In an attempt to prove that musicians aren't just products of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, SPIN.com has gathered together an eclectic group of literary-minded musicians to participate in a monthly, online book club. One member per month will select a book that has impacted their music career for the club to read and subsequently discuss. Then we will give you the highlights.

This Month's Selection: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Selected by: Meg Frampton, Meg & Dia

Reason for Selection: My sister asked me what this book was about after I had finished. Right away, I couldn't describe the plot or story line very clearly. Kundera's artistic descriptions and unique perspectives stand out to me more than the actual story itself. He is a true artist.

For example, to make myself a bit clearer, without ruining the book for y'all, there is a scene in which he explains how the main character could never remember people's faces as soon as they leave. He just remembers certain features and embellishes them until the images he holds become caricatures of their actual features. Of course, he describes it much more eloquently than I just did, but you'll see what I mean if you care to indulge.

Discussion highlights:

Rick Moody, author and honorary book club member

Unbearable Lightness is a book that was published in a very specific time, and that's one of the reasons that it has a fond place in my heart and has since I read it first, back in the '80s. I feel like Meg is right to speak of its lack of "story," although the story in Kundera (or at least until the Berlin Wall came down) was always about political repression in Czechoslovakia, and, in particular, about the way the thaw of May '68 in Prague (called, I believe, the Prague Spring) was crushed by the Soviets and their puppets there.

The lightness refers, I imagine, to the way Kundera [sees] carnal stuff -- love, sex -- serve as the only opportunity for liberation, under a repressive regime. The book sort of winds back and forth around the story. As such, at the time it came out, it was a big corrective on "plot-oriented" American fiction. A big relief for me as a reader. I wish we could have another one of these non-linear international sensations about now.

Dave Smallen, Street to Nowhere

I read this when I just began touring and found myself somehow surrounded by infidelity -- in the experiences of both bands and crews around me and the people that we would meet in each city. Coming from parents still quite happy together (which is something that I feel sort of always set me apart, being the exception, not the rule, it seems), I had trouble getting my head around the cheating, the screwing around, and the different philosophy that each person [used] to rationalize their behavior. It felt criminal to me, it really did, but I knew it wasn't my place to intervene, and so I tried to ignore it, but it still sort of ate away at me.

I have to admit that I was also pretty lonely at that time, and reading Unbearable Lightness, I was really moved by the love story. I mean, with all of the coincidence and all, it felt very real, dramatic, yes, but not over-dramatic, a sort of love that could really develop. That element of infidelity was there again, though, and I was consumed with how Tomas had this separation between sex and love and Tereza couldn't break the two apart for herself.

That didn't make it okay in my eyes, but it gave me some understanding, that not everyone has a severe emotional connection between those things, that people are what they are and feel what they feel. It practically destroys Tereza to sleep with someone outside of love, but it is a total pastime to Tomas. We all know a lot of dudes like that.

That broke that issue wide open for me, that like most everything, it isn't black and white, and trying to align your life with another's is one of the most difficult things. It can never be perfect, but it can be really good. It still didn't defend the actions of the guys and girls around me, but it allowed me to let it alone, to let it be their problem if it was a problem. That is what stayed with me from the reading, one more example of all the gray area and all the little unfairnesses of life. Like Leonard Cohen Says: "The duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule."

More discussion highlights on page 2.