I don’t really like the word favourite. It narrows thing’s down, squashes the great into a box, sticks it on a pedestal and stubbornly turns away from all the other possibilities.
But there are certain songs, books, pieces of art that resonate within people. When I finish a book and know I will one day return, or the very melody of a song beating out a feeling you couldn’t define. When they say it so you don’t have to.
So here is a glimmer of some of my greats. That give me my Fixx. That and too much coffee.
Music:
‘The Airborne Toxic Event’ are an American Indie rock band. They’re named after a section of the book “White Noise” by Don Delillo
The first time I heard this song I fell for it. It’s timeless, beautiful and there is such a rawness to the lyrics. Is it heartbreaking? Absolutely, but how many songs can really do that. And I’m a sucker for strings
“And it starts, sometime around midnight.
Or at least that’s when you lose yourself
for a minute or two.”
Books:
If you read my bio/know me then you will understand picking just one was a struggle. I’ll even read the Business Post if things are bad enough. But this is one that I first picked up when I was about 15 and get more from it every time I curl up with it again.
Synopsis :
In 1939 Nazi Germany the country is frozen with fear and bated breath. Death has never been closer, or busier.
Liesel Meminger and her younger brother are being taken by their mother to live with a foster family outside Munich. Liesel’s father was taken away on the breath of a single, unfamiliar word – Kommunist – and Liesel sees the fear of a similar fate in her mother’s eyes. On the journey, Death visits the young boy, and notices Liesel. It will be the first of many near encounters. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery.
So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.
Review
Far from your usual been there, read that WW2 novel. t’s never morbid, for a start. A lively humour dances through the pages, and the richness of the descriptions as well as the richness of the characters’ hearts cannot fail to lift you up
Death narrates the novel and provides incredibly insightful observations and occasional dry humour. Rendered vividly, a lonely, haunted being who is drawn to children, who has had a lot of time to contemplate human nature and wonder at it.
The novel opens with spoilers, putting you in the unusual position of knowing all along what’s going to happen. Death has no patience for mysteries. However, anticipation of the inevitable makes it even worse.
Instead of focusing on the Jews it focuses on the minority of Germans who sympathised with them. They aren’t the bad guys, but not necessarily the good ones either.
They don’t speak up for the Jewish people, they don’t try to change popular opinion, they don’t stand for what’s right. They quietly try to get by without causing waves and without risking much of themselves.
“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That’s how it feels to harbour a Jew”
They aren’t bad just inevitably human, and you come to care deeply for them.
Overall it’s a powerful book that only serves to heighten my belief on how important literature is and how mere word’s can help us through the worst of times
With wonderful characters, rich beautiful imagery and a fantastic story,I’d highly recommend.
“Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.”
.
~ Fixx ~ 