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What inspires the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter? Her first picture book, \u201cTori and the Muses,\u201d offers an answer. In an email interview, she shared how her gently rebellious mother made her a reader. SCOTT HELLER<\/em><\/p>\n What books are on your night stand?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMedicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals,\u201d by Jamie Sams and David Carson. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n How do you organize your books?<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s put it this way: Being a librarian is a fantasy of mine. In my album \u201cTales of a Librarian,\u201d I\u2019m 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\u2019t have a system, but I have dreams of one! <\/p>\n What kind of reader were you as a child?<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019m convinced this was her rebellion \u2014 her Methodist minister\u2019s wife rebellion, because it was difficult to rebel, especially as a minister\u2019s wife in the late \u201960s if you wanted to stay married and accepted by the parishioners and society at large \u2014 was reading to me from the collection of Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s works. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What\u2019s the best book you\u2019ve ever received as a gift?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cGrowing Up,\u201d by Russell Baker,<\/a> which I got a few years ago from my friend Mary Ellen Bobb. I\u2019d never heard of Baker and I couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the last great book you read?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m rereading \u201cLandmark<\/a>s,\u201d<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n You published a book called \u201cResistance\u201d in 2020. Why a children\u2019s book now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Francesco Sedita at Penguin reached out and said, \u201cI\u2019ve been reading your liner notes for years, since the \u201990s. You usually thank the fairies and the muses. Do you want to write about them?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the last book you recommended to a member of your family?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMaking Faces,\u201d<\/a> by Kevyn Aucoin \u2014 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\u2019t, so I thought let\u2019s go to the master. Kevyn Aucoin is and was one of the great revolutionaries in how to paint and light a face.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the last book you read that made you cry?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cGiving Up the Ghost,\u201d<\/a> by Hilary Mantel<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The last book that made you furious?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are two: \u201cThe Road to Unfreedom,\u201d<\/a> by Timothy Snyder \u2014 I\u2019ve underlined so many things and have Post-it notes in so many pages. It gave me an understanding of how we as a collective \u2014 unknowingly sometimes \u2014 are utilized to put authoritarians and dictators in power. And \u201cDark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,\u201d<\/a> <\/em>by Jane Mayer, explained things that I didn\u2019t 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 \u201cAs Time Goes By.\u201d 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. <\/p>\n What\u2019s your favorite book no one else has heard of?<\/strong><\/p>\n