The EPIC Spring Book Recommendation Post! 🌱📚🎉 (and upcoming “In Conversation” Author Events!!) (Patreon)

Hello loves!

**Way up top/warning: this post - when I get to the actual book review stuff - contains content that's graphic, upsetting, rape/incest/sexual assault. If you want to skip over that, I'd avoid the piece about "The Apology" and go to the next book. "Dear Sister" also contains some brutally graphic stuff. If you're not in the mood, don't read that one.

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Okay loves.

It's a long one! It's full of books! It's full of feelings! It's full of pain! It's a mess! It's what you've come to expect! It's spring in Upstate New York! It's beautifulllll!

This is an OPEN, PUBLIC post. If you want to support me by becoming a paid patron, you know I'd love it. I love getting paid for my time, writing, and work. But if you can't afford it? Just enjoy. We got you.

FIRST HOUSEKEEPING!:

I'm doing a BOOK GIVEAWAY with this post!! The first eleven patrons to hit me up in comments will get a signed book (of your choice, from a list, see details below)! I would love it if you'd read the whole post please...but yeah, GO!)

SECOND HOUSEKEEPING!:

I'm about to do a live webcast/Ask me Anything for the $10+ folks! We kick off at 11:11 am EST and I'll be on for a few hours! Come over and say hi! I'll show you the rain, drink coffee after coffee, tell you what's going on, read you some poetry, and take questions. There's a lot to discuss this month. If you're curious? You can always bump up to the $10+ tier and scurry away again. I encourage this style of hacking, because I'm me. 

The webcast link is HERE on crwodcast (which has fundamental integration with patreon, hoorah) and you have to be logged into your patreon account to access the cast. It'll also be archived forever if you miss it!

There are already people over in the cast chatting!! Go go go!!!! It's FUN.

THIRD HOUSEKEEPING:

If you're new to the patreon (and many of you are), I occasionally do long-ass pieces of writing like this. Sometimes I charge for them, sometimes I don't, sometimes I publish over on Substack and charge over here, sometimes I just publish here. Confused? Well: it's actually quite simple. Especially after spending twenty+ years thinking about art, exchange, money, crowdfunding and value, I play it by ear.

This is a "paid" post, otherwise known as a "Thing". Why? I dunno. Because it took me a long long goddamn time to write and compile, but moreover, it took me hundreds of hours to read these books and have fucking feelings about them, and if I'm not gonna go pitch myself to the Guardian or whatever, I figure I can get paid by your fine selves to write my own giant Book Recommendation Magazine here and now. Makes sense to me if it makes sense to you.

This is a very Amanda thing to do, and I love you all for being here, and I hope you all get something out of this.

I am sweetening the Thing Deal by offering to MAIL a signed copy of any of these books to the first twenty of you who comment and ask for a book, which I've never tried before, but we have the technology, so I hope you read this whole post and get to the end and comment and ask for a book, because if you do, I'm serious, I'll buy and sign and send you a book. If I'm gonna take advantage of my patreon by using it as a book-pimping platform in the middle of the night, I'm gonna at least send twenty of you books, no matter where you are in the world. Okay? Okay.

Let's ease into this post, shall we?

I love books.

Fucking love them.

Here's me, in a bookstore, yesterday, being happy.

To be very honest, I've actually been struggling with my relationship with books and bookstores for the last few years, and it's given me a lot to chew on.

I was married to an author for a while, and then I divorced an author, and I am reeling from that whole experience. I didn't expect my marriage to and divorce from an author to traumatize and reshape me and my love of - and relationship to - books the way it did but golly gosh darn, it did. I've had to, surprisingly, repair my feelings about books, the world of books, the world of reading, of writers, the publishing world, the feeling of being in a bookstore and looking for a title by a person I love.

I didn't see this coming. It's gotten a little mangled, but I still fucking love books.

Fucking so much.

More than ever, right now, with the world feeling like it's collapsing in on itself. Books feel like lighthouses. Books: What they can change, how they can teach, what they can heal.

The power, the power, the power of the written word.

I'll take that up one level: the power, the power, the power of the naked written word.

The power that's needed, more than ever nowadays, to transmit thoughts from one vortex-head to another.

I've been struggling, I said. I've been tangling, grappling with my feelings about books.

