Books and records are my life.

We’re coming to the end of Chapter 1 of Gladstone / Hellen. We’re pausing to reflect; not stopping, not at all, just taking a break to plan.

The next chapter will open slowly because we’re working on it carefully, and very much as I write. To continue the literary analogy, this business is more like one of those Victorian novels that appeared in a periodical chapter by chapter, month by month, rather than one that has been delivered, complete, to a publisher. Each month the author had to tease out new (improved?) wonders.

Yup. We’re making it up as we go along.

We sell books and records because we want G / H to become a place for community and for like-minded people to browse. You can buy from us (and we really appreciate it when you do) but the selling is not what matters. We want to be the sort of friends who enthusiastically recommend new things. The margins for us are tiny, but that isn’t the point.

The current collection is ending, and this means, with it, we will introduce some fresh books and records. So, please, if you haven’t done so already, do have a browseand perhaps buy some of our remaining stock. You will get this cheaper on Amazon, of course. But.

If I had to recommend some books I have read so far this year, they would be these.

Novels.

Flashlight. Susan Choi.

The Dead Don’t Bleed. Neil Rollinson.

May We Feed the King. Rebecca Perry.

You Don’t Have to Live Like This. Ben Markovitz.

Monique Escapes. Edouad Louis.

Memoirs. (actually, both listened to, but brilliant.)

Strangers.  A Memoir of a Marriage. Belle Burden.

Leaving Home. Mark Haddon.

And I have been listening to some great music too. I am an inveterate collector of records. This, of course, is not a surprising thing for a man of my age to write, far from it. I don’t necessarily listen to them that often, but I have to have a library of music I like. I love Spotify -what an incredible invention, despite its manifold weaknesses, both political and economic- but the minute I leave it, I leave my ‘collection’. Vinyl is forever, real, tangible, elegant, warm, fuzzy. It even smells great.

So far this year, I have had the following on repeat.

Antoine Bourachot.

JJerome87.

Andrew Wasylyk, Molly Linen.

Dua Salah, Bon Iver.

James Blake.

UNKLE.

Arctic Monkeys.

I have a playlist here, by the way, which will introduce you to these if you don’t yet know them.

I don’t know if these books and records will make it into the G / H Chapter 2 Selection, but I cannot recommend them more highly.