Kate is well read.

Kate is a music journalist from Toronto with great taste in bands and books. I was curious what the music-obsessed were reading, so Kate filled me in!

What kind of a reader are you?
Voracious. I devour everything – or at least I try. I have a ridiculous reading list on my computer in Excel format. I have to keep separate charts for fiction, non fiction, poetry, etc. I try and read as many different things as I can because I think it’s important. I’ll literally read almost anything… except romance novels.

What’s the best book you’ve ever read written by or about music?
Lester Bangs was this rock critic in the ’60s. He wrote for Rolling Stone and Creem magazines and pretty much invented rock writing and rock criticism. Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste is a collection of his essays published in both magazines, and there’s some really great writing in it that’s stuck with me since I first read it. He argued Black Sabbath are actually a Catholic rock band, despite parents calling them Satanic at the time, lambasted the MC5 amd thought Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music (which tons of people said was unlistenable at the time) was the greatest album ever recorded. Just in terms of how outrageous he is and some of the imagery he uses, I think it’s probably the best rock ‘n’ roll book ever written, even if it’s just a bunch of essays.

Have you hated any books written about musicians or bands?
I haven’t read too many terrible ones, but I remember absolutely hating Nick Hornby’s Songbook (it’s sold as 31 Songs in the U.K.). He’s responsible for High Fidelity, which is one of my favourite books so I feel bad for saying this, but I just thought it was awful.

Based on their lyrics, what musician do you think should write a book?
Well, Leonard Cohen was a poet before he was a musician, so since I can’t say him I’ll say John K. Samson from The Weakerthans. He’s a big reader, having done Canada Reads twice, and he runs Arbeiter Ring Publishing, but to my knowledge he’s not written a book. Just for the lyrics to “Aside” alone, he should write a book.

Compare reading your favourite book to listening to your favourite album.
My favourite book is Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and my favourite album is The Holy Bible by the Manic Street Preachers. They’re both really different because K&C is about cousins creating a comic book franchise and The Holy Bible is this mid-’90s blast of angry punk. But the lyrics on the album are really poetic and full of historical references, much the way K&C is full of historical references as well. They’re also both really interesting examinations of humanity (K&C theorizing that it’s good, while THB postulates it’s intrinsically evil), and I also can’t be doing anything else while reading or listening to them. They require my full attention, and I can’t say that about any other album or book.

Is there any book that has influenced the way you live your life, or how you think about life?
Hey, Think About Life are a great band! Um, more seriously, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation is one of the main reasons I was vegetarian for six years and why I still have huge problems eating fast food.

Kate’s Must Reads
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson