Pop Culture Care Package, Pt. 6

Books and Music, Very Consciously Paired

Hello, Dames Nationals! It’s Margaret here with your Wednesday recommendation. Today, I am recommending a practice as much as I am recommending any specific pieces of culture: putting on a full album (on a record player, if you’ve got one), turning your phone to airplane mode, and reading one book for the duration of that album. 

So basically this

Plus this

Minus some flail-dancing (unless the spirit moves you)

As you may gather from the usual nature of these emails, Sophie and I are typically both Very Online and pretty fractured of focus. Day to day, this serves us well— one benefit of the Too Many Goddamn Tabs lifestyle is that reading everything all at once makes identifying common themes in disparate stories possible, which is one thing that allows our jumble of cultural tidbits cohere into an appealing whole. But in moments like right now, where the moment-to-moment news can cause such terrible anxiety spikes without bringing any actionable enlightenment, going Very Offline and Embracing Hyperfocus can be a necessary and soothing change.

Just giving yourself 40 minutes where you do not have to make any new choices, 40 minutes where all you need to do is let a fictional world totally absorb you, is extremely restorative. This can be done with any book and album you choose, of course, but if you want a list of books and albums that I NOT ONLY wholeheartedly recommend individually BUT ALSO think pair together beautifully, well… I may have come up with 15 such pairings before I forced myself to STOP, and they may be detailed here as follows. Links will take you to GoodReads for the books and Spotify or Bandcamp for the albums, but again: if you are buying, see if there is a way to buy local or, particularly in the case of the musicians, directly from the artist or their label. And also:

ames ✨ @thisisames

All y’all who are turning to movies, tv, music, comics, graphic novels, books & other forms of art during this self-isolation period as a form of not only entertainment, but laughter, catharsis & relief — Please support govt relief packages for entertainment workers and artists

With those caveats up front, here are the recommendations! They are mostly YA fantasy and light romance because that is mostly what I read, especially when stressed. But they are the best YA fantasy and light romance, because my taste is exquisite.

• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi + Ibeyi’s self-titled debut: Look, when I really want to escape the world, I go to what’s worked for me since time immemorial: YA fantasy novels. Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orisha series is, quite simply, the best YA fantasy to come out in the last 5 years and it’s beautifully suited to Ibeyi’s dreamy, introspective Afro-Cuban “electro doom soul.”

• The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank + Bright & Vivid by Kathryn Calder: This album and book feel like a pair, in part, because I am not entirely sure whether I love them so much because they’re inherently special or if they have come to seem special because I have spent so much time with them. But love them I do, and pair well they shall. Try them out and let me know where you rate them.

• Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle + If I Was by The Staves: A spooky but never terrifying story about 17th century British ghosts enrapturing a freshly-transplanted American teenager in the Dorset countryside basically demands the haunting harmonies of The Staves.

• The Folk Keeper by Frannie Billingsley + Saltbreakers by Laura Veirs: This absorbing and gently dark fantasy novel about a sea-obsessed orphan and the wealthy family who adopt her goes exceptionally well with Laura Veirs’s layered, weird singer-songwriter tribute to the beauty of the ocean.

• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons + The Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks: What could pair better than these two stone-cold classic pieces of British Pastoral Satire? Pretty much nothing! Although The Kinks also pair very well with any and all P.G. Wodehouse.

• The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory + Let’s Stay Together by Al Green: I can imagine few combinations more likely to lower your blood pressure and increase your joy than Jasmine Guillory and Al Green. I’ve recommended the third book in Guillory’s series of delightful contemporary rom-coms because it is my favorite by the absolute tiniest margin, and I think the series works extremely well in whatever order it’s read, but Al Green would pair equally well with The Wedding Date if you’re the type who really likes to read series in order.

• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes + Sun Midnight Sun by Sara Watkins: Two gorgeous, bittersweetly romantic, frequently sad but ultimately soul-nourishingly optimistic pieces of art by fiercely intelligent women with effortlessly distinct voices. Sara Watkins and Linda Holmes: they’re everything I need to get me through right now. 

• The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan + Middle Cyclone by Neko Case: Is this the second book about selkies I’ve recommended in this email? Yes. If that’s a problem, find someone ELSE to recommend you books. Margo Lanagan’s dark parable about taking too much from nature and also feminism is an ideal match for Neko Case’s album about taking too much from nature and also feminism.

• The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart + Psychic Reader by Bad Bad Hats: The Ruby Oliver quartet (which begins with The Boyfriend List) is one of my favorite YA series ever and unconscionably under-read. Funny, angsty, complicated, compassionate, and, in the end, surprisingly romantic, this book (and its sequels) pair perfectly with my other forever favs, Bad Bad Hats.

• Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston + Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen: Finding a book that matches up with Emotion, one of my absolute favorite albums of the last 20 years, was no easy task. But McQuiston’s romantic fantasy of the prince of England falling in love with America’s first son? IT IS A PERFECT AND UNDENIABLE FIT. 

• Pretty Face by Lucy Parker + Sylvan Esso’s self-titled debut: I am once again chaotically recommending my favorite book in Lucy Parker’s uniformly excellent London Celebrities series regardless of the fact that it is not the first book. Sue me. It’s perfect. And it will match gloriously with Sylvan Esso’s dreamy and subdued electro-pop.

• The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope + Bonny Light Horseman’s self-titled debut: This SUPERB retelling of the old English myth of Tam Lin enmeshed in the political-royal machinations of Tudor England is an excellent match for Bonny Light Horseman’s modern rock interpretations of old English and American ballads. 

• Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia + Belong by San Fermin: I have shouted myself hoarse sharing my love of both Bellweather Rhapsody and Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts— I mentioned them both on Pop Culture Happy Hour just last week!— but look. It’s because I love them. And I love even more imagining the baby theater geeks and orchestra nerds of Bellweather growing up to delight in San Fermin’s gorgeously orchestrated chamber pop. Rabbit Hatmaker would die for this band.

• Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid + Rumours by Fleetwood Mac: This pairing is so self-evident that I feel almost silly even including it BUT ALSO? This book and this album slap, both jointly and individually. A pleasure need not be rare to also be keen.

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith + Let’s Get Out of This Country by Camera Obscura: Honestly, recommending this particular pairing is dangerous. It’s the emotional equivalent of sending out my social security number and mother’s maiden name. But they are both so good, and they pair so beautifully, that I can do nothing else. 

And finally, unrelated to the above: if you’re burning through podcasts at a faster than usual clip, you may be glad to hear that I was featured as a guest on two this week: first, I was on reliable favorite The Worst Bestsellers to discuss how infuriating I found Rachel Hollis’s self-help book Girl, Wash Your Face and then today, I appeared on the Extra Hot Great TV podcast to: discuss the freshly-released Hulu adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere; argue in favor of ultimatums despite what Bachelor Nation has against them; and make the case for the Canonical Importance of Sex and the City. Both make solid brain vacations from the mounting chaos surrounding us. If you enjoy them or any of my recommended pairings, please do @ me!

XO/Dame M.