There's words, there's "writing". And then there's physical, finished books: the product. BOOKS: THE MUSICAL. Books, the Business. I've gotten to know that business pretty well over the last dozen years. It isn't that different from the major label racket in the music industry. The book racket. The one percent. The obfuscations. The money business. The best-seller game. The marketing game of supply, demand, sexiness, compounded appeal, algorithm...fame. Myths.

Units. The fourth Quarter.

Books. Man.

I hate writing them, II gotta say, hate thinking about the business of them. And still?

I'm probably going to be writing more of them.

And really I love reading them.

But more than anything......I fucking love sharing them.

Really...a lot.

When I find a book I love, I tend to go to a bookstore and buy or order 10 copies of the New Book I Love and keep a pile of the New Beloved Book in my kitchen, and I give that book to everybody I like.

There was a year there when I gave everybody I knew copies of "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker, PhD, because I was certain (and I still am) that it would change everybody's life as much as it changed mine. There was the year I bought everybody I knew copies of "All The Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr, one of the finest, most beautiful pieces of fiction I've ever read. There was the year I gave everybody copies of Andy Goldsworthy's art book, "A Collaboration with Nature", because I wanted everybody to see it with their eyes.

I wish I spent more time sharing the depths of the books I love...and I'm glad that the forces of nature conspired to get me off my ass to FINALLY compile this spring reading recommendations post...I've been drafting it for ages.

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Okay people. For starters, and I hope not to bore you all, and you may not know this, but I WROTE A FUCKING BOOK? Did you know that?

I did. It's a pretty good book.

Some of you know me from my music, my band, my TED talk, my amusing instagram posts...and so I don't take anything for granted.

But yes, once upon a time about ten years ago, I locked myself in an apartment (this was before I had a kiddo) for about two months solid and churned out a book based on the TED talk that I did after it went viral. Both the TED talk and the book are titled The Art of Asking, and the book came out in 2013.

It was a New York Times best-seller the week it came out..and I'm still very fucking proud of it. Here it is.

If reading books with your eyes is not your thing, you can listen to me narrate the audiobook. It's really good, and in it, I cry a lot and I play some songs.

It's HERE on Audible, and it's got a 4.6 rating with almost 4,000 reviews, which ain't fucking bad.

I have been thinking a lot about working on a next book, and meeting with lots of publishers and Book Folk.

My problem?

I have too many stories to tell, and too much to say, and just don't know what to get to first. This is a good problem.

I also really hate sitting down to write. (This is a bad problem)

But nothing inspires me more, honestly, than to know that I'll have my little gallery of patron cheerleaders here to egg me on while I write draft after draft, the same way the patrons here have really help me to the mast while I've worked for the past few years on the new Dresden Dolls album.

It's nice to have an Understanding Art Family to come to at the end of the day to rub my feet and have a whiskey with.

You know?

So, while I am wondering what I want to write next...I am thinking a lot about gardneing metaphors...always good for creativity.

I wrote this little stream-of-conciousness post the other morning on social media:

I am becoming my own songs, and basking in it.

We’ve been gardening before school this week. The kale is going in before we have to brush teeth and get to the bus stop by 8:10.

So much of the last five years has been destruction, boots on fragile seedlings over and over again, dis-assembly, scorched earth. Now, finally, maybe something can flourish from the ash.

Ash.
We are all so slowly recovering. Putting our hands in the ground helps with the metaphor every day.

My body shakes less. My neck isn't quite as tight. It's taken years - so many years - but slowly, mind can settle out of flight or fight. Reading helps.

My little seed here, little Anthony, little Ash, is starting to smooth out his anxieties, make sense of the pain. We slowly get away from the darkness that bites at our heels, we wake up to date after day of very simple delight. This garden, I know, is a luxury. I think about the burning ground in so many places on earth right now. The wreckage. This oasis.

What else to do? So slowly, one handful of dirt at a time, we plant, we feebly attempt to heal our own little broken worlds.

The things that happen in our lives, my friends, may be horrific. Unimaginably dark. But then, things settle; there is compost.

So please, as Sophie Strand so beautifully puts it:

make something grow.
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Okay.

Before I get to the meat of the book recommendations, I also wanna remind you locals and close-to-locals that I'm CLOSING OUT THE EXISTENCE OF GRAVESIDE with three author events!

