Bookshelves and Books and Writers 2011

The website Bookshelfporn.com is amazing. It's aspirational. And a little bit crazy. So here's what's on mine...

I’ve mainly been reading guilty pleasures of late: football books. Gary Neville's autobiography Red is a sturdy, solid read, not especially exciting, but dependably relentless none the less. There are a few glaring errors (surely it’s Salford Quays, not Keys?), but that just adds to the way the book reflects Neville’s career.

Football - Bloody Hell!, Patrick Barclay’s book on Sir Alex Ferguson, is a bit too stop-start for my liking, jumping about too much to deliver a consistent narrative. Every time I thought ‘this is getting good’ the subject changed.

I’m reading Player One by Douglas Coupland. It’s  very good. I love Coupland. The way he writes these ‘big issue’ books in such a personable and relatable manner, with tiny vignettes and trivia and pop culture references that just decorate the scenes beautifully.

I’ve been discovering the work of Rachel Trezise, recently. She’s a brilliant writer who I discounted years ago as the only book of hers that I’d heard of at the time was called Dial M for Merthyr shares a title with a brilliant compilation album, and therefore I thought it could not live up to the (unrelated) LP. But her short story collection Fresh Apples is awesome. And the half of Sixteen Shades of Crazy I managed to read before I had to take it back to the library.

I met Richard Gwyn the other day. That was quite an honour. I was made aware of his poetry in a creative writing class at University, and particularly love a poem called ‘Dusting’.

“You run your finger down a ledge and it returns covered in the filth of 1976. Punk dust. It is now 1999. You wonder should you lick this dust, would you get a flavour of the past?” 

Really want to read his newish memoir, The Vagabond’s Breakfast.

I keep buying Margaret Atwood books in charity shops and then forget to read them. This is something I shall rectify in the next few months.

My very good friend, the part-time supermodel and compulsive liar A.K. Bruty, has had a story published in From Glasgow to Saturn. It’s very, very good. Download the full magazine for free from their website. Now.

A.K. ‘47’ Bruty gave me a birthday present a while ago, and apart from the bit about Spillers Records having a soul aisle (it doesn’t), Miranda July’s short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, is stunning.

Anyways, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. See you soon. Et Cetera.
(Not my bookshelf)

Extract: A Route 95 Summer

An extract from something (a novella? a long-short story?) that I've been writing, but keep forgetting I'm writing. I hope by posting it here, it will remind me to keep going with it. 'Cos some of it is really quite good.

Richard is twelve years older than me. He doesn’t let me forget this. I move to change the radio station on the car stereo, and he swipes at my hand.

‘This, my love, is pure Americana. We have to listen to it, absorb its cultural power, its lamenting blue-collar dream-soaked working-man symbolism, otherwise... otherwise what's the point of taking this road trip?’

I just want something I can sing along to.

I'm not sad...

The quality of this video is poor.
The song is beautiful.

'a table's not a table it's a chair you said'

Short Story: Shrinkwrapped (no star)

A piece of micro-fiction. By me.

I’m sat in the Dutchman’s office. I’m wearing a plaid shirt in red, white, and black; cord jeans; Vans skate shoes. What I’m wearing, it’s not that important. It’s just what was on the floor. It could have been ripped jeans and a Quiksilver hoody. But thanks to my inability to put clothes away, today I’m more Seattle grunge than Waikiki surfer.

'So, your T-shirt. What does it mean?'

It’s a Sonic Youth tee. This apparently is important.

'It's a band. Sonic Youth. I like ‘em’

'It's an interesting name. Sonic Youth. The Sonic Youth. The sound of a new generation. A nascent sound. The development of a primal scream. Not the cry of a baby, but the rebellious yell of adolescent humanity. The Sonic Youth’.

The Dutchman chuckles at himself. I don’t know whether he thinks he’s being funny or clever.

‘So, The Sonic Youth. Wonderful. Tell me, is their music an utter disappointment compared to the ideological and philosophical sophistication of their name?’

Does he care? God knows. But fuck, if I don’t have to talk about me, I’m game, innit?

‘Ah, y’know, New York alt-punk grunge. Noise. Avant-rock. I like a lot of what they do. Some of the albums, anyway.’

‘Indeed, always with you it’s the early albums, the debut novel, the first season, before they were cool...’

Busted. But...

‘For once, no, it’s the mid-period, Dirty, Experimental..., Washing Machine, they’re so much better than the early shoegazey nonsense of the first few LPs. They have like, proper choruses. And tunes, melodies.’

‘But how do they make you feel, The Sonic Youth? You put the CD in the player, or you press play on your Walkman, are you excited, filled with the trepidation? Do you feel anything?

I wish I’d read the Wikipedia entry on Sonic Youth, rather than piss around on Facebook all morning. That would have kept the fat fuck from asking me personal questions for at least another two or three minutes.

I hide behind music, choosing records to listen to in order to inform and support my state of mind. I use music. I use other people’s lyrics and hopes and dreams and guitar playing and drumming to reinforce my world view, and I steal them to make myself interesting. This is what I should tell him. He probably already knows.

‘It depends on the song, depends on the album, I guess.’

'No, it depends on you. Now then, last time we were talking about your family life when you were growing up. Important things in childhood happen, no? Let's continue.’

Fuck.