Tori Amos's Reading List

"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."

"I'd never heard of Baker and I couldn't 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."

"The way this man writes about landscapes, particularly in the U.K., makes the wild tracks and the sea roads come alive."

"People are looking at all of these tutorials online … so I thought let's go to the master."

""Giving Up the Ghost," by Hilary Mantel, broke me. I had to just be in my rocking chair and sob till my shirt was wet, it completely cracked me open."

"It gave me an understanding of how we as a collective — unknowingly sometimes — are utilized to put authoritarians and dictators in power."

""Dark Money" … explained things that I didn't understand, though I knew some of it at a cursory level."

"I reread it now every year around winter solstice. I'm so envious of anyone who gets to experience these books for the first time."

"Sarah Kendzior has been studying Central Asian autocrats for decades. She has a podcast called Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa that has been exposing the ties of the Trump administration to the Russian mafia. Currently, I am reading her new book Hiding in Plain Sight ."

"In 1990 I discovered Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman and wrote a song that references the Dream King and Neil. He called me up saying he really liked it, and we’ve been pals now for almost 30 years."

"Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me not only underscored my experience as a female singer-songwriter in the music industry but probably rang true for most women globally. I wish I could have written any of her books."

"As a teenager I was required to read Mythology by Edith Hamilton. Little did I know that would spark a passion for all myths."

"The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, in a translation of the original Coptic Gospel of Mary by Jean-Yves Leloup, was the gospel that my mother Mary and I read together. We found another layer of Jesus’s teachings through her. My father, the Rev Dr Amos, was not so keen on my mum being so inspired by this gospel, so we kept it sacred and close to our hearts and between us."

"Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel cracked me wide open. Her memoir filled with ghosts, from unfinished stories to unborn children, cut straight to my heart and rattled my bones."

"Laughing is sometimes the only medicine that pulls me from the gloom. Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman is pure gold."

"The definition of comfort for me is inspiration. Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks has been my travelling companion on more than one journey."