I'll be discussing these books below, so if you wanna see me in person talking with therse incredible authors, come! Leslie is nearing sold out and the rest are chugging along! I'll be playing songs at all of these events and they're worth traveling for; you're gonna see me at a level of truth you've never seen. I'm on fire. So come.

All the tickets are at gravesidevariety.com.
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Wait! One more piece of housekeeping: regarding book links.

I am not going to provide book links for these recommendations.

Sometimes I link to the publishing house, or to wikipedia, or, when I gotta, to Amazon. I don't have an amazon "affiliate" account (did you know that's a thing? If you see artists or writers linking to amazon, it could be that they're being paid by amazon to pimp shit! If someone follows an amazon affiliate link, the artist or entity that posted the link gets a cut of whatever income that consumer buys on their entire purchase after following to the link to the book, even if they wind up buying a refrigerator...learn something new every day).

Rant aside.

I'm gonna just talk about these books and mostly let you google.

We're all adults.

What I would love most?

You read about one of these books, wanna buy it, and call or order via your local indie bookstore. THEY NEED THE BUSINESS. Or order online from your local indie. You know you can do that, right? When I need a book, I try not to amazon. I order the book through my little local bookstore, The Golden Notebook. They get the book in 3-4 days, then I swing by and pick it up. It's so much more satisfying than having the FedEx truck arrive with the single paperback. I can her the trees dying when that happens. Use your brain. Order local. Or go do audible....or go to the library!!!)

Okay. HERE WE GO YO.

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First up: THE APOLOGY, by V (Formerly known as Eve Ensler)

I read this book this past fall, after seeing V at a book event with Elizabeth Lesser (see below).

They were doing an in-conversation event at the local Rhinebeck Library, and I'd been invited to the event (and out to dinner with Elizabeth and V) and a post-talk dinner. V lives upstate, not far from me.

So V was at the event in Rhinebeck - being interview by Liz - and they were pimping their more recent book, "Reckoning".

If you know V's work - they're most famous for The Vagina Monologues - you know that it's inherently feminist. Hooray. Vaginas are awesome. Women's rights. All that.

What I didn't know - until that night - was that V was the survivor of horrific childhood sexual abuse. At the hands of her own father.

I just didn't know.

Towards the end of the evening, she talked about "The Apology", which I'd heard of, in passing, but hadn't read.

She described it: it's a fictional letter written by her, fictionally, in the voice of her dead father.

A letter she never got.

A letter, written to her, by her father who raped her when she was a little, little girl.

Repeatedly, for years.

I felt my breath leave my body as she described this book.

And it was listening her combination of describing the peace that she's finally found in upstate New York - here among the mountains, the flowers, the birds - and the writing of ther last line in the book that made me want to read this book with every cell in my body.

I remember her looking at the crowd - about 100 of us, packed into a little library - and talking about what it felt like to write the last line of the book, which is written in the voice of her father, her father who raped her when she was a little girl.

"Be gone, old man".

She said it, and silence exploded in the room.

The last line of the book.

Be gone, old man.

And she talked with Elizabeth how she didn't know - still, to this day - whether this sentence was her writing voice speaking, or her father speaking through her, karmically through time. But, she said: when she wrote that last line of the book, it was like her pain gathered in her heart and took flight out the fucking window.

She felt free.

The power in that moment, in that room, was palpable.

I found myself thinking of all the women I've talked to, cosoled, comforted, espeically during the 2019 tour and confession booth in Tasmania. The rape. The Incest. The horror. Could a book, a book like this, be a medicine? Maybe? Not just for V, but for me, for other survivors of sexual assault, for all the women - and men - I know who've lived through trauma at the hands of a powerful man who couldn't control his dark impulses? Was this book a way out?

So: I really wanted to read this book. It sold out, immediately, at the event, so I went to the Golden Notebook the next day and ordered it, and then I read it, voraciously, over four or five nights.

When V was a little girl, her own father raped her. Her dad.

She cut him off, estranged him, when she was older.

Then, eventually, her dad died.

Her father raped her. Not just once, but again and again.

Just wrap your mind around that. Wrap your heart around that.

She was a kid. Little. Younger than my son.

She writes in her father's voice.; because this entire book is the apology letter she never got. She wrote this entire book from his perspective. It's like reading the ultimate emotional highwire act.

