I grew up in the 1980s. Those were my teenage years and, like Rob Sheffield in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, the music of that decade figures prominently in who I was then and the person I am today.

Much of the music that came out of the 80s is still some of my favorite music of all time: R.E.M., Sonic Youth, and The Replacements along with single wonders like "Say It Isn't So," "Don't You Want Me," "Girls On Film," and any hit off of Madonna's first album.

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran proves that our memories are undeniably linked to music. Like the flashbacks you get when you hear a certain song, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is a continuous flood of stories triggered by listening to a single song. The stories are Rob's but each of us has our own stories for each song, too.

The book is full of Sheffield's great commentary on 80s pop music gold. For instance:

The Banana Splits didn't look any more ridiculous pretending to play guitars than Missing Persons did.

If you're making fun of somebody for having new-wave hair, the words "You! Flock of Seagulls!" are going to come up.

Of all the complex females in my life, Madonna was the one who taught me how to be completely exasperated by a woman, and how to like it.

The Replacements were imaginary friends who I could practice on while I was learning to have actual friends.

As someone who felt the same way about The Replacements -- and much of the music of my teenage years -- Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is a conversation with old friends over a box of records and cassingles.

Ah, John Waters. Campy, filthy, subversive, delightful.

I'm not a big fan of his films but you have to admit the guy has balls. And in his book Role Models he proceeds to entertainingly write about the people who have influenced his unique style and outlook on life.

For instance, this passage about the great Tennessee Williams:

Yes, Tennessee Williams was my childhood friend. I yearned for a bad influence and Tennessee was one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing, and dangerously funny. I didn't quite "get" "Desire and the Black Masseur" when I read it in One Arm, but I hoped I would one day. The thing I did know after finishing the book was that I didn't have to listen to the lies the teachers told us about society's rules. I didn't have to worry about fitting in with a crowd I didn't want to hang out with in the first place. No, there was another world that Tennessee Williams knew about, a universe filled with special people who didn't want to be a part of this dreary conformist life that I was told I had to join.

From Tennessee Williams to Johnny Mathis, Lady Zorro (the lesbian stripper from Waters' hometown of Baltimore) to designer Rei Kawakubo, Little Richard to pornographer Bobby Garcia, Waters regales us with stories about his role models as if we were sitting together over cocktails at some Baltimore dive bar on a Friday night. Yes, please.

[Source: AthFest 2010 Venue Lineups]

Blake Nelson has an exceptional ability to tap into what it's really like to be a teenager. Most of us look back on our teenage years with our adult perspective and write them off to the awkwardness of adolescent social life and the transition into impending adulthood. That changes our perspective, though. We forget what it was really like. And that's what Nelson captures so well: that teenage psyche, the internal struggle we forget. The "problems" teenagers have are overshadowed, almost reduced in scope, by the real problems and responsibilities that com with being an adult.

It's those real problems, the very real internal struggle and turmoil, that haunts Paranoid Park. The main character, a 16 year old skater, is so caught up with the thoughts inside him that he can hardly enjoy or even live the life of a "normal" teenager.

From his internal monologue:

It made me mad that people always talked about helping teenagers. There was always some new program, some new plan to help kids. There were ads on TV, on the radio. Hotlines, and this and that. But did any of it work? Not in the slightest. Here I was, with a real problem, with a serious problem, but was there anywhere I could go? Who do you call when something really goes wrong? Those geeks in the student-counseling office? When you had a real problem, there was nothing you could do, no one you could talk to. It was so typical. And so unfair. Why didn't they set up an anonymous number you could call, so you could talk to someone who actually knew something, someone who could give you real advice and tell you what your options were?

For once in my life I genuinely needed help, and where could I go? There was nowhere. There was nothing. And it really pissed me off.

Nelson makes dwelling in the mind of a teenager as interesting and psychologically compelling as dwelling in the mind of an adult.

Here's the thing about autobiographical essays: they matter deeply to the person writing them. Enough to even write the essays in the first place. Yeah, we all like to write or talk about ourselves and, ultimately, when we do it's for our own satisfaction, catharsis, empowerment, or whatever. So does it really matter what other people think?

That's why I like Emily Gould's collection of essays about her life before and upon arrving in New York City, And The Heart Says Whatever. Gould never pretends for it to be a collection of life lessons, for her or the reader. It's one person's story of life as a young adult in one of the most exciting and opportunity-filled cities in the world. Gould feels "the pull of a trajectory, a sense of experience piling up the way it does as you turn the pages of a novel." Sometimes you're in control, other times you're not. Sometimes you make the right decisions, other times you don't.

This is one of the most painful things about getting older, especially getting older in the same place where you were young: the constant realizations that you could have been doing everything better all along, if only you'd known how to read the map more accurately.

While at times I found myself pushing myself through to the end of a story, what I took from most of the essays is a sense of no regrets. Sure, some things could have been approached or carried through differently, but Gould did the best she could -- like each and every one of us has in our own lives, good results or bad -- and "would do it all again."

From the press release from Jackson Fine Art owner and curator Anna Walker Skillman:

The works of Lillian Bassman, Frank Horvat and William Klein helped define and revolutionize Fashion Photography of the 20th century. Their images of some of the foremost models of the day, immortalized the style of a bygone era. Their Individual styles set them apart but their experimental approach to their crafts unifies them. Working for magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Glamour, with some of the top art directors Alexey Brodovich and Alexander Liberman throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, these three photographers broke conventional rules and set the ground work for the fashion images we see today.

