How's this for love stinks? In 1977, my first boyfriend calls to casually instruct me to listen to the last song on side one of Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees album, one of our favorite make-out records. The song he was directing me to? “It's Over” — you know, the one that goes, “Why can't you just get it through your head? It's over, it's over now.” Courtney E. Smith, a music writer/blogger and former music programmer for MTV, understands the importance of music in our lives. The tagline for her new book, Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time, is “girls get their hearts broken and make mix tapes about it, too.” She says, “I was inspired to write it because I personally love reading the writing about music that men like Hornby, Klosterman and Sheffield have done. But after devouring it all, I found I was getting exasperated that so many stories were about some woman who broke a guy's heart and I wondered what those women would have said, what songs they would play about the men who wrote about them. So instead of imagining it or waiting for someone else to get around to it, I decided to write it myself.” The book includes themed playlists — guilty pleasures, breakups (see above) — a history of girl bands and a chapter on “Smiths Syndrome.” Says Smith, “My favorite thing is after people read the chapter with my rules for making a Top Five artists list, start making their own list, and then want to tell me what it is and how they made it. Not only is that great, but I have to admit I really enjoy finding that one embarrassing artist on them and making them defend it — it's in the rules!” Could she ever be romantically involved with someone whose music taste she can stands? “I think so; if we had other things in common and they didn't try to make me listen to their crappy music. If this is going to be a situation where a guy gets upset that I won't go to a Rush concert with him, then it's probably not going to work out.” Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., W. Hlywd.; Sat., Sept. 10, 5:30 p.m.; free, book is $13.95. (310) 659-3110.

Sat., Sept. 10, 5:30 p.m., 2011

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