I felt weirdly voyeuristic, a little dirty and gross, reading this book. It reminded me of the experience reading The Incest Diary, which I picked up at a bookstore out of curiosity in 2017.

This much pain, around sex. Around rape. I would find myself angry at fictional people reading these stories and getting off, people who "must exist" out there, reading V's words, reading the stories of this anonymous victim of incest, jerking off in some horrific backroom psyche.

What I know is that I wanted to gift this book to every woman I know who'd ever experienced rape, incest, or the horrifying shame and punk-rock-fuck-you-middle-finger-up reaction that those experiences can - and often do - engender.

I'm still so shocked by my own past, my own experiences of sexual assault; not just what I've personally endured, but what I've witnessed, and what I've digested. So many people have told me about their dark experiences.

I walk through the world now, knowing that so many dark stories stand in direct contradiction to the happy stories we see in the media, in the movies, in the newspapers, in the world.

This shit is happening everywhere, all the time.

I know because I read my private comments.

I know because I read my emails.

I know because I listen to my community.

I know because I do confession booths.

I know because I fucking know.

I also know this has to stop.

I spend my days wondering what I can do to make this stop, besides being anodyne, besides recommending books.

Then I find myself thinking:

This is it.

Recommend the books.

Real books are real power. I want every woman, and every man, I know to read this book.

It will make you incredibly, INCREDIBLY uncomfortable. Good.

It fucking should. That's why V wrote it.
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And now....on topic....to book number 2.

This is Elizabeth Lesser's newest book. The title speaks for itself: it's a masterpiece of nowness.

I met Elizabeth a few years ago, pre-covid, when I moved to the area and started getting involved with the Omega Institute, which she co-founded.

Before I got to know her personally, I read this book:

....Broken Open, which was about her divorce, her struggle raising two young kids as a solo mom, her reckoning and dawning realizations about the patriarchy.

So much of her philosophy embedded and rooted in me - and saved me - when I found myself in survival mode in New Zealand in 2020.

She became one of my most important North Stars during those dark years of 2020 through 2022 - a wise mentor who had been through it all, seen it all, knew where the bodies were buried and knew that lengths the patriarchy would go to cover up the story.

Even though we only spoke once a month, or less, it's safe to say that Liz was one of the people who Got Me Through New Zealand.

There are people who write memoirs to talk about and aggrandize themselves, and there are people who write memoirs (and backing up one recommendation, I'd put V in this category) to reach into the heart of humanity and fucking help other people. 

Liz's books both really helped me. Self-help could basically be tossed into two piles: the books that can't really help you because the author is still too lost, and the books that can deeply help you because the author doesn't need your approval and they're really just there to share their hard-won, life-battered wisdom. Liz deserves the latter award. (I also can't wait to talk to her live this weekend. There are about two dozen tickets left for our conversation at Graveside; I hope it sells out.

If you wanna hear my podcast with her, it's here: It was funded by patrons back when I was ultra-fucked financially and living in New Zealand in 2020 with little else to put out. It's a great, great, great episode of "The Art of Asking Everything" recorded before covid hit when I was in Woodstock in 2019.

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OKAY!

Next up; some fiction.

I met Sophie Strand back in 2021...when I was living in New Zealand.

I came across their work online and was totally surprised and excited to find out that they lived in Woodstock, the town I would eventually be moving back to from Waiheke.

I remember reading their social media posts, then their substack posts, and thinking: this person understands something very profound. Like my friend Maria Popova who has written the books+science+poetry+philosophy website The Marginalian (formerly known as "Brain Pickings") for over a decade, Sophie had this uncanny way of threading themes and thoughts together. Mushrooms and mycelium became metaphors for society and sickness. Soil and compost became metaphors for community and growth. I was obsessed. I would read anything this person wrote.

The first full book I read by Sophie was the non-fiction offering "The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine". I think I wrote about and recommended here a few times, but it spoke deeply to a theme I feel I've been confronting again in my own life and work over the past few years...what has happened to the men? Patriarchy and late-stage capitalism have certainly ripped apart the fabric from all sides, and left women holding the proverbial bag (am I mixing my metaphors too much here?) but the men have suffered just as greatly. This system we're trying to operate within is not working out for anybody, baby.

Sophie was then given a death sentence from some doctors, and decided that if they were gonna write one book before they died, it was going to be a re-telling of the Madonna Story. So she buried herself in research and re-wrote the story of Mary Magdalene. And it's not what you think.

