Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

Veteran rock and pop culture critic Rob Sheffield, a staff writer for Rolling Stone magazine, writes a remarkable memoir in which he describes his musical coming of age and how his first love, rock music, introduced him to his second, a lady called Renee. Through the window of the mix tapes they compulsively produced, Rob and Renee's life together is shown. They met after graduate school, both became music journalists, and were only married for five years before Renee passed away unexpectedly on Mother's Day, 1997. There are mixes for sleeping, for taking road trips, for cleaning the dishes, for courting each other, and, at some point, for grieving Rob's biggest loss. The songs included hits by The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, and other legendary musicians from the early 1990s, including Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, REM, and Weezer. LOVE IS A MIX TAPE is a narrative of lost love and the gut-punching intensity of great pop music, combining the sad skill of Dave Eggers with the passionate honesty of Nick Hornby.