‘Winter Wood’ and ‘Intellectual Gathering’ by Kenneth White (read by Sarah Salway)

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| Leave a comment

You don’t need another self-help book (apart from this one, perhaps?).

It’s good to know though that you, me, Sarah Salway and David Foster Wallace still buy them.  Continue reading →

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Tim The Terrible Tiger by Tessa Potter (Read by Jane)

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 3 Comments

Unless your hypnotherapist records your sessions, it’s unlikely you will ever hear yourself in a regressed state.

Of course we’re regressing, progressing, digressing at any given moment of the day, and that’s OK if you’re OK with it.

Regression is when we put aside the carefully formulated poses of adulthood and return to something more child-like in our response to the world. Continue reading →

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Story Water by Rumi (read by Edward Espe Brown)

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 1 Comment

Here’s a jug of story water to put into your morning kettle.

When I was living in Milan in the early 90s, with all the potential and fear that being a young adult entails, the floorboards of our flat would often chant to me:

Nam-Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, Nam-Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, Nam-Myōhō-Renge-Kyō.

It was quite relentless. Mornings, evenings, a constant reverberating drone of confounding vocalisations. I would put my ear to the floor and feel it (also something in me) shiver. Continue reading →

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The Gun by Mark Haddon (read by Ted Hodgkinson)

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 3 Comments

I’m hoping I might get a few complaints about this podcast.

Firstly, as this is a nominal tie-in with the new Granta 119: Britain issue, nothing really says Britain like a good old whinge.

But also because the internet (as a buzzing, virtual gestalt of ourselves) is often driven and impelled by the energy of expostulation. Continue reading →

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The History of England by Jane Austen (read by Janina Matthewson)

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| Leave a comment

You can learn everything and nothing about a person by the virtual breadcrumbs they scatter across the internet that lead you and the Google bot towards them.

Before meeting Janina Matthewson I already knew that she was damn funny and damn sharp. This is thanks to the 140 character slivers of Janina that pop up in my Twitter stream on a daily basis.  Continue reading →

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Netsuke [excerpt] by Rikki Ducornet (read by Saskia Vogel)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 4 Comments

The great thing, for me, about RMSYL is the sheer diversity of readers transmitting their love of reading to me, and the texts they choose to do this with.

This afternoon I was in Brompton Library listening and then later discussing Tim The Terrible Tiger with Jane, a reading volunteer.

Tomorrow morning, I’m meeting Edward Espe Brown (Yes! Tassajara Bread Book  Espe Brown: 1/3 Gordon Ramsay, 1/3  Shunryu Suzuki, 1/3 Jack Kerouac.) It’s breakfast and Rumi for me +  EEB. Then on Friday Continue reading →

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Posted in Ducornet, Rikki

The Day The Saucers Came by Neil Gaiman (Read By Rohit Talwar)

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 3 Comments

One day (I know this is hard to believe) Woody Allen will be no more.

Even worse, you and I will be no more (which still at times feels like news to me). Continue reading →

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I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olson (Read by Jean Kwok)

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 1 Comment

If you haven’t read Jean Kwok‘s short story Where The Gods Fly, you should do so right away.

Three reasons (actually five, but I am culturally nudged into saying three): Continue reading →

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An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie (read by Ann Morgan)

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 1 Comment

Before the internet, if you wanted to commit yourself to a transcendental pursuit, you would need to go and stand on a pillar in a desert for a clearly circumscribed period of time, or wall yourself into an anchorage, built against a church like a seraphic-aspiring lipoma. Now, whatever your soulwork be, Continue reading →

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‘Incarnations of Burned Children’ by David Foster Wallace (read by Alex Preston)

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Read Me Something You Love| 5 Comments

Whenever I meet flesh-encased authors, I need to be careful not to refer to them by the book-embedded appelations I hold of them in my head.

Alex Preston is of course Alex ‘TBC’ Preston. Not because he is forever awaiting confirmation, but because his name is, for me, synonymous with This Bleeding City.

So how annoying when these livingbreathing writing folk then go and produce further novels, requiring redrafts of psychic categories. Continue reading →

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