One of the rock world’s most enduring icons is David Byrne of Talking Heads fame and recently, at 74, touring with an assemblage of 13 musicians identically dressed in electric blue playing instruments while marching about the stage in intricately choreographed patterns. But his creative genius doesn’t stop there. A bit of a polymath with a huge personal library, an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, he is also a published author coming to San Francisco to talk about his new book, “Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up” (Penguin Press, $36, 400 pages). The principle of the book, which has an Oct. 6 release, is the multitude of breakthroughs in arts and sciences that are ignored or even lambasted at their first emergence, only to return, perhaps many years later, to bring permanent change to the world. Solar panels and steam engines are among topics discussed; an example Byrne has mentioned in public appearances is Glasgow physician Joseph Lister’s discovery about using antiseptics during surgeries that was greeted with contempt by his peers. It languished for three decades until a Buckingham Palace surgeon in 1902 personally called upon Lister for step-by-step instructions for an operation to drain an abscessed appendix that saved the life of King Edward VII mere days before his coronation was to take place. (The surgeon, Sir Frederick Treves, reportedly told the reluctant royal that if he waited until after his coronation, he would attend it “as a corpse.”) Byrne is scheduled to talk about the book at a City Arts & Lectures appearance at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 11. Tickets, $55, are going quickly, with some seats in the balcony. They are only available by phone at (415) 392-4400.
Byrne’s books stand out, because, unlike titles by many rockers, are neither strictly autobiography nor memoirs. Those genres have been plowed aplenty by many of his fellow recording artists; my favorite for its title alone is Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler’s “Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?” I snagged it when Ecco published it in 2011 because it seemed to encapsulate his raucous, over-the-top persona perfectly.
Bob Dylan’s 2004 memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and spent 19 months on the New York Times best-seller list. (His subsequent Nobel Prize for Literature and special Pulitzer were in recognition of his entire career.) Also highly respected is Patti Smith’s “Just Kids,” her memoir about her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, which won the 2010 National Book Award. But then again, the prolific Ms. Smith has published a total of 20 books so far (memoirs, poetry collections, artistic nonfiction), nearly double the number of the 11 music recordings she has released.
Other rock star memoirists include Sting, aka Gordon Sumner, whose “Broken Music” was released in 2003; Linda Ronstadt, who wrote about her Tucson, Arizona, childhood and rise to fame in Southern California in 2003’s “Simple Dreams”; and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, whose rambling, 576-page “Life” landed at the top of the New York Times nonfiction best-sellers list when it came out in 2010.
More recently, rocker and activist Bono released “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story” in 2022, with titles of U2 songs used as chapter headings to help dredge up the memories. Its unexpected literary sophistication surprised critics, winning this lavish praise from the UK’s Sunday Times: “beautifully evoked, a mixture of Joycean exuberance and Chandleresque irony.”
Rock star status is not really theirs to claim, but folk icons Joan Baez and Judy Collins have both been busy scribblers of more than songs over the course of their long years in the limelight. Baez has penned five books, beginning with her autobiography “Daybreak” in 1968 and winding up, for now, with 2024’s “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance,” a poetry collection with reflections about her 83 years on the planet. Her close friend Collins, meanwhile, has produced eight books as the sole author and several others in collaborations – several memoirs and inspirational works and 1995’s “Shameless,” a mystery novel set in the world of 1960s rock and roll. Her latest is 2025’s “Sometimes It’s Heaven,” a 365-day collection of poems reflective of the breadth of human emotions. Now at 87, Collins is on her “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” farewell tour, which makes a stop at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall for Cal Performances at 3 p.m. Oct. 18.
Potential Booker hookers: The shortlist of authors for this year’s prestigious Booker Prize for literary fiction, announced Sept. 22 in London, include Douglas Stuart of Scotland for his novel “John of John,” about a down-on-his-luck young gay man who returns to the island in the Outer Hebrides where he grew up and reengages with his set-in-his-ways sheep farmer father, a devout Presbyterian. Stuart is a previous Booker winner, for the novel “Shuggie Bain” in 2020.
Also in contention is Maine author Elizabeth Strout, who has secured her third Booker nomination for “The Things We Never Say,” a novel whose protagonist, Artie Dam, is a seemingly ordinary and kind middle-aged high school teacher who has a secret and makes a discovery that compels him to break free of it. Strout’s previous nominations were for the novels “Oh William” and “My Name Is Lucy Barton.”
Another nominee is London poet Rebecca Parry, whose first novel “May We Feed the King” already has won the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. It revolves around a museum curator replicating historical banquets who becomes fascinated by a medieval king who ascended to the throne reluctantly and became enmeshed in court intrigue.
Award-winning British poet Luke Kennard’s “Black Bag” is a comic campus satire inspired by a real-life experiment at Oregon State University in 1967 where a professor had an anonymous male attend classes, totally encased in a black sack with only his bare feet exposed, to chart the other students’ reactions. Kennard’s focus is on the black bag occupant, a debt-ridden actor who takes the absurd job and begins to grow fond enough of his attire that he starts wearing it outside as well.
Jamaican-born author Marlon James previously won the Booker for 2015’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” which was loosely based on the attempted assassination of reggae singer Bob Marley. His new novel “The Disappearers” follows the different coping mechanisms adopted by seven gay men in Jamaica brought together to rehearse for a play after a mob attack on all of them kills the eighth member of their group.
British author and literary critic M. John Harrison, himself a Booker Prize judge in 2022, has been nominated for his sci-fi apocalyptic novel “The End of Everything,” in which his protagonist, who makes a living scavenging things that wash up along the English coast following some sort of catastrophe, fishes up an artifact that seems to be an ever-evolving alien life form.
The winner of the Booker Prize, who will receive more than $66,000 as the equivalent to 50,000 English pounds (plus major bragging rights), will be announced at a ceremony in London on Nov. 9. For a plethora of more information, including generous excerpts from the nominated books, visit www.thebookerprizes.com.
Hooked on Books is a monthly column by Sue Gilmore on literary buzz and upcoming book events. Look for it on the last Thursday of the month.