Emma Smith-Stevens’s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Greyhounds In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Emma Smith-Stevens follows up on one of my favorite novels of the century, The Australian, with the surprising and powerful story collection, Greyhounds. Booklist wrote of the book: “In one particular standout, “Neighbors,” a widow watches her neighbor, who struggles with hoarding disorder, find meaning and joy in rehabilitating retired greyhounds but can’t resist sabotaging that happiness. Threaded with dark humor and rendered with incisive prose, these stories will resonate with fans of Kristen Roupenian (You Know You Want This, 2019) and Marie-Helene Bertino (Exit Zero, 2025).” In her own words, here is Emma Smith-Stevens’s Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Greyhounds: Writing my first book, a novel called The Australian, overlapped with composing the stories Greyhounds, which took about fourteen years. Throughout that time, I was publishing short fiction, essays, and occasionally humor. When I became aware that I had readers, or even that I potentially could—especially when my work began appearing online—I was horrified by the idea of “writing from life.” My life, anyway. I’m reminded of cultures in which people believe that having one’s photograph taken will steal their souls. I dreaded writing in the first person. My novel is about a man from the other side of the world. Listen, though. Memory is imagination, the stories we construct to make sense of being alive—so it’s all kind of silly. My personhood, my life, are not separate from my imaginings. Nonetheless, “I” felt like a humiliating disclosure, pinched-pale flesh while wearing a too-tight outfit under fluorescent lighting. When I think of the memoir I started writing several years ago, while Greyhounds was still in the works, great Southern author and my graduate school professor, Padgett Powell (e.g. Edisto, The Interrogative Mood, Indigo), warned me sternly not to write a “me-more.” I think he was quoting Gore Vidal. I tried, for over three years, to write a memoir in which I did not appear even once. A clever trick, it so happens, if one can pull it off. I cannot. Who can? Nabokov. See: Look at the Harlequins (1974). Thanks for humbling me, catchers of indigo snakes and butterflies, respectively. * The stories in Greyhounds can be sad, and if you knew which flickers alight from memory, which after writing The Australian I began inviting into my writing, it would maybe sting worse. I don’t know, though, and it doesn’t really matter. Greyhounds benefits from being fiction. No, it’s not depressing, just sad where life hurts. Funny, too. It’s not a “sex book,” though I was flattered to have been called a “sex writer” one time by a star writer. Hello: it’s just me, doing my best to tell the truth using unhinged lies and a few truth-truths, here and there. The astronaut stuff in the story “Orbit”—that’s factual. The space station, the reaching hand. Like I said, who cares? Another thought: fiction is either false or true. It depends on the depth of imagination and empathy; style, rhythm, silence; honesty and depth of feeling and meticulousness; and an irrepressible desire to make sentences so tight they ping. The truth or lie on the page is not about facts or fables but the pulp at the core of the words, put in a particular order, by a mind; and ultimately, it comes down to whether that mind is fearless or fearful when it looks into its own messy center. * Greyhounds is a slender volume spectacularly designed by Carrie Guss. You may be wondering how to read it. Here we go. Open up that little compartment at the top of your sternum just below the Adam’s apple, and place a heavy, cold stone inside, the kind that makes tears feel imminent and swallowing feel so… My God, that stone? Obsidian. Maybe Tiger’s Eye. In any case, it’s been polished, not left coarse or jagged. Don’t worry. I’m just standing waiting to pay for my gas, check out my groceries, at the post office, and then I think: people are beautiful. Or, remembering how the woman in her 60’s working in the toll booth before the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge said, “Have a good day,” and I smiled—and, out of view, I sobbed. Later, I see a man throw a coffee stirrer on the ground at a gas station, and I think: we all deserve a brutal demise, except the light-giving miracles among us: the toll booth woman, babies and children, oh—and angels, obviously. I don’t believe in angels, but 70% of Americans do. Shouldn’t that be enough? For me? And you? * Greyhounds is sad, but what isn’t sad? And who? Are you sad? If not, are you okay? The book’s funny, too. I hate the word “levity,” and thankfully I think Greyhounds is not for people who are too good for the word “funny,” and instead say “levity.” * On 12/15/2015, I became ill. I have not, for even a moment, felt free of sickness since I woke up that day. Initially, I was found to have Lyme and a second tick-borne