It's rich in history, rich in rage, and a fast read.

I wandered over to Sophie's house the other night, and we had a long and langorous chat about stories, fiction, and the Men Artists Who Are In Trouble Now. There's too many to count, but we were exploring what is happening in the "What About Their Art?" question. The cancelled comedians, the canceled musicians, the canceled film-makers, the canceled graphic novelists dudes. (I don't know if you've followed the tragic story of Ed Piskor, who was called out for grooming and then committed suicide, but jesus christ, what a mess).

It's certainly an ongoing discussion, and I often find myself wondering how I will respond if and when someone holds that reporter mic to my face. I know and have befreiended so many artsits, so many men, who've been canceled. What should we do with their art? Their music? Their stories?

My feelings - and Sophie's feelings - about this are pretty clear: you don't burn their books. You never burn the books. You just make better books, tell better stories.

You don't burn their books. You simply....well, don't have to read them, or you re-contextualize them to shine a little light in their darknesses. Men who hurt, men who rape, men who prey....those men have often been abused themselves. We can look to their work and see the real-time working out of their own trauma. You can find the clues. Their work becomes almost object lesson, academic. Lessons in a whole culture that hurts.

It's not our job to erase their stories. It's our job, Sophie says, to just tell better stories.

Gradually, the human story, the world of stories, will become more balanced, less violent, more well-told, and I pray to god, more hopeful.

Young writers like Sophie are leading the charge here.

They're currently working on a new work of fiction for young adults, and I can't fucking wait to read it.

Meanwhile, if you wanna see the spoken word/music project that Sophie and I did shortly after I came home from New Zealand, it's called "I Will Not Be Purified", it's here, and it's gorgeous.

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NEXT UP?

Some lighter reading. You deserve a break after all that.

How about some feminist history??

This book recommendation will be better served by grabbing the back-o-book blurb first:

Feminism has always been a complex and controversial topic, as female rock musicians know especially well. When they’ve stayed true to their own vision, these artists have alternately been adored as role models or denounced as bad influences. Either way, they’re asked to cope with certain pressures that their male counterparts haven’t faced. With each successive feminism movement since the 1960s, women in rock have been prominent proponents of progress as they’ve increasingly taken control of their own music, message, and image. This, in its way, is just as revolutionary as any protest demonstration.

In She’s a Badass, music journalist Katherine Yeske Taylor interviews twenty significant women in rock, devoting an entire chapter to each one, taking an in-depth look at the incredible talent, determination—and, often, humor—they needed to succeed in their careers (and life).

Suzi Quatro, Ann Wilson (Heart), Exene Cervenka (X), Gina Schock (the Go-Go's), Lydia Lunch, Suzanne Vega, Cherie Currie (the Runaways), Joan 'sborne, Donita Sparks (L7), Amy Ray (Indigo Girls), Tanya Donelly (Throwing Muses, the Breeders, Belly), Paula Cole, Tobi Vail (Bikini Kill), Laura Veirs, Catherine Popper, Amanda Palmer, Bonnie Bloomgarden (Death Valley Girls), Orianthi, Fefe Dobson, and Sade Sanchez (L.A. Witch).

Yep, I'm in there. I remember doing this interview shortly after I got back from New Zealand, and feeling so grateful to Katherine for attacking this topic. The chapter is great....

"When I do the giant career retrospective when I'm eighty-five, I think the songwriting will be a big part of it, and my piano and vocal abilities will be a big part of it, but I sometimes feel like the biggest thing that I will have accomplished is creating space for women to feel a bit less alone and a bit less crazy."

Amen.

There's Taylor Swift. There's Madonna. There's Cyndi Lauper, there's Lady Gaga and there's Beyoncé. But the more underground musicians - the ones like me who don't deal in the currency of pop - rarely get their own histories shared.

It's so fucking refreshing to watch this side of history slowly unfurling, and to be a part of it.

The entire book is a great deep-dive not only into the artistry of these women, but the struggle, the battle, the impossibly annoying workplace, the RELENTLESS feeling you get when you're a woman working in a industry that's run by men. It captures the themes beautifully. It's been getting some stellar press...including an excellent article in Billboard....

And FLOOD, who included an excerpt of my chapter...

