a book recommendation to match my top song on Spotify for each of the past 5 years
self-reflection
THE YEAR: 2023
THE SONG: “Eat Your Young” Hozier (2023)
I went through a breakup in 2023! Hozier blessed us with a new album! I had a lot of feelings and they needed expulsion. I read the entirety of Dante’s Divine Comedy simply because an tall Irish man sang a few songs about it. I had no self control. I sang along to this song with passion, aggression, rage!
Skinnin’ the children for a war drum
Puttin’ food on the table sellin’ bombs and guns
It’s quicker and easier to eat your young
THE BOOK: Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket: Stories by Hilma Wolitzer (written 1966, compiled 2021)
I have no young to eat. I am, however, a consumer – of media, goods, the human condition – in whatever way we define that. I consume experience, I need newness, I need distraction from all this everything that’s always going on all the time around me. Give me more because there’s not enough to keep me from thinking about everything that already is!
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket. I suppose this happens everyday. This is a short story in a collection of many but read them all, consume it!
THE YEAR: 2022
THE SONG: “Lady May” Tyler Childers (2017)
I adore Tyler Childers. With his charm, his lyricism, his fashion sense and his love of mules, Tyler is yet another example of my ideal man. I’m constantly falling in love with strangers, idolizing men I’ve never met over words they’ve written for others, setting myself up for unreachable expectations. It’s no wonder “Lady May” is one of my favorite songs of all time – it’s pure, unbridled yearning. He found his love, his lady, the person that sparks absolute joy in his life! I hear this song and I imagine sitting butt-to-butt with my partner, drinking our morning coffees and sitting together in peaceful silence, grateful.
THE BOOK: Foster by Claire Keegan (2010)
This novella tackles a different type of love, but a wholesome and heartwarming love nonetheless. While “Lady May” focuses on romantic love that turns into familial love, the characters in this story are brought together by seemingly random relationships. A girl is brought to a foster home while her mother is pregnant with yet another child that her family is unable to care for, she has been ignored for most of her life and for the first time she experiences acceptance, praise, and love. It’s Irish so, naturally, it’s a bit sad but so absolutely precious. Unconditional love.
THE YEAR: 2021
THE SONG: “Arsonist’s Lullaby” Hozier (2014)
Another Hozier song, how shocking! Essentially this song is essence of horny, self-loathing man. It’s Hozier religious imagery and poeticism with a dark, gooey “sexy Fleabag priest” undertone. Help him, Father, for he has sinned.
I knew that something would always rule me
I knew this scent was mine alone
THE BOOK: Perfume by Patrick Suskind (1985)
Absolutely horny, depraved, very icky! An absurd concept for a book. Before I started reading this, I was told by a friend that this was required reading in high school for her in Canada (apparently in Europe, too?) Without any spoilers – this is about a man in 18th century Paris who has a profound sense of smell but is overall just a freaky little guy who develops some freaky little obsessions with certain -odors- that he will stop at nothing to capture. I’m not here to kink shame.
THE YEAR: 2020
THE SONG: “Jackboot Jump (Live)” Hozier (2019)
Yes, there’s a massive Irish elephant in the room. He’s 6’6″ with brunette locks and the voice of an angel. This one is very mad ! Jump up when you see injustice, stand up when you’re angry, don’t be idle. If you weren’t conscious in 2020 or just forgot what the world was like, do a quick search on Googs and see why perhaps I was feckin with this song. Andy references multiple important protests in this song and brings light to peoples that are simply tired of being stomped upon.
But the jackboot only jumps down
On people standing up
So you know good things are happening
When the jackboot needs to jump
THE BOOK: Tell Me Where It Hurts: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli (2017)
Speaking of people who are absolutely stomped on without representation or justice, this book focuses on undocumented Mexican and Central American children detained on the southern US border. Luiselli serves as a Spanish interpreter for children through the intake interview – a series of 40 questions that no child should reasonably be expected to answer, especially after what is often a life-threatening and lonesome journey. Children separated from their families and traumatized by unimaginable horrors on the road? Let’s quiz them!
THE YEAR: 2019
THE SONG: “Love Ain’t” Eli Young Band (2018)
I could really read into this one but honestly I just spent a lot of time this year outside playing soccer and sunbathing and this was a great summertime sports bop for me. But! Looking back now, it’s ironic that this was my top song of 2019 because my senior year spring semester was the 3rd year in my long-term relationship with The Ex. We had lived together for 2 years in our college town, he graduated one semester earlier than me and moved away to the big city, and we had our fair share of difficulties with the distance and the life changes and the overall festering issues of our Relationship as a Whole. I spent the entire semester trying to fend off the “nice guy” friend who saw this as his opportunity to convince me to end my relationship and start anew with him. He was incessantly bad-mouthing my partner and telling me I would be so much happier dating someone like “him”. See lyrics below and laugh with me.
The way you’re talking sounds like he’s somebody you should hate
I may not know what love is girl, but I know what love ain’t
THE BOOK: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (1981)
I mentioned unconditional, idealistic love when talking about “Lady May” above – but thinking about the lyrics of “Love Ain’t” reminded me that relationships are not always beautiful from the outside perspective. A partnership has disagreements and lows, life changes and moves and separations and financial struggles and unemployment and losses and also love and happiness and joy! But the only people experiencing all of this are the people involved- anyone else is just peeking through a window.
Carver is the master of creating windows into the lives of his characters, lovers and exes and partners with real problems and real conversations and we don’t always see them at their best. This is a series of short stories – he wrote a lot of them. This has some of my favorites.
* Listen to III by the Lumineers, released in 2019 as well. This album matches the energy of this book so well. It’s a concept album exploring an American family through multiple generations of poverty, alcoholism and abuse (all themes that Carver features heavily in his stories.) The songs and their accompanying videos (which are GORGEOUS) recognize each family member’s flaws while acknowledging the uncontrollable factors that drove them to behave the ways they have. It’s humanizing, and that’s the best way I can describe the way Raymond Carver writes.
Go stare at yourself in the mirror! Remember to blink, today.
pro-whimsy agenda 