As part of our music-themed month on the blog, we’ve been asking our authors to talk us through four songs that have in some way shaped their writing.
Claire Lowdon says, ‘I’m the world’s worst multi-tasker: I can barely stir a saucepan of baked beans and talk at the same time. So I never listen to music when I’m reading or writing. But there’s a lot of music in my novel, Left of the Bang, and these four tracks each mean something to one of the characters.’
As part of our music-themed month on the blog, we’ve been asking our authors to talk us through four songs that have in some way shaped their writing. Lee Rourke’s selections are as innovative and forward-thinking as his novels, taking in political hip-hop, Madchester goofiness, uncompromising post-punk and minimal rock ‘n roll.
It’s the annual Reading Festival this weekend, and as a bunch of bookworms we at 4th Estate are very excited to… sorry, what? Oh, it’s Reading as in Reading, the town in Berkshire? Right. So there are no author panels? No writing seminars? Just a ‘limp bizkit’? Hmm. Well, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pack a book or two alongside the tent and wellies…
As Festival Season reaches its peak, we have reams of musically minded material on our bookshelves just waiting for you to discover. Just promise not to read our books on the campsite toilets. And keep them away from the mud:
As part of our music-themed month on the blog, we’ve been asking our authors to talk us through four songs that have in some way shaped their writing. Christopher Potter is up, and has given us (and YOU) four of his current favourite tracks. Read more…
When we were discussing this month’s music theme on the blog, we remembered that the inimitable Nell Zink was the editor of an indie rock fanzine before she wrote scintillating novels like The Wallcreeper and Mislaid. When we asked her whether she had any pages to show us, she wrote back apologising for not owning a scanner. However, she did have a (tenuously) music-themed story to hand; the story of an anaconda who unwittingly gets stuck in the New York art scene, and ends up devouring a doyenne of the 90s underground experimental rock community.
We couldn’t wait to share it with you…
As part of our music-themed month on the blog, we’ve been asking our authors to talk us through four songs that have in some way shaped their writing. Andy Miller is as mad about music as he is about books, and could easily have written The Year of Listening Dangerously. After much agonizing, he managed to whittle down his vast record collection to the foursome below:
As part of our music-themed month on the blog, we’ve been asking our authors to talk us through four songs that have in some way shaped their writing. Erik Didriksen, whose Pop Sonnets blog sent the Internet into throes of mirth, is publishing a collection of his musical verse with 4th Estate this autumn. Here he talks us through four songs that just begged for an Elizabethan makeover…
In The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, gives us a riveting tour of the wild landscape of twentieth-century classical music: portraits of individuals, cultures, and nations reveal the predicament of the composer in a noisy, chaotic century.
Here, as part of our music-themed month on the blog, we present an abridged version of the chapter-by-chapter Listening Guide that can be found in the back of the book, complete with corresponding Spotify playlists. Alex has also kindly updated his recommendations to accommodate the first years of the 21st Century.
A tip-of-the-iceberg introduction to a century of classical music, we recommend you immerse yourself in these recordings right away (and immerse yourself in the book immediately afterward!).
