Help a Girl Out, Will Ya?

I don't normally do this. I almost never outright request that you, fair reader, buy a specific book at a specific time, but this is a special case. I've mentioned Amanda Petrusich a few times on this blog. She is the author of the new book It Still Moves, a great book about Americana music. In it, she traces the history of Americana music from its roots in the delta blues and Appalachian folk music to its present day incarnations in Nashville country and the freak folk scene. It's a good book, a fast read, and one of its best attributes is Petrusich's unique and endearing voice. As she makes her way around the country, she stops at truck stops, eats at Cracker Barrel, and muses on coal mines, Oxycontin, and kitsch.

Yesterday on her blog Player Piano Music, a quirky blog where she writes about her life and her career, Petrusich posted the troubling news that she was robbed on a recent research trip to the South. The thieves took her jewelry as well as:

"my watch, my new laptop, my flash drive (containing a year's worth of writing, including a 3000 word feature story that's due on Tuesday morning and, ugh, the eulogy I wrote for my grandmother in February), my notebook and notes, a few books, my tape recorder, three days' worth of interview tapes, and a bunch of other stuff..."

Obviously, the monetary value of all that "stuff" really adds up, but what seems most depressing to me is the loss of her writing and her research.

So I'm doing something simple here, and requesting that you buy a copy of Petrusich's book today (you can do so by clicking here or by clicking on the title earlier in the post or on the cover of the book...I've made it easy for you). It's not charity, as you're getting something back (something that I think is well worth the money), but it might help restore some karma in the world. It won't bring back any of that lost stuff, but it will, eventually, put a little money in Ms. Petrusich's pocket. If reading about good music isn't your thing, if you think, like some, that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then buy it for a friend. It makes a great gift.