8. The Three Pigs by David Wiesner

There’s the “right” way to do things, a “traditional” way to tell a story, an “expected” course of events, and that’s all well and good, but not nearly as much fun as tearing down idols and bulldozing over monuments. David Wiesner is a visionary picture book author and his version of The Three Pigs is his most radical (and most fun) exploration of storytelling.

9. Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood

A weird sense of humor and an even stranger sense of sexuality along with a philosophical perspective on the world and a brilliant sense of image all combine to make Patricia Lockwood one of America’s most exciting and polarizing contemporary poets.

10. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Time-travel, serial-killer, murder mystery, in which Kirby Mazrachi chases her own future murderer. The Shining Girls manages to twist about six different genres into something totally unique, while creating one of the more memorable heroines in recent memory. I gonna go out on a limb and think a few of you are Dr. Who fans and if there is one book in the world for fans of Amanda Palmer and Dr. Who, it’s The Shining Girls.

11. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

Does Amanda Palmer read mysteries? I don’t know, but if she did this coiled, cynical whodunnit featuring a weary but able detective and a disintegrating writer would be the mystery she reads.

12. Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

United by a love of music across two centuries and the Atlantic ocean, Revolution is the story of Andi Alpers, Brooklynite about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school and Alexandrine Paradis who dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage two centuries earlier. When Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.

13. Duplex by Kathryn Davis

A book with as many as four separate apocalypses. With a massacre based on a robot’s misunderstanding of the language of sex and love. With transformations, wizards, and halfway houses between the living and the other thing. Davis writes with a kaleidoscopic imagination creating a weird and thrilling world only matched by our weird and thrilling reality.

14. Rookie Yearbook by Tavi Gevinson

Every now and again the Internet redeems itself (just barely) and Rookie is one of the few redemptive websites. Rookie Yearbook One, explores breakups, love, feminism, street harassment, being happy, being sad, and other life-related topics. Featuring contributions from and interviews with Rookie heroes like Daniel Clowes, Zooey Deschanel, Lena Dunham, Sky Ferreira, Jack Black, Anna Faris, Fred Armisen, Patton Oswalt, Paul Feig, Miranda July, Aubrey Plaza, Dan Savage, David Sedaris, Sarah Silverman, John Waters and Joss Whedon. Plus extra goodies like playlists, DIYs and stickers! Sure it’s targeted toward teenage girls and some of the advice is specific, but its message of independence and control over your own identity is one important to all genders and all ages.

15. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The best book about rock’n’roll and one of the best books of the last decade or so period. Egan looks beyond the rock stars to some of the people who drive (or don’t) the music industry while pushing the idea of how we tell stories to new places. There is even a chapter in PowerPoint. One subplot involves an aging and obese old punk rocker who has decided to go on one last suicide tour, pushing his body to the point where it just gives out. I won’t spoil what happens to the suicide tour or any of the other characters, but, along with capturing the particular energy of rock’n’roll, Egan has subtly laid out a potential path for life.