Katherine got in touch to say the publisher has ordered a second print run already (FUCK YEAH!!!!), in order to keep up with demand. This is so awesome to hear.

I cannot wait to discuss the book in more depth when Katherine comes to Graveside on May 18th, and there's still a couple dozen tickets for the event, so please, COME! We will be throwing down about alllll the themes in the book, taking questions, and signing. I cannot wait.

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NEXT UP: the memoirist who is so honest she should fucking be illegal.

I can't remember where I saw this book...I think it was on a table in a bookstore somewhere, just pre-pandemic. Around 2018/2019. I picked it up. I started reading. My jaw hit the floor.

On the surface, it's a book about getting sober and dealing with relationships: with men, with self, with substances, with food. But that was just the surface.

It was the VOICE of this writer. I couldn't believe how searingly honest her words were, how unadorned and painfully, brutally, candid her words were. She had set a new bar, for me, for honesty in the written word.

I reached out to her as a fan, had her up to my house for dinner (she had just had a baby, and soon after, divorced the babydaddy). And I committed to reading any printed word she ever wrote again.

Then, a few months ago, "Splinters" hit the stands.

Oh my holy fuck.

I pre-ordered the book and practically read it in one sitting, wondering if the book I was holding in my hands was written by Leslie Jamison, or me. Her words seemed to be pouring out of my own heart. She went on the book tour for "The Recovering", which was a runaway hit, when her baby was under a year old, and her marriage was quickly falling apart.

It's a mixed-up memoir about motherhood, rage, inquiry, isolation, raising a small child alone during covid, dealing with an ex, and confronting the inner-most demons: ego, worth, art. It's a book about parenting, but it's also a book about meaning, and how art saves and stitches us together.

She writes like I think: she takes mundane fragments and pieces - the legos on the floor, the slam of the door, the smell of the pillow - and ties them together in ways that make beautiful and human sense. Up to and including the hilarious description of her string of lovers (one is a tattooed touring musician only referred toby Leslie as "The Tumbleweed")

I found myself thinking: I may never need to write a book again. If anyone asks me if I wrote a follow-up memoir about my time in New Zealand, I'll just hand them this one and say: "More of less, but Leslie Jamison wrote it for me".

photo by Mark Ostow

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Next up....OOF.

I came across this book only a few weeks ago, tipped off by none other than Elizabeth Lesser, who interviewed Michelle at Graveside when the book launched.

I missed the event because I was in Boston with Ash; I would do anything to reverse time and get into that room.

Again, the official blurb here will help:

AMAZON EDITOR'S PICK FOR BEST BOOKS OF FEBRUARY 

A breathtaking memoir about two sisters and a high-profile case: Nikki Addimando, incarcerated for killing her longtime abuser; and the author, Michelle Horton, left in the devastating fall-out to raise Nikki's young children and to battle the criminal justice system.

In September 2017, a knock on the door from police upends Michelle Horton’s life forever: her sister had just shot her partner and was now in jail. Everything Michelle thought she knew about her family unraveled in that moment. During the investigation that follows, Michelle learns that Nikki had been hiding horrific abuse for years.

Stunned to find herself in a situation she’d only ever encountered on television and true crime podcasts, Michelle rearranges her life to care for Nikki's children and simultaneously launches a fight to bring Nikki home, squaring off against a criminal justice system seemingly designed to punish the entire family.

In this exquisite memoir, Michelle retraces the sisters’ childhood and explores how so many people, including herself, could have been blind to the abuse. An intimate look at a family surviving trauma, Dear Sister is a deeply personal story about what it takes to be believed and the danger of keeping truths hidden. Ultimately, Horton turns her family’s suffering into hard won wisdom: a profound story of resilience and the unbreakable bond between sisters.

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I picked this book up and literally couldn't put it down for four days. I raced to get to the next page.

The fact that this story was local (Poughkeepsie, where this takes place, is an hours' drive from here) helped to sucked me in, but it was the horror of the story and the injustice that kept me riveted.

The night that Elizabeth told me about the book event she'd done with Michelle, she recounted some of the atrocities that came out in the courtroom. The evidence that was dismissed, the stories that weren't believed. The midwife who testified.