disease called Babesia. I treated them aggressively for a year but was worse than ever. I was then diagnosed with three autoimmune diseases and various complications. They keep rolling in. I get infusions, take medications, keep myself walking my dogs several times a day, try not to look back. I saw my bloodwork in the cursed patient portal yesterday. I’m trying to be whatever, but it sucked. Zoom out and you’ll see that the big, the huge, the enormous things are mixed, fused, muddled, rivering betwixt and between one another. Always. Everything’s a mess. I love my life. My body wants me dead. I want the diseases gone. I’ll do anything. I’d go down with the ship, but I am the ship—and the ocean. I’m talking about specters and shapes in my field of vision. * My husband S’s birthday was yesterday, and I watched our four little nieces—his brother’s daughters—pile on him when we entered their house, screaming their mispronounced version of his name. Later, the eight-year-old and eldest, C, issued complex instructions for a game of her own invention to me, my husband, and her two younger sisters (the fourth sister was a newborn)… C was a flight attendant and also a passenger who needed a beverage, and when the passenger went to the bathroom, C would reappear as her own evil twin. She gave us all a list of rules of conduct, which my husband and I couldn’t keep straight. Somehow her little sisters could. That scene—the girls’ laughter, all our shared happiness—felt realer and more true than my own self. * I have a memory of lying in the center of a large hospital room, which looked like an operating room, though I was not having surgery, so why would this be? In walked three women in white coats with their names and M.D. embroidered on the breast. I was vaguely aware that they were talking, but they seemed to be at a great distance. It did not occur to me that I might be the subject of their conversation. I felt like a voyeur. Then, one doctor, looking concerned, asked the others if I’d had an EEG. Her colleague said, “Yes, 48-hours, and an L.P.” Something, results were something-something. All of a sudden, I tumbled into a mainframe, into my body, a lone seed in a pod. “There she is,” said a tall doctor with brown, frizzy hair and a tender smile. I felt like a baby. I don’t recall much about my talk with this doctor. I might not have said a word. I do know she told me about a book. The title had “winter” in it; maybe The Wintertime or The Wintering. She said, “It’s written by Katherine… Oh shoot, I can’t remember her last name. Katherine with a K.” The doctor approached the guardrail of my gurney and stood above but not over me. (There’s a big difference.) Like a dream-wave: one that protects and never crashes. “You,” she said, “are in the winter of your life.” I don’t remember what she said next, because though I’m much improved, I’ve been home for a few years, can think far more clearly, and people are correct distances from me, I’m still a little frozen, parts of me stinging, throbbing as they awaken, especially when touched. Snow still falls, icicles like needles from tree limbs. Nonetheless, I’m moving, going somewhere. The next morning, the frizzy-haired doctor appeared again. I was trying to talk but couldn’t. Then, just when she was walking out the door, I said, “Katherine with a K.” She turned and smiled. “You remember.” Human moments in medical spaces are extra beautiful. There’s no way to describe them except to say, again we’re back to angels, something better than a promise—something larger and more real than your very own life, which is being handed to you, like a globe. No, the whole universe. * I used to be able to listen to music sitting in loud cafés while I wrote. Now I need at least semi–private spaces to think and write. I walked and drove out the songs on my playlist, thinking about the stories I imagined and gathered in my Craigslist photo and quote collection. Sometimes I thought of my own stories. Those days, years, that old life, I walked and walked. I spent the early years of writing these stories walking along train tracks in Rhinecliff and Germantown and Hudson, towns in New York’s Hudson Valley. For a year, a terrible one, I lived in Los Angeles, wished I had the guts to be a stripper, met a guy while I was crying on the sidewalk, I overshared, he overshared, you know. I went to graduate school at the University of Florida in Gainesville—those years were three spinning gold records that kept playing these songs and adding new ones. I live in Brooklyn now. My medical team has told me to stay in New York City, so here I am, with my husband and two Azerbaijani rescue dogs, strays-turned-massage enthusiasts, Lena and Bob. My husband I moved to Brooklyn to be near my doctors and family. Boom: the pandemic. My husband and I got COVID almost immediately. I was infused with monoclonal antibodies immediately, in a trailer with a space heater at Maimonides Hospital—the antibodies were magic; three days later I felt better