Oh, how we have been waiting for this. Taking the title of her honest and often funny memoir from the song on the Sleater-Kinney album, The Woods, Carrie Brownstein signals that the story of her life is the story of her band. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl (Riverhead, $27.95) starts with Brownstein’s turbulent family life (a closeted gay father, an anorexic mother) and how the Pacific Northwest’s growing independent music scene gave her a focus and an identity. Her intimate account of Sleater-Kinney gives readers an inside look at the group’s formation and struggle to find the perfect drummer, takes us on the road trips, with all their joys and stress, and helps clarify who wrote which songs. Stopping short of her work in Portlandia, Brownstein’s book is the story of a talented and determined female musician, an indomitable riot grrrrl in the male world of punk rock.
