“Love is a Mix Tape:  Life and Loss, One Song at a Time” will have you reminiscing over mix tapes from your past, and have you running to your iTunes account to make a new one.  In this amazing memoir by Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield about his marriage to fellow music critic Renee Crist, he illustrates how “the times you lived through, the people you shared those times with—nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”
 
I gobbled up “Love is a Mix Tape” right after reading the author’s second, and significantly more lighthearted book, “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran:  One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut.”  Cruising along with Sheffield as he relives the adventures and misadventures of his youth, I grooved to the soundtrack of his teen years (along with a few favored hits from his beloved Irish grandfather’s homeland) in the background as he tells of growing up with his three strong sisters in the time of John Hughes movies and Madonna incarnations. 
 
After Sheffield’s books, I was hungry for more song lists and musical taste analysis (such as advice on why to never date a guy who is too into The Smiths) so I dove right into “Record Collecting for Girls:  Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time” by Courtney E. Smith.  Smith dishes out wisdom she's cultivated after years of having lived and breathed a career in the music industry discovering and promoting “life changing” new bands, programming for MTV, and DJing underground hole-in-the-wall punk joints in SecondLife.  Her music philosophy and insights are pitch-perfect and often hilarious.

If, like me, you’re always aching for more music appreciation, there are so many books and DVDs to explore at the Library, as well as an eclectic and constantly growing collection of CDs .  Get started by searching on "Rock Music--History and Criticism" in our Library's catalog. 
 
(For fabulous entertainment value, don’t forget “High Fidelity” or “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”—both mix-tape-inspiring books made into movies.)

After weeks of immersion in other people’s playlists, I was moved to jot down a few favorites from my ghosts of mix-tapes past, and I’m in the middle of compiling a mix-tape to give to my teenage daughter as she nears a milestone graduation.  (Sob!) 

Do you have music forever memorialized from a mix tape?  Here are some of my most treasured:
 
Nightswimming, R.E.M.
Philadelphia, Neil Young
Paper Doll, The Mills Brothers
Christine, Siouxsie and The Banshees
Many Shades of Black, The Raconteurs
California Stars, Billy Bragg and Wilco
The General, Dispatch
Planet Called Home, Holly Near
In the Cold, Cold Night, The White Stripes
Right in Time, Lucinda Williams
Non, je ne regrette rien, Edith Piaf
All Mine, Portishead