than I had in years. Soon the effects wore off, but something new seemed possible. Seems possible. * You may realize these are love songs, fuck songs, craving and desire and touching yourself songs. Jealousy songs. Crying about them, missing them, goddam them, who need’s them? All that stuff is hopeful. There’s life in those things. Music loves me up and drives me forward—never home. I don’t have one. (I mean, in a literal sense, my husband and I rent an apartment—don’t worry.) The only real home I’ve known, though, has been my body. I’ve been evicted. I go forward, on the edge of my seat, flooring the pedal down, gunning it toward love, hunger, thirsting for more life, more love, more life, more love. Searching for the road home. * I started pairing the playlist So I Know You’re Real with photos from Craigslist during a high point: thriving in graduate school, making new friends, finding mentors, my bipolar disorder largely in remission. I met my husband when he was a prospective student visiting my MFA program in creative writing. When I got sick a few months after we married, I stopped So I Know You’re Real. I didn’t feel so real myself, I suppose. I was so desperate for relief. Early on, I looked into the liquid of doctors’ eyes, blue, hazel, brown, green; sometimes I thought they might cry, they might already be crying, right there before me, a shimmering wall of tears—and I’d realize it was my eyes straining against overflow. The important fact about this mix is that I put these songs together for a Tumblr I used to have—stones I found on Craigslist personal ads (“Missed Connection,” mostly) about need, loneliness, nostalgia, anger, love, crushing hard, craving, abandonment, voids. This playlist was embedded as the soundtrack on the Tumblr along with the photos below (and many more). Somehow these songs announced themselves as an obvious playlist for Greyhounds. The music and images and captions borrowed from Craigslist “Missed Connections” and other personals are called, collectively, So I Know You’re Real. Do you remember how in posts on the site, people would request: “Put ‘fly girl’ in the subject line so I know you’re real’” or “type WICCA N WANDS so I know you’re real?” Type “I love you forever” so I know you’re real.” Write “Big boy.” Write “My Manga future wife.” Write “Angels all over” so I know you’re real. So I Know You’re Real also at Largehearted Boy: Emma Smith-Stevens’s playlist for her novel The Australian For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of The Australian. Her writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/30/emma-smith-stevenss-book-notes-music-playlist-for-her-story-collection-greyhounds/ #booknotes #notesmusic #musicplaylist #greyhounds #storycollection #emma #writing #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #laurengroff #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Kaaron Warren’s Book Notes music playlist for her novella Going to Summertime In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Kaaron Warren’s Going to Summertime is an unsettling novella of friendship and greed. Aurealis Magazine wrote of the book: “Morbid and cajoling, sensual and startling. An astonishingly bizarre novella. And a treat for those finally encountering indomitable Warren’s rich and most peculiar stories.” In her own words, here is Kaaron Warren’s Book Notes music playlist for her novella Going to Summertime: Going to Summertime has two main settings. A hairdressing salon, where the four women work, and Summerland Place, the haunted cul-de-sac they go to explore. There’s no music in the cul-de-sac, except perhaps from faint strains coming from nearby houses, hints of living people going about the day. It’s the salon that is rich with music. Every salon I’ve ever been in has had its own musical style. It might be the radio, or it might be a personal compilation. In the Red Mullet Salon, the playlist depends on who’s working. Georgia will play music to suit the customer. Sunnie loves to sing and dance around like an angel. Erin loves rap music and swearing. Tamara loves the maudlin. Any song about death is all right by her. Here’s a mix from all of them. Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit This is very much a Sunnie song, both thematically and musically. Hill Top Hoods – Don’t Happy, Be Worry A great Aussie band, been knocking out hits for about 20 years. This one is a ripper, one of those songs that sounds like it might be happy but is really not. Amyl and the Sniffers – Big Dreams Another great Aussie band. Amyl and the Sniffers hit all the buttons for Erin and for Tamara, who battle the others to play this music as often as they can. Camille O’Sullivan – Hurt They all love this one, especially after a difficult client. Sometimes they’ll play it low while the customer is still there. The Angels – Dawn is Breaking Australian pub band, the first band I ever saw live. I’m sneaking a few of my favourite songs in here, but that’s fine. This one brings back memories