I’m a great big dork and love reading about music almost as much as I love listening to it. I’d like to tell you about some of the music books I’ve enjoyed, on a monthly basis, if you’d like to hear about them. To start things off this month, I’ve got two books I’ve recently devoured, both about love and loss and the impact of music.

Rob Sheffield’s Love Is A Mix Tape is, superficially, told through the presence of mix tapes in his life. All of us (well, those of us who listened to music pre-iTunes) can relate to the impact of a mix tape. It’s not just about the music on it, because that part can be replicated through playlists and mix CDs. What we’re missing in the digital age is the way it took all day to physically make a really good mix. And, more importantly, the effort that you made to make one for someone else (and vice versa). Making a mix was special. Now we can whip out a CD in a few minutes, which is nice in its own way, but it’s a different thing. Mix tapes had themes and meaning in a way that CDs don’t – I don’t know why that is exactly, perhaps simply because CDs are so much simpler to make, we’re much less perfectionist about them. Mix tapes took devotion and commitment and, in a way, that’s what Rob Sheffield’s heartbreakingly beautiful memoir is all about. The story of how Sheffield met and fell in love with his wife, Renée, starts with a shared love of a lesser-known song (Big Star’s “Thirteen”) and ends with him a much too young widower, surrounded by the mix tapes that soundtracked their time together. It’s also the story of how he managed to live on after her death, both because of and in spite of the music that they loved together. Love Is A Mix Tape is horrifically sad, often funny, and essential for anyone who feels like music means something in their lives.

(Note: On the subject of mix tapes, also recommended is Thurston Moore’s Mix Tape: The Art Of Cassette Culture, a great stroll down memory lane for those of us who used to get really excited about spending all day Saturday parked in front of the stereo, surrounded by cassettes.)

Another memoir, Things The Grandchildren Should Know, by Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett is a perfect companion to Love Is A Mix Tape. If you saw Everett’s recent BBC documentary, you’ll know that his father basically invented the idea of parallel universes. While that was all surprisingly fascinating (I’m not a theoretical physics kind of gal, so I wasn’t expecting to find the science stuff as interesting as I did), that’s not what Everett’s memoir is about. This is his personal story and it reads like he’s just telling a friend about his life. Like Rob Sheffield, Mark Everett’s musical world has been shaped and altered, in part, by tragedy and sorrow, much more than any one person should ever have to deal with. But it’s just as much about the desire, and the fight, to just be one’s self without compromise. You definitely do not have be a life-long Eels fan to appreciate and be inspired by Everett’s career and his struggle to just be the musician he is.

All in all, these are two of my most highly recommended music books, the kind that make me want to buy a box full of copies and hand them out to my friends like Elvis. Like the best movies and songs, they’re both full of love, humor, sadness and beauty.

   Big Star – Thirteen

   Eels – Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)