The literal description of Nikki's burned vulva, where her husband had taken a red-hot spoon and pressed it against her...while she was pregnant with his child. The therapist who recounted the story that Nikki had shared about having a gun thrust into her vagina. Her husband threatening her life, her husband threatening to kill himself, her husband demanding that she keep her mouth shut because "nobody would believe her."

And then? Nobody believed her. The system failed her, utterly. Her community rallied around her, but she stayed stuck in prison, her truth and the obviousness of her self-defense dismissed while her sister was left to raise her traumatized children.

I was about halfway through the book when I finally picked up a highlighter. I never highlight books. I just don't. But this one was too weird, too uncanny. Like Leslie's book; I felt like someone was writing my own story. Not the story of being stuck in a prison for murdering an abusive husband, but the story of being stuck carrying the life of a child with no prediction, no plan, and no followable plot. Michelle's descriptions of driving Nikki's two kids to school and trying to explain to a two and four year old when they might (or might not) ever see their mother again, and trying to make the world make sense to them felt painfully close to my year in New Zealand as a solo mother. In my case, there was no murder, no prison sentence.

But there was a shocking sense of trauma, chaos, and disorder against the backdrop of the mundane. My head was locked in a triage of panic while groceries had to be bought, school forms had to be filled out, dinner had to be cooked, dishes had to be done. Michelle was the caretaker for two kids who had no idea what had struck their universe. I felt the same way with Ash in New Zealand. The kid was four when he lost his country, his dad, his home, his predictable storyline. Plus covid. Trying to make things feel "normal" for him as the world turned into a melting blur around me was one of the hardest and strangest things I've ever done. Reading Michelle's description of her inner world (the panic, the mundane, the panic, the mundane) during that first year is the closest thing I've read - since covid hit - to describing the feelings I felt.

The injustice continues, and Michelle (and Nikki) are currently leading a movement to uncover and address the massive broken-ness of our legal system when it comes to domestic violence, rape and abuse. Reading and understanding the story is a huge part of it; I reommend this one with all my fucking might.

(You can also become part of the movement, with me, and order the book here: https://westandwithnikki.com/)

............ 

Rolling along in the non-fiction world.....

I found this gem while perusing around in the Porter Square Bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my ol' stomping ground.

I know at least a half dozen people who are dealing with parents-getting-older-and-facing-the-first-stages-of-dimentia. Work friends, art friends, neighborhood friends.

We are the sandwich generation, as they say.

We had kids late (well, I certainly did, and many of my friends had kids after 35 or 40) and we are therefore trying to raise our kiddos while also dealing with the inevitable aging of our own parents, aunts and uncles.

Dementia (Alzheimer's) is everywhere, and trying to navigate the story has been a mystery to me and many of my friends. This book called to me, and I picked it up, flipped through it, and got hooked.

This book could have been so many things: a boring self-help listicle, a collection of platitudes. Instead, it's a deeply personal memoir of a dutch writer, Eveline Helmink, whose mom started the decline into dementia at...well...some point...nobody really knows when. That's the THING. Dimentia has no binary. It has no tidy flow, no beginning/middle/end, and no simple prescription. It's just...a mess. Families struggle to know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and how to delegate, task, take account, and, most importantly, tell the story within the family.

If you or anyone you know is facing this sort of stuff: get and read this book.

Gift is quietly to a friend who may be struggling.

Books can be such incredible and un-lonely-fying companions when people are facing the hard yards of family life: this book will, I hope, make a lot of people feel a lot less lonely in their struggles in this department.

...............

AND NOW!!!!!! Because you've been GOOD....YOU GET SOME JUICY, JUICY, HILARIOUS QUEER FICTION SET IN UPSTATE NEW YORK!!!

Congrats! This is where you get to stop learning about grown-up shit and just get sucked into a gorgeous fictional world and laugh your ass off.

This book refused to not be read by me.

It's a work of fiction that came out last year (2023), set in and penned by an "upstate" author from Hudson New York.

I avoided t book immediately.

I am a judgy fuck!

First of all, I don't read a lot of fiction. Not because I don't love it, but because my bar is so fucking high that I'm bored and irritated by most fictional offerings. I can count on two hands the fictional works I've read in the last dozen years that have moved me deeply enough to make me want to gift or recommend them to another human being.

This is now one of them.