of friends, and friendship is an important element to Going to Summertime. Tonada de Luna Llena – Mar Loi , Sara Sambola, and Irene Zugaza This one’s for Sunnie. She has a beautiful voice; she could have been something. Instead, she’s cutting hair and trying to keep clean. YNG Martyr – Die in the End YNG Martyr hits the spot for Erin. Her mother hates this music, so she waits until she’s in the salon to blast it loud. Ren – Hi Ren All four women love this song, and they’ll sing it at the tops of the voices while cleaning up at the end of the day. Stumbling over the words, getting them wrong. They all take something different from it. John Craigie – Helena I haven’t named Sunnie’s mother, but I’m going to say Helena. This is how she feels about her mother, and she’s not wrong. Smoke on the Water – Deep Purple Their sleazy landlord, Felix, loves to sit in the salon and perv at them. He air guitars this song, like so many before him. He thinks it makes him attractive but it really doesn’t. For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had fiction in print every year since. She has published six multi-award winning novels: Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, The Grief Hole , Tide of Stone and The Underhistory, and seven short story collections, her most recent being Calvaria Fell, with Cat Sparks, from Meerkat Press. Her stories have been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award and the Stoker, and appeared in both Ellen Datlow’s and Paula Guran’sYear’s Best anthologies. Her writing podcast Let the Cat In showcases ideas, objects, and inspirations If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/29/kaaron-warrens-book-notes-music-playlist-for-her-novella-going-to-summertime/ #booknotes #kaaronwarren #notesmusic #going #summertime #novellagoing #musicplaylist #salon #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Wendy Wimmer’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Doomscroller’s Companion In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Wendy Wimmer follows up her impressive story collection Entry Level with a debut novel, The Doomscroller’s Companion, that dazzles with its storytelling through a variety of narratives. “Provocative. . . . An engaging novel in which ramped-up pandemic anxieties are reflected in online interactions, amid which choosing embodied connections proves best.” Foreword Reviews wrote of the book: In her own words, here is Wendy Wimmer’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel The Doomscroller’s Companion: In late 2009, I went on a white shark cage diving trip to the Farallon Islands, a little-known wildlife refuge about 30 miles off San Francisco’s coastline. As luck would have it, I didn’t see any sharks (although others on our expedition did see several), but I spent that twelve hours staring up at this forbidden landscape of crumbling rocks, kelp flies and more sea birds and seals than you could count and thinking “If there was a zombie apocalypse, that would be the perfect refuge because no one would be trying to get on this island. They’d take one look and nope right the fuck out.” Or one smell, because the accumulated dense fog of bird and wildlife excrement and ammonia was almost visible. Upon my return, I became obsessed with the history of the islands – the Egg War in the 19th century, the indigenous people, Juan Cabrillo and Sir Francis Drake, and became locked on the history of ecological nightmares inflicted on this beautiful collection of cliffs, shoals and secret caves. Not only were sea bird eggs pillaged to serve San Francisco’s breakfast tables (to the tune of 500,000 eggs a MONTH) and the fur seals hunted to extirpation, during the mid 20th century, the US government sunk over 44,000 containers of radioactive nuclear waste, as well as an entire radioactive Naval aircraft carrier – the USS Independence – next to the islands, and then named it a Wildlife Refuge. Sounds like us. The one thing that all zombie movies have in common is that zombie movies don’t exist in those worlds. If they did, everyone would automatically know how to react when you saw a bunch of rotting corpses shambling toward you. Zombie movies and shows like The Last of Us and The Walking Dead have trained us to survive a zombie apocalypse, with those double taps, cardio tips, base building tips, etc. But what if a pandemic happened and everyone was so ready to go into zombie movie mode that they started murdering sick people? Throughout the 2010s, I wrote and rewrote this novel, finishing it in fall of 2019 and started querying agents in February 2020. Instantly I had a lot of interest and then, well, that interest became very strong “not for me” once March 2020 hit. What happens when your super speculative novel becomes not at all speculative? It gets the benefit of psychological distance and then another rewrite. A fun fact about me: Back before “blog” was a common word in our lexicon, back before the turn of the century (yes, the 1900s), I was