What the AnOther Team Are Reading and Recommending This Summer

Ulysses by James Joyce

“I’m reading Ulysseswhich is my mother’s favourite book. She’s been studying it for years, so in her honour, I feel I have to find my way through it. I’ve never read it from cover to cover before. But this summer I’m going to try.”

– Susannah Frankel, editor-in-chief

Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter

“I’ve had this book in my possession for some time now, circling it warily. One of my close friends polished it off on his morning commute and spent the better part of his workday weeping, looking like someone who’d just been told the truth about humanity – so, naturally, I’ve been hesitant to crack it open. But, as our recent “summertime sadness” film list suggests, summer has a curious way of inviting melancholy, the heat making everything more tender. This is Charlie Porter’s first foray into fiction, a novel described as achingly delicate, a study of love and loss. I’ve loved his books on clothing – those precise, humane observations on fabric and the lives stitched into it. Let’s see where this one takes us.”

– George Pistachio, social content editor

Read our interview with Charlie Porter on Nova Scotia House here.

Munkey Diaries: The Extraordinary Early Years of an International Icon by Jane Birkin

“This summer I’m reading the Munkey Diaries. I love biography, but I especially love reading about the remarkable lives women have led. I think most of us come to a biography because we’re particularly curious about the person, but also because we hope some of their secrets and life lessons will be imparted to us. There are some very dark moments in Jane Birkin’s story, but it’s also saturated with European glamour – Parisian nightlife, intoxicating romances, jetting around and filming in various locations, so it feels like the perfect book to take away with me to a Greek island this year.”

– Emily Dinsdale, contributing editor, anothermag.com

Speedboat by Renata Adler

“Speedboat is a part fictional, part confessional novel following a young journalist thrashing around 1970s New York – a scrapbook of Elaine’s dinners and eavesdropped conversations, fleeting affairs and insomnia, analysts and cab drivers … It comes recommended by two of AnOther’s previous Document guest-editors – Hilton Als and Lisa Taddeo – and is the first novel by Renata Adlera New Yorker staff writer who covered everything from Biafra to the Sunset Strip. I’m choosing this for summer as it’s much more pleasurable to read about city life when you’ve escaped it.”

– Hannah Lack, deputy and literary editor

Summer Crossing by Truman Capote

“I always seem to be re-reading rather than finding anything new. This summer, it’s Summer Crossingthe novel Truman Capote began and abandoned before he wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’m obsessed with Capote, especially with the unfinished and lesser-known manuscripts that litter his already prolific output. And as I want something lightweight – literally and metaphorically – as my summer read, this is perfect.”

– Alexander Fury, fashion features director at-large

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

“I’m staying on a Leo Tolstoy theme, having read War and Peace last summer – I’m looking forward to reading Anna Karenina. I’m hoping it’s an easier read than War and Peace (which I’ve been told it is). As a fast reader who is not a huge fan of the Kindle, what I primarily look for in a holiday read is a book that’s long enough to last the week/two weeks I’m away.”

– Rebecca Perlmutar, senior fashion editor

Hello sadness by Françoise Sagan

“Usually when I go on holiday, I reach for a big 500-page novel to really get stuck into, but this year I opted for a few shorter books. I read Hello sadness for the first time and absolutely loved it. The plot moves at a great pace and the descriptions of the French Riviera in the 1950s are gorgeous, but it was the charming father-daughter dynamic between teenage Cécile and her debonair dad, Raymond, that I enjoyed most. It’s hard to believe Françoise Sagan was only 18 when she wrote it, but I suppose that gave her a proximity to Cécile she might not have had otherwise.”

– Orla Brennan, contributing editor, anothermag.com

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

“This summer I’m reading Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. Translated into English and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions earlier this year to critical acclaim, this 120-page novel is a scathing satire of millennial expat couple Anna and Tom, two digital creatives living nomadically in Berlin and beyond. The story is told mainly through the objects that surround them – there is no dialogue – in an homage to Georges Perec’s 1965 novel Things. I found this book to be the most depressing, bone-chilling indictment of a certain kind of hipsterdom – a lifestyle filled with well-worn aesthetic signifiers that is all style over substance. It’s also some of the best and most unsettling writing about what it means to live and work on the internet; it has a lot in common with Kyle Chayka’s excellent non-fiction book, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, which perfectly articulates how the internet shapes our behaviour and the tangible world around us.”

– Violet Conroy, deputy editor, anothermag.com

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

“One of my friends recommended that I pick up this classic and I was completely hooked from the moment the stranger in the ’expensive suit and foreign shoes of the same colour’ steps into the tale. I adore books that twist perception, and in the case of this classic, with its stories running parallel in modern and biblical timelines, it raises far more questions than are answered.”

– Beth Mingay, photographic producer

Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin

“I’m currently escaping another indecisive London summer for the quaint streets of an excessively hot Paris – only I’m not really in Paris, but rather in the pages of the Paris in Lauren Elkin’s latest novel, Scaffolding. I’ve read a few of Elkin’s books before, including No 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute and Flâneuse, and she always manages to make the mundane details of life in the city feel more romantic and vivid than they really are – which I don’t believe to be her intention. I’ve not finished reading Scaffolding yet, but so far it’s been everything I want and need from a summer read: love and discomfort, the passing of time, recent histories and gentle psychoanalysis – set in a city that’s not my own.“

– Rose Dodd, editorial assistant

A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal by Anthony Bourdain

“I’m obsessed with Anthony Bourdain’s writing, combining food and travel inspiration with cultural commentary and political critique – but I’ve never treated myself to this particularly culinary quest. I love his voice, wit and wisdom. It’s the ultimate escapist read for me.“

– Helena Whelan, photographic director

Soft Core by Brittany Newell

“I started this on a Menorcan minibreak back in April, my travel companion lent it to me, comparing it to one of my all-time favourite books, Lisa Taddeo’s Animal (which somehow manages to straddle two worlds: trashy, pulpy thriller and exquisite, rage-filled thing of beauty) for which I wheel out a recommendation at every opportunity. Soft Core is set in the dark, alluring locker rooms of a San Franciscan strip club, following Ruth (her stripper name, Baby, is perfect) as she’s haunted by her missing ex-boyfriend Dino and various other vanilla-scented ghosts. As with most of my holiday reads, it’s been sitting on my bedside table begging to be finished – I can’t wait.“

– Sophie. Editor

Read our interview with Brittany Newell on Soft Core here.