#allenderreadinglist2018

Classic Scrapes – James Acaster Reservoir 13 – Jon McGregor Collected Stories – John Cheever The Dark Portal – Robin Jarvis The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times – Xan Brooks Stag’s Leap – Sharon Olds All the Devils are Here – David Seabrook A Month in the Country – J. L. Carr The Argonauts – Maggie Nelson The Gallows Pole – Benjamin Myers The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society – Andy Miller Le grand Meaulnes – Alain-Fournier Red Shift – Alan Garner Mothers – Chris Power Wetlands – Charlotte Roche Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son – Gordon Burn The Abandoned Settlements – James Sheard Three Poems – Hannah Sullivan The Owl Service – Alan Garner The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead States of Desire – Edmund White La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One – Philip Pullman Less – Andrew Sean Greer My Purple Scented Novel – Ian McEwan Transit – Rachel Cusk Neon in Daylight – Hermione Hoby How to Break Up With Your Phone – Catherine Price The Only Story – Julian Barnes Mortal Causes – Ian Rankin Crudo – Olivia Laing Normal People – Sally Rooney (book of the year)  Last Stories – William Trevor Like a Fiery Elephant – Jonathan Coe The Holy Vible – Elis James & John Robins Songs of Love and Horror – Will Oldham Murmur – Will Eaves Ulverton – Adam Thorpe The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark Autumn Journal – Louis MacNeice How Not to Be a Boy – Robert Webb (who has since become [even more] insufferable) Beastie Boys Book – Michael Diamond & Adam Horowitz The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger Middle England – Jonathan Coe Finnegans Wake – James Joyce

(If you are interested, I have previously posted about Jonathan Coe’s Number 11 and Expo 58 on this blog.)

Looking forward to tucking into both of these terrific birthday presents! 🎤🎤🎤

If you’re not a fan of Robert Webb then don’t worry, neither is he! I really enjoyed this, he writes honestly and lucidly about (toxic) masculinity. Some lines have really stuck with me: ‘I express anger when what I’m actually feeling is shame’ and ‘Some men don’t recover from masculinity at all.’

And all of London littered with remembered kisses

It was time for Jenny to go home with her mother, all the way in the tram car through the haunted November twilight of Edinburgh across the Dean Bridge.

I saw Alasdair Roberts performing a selection of Will Oldham songs the other day and they were selling this book on the merch stand. Seeing those old songs performed live and reading these lyrics has been a reminder of what first drew me to Oldham’s music: the strange familiarity of the language. Hearing the line, ‘dread and fear should not be confused, by dread I’m inspired by fear I’m amused,’ on John Peel was one of those revelatory moments you get from music sometimes. I’ve been going back over the early Palace albums this week (particularly Arise, Therefore and Viva Last Blues) and I’m amazed by the spontaneity of the performances (a lot of them are first takes with the band not really knowing the song!) and the wonderfully charged language: ‘A lover’s laugh, a bleeding calf, a dog out in the harbour’. Anyway, this book is very much worth getting your hands on. There’s a brilliant introduction (‘If something is too specific, its light burns out quickly, if the words are exceedingly oblique then the light never catches’) and a little gnomic commentary after each song, which will often leave you more puzzled than you were before. Which I think is as it should be. 

Very excited to come home to my preview copy of The Holy Vible (which came with a packet of Space Raiders). Super proud of the boys for writing this and very flattered to be mentioned in it (extensively in the chapter on Oxford pub crawls). To the past!