writing about my life online (some of the older archives are still preserved at my website), hand coding the HTML because WordPress didn’t exist yet. I was a prehistoric, almost neolithic internet influencer. I even had some brand deals, a beauty closet filled with literally thousands of dollars in skin and beauty products, as well as a fashion closet filled with free clothes from indie fashion designers. Conde Nast hired me to build two of their dot com brands and paid handsomely for what I used to just give the internet for free. My work was featured in household name publications and websites, I appeared on nascent vlogs and video podcasts. It was surreal. Then the 2008 dot com crash changed everything – I lost three jobs, including my day job, in the span of eight days– and I was burned out by being what I called, “the internet’s liver.” I felt like I was filtering and metabolizing all the worst things into consumable forms. I stopped updating my own blog and rejected monetizing everything because it felt disingenuous. Jokes on me, I had earned so much Googlefu at that point, I probably could have just been a legit internet identity brand if I had cared more. And that was the genesis of Jane’s character – she’s what might have happened to me if I had pursued that path further, become loved and shared by millions and then struggled to invent more novelty to draw internet eyes and clicks. Holocene – Bon Iver In The Doomscroller’s Companion, both Jane and Brian are on separate islands, staring back at civilization as it begins to unravel, both from their vantage points and via webcams. Brian’s safe and protected on his island until the ice forms over the water and the island is now vulnerable to the people who are infected with the insomnia plague and are dealing with ambulatory coma-type situations. The world is reacting as though it’s a zombie apocalypse but it’s not actually zombies, they’re people who are ill, out of their minds with delusion and hallucinations. A fellow Wisconsinite, Bon Iver is capturing the coldness of the upper Midwest while being alienated and yearning for connection. “And at once, I knew I was not magnificent, strayed above the highway aisle, jagged vacance, thick with ice but I could see for miles, miles, miles.” The ever-beating thrum of Brian’s inner monologue is that he’s an imposter as an artist, flummoxed by his successes and constantly finding excuses for why it’s not his own talent that is driving his commercial success. Bon Iver sings “It’s a part of me apart from me” and “now to know it in my memory” – when the entirety of our social media stream is both us and not us at all, out of order, manipulated by an all-power algorithm that decides who is heard and seen and who is not. Fun fact: My working title for The Doomscroller’s Companion was “Fake Internet Friends” – I knew I wasn’t going to keep that title, but I suspect it lingers just outside the margins, as real as the ghosts that share Jane’s bedroom on the Farallon Islands. The Shins – Simple Song This novel explores so much nostalgia for the Before Times, before we ever had this societal breakdown, the juxtaposition of Internet 2.0 with Internet 5.0, when our currency was in pretend internet popularity points, likes, follows and shares. Like so many moments of our lives, we don’t realize the importance of those glimpses until long after they have passed. I envision this song playing in the background of the scene set in the mid-Aughts, Jane riding a borrowed Fixie bicycle among the tech bros playing ultimate Frisbee on San Francisco’s Crissy Field. In that blog post, Jane describes to the internet: “And for one brief instant, while flying along this perfect bike path, I felt like I could peddle that way forever, making concentric circles around the peninsula, using hills and gravity to propel me into perpetual motion, like an executive desk toy. Click clack click clack I would never ever stop. It was a glorious moment. And then I wiped out.” She has a high-side fall, this huge dramatic bike crash but no one seems to notice. In that moment, she falls out of love with San Francisco, her lucrative career in the tech boom, and faces who she believes she is, and what she believes she deserves out of life. Mercer, the songwriter and lead singer for The Shins, writes “I know that things can get really rough when you go it alone. Don’t go thinking you gotta be tough, and play like a stone. Could be there’s nothing else in our lives, so critical as this little home” Later in the novel, we see the moment again, only this time from Brian’s point of view – and we learn that it is the moment when they meet in real life, sending each of their fates into an intertwined online ‘e-lationship’ that will impact their lives in countless ways. They become each others’ online soulmates but both are too afraid to break the enchantment by meeting again in real life. As the song opines, “Love’s such a delicate thing that we do with nothing to prove, which I never knew” and “I