Finally a chance to kick back and relax! If, like me, you are celebrating August with a much-needed respite from work, here’s a few recent favourites of mine to help you while away the hours at the beach, in the garden, the mountains, the downs… anywhere really.
The new Laura Marling album I Speak Because I Can is beautiful: we all marvel at how someone so young can write so maturely. Elegant nu-folk. Not so new, but probably off your radar is Nothing Gold Can Stay by The Duke and The King. It’s got a lovely ’70s feel to it and some really witty lyrics. And I must thank friends Mark and Ruth for turning me on to the latest Gil Scott Heron, I’m New Here which is sublime. Amazing voice.
For the readers among you, I must plug a friend’s book because it’s perfect summer reading. The Cloths of Heaven by Sue Eckstein has been serialised on Radio 4 so you may have come across it, a great tale of ex-pats ‘doing good’, and other things, in Africa. I loved Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Froer that I read recently - not new but new to me. If you are interested in things systemic, watch how the past and the present unfurl towards each other, and note the power of family secrets to emerge. I also loved A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book, for a family epic set against the Sussex downs and the arts and crafts movement.
I didn’t get to see this but really wish I had. There’s an exhibition on in London somewhere (just saw a poster) featuring 3 generations of Wyeth painters. I went to an Andrew Wyeth exhibition as a child and adored it: we have a print of his in my parents’ house that I love. It finishes around 20 Aug so I’ll miss it but if you’re in town, find it if you can. I’m gutted to miss it - send me a postcard!
Also film-wise we just saw Inception which I hadn’t expected to enjoy so much and even, yes it’s true, The A Team! Laughed out loud at the 3D scene…
Happy viewing, listening, thinking, absorbing, resting, reading, living!