What I’m reading Harper Finn
Iread, maybe, four or five books last year, but they were all fairly short. But when something is recommended to me – my mother and father both love to read – I’ll often take their recommendations. They say if you want to write good lyrics, read more books.
Neuromancer by William Gibson was a book that my mother gave me last year, which is like a futuristic Blade Runner. I loved Blade Runner. It has really fantastic imagery, and it’s set in an unknown time in the future.
Ask the Dust by John Fante is probably my favourite book of all time. I just loved it. It’s a fairly short novel, and sort of in that vein of Charles Bukowski. It’s written from the perspective of a writer trying to write a book, and about his life. It’s really just a love story, a romance about a waitress he meets, and is set in Los Angeles in 1930, back in the day when writers were rock stars. So it’s quite outrageous. There’s a lot of debauchery.
Maybe there’s something about reading something that wouldn’t be allowed on TV or on film? It feels quite exciting and interesting, because this could only be a book. No-one could make a film about this and get away with it. I love those stories.
Bukowski did a lot of short story writing, as well, so I quite like reading things that have a pace to them and are quite punchy.
Book-lovers will cringe when I say this, but I read on my phone now, through the Kindle app. I just find it convenient, especially when travelling. The more convenient the better.
My friend gave me a book the other day called Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. It’s a science fiction thriller, which I’m going to start reading now, and it’s a hardcopy book. After spending so much time reading on the phone, I was like, ‘this is not right, this is not how it’s supposed to be’.