Commute Reading

plus new albums from Half Waif & Thou, interviews with Anna Dorn & Kathleen Hanna, new music from Soccer Mommy, an excerpt from Sally Wen Mao's new novel, and more

The 8th grade year at my school ends in two weeks, as does my first year of teaching. I am already anticipating missing many things, among them my interactions with students and the comradeship of educators, but lately I realized I will also miss the commute.

My school is in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, about a 40 minute commute from my home in Greenpoint. Every morning, I leave the house with several books in my bag: my current commute reading, another book I have started, and a poetry collection.

I prefer something dark to read on the way to work, that seems a perfect match for the subway at 6 a.m. For example, I just finished Madeline Leung’s debut novel, How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, set in an NYC of the near future devastated by acid rain. The second book (a novel, memoir, short stories, or essay collection) is my backup in case I finish the commute reading. The poetry collection (currently Jessica Laser’s The Goner School) is literary caffeine to jumpstart me intellectually during the day.

Before this year, I have never had a reading schedule. I read whenever I found the time. In line at a grocery store, while eating lunch, even on a walk. Having a demarcated time for nothing but reading added focus to my day.

Over the summer, my plan is to read every morning when I get up, before I start writing. Framing the start of the day with books at home feels right, I can start reading on the subway when I go back to school in mid-August.

What do you read during your commute? Do you listen to audiobooks, music, or podcasts?

Largehearted Likes:

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1. Muriel Leung’s debut novel How To Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster is a masterfully quirky cli-fi post-apocalyptic book (with ghosts).

2. 

3. Kristen Felicetti
   ’s debut novel Log Off is unputdownable, and told in a series of Livejournal posts.

A Playlist of the Week’s Best New Music (19 albums, 202 songs, 12 hours and 44 minutes)

This week’s new music includes releases by Thou; Ezra Feinberg; Bat for Lashes; Half Waif; Anastasia Coope; Ayra Starr; The Marías; Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Nathan Salsburg & Tyler Trotter; Psychic Temple; Swamp Dogg; Beak>; Richard Thompson; Esy Tadesse, The Bird Calls; Shaboozey; Arooj Aftab; Another Michael; Winston Hightower; Habibi; and Idaho.

Largehearted Book & Music Links:

1. How Duke Ellington Dealt with Jazz Critics and Jim Crow
   The last piece in a three-part 1944 New Yorker profile of the musician.

2. According to Anna Dorn, There’s a Place for Twinks in Lesbian Fiction
   I was also thinking of this idea that’s perpetuated in lesbian media, from the pulps to The L Word, that lesbian relationships are inherently crazy-making. It’s like: two women, obviously they’re going to go insane. So I wanted Astrid to struggle with this expectation and, over the course of the book, learn that it doesn’t have to be crazy-making.

3. The Night Becomes a Great Friend: Arooj Aftab Interviewed
   Although often described as a genre-defying artist, many like to genre-define her on a micro level anyway. From “jazz fusion” and “Hindustani classical” to “neo-Sufism” – a term Aftab herself came up with in her younger years when asked what her first record was all about. Does she regret coining it, I wonder? She laughs. “I was just a baby, you know? I should’ve been like, it’s new! I’m making something that I want to hear that I’m not finding in the music scene.”

4. Debutiful’s interview with Emma Copley Eisenberg about her magnificent debut novel Housemates

5. On the importance of creative agency: an interview with Kathleen Hanna
   People assume I just walk out and I’m just spewing my guts on the floor, but I’m not. I’m doing the same as almost all the other artists I know are doing, which is trying to find the right balance between the content and the technical.

6. An excerpt from Sally Wen Mao’s debut novel Ninetails

7. Stream a new Soccer Mommy song

8. R.O. Kwon on Writing About the Desire for Queer, Kinky Sex and the Cost of Being an Artist
   I think there continues to be a belief that the desire to be an artist is selfish. And I just so strongly believe that it’s not. I feel very lucky to get to be a writer, to get to be an artist. And I don’t think there’s anything selfish about it.

9. Shana Cleveland of La Luz on the band’s new album
   It seems hard for people to really pin La Luz down in terms of genre, and I was wondering if you find freedom in being a bit undefinable?

   I think that’s a real theme of my life. I’m half Black and half white. I’ve never been visually identifiable that way. I’ve kind of just gone through life as this secret agent. It has sort of had the loneliness of not fitting into a group cleanly, but also there’s so much freedom in that. I feel like that’s the case with La Luz, as well. I don’t feel like we’ve ever really cleanly fit into any genre. We do a lot of stuff with garage rock and psych rock, and I love that kind of music so I’m totally cool with playing those festivals and playing those bills.

10. “I Couldn’t Have Written This 20 Years Ago”: Claire Messud, In Conversation With Joshua Cohen
    Thematically, there’s certainly [overlap] with earlier novels, The Last Life in particular. The sort of boilerplate answer is that I’ve been preparing all my life to write it. But it isn’t something I could have written 20 years ago for any number of reasons, formal and technical reasons and emotional, human reasons. But I also feel that it is, on every level, connected to the other things that I’ve done.

11. New Music from Katy Kirby

Last Week’s LHB Feature Posts:

Bobi Conn’s playlist for her novel Someplace Like Home

Emma Copley Eisenberg’s playlist for her novel Housemates

Frankie Barnet’s playlist for her novel Mood Swings

Kent Wascom’s playlist for his novel The Great State of West Florida