2. A collection of the poems of John Skelton, to Mike Doughty (ex-Soul Coughing):
Skelton's verses ping with the vernacular of late 15th/early 16th century England. His meters and rhythms would be admirably complemented by contemporary hip-hop beats. And Zack de la Rocha and Public Enemy would do well to study how Skelton spoke up on contemporary issues such as inflationary government policies ("Speak, Parrot") or the socially destructive effects of alcohol ("The Tunning of Elinour Rumming"). Was Skelton the first socially conscious rapper?

3. Le Diable au Corps (The Devil in the Flesh), by Raymond Radiguet, to Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes):
So Oberst thinks that he's lived and loved desperately at a tender age? The Devil in the Flesh tells in the first person the story of a 16-year-old youth's obsessive affair with an older married woman (based on the author's personal experience). Radiguet completed this novel plus a second, Le Bal du Comte D'Orgel, and a collection of poems, before dying at age 20.

4. The Unquiet Grave, by Cyril Connolly, to Travis Morrison (Dismemberment Plan):
This nominally autobiographical meditation on past failures and longed-for successes (professional and personal) is shot through with an incurably romantic optimism. Yet beware of equating the "I" of the text too closely with the author.

5. Les Guérillčres, by Monique Wittig, to Kathleen Hanna (Le Tigre/ex-Bikini Kill):
No, this is not a recent book in French on the Gorillaz. This feminist utopian novel depicts a group of women who have forcibly withdrawn from a male-dominated mainstream and created their own society (an apt metaphor for what the Riot Grrrl movement sought to do). And the novel's rejection of traditional narrative practices recalls Le Tigre's way of messing with the traditions of the pop song.

6. Selected Poems, by Ezra Pound, to Tim Harrington (Les Savy Fav):
Could Pound have rocked a party that rocks the body with such lyrics as "Tching prayed on the mountain and / wrote MAKE IT NEW / on his bathtub" ("Canto LIII")? I'm sure the results would have been…interesting. And admit it; the last time you saw Harrington swinging from a club's lighting fixtures, you wondered if it was entirely an act, or could he really be a few tracks short of an LP.

7. Political Writings of William Morris, to Dennis Lyxzén (The (International) Noise Conspiracy):
Ian Svenonius' number one fan has already endorsed the Emma Goldman quote "If I can't dance, I don't want to join your revolution." Lyxzén almost certainly would appreciate the theories of this Victorian-era author (1834-1896) who witnessed the start of the Industrial Revolution and linked "competitive Commerce" with deepening social inequity, the disappearance of aesthetic quality in everyday life, and the dissociation of work from satisfaction in one's labors. As a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement and a member of several socialist organizations, Morris advocated drastic social change that would "help to break up our rotten sham society." Smash it up indeed.

8. The Flower Beneath the Foot, by Ronald Firbank, to Stephen Merritt (Magnetic Fields):
Reviewers routinely link Merritt's songs with the works of Cole Porter and Noel Coward -- artists who wore their hearts on their sleeve and then glossed over the blood with a high-camp, oh-so-social veneer. This novel, like Firbank's others, does very much the same in the guise of fiction.

9 and 10. Mes Apprentissages (My Apprenticeships) and L'Etoile Vesper (The Evening Star), by Colette, to Courtney Love (Hole):
La Love would do well to study these autobiographical accounts of how the author got herself out from under the overarching shadow of a husband (My Apprenticeships), and worked to develop her own, authentic voice (The Evening Star).

11. The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford, to Chuck Cleaver (The Ass Ponys):
Okay, the Ass Ponys have a song titled "Ford Madox Ford," and Cleaver may well have read this book already. And the Ponys' best songs-Middle American Gothic character sketches-stand comparison with Ford's nuanced tales of other people's conduct as interpreted by a possibly unreliable narrator.

On second thought, I think I'll keep these books. Maybe I can cut down my CD collection -- it's a lot harder to rip an electronic file of a book than a song.