A Dream About Lightning Bugs, Ben Folds
A Dream About Lightning Bugs, Ben Folds
4 Rating(s)
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A Dream About Lightning Bugs
A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

Bestseller

Author: Ben Folds

Narrator: Ben Folds

Unabridged: 8 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/30/2019


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the genre-defying icon Ben Folds comes a memoir that is as nuanced, witty, and relatable as his cult-classic songs.

“A Dream About Lightning Bugs reads like its author: intelligent, curious, unapologetically punk, and funny as hell.”—Sara Bareilles

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND PASTE

Ben Folds is a celebrated American singer-songwriter, beloved for songs such as “Brick,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” and “The Luckiest,” and is the former frontman of the alternative rock band Ben Folds Five. But Folds will be the first to tell you he’s an unconventional icon, more normcore than hardcore. Now, in his first book, Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller. 

In the title chapter, “A Dream About Lightning Bugs,” Folds recalls his earliest childhood dream—and realizes how much it influenced his understanding of what it means to be an artist. In “Measure Twice, Cut Once” he learns to resist the urge to skip steps during the creative process. In “Hall Pass” he recounts his 1970s North Carolina working-class childhood, and in “Cheap Lessons” he returns to the painful life lessons he learned the hard way—but that luckily didn’t kill him. 

In his inimitable voice, both relatable and thought-provoking, Folds digs deep into the life experiences that shaped him, imparting hard-earned wisdom about both art and life. Collectively, these stories embody the message Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you’ve got nothing to prove, because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds.

Praise for A Dream About Lightning Bugs
 
“Besides being super talented, and an incredibly poignant and multifaceted musician, Ben Folds is a fantastic author. I couldn’t put this book down—and not just because I taped it to my hand. Ben takes us into his mind and into his process from the very beginnings of his childhood to where he is today—one of the greatest musicians and writers that has ever graced the art.”—Bob Saget

About Ben Folds

Ben Folds is a celebrated musician who has created a unique body of genre-bending music that includes pop albums with Ben Folds Five, multiple solo albums, and collaborations with artists ranging from Sara Bareilles to Regina Spektor to William Shatner. One of his recent albums, ‘So There’, a blend of pop songs and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, soared to #1 on both the Billboard classical and classical crossover charts. In 2017 he was named the first ever artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. An avid photographer, Folds is a member of the prestigious Sony Artisans of Imagery. Folds is also an outspoken champion for arts education and music therapy. A Dream About Lightning Bugs is his first book.https://www.benfolds.com/book


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kristy

Ben Folds--as you probably know if you're interested in his autobiography/memoir--is a singer-songwriter who became popular in the 1990s as part of the band Ben Folds Five. He's well-known for his piano skills, vocals, and songwriting. He's also had a somewhat tumultuous personal life, with multiple......more

Goodreads review by R.L.

Having been a fan of Folds for over two decades I wasn't sure what to expect from this. Folds has at various points in his life been an open book and others not so much. He can also write joke songs while playing with an orchestra. What we end up in the book is mostly a straight forward, serious boo......more

Goodreads review by Margot

Folds knocks it out of the park. Who knew he was as good a book writer as he is a songwriter? Cheap lessons have never been so resonant - or so funny.......more

SPoilers!!!!!!!! I love Ben Folds. Ben is a truly gifted songwriter, but book author, not so much. This is the most boring rock and roll memoir I’ve ever read. Nothing really happens. Wait that’s not true. Lots of incredible and big things happen, Unfortunate, Ben just just know how to get into it.......more

Goodreads review by Buford

As a lover of music and books, I surprisingly rarely enjoy reading about musicians’ lives. Ben Folds as a songwriter and now book writer is an exception to this rule. His memoir chronicling his childhood through his impressively diverse music career is incredibly poignant and poetic like his lyrics.......more


Quotes

A Dream About Lightning Bugs is an insightful, touching and often hilarious look back at [Folds’s] life and career, told with wit and good old-fashioned Southern warmth—like Truman Capote, but with more F-bombs.”People

A Dream About Lightning Bugs offers a glimpse inside the head of another musical genius while also being one of the best-written, most interesting musical memoirs of the rock era.”Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A masterfully written memoir, and so much more. Folds imbues this literary work with keen insight and humor to create an elegant and moving tribute to art and life itself.”—Daniel Levitin, author of #1 New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind

“Delightful . . . Singer-songwriter Folds explores the ways in which music shaped his life and offers glimpses into the process of making music. . . . Folds’s fans will take great pleasure in this charming and insightful memoir.”Publishers Weekly

“Engaging and solid . . . Rock memoirs have a distancing effect, but Ben Folds is as relatable as ever.”The Washington Post
 
“A memoir of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll that’s long on wry humor and short on—well, sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. . . . A pleasure for fans and encouragement for novices to tune in.”Kirkus Reviews
 
“[Folds’s] journey, beginning with a dream he had at age three, is one of the most rewarding any musician has brought us along for in quite some time.”Paste Magazine

A Dream About Lightning Bugs . . . radiates [Folds’s] goofy, brilliant, genuine, deeply empathetic spirit, marked by the kind of amiable self-consciousness with which unboastful genius often shades itself from the harsh stage-glare of attention.”—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings