Summer Reading
Summer Reading
"Things to do not because you gotta..." (Jonathan Richman)
TLDR: Some personal recommendations for times of pause, as if someone had asked me. Look away now if requiring something more simply serious for this serious world.
Recommended reading
Well, the newspapers and magazines have yet again unfathomably neglected to ask me to pass on my summer reading suggestions.
Never mind, we can bypass the dying media by doing it here, one last slight indulgence before I take a break and get back to you in September.
These are simply five books I’ve enjoyed this year that I think regular readers might actually pleasurably read on your holidays, wherever you are – at home, on the beach, in a city, walking, in bed.
I wanted to suggest books which were certified (by me anyway) as Not Harrowing. This ruled out beautiful books including Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry and Close to Home by Michael Magee, both of which I loved. (I did actually read the Barry while on holiday and it was almost a bit too much, I am such a sensitive soul.)
I also decided recommendations had to be easily portable, which meant omitting the enlightening and essential oral history of women at Factory Records, I Thought I Heard You Speak by Audrey Golden, which is still only available in luggage-busting hardback till October.
Oh, and they all had to have some tangential relevance to the types of pleasures, trials and conundrums of culture I usually worry away at here, but not be work.
In no particular order then…
Erasure by Percival Everett
The novel that was brilliantly adapted into the film American Fiction, this is as entertaining and hilarious as post-modern novels get, especially if like me you love a bit of peak French lit theory. (Did I buy more Barthes after finishing it? Reader, I did.) It will make you pay a different kind of attention whenever publishers (inter alia) talk about sharing untold stories, or next time ‘a gritty authentic voice’ is plucked from seeming obscurity. We debate nowt else these days, in the smog-filled mock-workhouse parmo factories and freeports of the Tees Valley.
World Within A Song by Jeff Tweedy
One of my favourite songwriters talking about the music and musicians that changed his life? Yes, please. Tweedy’s third book is (approx.) what Bob Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song could have been but wasn’t: revealing, heartfelt and casting new light on his own music-making. To adapt the meme, find someone who writes about you how Tweedy writes about Mavis Staples. And don’t forget: music means you are not alone, even when you might look it.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
This is a deeply strange but life-enhancing novel, which is ironic as it’s partly about a road trip with a recently deceased ex. Something in this novel talks to the dream-like nature of what writing can do, of what we do in performing, creating, living. And like all Moore’s writing, it fair zings from start to finish.
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
It’s a cliché to say no one writes about families like Anne Enright. But that’s because it’s true. The dynamics between mothers and daughters, fathers and mothers and daughters, the ebbs and flows of selflessness and selfishness are like a kind of dance here. It would be fair to say poets don’t come out of this novel well. Which is probably fair comment.
Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village by Marit Kapla
This unusual book is an oral history novel of a community in rural Sweden over many decades, in verse. It creates a hypnotic collage of voices that adds up to an economic and social picture of a community ever changing. . There are touching love stories in here, as in any place, as well as emerging narratives of climate change and migration. It demonstrates that parochialism is universal as Patrick Kavanagh said.
Do please add your own suggestions in the comments.
One More Thing…
“This is the first time I’ve been excited about evaluation in such a long time..”
Not holiday reading exactly, but just published is my report for Future Arts Centres on the Most Significant Change Action Research Group I helped with in their first year as an NPO. It’s a light-hearted comedy about a raggle-taggle group of misfit arts centre folk… oh no, hang on, I’ve not written that yet. One day.
I’ll return to this report and the subject of Most Significant Change in September, when these newsletters will hit fewer Out of Office messages, but thought I’d mention it now anyway. Maybe you’ll get excited too.
Tactics Tomato
Pushing the principle of giving myself enough rope to its limits, here’s a pomodoro playlist of some sunny Summer listening. 25 minutes in the sun, then five minutes in the shade. See you in September.