Lillian Bassman's photos are particularly striking.

Frank Horvat is no slouch either.

This work is so visually stunning. It's beyond fashion, especially considering when they were made.

Really wonderful stuff. Believe it or not, looking at these photos makes me wish I had been old enough to experience this New York. I'll admit I'm romanticizing it quite a bit but there's no denying the artistic and cultural energy of the time. Gone.

Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds chimes in with some commentary on a few of the photos. Definitely worth the quick read.

Check out the whole NYC 1978-1985 set and all of Edwards' work. Lots of great stuff to look at.

I've been a big fan of Charlotte-based artist Sharon Dowell for some time now. Her paintings are like memories layered upon each other and stacked high in your mind. Whether it's one of her dazzling cityscapes or a ghostlike figurative painting, Sharon's work is exciting, pushing you to look a little deeper and longer.

I always want to know more about how people create: what inspires them, how they motivate themselves, etc. So I asked Sharon some questions about her work and inspiration.

Armando Bellmas: What moves you to begin a new painting?

Sharon Dowell: The satisfaction from completing a painting inevitably wanes and I begin to think about new ways to explore ideas, imagery, layers, etc. It's akin to being in a bustling city; that wonderful overwhelming feeling that there are so many things to do and see that the possibilities are never ending.

Sometimes inspiration hits with a feverish pitch and I cannot wait to get into the studio. Other times I glimpse something that I file away to explore at a later date, such as tangled power lines in a quiet alley or the beautiful geometry and order of farmland when fly across the country.

Armando: Do your ideas rely on actual snapshots of places and things or are you working from the memory of what you've glimpsed?

Sharon: A little of both. I try to capture the energy of place in my work. I usually have a camera on hand wherever I travel and my imagery is based upon my actual photos. When I am painting in the studio, the memory of that moment is incorporated into the work in the underpainting, color, and texture.

Armando: I love that layering of tangible and intangible. So in a painting like 'Pier', for instance, there's a memory in there, almost a reflection in the water and on the wood, tangible and intangible. Tell me about it.

Sharon: Most of my paintings begin with either patterns or an aerial view of a city--rooftops and streets, etc. It is my attempt to express that intangible energy one experiences in different environments--be it on a loud and bustling street corner or under a pier on a breezy day. The architectural imagery then creates a nice tension between the two layers. I allow the underpainting and texture to show through in certain areas. Visually, the transparency of the layers feels ghostlike, referencing who or what may have occupied that space in times past.

Armando: Would your work be different if you lived someplace else? How does living in Charlotte affect your ideas?

Sharon: I'm not sure if my work would be different, but I do feel that the one year I lived in New York City influenced my subject matter heavily. I had a difficult time painting there--so much wonderful distraction! But when I came back to Charlotte, I was able to have a studio, a sanctuary where I could focus solely on my work, and that made a huge difference.

I have painted scenes of Charlotte, but a lot of my subject matter tends to be of other places--Helena, MT, Asheville, Iceland, San Francisco, NYC, you name it. As mentioned, when I travel, I have my camera on hand and thus build up a large database of images to cull from. Because I am exploring (and romanticizing) these new places, I think they are sometimes a little more exciting to paint when I get into the studio.

[Check out more of Sharon Dowell's work.]

It's pretty obvious by now that I love to read. I'm not always good about following through with recommendations from others, though. I have pretty specific tastes as far as my fiction goes.

So in an effort to open myself up to the recommendations of others I signed up for The Rumpus Book Club.

The Rumpus is one of my favorite websites. Books, music, film, comics, art, sex -- they cover it all. Our tastes jive. I trust them. So it was a no-brainer to let them pick one of the books I read each month by joining the book club. (Get more details about The Rumpus Book Club here.)

The inaugural The Rumpus Book Club book is the John Brandon's second novel, Citrus County. (The Rumpus Book Club members received this one a month or two before it's release date from McSweeney's -- another club perk.)

So here I go opening myself up to the recommendations of others and the first book is mainly about a sociopath that does some pretty disturbing shit. So disturbing, in fact, that I find it difficult to continue reading the book after the first 75 pages or so.

This passage is from the first part of the book:

As far as Toby could tell, Uncle Neal's business was to clean things that nobody else would clean, from grimed old engines to abandoned slaughterhouses. Toby's uncle, it was safe to say, was a pariah. He lived in a world of regret, if not remorse -- about what, Toby couldn't say. Toby's uncle always joked about killing himself, and Toby had begun to suspect he wasn't joking. He didn't have much incentive to stay alive. Uncle Neal, like everyone else, believed Toby was a run-of-the-mill punk, another angst-ridden adolescent. He had no clue what Toby was capable of.

But here's the thing about a damn good book like Citrus County: as disturbing as the story is, Brandon's writing is so methodical and intriguing that you can't stop reading. I wanted to stop a few times but couldn't. I had to find out what would happen, how the characters would deal with their predicaments, and how Brandon would twist and turn the tale towards the end -- despite the disturbing shit.

I stuck with it, putting my faith in Brandon's writing to get me through it. It was worth every word.