What inspires the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter? Her first picture book, “Tori and the Muses,” offers an answer. In an email interview, she shared how her gently rebellious mother made her a reader. SCOTT HELLER
What books are on your night stand?
“Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals,” by Jamie Sams and David Carson. It’s an interactive book and card set where you can pull a card and read about the healing properties that each animal embodies as it relates to mind, body and spirit. Jamie Sams was of Indigenous heritage, and I feel like some of it was passed down to her as a gift she has channeled for us all.
How do you organize your books?
Let’s put it this way: Being a librarian is a fantasy of mine. In my album “Tales of a Librarian,” I’m dressed in different imagined librarian costumes, and in the liner notes the tracks are organized by the Dewey Decimal System. My own little libraries don’t have a system, but I have dreams of one!
What kind of reader were you as a child?
My reading was all inspired by my mother, Mary. My father, a pastor, believed that she was reading me Bible stories. But what she was doing, and I’m convinced this was her rebellion — her Methodist minister’s wife rebellion, because it was difficult to rebel, especially as a minister’s wife in the late ’60s if you wanted to stay married and accepted by the parishioners and society at large — was reading to me from the collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s works.
What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
“Growing Up,” by Russell Baker, which I got a few years ago from my friend Mary Ellen Bobb. I’d never heard of Baker and I couldn’t put the book down. The way he could tell the story of his life made me feel like I knew everybody in it by the time I finished. I grew up in Baltimore and he put the city in a different light for me: more like a shining city on a hill.
What’s the last great book you read?
I’m rereading “Landmarks,” by Robert Macfarlane. The way this man writes about landscapes, particularly in the U.K., makes the wild tracks and the sea roads come alive.
You published a book called “Resistance” in 2020. Why a children’s book now?
Francesco Sedita at Penguin reached out and said, “I’ve been reading your liner notes for years, since the ’90s. You usually thank the fairies and the muses. Do you want to write about them?” That was the jumping-off point. We found the illustrator Demelsa Haughton, who just magically understood and was open to hearing about the muses and their stories. She captured them so beautifully.
What’s the last book you recommended to a member of your family?
“Making Faces,” by Kevyn Aucoin — a gift I gave to the band, my collaborators, my extended family. People are looking at all of these tutorials online. Some people know what they are doing, and some don’t, so I thought let’s go to the master. Kevyn Aucoin is and was one of the great revolutionaries in how to paint and light a face.
What’s the last book you read that made you cry?
“Giving Up the Ghost,” by Hilary Mantel, broke me. I had to just be in my rocking chair and sob till my shirt was wet, it completely cracked me open. I had such empathy for her pain.
The last book that made you furious?
There are two: “The Road to Unfreedom,” by Timothy Snyder — I’ve underlined so many things and have Post-it notes in so many pages. It gave me an understanding of how we as a collective — unknowingly sometimes — are utilized to put authoritarians and dictators in power. And “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” by Jane Mayer, explained things that I didn’t understand, though I knew some of it at a cursory level. I certainly had no idea of the machinations that were going on when I was working the piano bars off K Street in Washington, D.C., and the liquid handshakes were occurring in front of my eyes as I played “As Time Goes By.” When a lobbyist would lower his hand down my back when I was 16 playing some of these swanky hotels, I had no idea what some of them were planning.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
“The Dark Is Rising,” by Susan Cooper, which came out decades before another popular series about a boy discovering he can wield magic. I reread it now every year around winter solstice. I’m so envious of anyone who gets to experience these books for the first time. I want to be there with you, having s’mores and hot chocolate.
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