The person who first tired to recommend this book to me was Jackie, the awesome co-owner of the Golden Notebook. She was like "Amanda, I truly think you'll love this book". And I bought it, but I was inwardly grumpy about it, because it was written by a "local upstate author", which to me was code for "this book is bound to be terrible and I am buying it out of pity to support the local art economy". Shame on me.

A few months later, I was touring in Australia, and perusing the bookshelves of the airport bookshop.

You know, one of those bookshops that has like 3 shelves of fiction, and space for 23 titles.

And lo and behold, with a different cover, there it was: Big Swiss, by Jen Beagin.

I was amazed. This little upstate author work of fiction had managed to find it's way onto a shelf in a Sydney Airport among the other bestsellers and Dan Brown crap. I assumed it was a sign from God and I bought my (second) copy.

I cracked it open on the plane and I felt the shame burn my body. This was one of the smartest, funniest, SICK-est, darkest, juiciest works of fiction I had ever laid eyes on.

I won't drown you in spoilers but:

it's a send-up of upstate New York and therapy culture.

It's got GREAT lesbian sex scenes.

It's unapologetically honest and brave.

It's so dark and twisted that I practically wanted to stand up and CHEER on the plane once or twice.

I wanted to rush to Jen Beagin's house and be her best friend by the time I was 14 pages into the book.

I gave it to Holly (Miranda, who lives nearby) and she also devoured it. I've been gifting it to friends and it's been slowly becoming locally beloved. I say: "Don't worry. It's a local upstate author, BUT IT IS ACTUALLY PHENOMENAL TRUST ME". So there. If you're upstate, you can take extra pride in reading this sucker.

But wherever you are, if you like juicy dark fiction, you'll love it.

.............

THAT'S IT, my loves.

And now, the most important question of all:

WHAT ARE YOU READING?????

Tell us in the comments!

.....

And now...as promised...I'm gonna GIVE AWAY SOME BOOKS!!!!

It's easy!!!!

The first ELEVEN of you to post a comment here with your selection will get a private message back from me asking for your address.

I'll mail anywhere in the world.

PLEASE, TO MAKE IT WORK, tell me in the comment which book you'd like, and pick from the list below!! I'll sign and make the book out to you (or whoever, we can nail that down in the PMs), and if and when possible, I'll have the author of the book sign it as well.

V is upstate near me so I may be able to get her to sign a copy, and I can certainly get signed copies from Katherine, Sophie, Leslie, Elizabeth. I may be able to nab Jen Beagin and Michelle Horton, since they're nearby, but no promises!!!!!

You can pick from these titles:

-The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer
-The Apology by V (formerly Eve Ensler)
-Cassandra Speaks OR Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser
-She's a Bad Ass by Katherine Yeske Taylor
-Splinters OR The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
-Dear Sister by Michelle Horton
-When A Loved One Has Dementia by Eveline Helmink
-Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

I'll check back on the comments ASAP and confirm the recipients!

I LOVE YOU ALL

HAPPY READING!!!

And don't forget, once again, to support your local indie bookstore.

They need you.

One last thing!!! If anybody wants to make some BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION THREADS on the shadowbox (or Facebook, grumble), I'd love it! Anybody out there feeling feisty? If you are, hit me in the comments with the book discussion links and I'll share them, either by updating this post with a notification or sending a new post.

xxx

AFP

------THE STUFF I SAY AT THE END OF THE POST---------

1. If you are a patron and new to my work, don’t forget your patronage allows you access to ALL of my patreon releases to date. HERE is the link to download my latest big solo record, “There Will Be No Intermission”, and HERE is a link to download the PDF of the art/essay book that goes with it.

2. If you’re a patron reading this post via an email notification, please click through to comment on this post. at the very least, if you’ve read it, indicate that by using the heart symbol. that's always nice for me to see, so i know who's reading.

3. You can see All the Things (over 150 of them) I’ve made so far on patreon…though this page badly needs updating

http://amandapalmer.net/things

4. JOIN THE SHADOWBOX COMMUNITY FORUM, find your people, and discuss everything: https://forum.theshadowbox.net/

5. New to my music and TOTALLY OVERWHELMED? TAKE A WALK THROUGH AMANDALANDA….we made a basic list of my greatest hits n stuff (at least up until a few years ago, this also desperately needs updating) on this lovely page: http://amandalanda.amandapalmer.net/

6. General AFP/patreon-related questions? ask away, someone will answer: patronhelp@amandapalmer.net