Benny Blanco gets cooking, Joan Baez gets poetic, The Beatles explain themselves, Bob Dylan wins and John Lee Hooker gets graphic. Welcome to your new reading list:
Open Wide: A Cookbook For Friends
By Benny Blanco & Jess Damuck
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Hi, I’m Benny Blanco. I’m in a television show with my best friend Dave and I probably produced most of the songs you have heard on the radio from 2008 until now. When I was 13, my friend got a George Foreman Grill and it changed my life forever. We would invite friends over, get stoned, and make the most elaborate sandwiches our prepubescent minds could fathom. I became obsessed with food and cooking for friends. I know what you are going to say, and I get it. Cooking is scary. But I promise you, once you get into it, it will be your new addiction. Slicing an onion is like taking a Xanax to me. I made this cookbook to teach you everything I know about food, cooking, and throwing the greatest dinner party of all time. There are the basics to get your kitchen ready, a little advice from my expert friends, then all of the dinner party menus I love to make. I’ve been told some of the finest stories over meals. I’ve laughed so hard I thought I was going to actually die. I’ve fallen in love — sometimes with the food, sometimes with the person across the table. I’ve cried in good ways, and I’ve cried in bad ways. I hope you’ve been lucky enough to have all these same memories and then some. But if you haven’t, I can make you a promise. If you follow these three simple steps, it will all become a reality: Open this book. Open your heart. And open wide, baby.”
When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance: Poems
By Joan Baez
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Joan Baez shares poems for or about her contemporaries (such as Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and Jimi Hendrix), reflections from her childhood, personal thoughts, and cherished memories of her family, including pieces about her younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. Speaking to the people, places, and moments that have had the greatest impact on her art, this collection is an inspiring personal diary in the form of poetry. While Baez has been writing poetry for decades, she’s never shared it publicly. Poems about her life, her family, about her passions for nature and art, have piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper. Now, for the first time ever, her life is shared revealing pivotal life experiences that shaped an icon, offering a never-before-seen look into the reminiscences and musings of a great artist.”
We Shook Up The World: The Spiritual Rebellion of Muhammad Ali and George Harrison
By Tracy Daugherty
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “George Harrison met Muhammad Ali in 1964, when both men were on the cusp of worldwide fame. Ten years later, the two simultaneously staged comebacks, demonstrating just how much they embodied the promises and perils of their era. In doing so, Tracy Daugherty suggests, they revealed the scope and the limits of political courage and commitment to faith in the modern world. We Shook Up The World is the story of these two larger-than-life figures at a momentous time. A unique blend of biography and cultural history, this book goes to the very heart of the zeitgeist that each man inhabited and reinvented in profound and enduring ways. In 1974, deep in the Pennsylvania woods, 32-year-old Ali was seeking renewal, training to regain his heavyweight boxing title in a fight with George Foreman, and exploring questions about his politics, his career, and his life. Meanwhile, Harrison was 31 years old. With The Beatles disbanded, his marriage ending, and the loss of his mother still fresh, he traveled to India to revitalize his faith, energy, and musical spirit, seeking renewal at the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. In contemplating how these two complex figures managed to carry the cultural rebelliousness and spiritual yearning of the 1960s into a new era of cataclysmic political, economic, and social change, We Shook Up The World offers an intimate perspective on two outsize figures in the nation’s and the world’s cultural history, and a new understanding of their unique contributions to the consciousness of their time and ours.”
Let Me Take You Down: Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever
By Jonathan Cott
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever in Almería, Spain, in fall 1966, and in November, in response to that song, Paul McCartney wrote Penny Lane at his home in London. A culmination of what was one of the most life-altering and chaotic years in The Beatles’ career, these two songs composed the 1967 double A-side 45 rpm record that has often been called the greatest single in the history of popular music and was, according to Beatles producer George Martin, “the best record we ever made.” In Let Me Take You Down: Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, Jonathan Cott recounts the conception and creation of these songs; describes the tumultuous events and experiences that led The Beatles to call it quits as a touring band and redefine themselves solely as recording artists; and details the complex, 70-hour recording process that produced seven minutes of indelible music. In writing about these songs, he also focuses on them as inspired artistic expressions of two unique ways of experiencing and being in the world, as Lennon takes us down to Strawberry Fields and McCartney takes us back to Penny Lane. In order to gain new vistas and multiple perspectives on these multifaceted songs, Cott also engages in conversation with five remarkable people: Media artist Laurie Anderson; guitarist Bill Frisell; actor Richard Gere; Jungian analyst Margaret Klenck; and urban planner, writer, and musician Jonathan F. P. Rose. The result is a wide-ranging, illuminating exploration of the musical, literary, psychological, cultural, and spiritual aspects of two of the most acclaimed songs in rock ’n’ roll history.”
And the Nobel Prize In Literature Goes To… Bob Dylan?
By Dimitrios P. Naskos
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “And the Nobel Prize in Literature Goes to… Bob Dylan? delves into the fascinating story of the famous songwriter and singer, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. Through a thought-provoking analysis of the works of Bob Dylan and other famous songwriters, author Dimitrios Naskos explores the complexities of whether songwriting can be considered high literature and if musicians who write lyrics deserve the same recognition as traditional writers. At its core, this book celebrates the profound legacy of songwriting and the pivotal role songs play in our lives. By offering a novel outlook on the intersection of music and literature, Naskos encourages readers to delve into the realm of words and music in fresh and stimulating ways.”
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer: Three Tales of John Lee Hooker
By Gabe Soria
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Legendary bluesman John Lee Hooker lived more life in one of his songs than the collective lifetimes of many. Spanning several decades of the American experience, One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer tells three tales of Hooker’s storied life through the perspective of those who lived within his massive orbit, weaving textured and interpretative stories that rise to the lofty creative heights of his music and fall to the gritty reality of trying to thrive in several unforgiving eras.”
