Baby Plays Around (2004)

Reading Stapinski's second memoir, about parallel relationships with her husband and her rock band in the late 1990s, is like dishing with a buddy over a beer; the journalist/drummer, with her wry narrative voice, is a hoot. That said, her observations occasionally come across as more forced than in 2001's bold ''Five-Finger Discount,'' and the chart of personal ebbs and flows is underdeveloped (her son's birth, for example, is an afterthought). Stapinski is most magnetic in her intimate descriptions of the NYC club scene (sweating on stage at Brownie's) and the music world in general.