Reading as Respite, A Playlist of the Week's Best New Albums, and more

A playlist of the week's best new albums, interviews with Myriam Gurba & Olivia Rodrigo, new music from Mary Lattimore, and more

For the past twenty years or so (ever since I started covering books on Largehearted Boy), I have been inundated with books to read. Occasionally I get overwhelmed, and begin to see reading as a chore, not a pleasure or a necessary task to build up my own writing and literary skills.

Since starting teaching, my reading time has been limited. Reading in the morning, evening, and on my commute has been a welcome break from work. Delving into novels, short story collections, essay collections, and poetry offers an escape into other worlds, other thinking.

This week I am thankful for the worlds literature invites me into. The worlds that help me understand my own world, and to make my world better.

A Playlist of the Week’s Best New Albums (91 songs, 5 hours and 38 minutes)

This week’s new music includes the indie folk of Anjimile, Romy of the xx’s first solo album, a posthumous Sparklehorse release, free jazz from Irreversible Tanglements, plus much more.

Largehearted Likes:

1. The tamales outside the Greenpoint Ave. subway station
   Yes, I am on a first-name basis with the person selling tamales and horchata outside my subway stop. Nothing tastes better at 5:50 in the morning as I wait for the G train.

2. Dough donuts
   Not far from where I transfer to the bus from the subway are my favorite donuts in NYC. In the world. The hibiscus donut is heaven.

3. The B52 bus

   Today’s likes are all about the commute. The B52 bus is the only MTA service I can count on to get me to school (and toward home) on time.

Largehearted Links

1. Heidi Pitlor
   on the state of the trauma memoir in American publishing
   I met with a couple agents recently to talk about doing some business together (in the form of HPE editing and scouting for them), and they told me that very few publishers are interested in trauma memoirs these days. I both understood and recoiled at this.

2. Mitch Therieau
   on the playlists at CVS
   The one unalloyed delight of CVS, though, is the soundtrack. One of the first things you notice once you start paying attention to the in-store music is how much whoever is in charge of programming loves Rod Stewart.

3. Remembering translator Edith Grossman
   Translation “permits us to savour the transformation of the foreign into the familiar and for a brief time to live outside our own skins, our own preconceptions and misconceptions,” Grossman wrote in her 2010 book Why Translation Matters. “It expands and deepens our world, our consciousness, in countless, indescribable ways.”

4. Phoebe Bridgers interviewed Olivia Rodrigo

   BRIDGERS: I love when the aesthetics of your life kind of work themselves into an album cycle.

   RODRIGO: I mean, that just happens. You’re so good at doing that, too.

   BRIDGERS: Thank you. I was going to say, speaking of aesthetics, I literally made my mother buy me the Jansport that Kristen wears in the first Twilight.

5. R.O. Kwon on where to eat, drink, and shop in Seoul

6. Stream a new song by CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry

7. New short fiction by Annie Earnshaw at

   Short Story, Long

8. The Postal Service & Death Cab for Cutie covered Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”

9. The Guardian’s fall book preview

10. New music from Mary Lattimore

11. The talented Myriam Gurba was profiled at the Los Angeles Times and Vogue
    

Last Week’s LHB Feature Posts

Alissa Hattman’s playlist for her novel Sift

Dmitry Samarov’s playlist for his book to whom it may concern

Ghassan Zeineddine’s playlist for his story collection Dearborn

Kathleen Rooney’s playlist for her novel From Dust to Stardust

Lang Leav’s playlist for her novel Others Were Emeralds

Sean Michaels’s playlist for his novel Do You Remember Being Born?