told you about all those fears and away they did run You sure must be strong and you feel like an ocean made warm by the sun.” This song is that shiny feeling of meeting and clicking with someone and being just a little bit addicted to the world seen through they’re perception, and the image of you they are interacting with. OneRepublic – Connection Beyond my premise of zombie movies training us to react to a zombie-like scenario, my other working inspiration for the novel was that when the apocalypse happens, it will mostly be filtered through and to some extent, be felt through social media. The lyrics opine “There’s so many people here then why am I so lonely? Can I get a connection.” Beyond Jane and Brian’s textual relationship – which Jane calls their e-lationship – there’s the constant yearning of other characters who might or might not be known to us in the narrative. We see Jane’s named social media stream, we see one from Brian’s ex-girlfriend, but other characters exist only as their social media handles. Reddit posters write long theses about human colony collapse and encourage fellow Redditors to end it sooner than later, Google’s suggested search terms offer “why am I still here?” and “Can insomnia make you fat?” The social media streams are full of tiny stories from the lives of strangers, along with the number of likes, comments and shares. @Gemma1989 says “Just made friends with neighbor who has never spoken to me or met my gaze. I’ve only lived here for six and a half years and we share a driveway, so that was cool” while @MightyMych offers to pick up groceries for people who are unable to leave their houses and at one point says “If you’re lonely in lockdown and need someone to talk to, I’d love to hear from someone” which is hearted by 429 people but far fewer take her up on it. @DBmm talks about the people who have been lost to the pandemic, but without funerals “it’s like they’re still there, not answering my emails,” a sentiment hearted by 3.9K followers and shared 87 times. The text lays out all these flailing attempts for connection that interject within Brian’s and Jane’s narratives, emails, chats and blog posts, a Greek chorus that reminds us that even when we’re alone, we are reaching out into the ether. Half-alive – Everything Machine The diptych to the social media element is the facet of technology and the algorithm that acts as both a censor and a feeder to what we consume. In every crisis, count upon the fact that we’ll be making jokes and using black humor to cope with the cognitive dissonance. Our cell phones have become “everything machines.” Of the insomnia plague, Brian says “We each hold tiny blue suns. up to our faces and then are surprised when our primate selves can’t get a decent moment’s rest.” These lyrics counter his disdain, arguing “I’m your second nature, never leave your side I’m a growing cancer (the feeling of sleepless nights), I’m your serotonin, I’m your burning eyes, Baby, don’t you cry, I’m right here tonight” and promise to “keep you close when it’s getting late” and “make you feel at home ‘til the pain is numb.” Are these machines helping or hindering our existence? Are they literally keeping us from connecting because we hold them between each other? Stars – Your Ex-Lover Is Dead Stars is one of my most favorite bands in the entire world, but I listened to this song repeatedly while drafting The Doomscroller’s Companion. It captures the intensity of connection and then moving on only to be faced with who you were in another lifetime – the duet between two people, one of whom was devastated by the loss and the other who can’t even remember the person’s name. Jane details her romantic devastations online, displaying her self-incriminating inner dialogue for millions of readers. Her hunky tech bro was just never really going to be in love with her, despite the evidence she had clung to all along. In her blog, Jane writes, “That night, while drunk, he says he will never love anyone as much as he loved his first girlfriend. He says I’m unlike any woman he’s ever met. He says I’m special, someone he knows will be his best friend forever. Dear Reader, you may have already guessed he says these things out of order.” In that scene, I was very much thinking of Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan singing in heartbreaking harmony “I’m not sorry I met you, I’m not sorry it’s over, I’m not sorry there’s nothing to say.” Chris Seligman writes baroque pop operas, capturing these gorgeous and lonely moments with a sardonic French horn thru-line. We need more pop with melodicas and French horns, right? Maybe that’s just the marching band geek in me. Fun fact Doomscroller trivia: the character Patty was named for Pat McGee, Stars’ drummer. McGee’s nickname is Paddy, but when I met him, I heard “Patty” and was so confused, like Jane is when she meets Patty for the first time. The Cure – Plainsong There are several cross-country road trips in my novel – I love a good road trip, especially