Fans of the London-based post-punk band Savages have come to expect an act of intimate connection from its kinetic frontwoman, Jehnny Beth: stand-up crowd surfing. During every live performance, the singer steps from the stage into a sea of outstretched hands and is held aloft like some kind of darkly glamorous, androgynous George Washington crossing the Potomac — in Savages’ case, a boisterous mosh pit. But on an unseasonably cool Tuesday morning in Venice Beach, Calif., Beth projected a more cerebral image.

Bundled up in a knee-length black coat by the Stockholm women’s wear label Minimarket, skin-tight black jeans, Vagabond Chelsea boots and a vintage motorcycle jacket, she had come to peruse the stacks at the venerable bookseller Small World Books. Savages had just delivered a pair of triumphant sets on back-to-back weekends at Coachella, promoting the group’s second album “Adore Life,” and Beth, 31, who was born Camille Berthomier in Poitiers, France, was on the hunt for something good to read.

She ran an index finger along Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” — “Kundu,” she cooed in recognition — and Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” before pausing before a rack in the Eastern Mythology section and removing a copy of the ancient Chinese divination text “The I Ching or Book of Changes.” “So I was reading a book of interviews with Philip K. Dick and he was talking about the I Ching,” said Beth. “He used it all the time for his characters to decide what they would say or do. Wow, it’s a big book.” The singer swiped the book of interviews with Dick, the druggy science-fiction visionary, from her bandmate Gemma Thompson. Especially in the two years since Beth gave up drinking alcohol, reading — and in particular, poetry — has played a key function in her creative process. “Me and Gemma exchange books and buy each other books. We don’t buy each other records,” she said. “It’s something we’ve always done.”

Image Credit... Nathaniel Wood

In performance, Thompson’s pummeling efforts on lead guitar find natural counterpoint both with Beth’s spidery stage presence and in her lyrical meditations on love. “The contrast is interesting,” she said, moving efficiently through Small World’s poetry section. “The idea of saying ‘Love is the answer,” which is a very vulnerable thing to say, it seems very absurd. A bit … cliché? If you do it on a very loud track, then it has a different meaning.”