Autism resources part 2: Recent books

My first autism reading list was given to me after I got my “diagnosis”.  My second reading list is books I found myself. These are some of the books that have come out since I found out I was autistic. And they are all by autistic writers. There’s much more now, and more being published all the time. 

As Joanne Limburg says in Letters to My Weird Sisters about learning from other lives, “I realised that other people had experienced the same kinds of painful moments and for the same reasons.”

There is so much I identify with when reading about other people’s experiences, especially women. Especially the older ones.

In  a world where so many "experts" and researchers still get it wrong (and where the "diagnostic manual" trades in deficits)  there's a notable amount of consistency in the way that #ActuallyAutistic people describe their own experiences among themselves. 

Autism resources part 1: My first reading list

It’s seven years since I found out I was autistic. I’ve written a blog post about it, because I wanted to think about how it felt then and how it feels now.

I’ve also written a list of books that I have found useful. Because they might be useful to other people, and because I like lists.

Actually, I’ve written two lists. This is the first one.

These books were on the reading list I was given after my diagnosis in 2018. Here’s what I learnt, and what I recommend.

Men of a Certain Age - book review

In Men of a Certain Age, music journalist Kate Mossman has compiled a selection of interviews with ageing male rock stars, and uses them to analyse her own obsession with ageing male rock stars.

Does the world need another book about middle-aged male rock stars? Kate Mossman asks the question herself: the answer being that she needed to write it. “The older male rock star,” she writes, “isn’t just my specialist subject – it’s my obsession.”

How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History

 

Book review: How Women Made Music by NPR Music 

This book from the US-based public service broadcaster is a spin-off from a longstanding project aimed at putting women musicians centre stage. It proves its point with a rich, readable and revolutionary overview of numerous women musicians who have earnt their place in history.  

NPR is a public service radio network, and they are doing a public service with this book, appropriately subtitled A Revolutionary History. But the book is only a small part of what they are doing. In 2017 they launched a multi-platform series called Turning the Tables; this book is a selection of material from its various strands, supplemented with fifty years’ worth of coverage of women musicians.

The coolest woman in pop: review of Neneh Cherry's memoir

Book review: A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry

This memoir by the Buffalo Stance star is a story about identity and roots as much as a story about music. And threaded through all these strands is a lifelong relationship with creativity.

David Bowie’s 1972 appearance on Top of the Pops singing Starman has gone down in history, making him a role model for many fans. But Neneh Cherry’s appearance on the same programme in 1988, singing Buffalo Stance, must go down in history as equally groundbreaking. Full of boldness and style – and unignorably, unapologetically pregnant – she was a new kind of role model for women.  

Rock’n’roll purists with a punk attitude: a review of the Liverbirds book

The Liverbirds: Our story of life in Britain’s first female rock’n’roll band by Mary McGlory and Sylvia Saunders

The only all-girl group to come out of the Merseybeat boom, the Liverbirds forged a successful career in Germany as a hard-playing crowd-pleasing rock’n’roll band during the 1960s. The two surviving members tell their story in this new biography. 

Five years ago, a musical about the Liverbirds called Girls Don't Play Guitars opened  at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and was so popular that it’s coming back again later this year.  The title was taken from a notorious throwaway remark by John Lennon on meeting the Liverbirds at the Cavern, but this isn’t about him. This is about four women who proved him wrong.

Writing about pop as though it really mattered: music journalism and women

Gatekeepers. All women know about them, whatever their job or chosen leisure activity. And the music business has always been one of the top villains. 

Within that crowded field, Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, recently emerged as an arch villain. In case you missed it, he put out a book of archive interviews which was full of old white blokes. When challenged about the lack of women said: “none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level”. And made a similar point about Black musicians. Prat.

The ensuing controversy even lost him his gig with the ever-irrelevant Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which isn’t exactly squeaky clean when it comes to ignoring minorities. 

So why am I writing about this now?

Ear-altering sounds and personal stories

Book review: Sound Within Sound by Kate Molleson

This is the latest in my series of reviews of music books by women, specifically those that were longlisted for the 2022 Penderyn Music Book Prize. I think this going to be the hardest to write, because it’s outside my field of knowledge, but the book wasn’t hard to read because it is so well written.

I suspect that some books get listed (particularly in the case of memoir) because they tell a good story rather than for the quality of the writing. Sound Within Sound, though, qualifies as literature; Kate Molleson used to be a music critic, and her descriptions of how things sound are precise and poetic. But she tells a good story too – in fact, many good stories.

Book review: Fingers Crossed by Miki Berenyi

This memoir from “Miki from Lush” is out now in paperback, so if you haven’t read it yet now’s your chance.

Since its original release, the book has become Rough Trade Book of the Year, a Rolling Stone Book of the Year and a Mojo Book of the Year. But, I wondered, is it really a music book? There is after all a lot about Miki’s life before Lush: so is it a book about a person - like a “normal” memoir - rather than a book about music?

Of course, you can’t really separate those things, as everyone whose life has been immersed in music knows. So the first half of the book is about Miki’s dysfunctional, damaging childhood and adolescence. The second half is about her dysfunctional life in the music business. And they make sense of each other. 

The forgotten women of Factory Records: a different history

A review of I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women At Factory Records by Audrey Golden

We all know that the history of popular music – like the history of most things – is a tale told by men. I’ve also read enough books about Factory Records and the Hacienda to know that their history has largely been told by men, too. This is the antidote.

Book review: Access all areas by Barbara Charone

Barbara Charone, music journalist turned legendary PR woman, has had (and continues to have) an impressive career. It’s obvious from her memoir, Access All Areas, that she also has an impressive contacts book, impressive stamina and an impressive capacity for partying.

Most impressively, she’s still working in the music business well past her pension age. And she still seems to love it.

Book review: Don’t Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You

 

Reading Lucinda Williams’ memoir.

Someone said to me the other day, the problem with some modern pop songs is that they just sound like extracts from someone’s diary. 

The thing about Lucinda Williams’ songs is that they sound like extracts from your own diary. Listening to Passionate Kisses or Sweet Old World, it feels like someone’s been there before you. 

As her friend Steve Earle puts it: “People don’t give a fuck what happened to you, they care about what happened to you that also happened to them.”

Book review: Lead Sister – The Story of Karen Carpenter

 

Husband: “What are you reading?”

Me: “A biography of Karen Carpenter.”

Husband: “What’s interesting about Karen Carpenter?”

It’s true – and it comes up many times in Lucy O’Brien’s new book Lead Sister – that Karen Carpenter had an image problem. Basically, she wasn’t very rock’n’roll. 

P P Arnold: Soul Survivor - book review

On the one hand, P P Arnold’s memoir is quite a hard book to read. Because it’s set in the music business in the 1960s and this, from the point of view of a very young, very naive black girl, was a hard place to thrive in.

On the other hand, it is a good read. Because it’s set in the music business in the 1960s and full of interesting tales. Specifically, a big part of it is set in Swinging London where Pat Cole (her real name) hung out with the Rolling Stones, the Small Faces and Jimi Hendrix. 

The Penderyn Music Book longlist: let’s hear it for the women

 

The winner of this year’s Penderyn Music Book Prize has just been announced. It’s a man. 

I’m a bit disappointed in this because this year nearly half the books on the longlist were by women (and nearly half of those on the shortlist, too). But Bob Stanley is a very well respected music writer and I’m sure he deserved it.

Nonetheless, I’d like to give a shout-out to all the women on the longlist.  

Punk rock and feminist as fuck

Book review: Why Patti Smith Matters by Caryn Rose

This is one of those books that when you’ve finished you think to yourself “I’m GLAD I read that.”

And not just because I agree with the title. To the extent that I wrote a blog post with the same title many years ago. 

It’s because, I think, it’s life affirming to hear from someone who really loves the artist they are writing about, and makes you feel the same about them. And at the same time, someone who has the skill to go above and beyond fangirl stuff. 

Book review: This Woman’s Work

I don’t know what the point of this book is. 

Subtitled Essays on Music, the selling point is that everything in it has been written by a woman. Nearly all the reviews think the point is what’s on the publisher’s blurb – “confront male dominance and sexism” blah blah – but I don’t judge a book by its cover. Or even the inside cover. (The front cover – a woman musician, on stage, looking very rock’n’roll – is actually good.)

Generous geekiness: The sound of being human

 

There’s a lovely line in Jude Rogers’ new book, The Sound of Being Human, as she remembers how she papered her teenage bedroom with pictures of pop stars. She describes: “faces that made my connection to music human, faces that I stared at like a baby, trying to understand the new realms they represented.”

I don’t think a male music writer would have thought of "stared like a baby” but it’s a great simile. And as a female music lover (and one time music writer) it makes me happy to see women writers doing things in a distinctively female way.

Why we need books about music by women

Here’s the good news: “In 2022, lots of women are writing books about music and getting them published.”

That’s the first line of a recent article by Jude Rogers in The Quietus. She has her own new book to promote and everyone says it’s good. I am trying to get my local library to stock it. They have a suggestion form. I also asked them to get the new anthology This Woman’s Work. “More music writing by women, please,” I said in the comments box. 

It's good that there’s more music writing coming out now by women, but it’s scuppered my plans for the Women’s history of pop section in my blog. I’ve got a backlog of books that I’ve read but not yet reviewed, and I’m not going to keep up.

A while ago American music writer Jessica Hopper put together a spreadsheet of books about music by women. (Actually it’s titled “non-men” but I’ll overlook that.) I was planning to work my way through it, but that’s now feeling a bit ambitious. If the list keeps getting longer, though, that can only be a good thing. 

Because writing about music has been a boys’ club for too long, and women have things to say too. 

Book review: She Bop

Last year, a friend posted on Twitter: “I’d like some big sprawling pop history books written by women now, please.” Obviously, it caused a bit of a discussion.

And it made me wonder. I like books, and I particularly like music books written by women, but I don’t think I like sprawling books. And I wondered if I actually like the word “sprawling” either. It feels like a male word. A word for people who are used to taking up space, regardless. More space than is actually necessary. Maybe a sprawling book is the literary version of manspreading. I can’t think of many books by women that do that. 

There are some long pop history books by women, but that’s not the same as being sprawling. She Bop (25th Anniversary Edition) by Lucy O’Brien is one example. It’s 423 pages long and it’s the opposite of sprawling. Because there’s a lot to fit in, so it has to be concise.