one fueled by running away from or to something. I’ve crossed the country by automobile several times myself and I’m 99% ready to fully give up air travel in exchange for auto and train travel, because you just get to see everything up close and spend time in your own mind. When Jane embarks on one of those trips, the first thing she does is queue of The Cure’s Disintegration on the car’s stereo. The entire album is flawless, and while I probably wouldn’t rank Plainsong as my absolute favorite on the compilation, it feels like a disembarkation, a transition point (probably why it’s the first track). The lyrics are bittersweet, “I think I’m old and I’m feeling pain, ” you said “And it’s all running out Like it’s the end of the world, ” you said “And it’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead” Then you smiled for a second” It feels like a triumphant reclamation of the self. Sofia Coppola must agree, as she uses it to great effect in Marie Antoinette, as the titular character walks to her coronation. Fun fact: When Billboard ranked The Cure’s top 40 songs, it put Plainsong fourth, calling it “a slowly unfolding poem for the apocalypse” and well, if someone said that about The Doomscroller’s Companion, I’d never stop talking about it. Lucy Dacus – Night Shift This song is all about the transition from disbelief and shock to anger post-breakup, which both Jane and Brian certainly go through on their own parallel but distinct paths. The lyrics are insistent that the singer is fine, she’s fine, she’s fine, even though the singer then asks in the chorus “let me kiss your lips so I know how it felt” and holding themselves responsible for their own actions, knowing that they will “walk for hours in the dark feeling all hell.” While Brian and Jane’s online relationship has never involved physical touch, they’ve been trapped in a stasis of a pretend situationship. Jane is afraid that her online persona is impossible to live up to in real life and doesn’t want to risk losing Brian’s friendship – or whatever it is – by meeting up in person again. She relies upon his memory of her during the one chance meeting, as the lyrics say, “forget you’ve ever saw me at my best… it’s too dangerous to fall so young, take back what you said, can’t lose what you never had.” In the novel’s opening scene, she thinks about Brian, “No one could live up to the persona I’ve created. Jane ’Ere is a goofy best friend that millions of people Like and Share. People rarely Like the real me… Disappointment flickering on Brian’s face after so many years. He’d try to hide it, but I’d see. I depend upon his foggy memory, a girl in Sa https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/28/wendy-wimmers-book-notes-music-playlist-for-her-novel-the-doomscrollers-companion/ #booknotes #notesmusic #wendywimmer #musicplaylist #companion #zombie #sanfrancisco #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #laurengroff #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Devon Halliday’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel To Stay, To Stay, To Stay In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Devon Halliday’s novel To Stay, To Stay, To Stay is filled with masterful storytelling and memorable characters and is one of the year’s strongest debuts. David Haynes wrote of the book: “In this enchanting tale of small-town love, artisanal bread, and sketchy real estate, Devon Halliday explores the webs that connect us and the mysterious forces that break those webs apart. Everything and everyone in this wonderful novel is rendered with precision, wit, and uncompromising humanity.” In her own words, here is Devon Halliday’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel To Stay, To Stay, To Stay: When I was young, I used to create mental music videos to accompany my favorite songs. As one song gave way to the next, the music video in my mind kept rolling, developing a vast plot that encompassed the lyrics of whatever songs were on shuffle that day. I loved the feeling of building a story through music, treating each new song as if it rose directly out of the mood of the last. In the spirit of those long-ago music videos—alas, lost to history—I present an emotional road map of my novel, To Stay, To Stay, To Stay. If you listen to this playlist all the way through, the music video in your mind should recreate the plot of the novel with 99% accuracy… allowing, of course, for some differences in budget and casting. icepick by Sadurn We begin with a kind of rolling stasis. This song is about what it’s like to be in love—when it’s hard, but it’s still worth it, but it’s still hard. Doubts follow resolutions follow more doubts, like waves turning endlessly in the tide: “I get so frustrated about your communication / But I know you can’t help it, and I’m not really trying to change it.” There’s so much in that not real. I’m not trying to change you—not really. Not all the time. Not when I remind myself not to. That’s where the characters of my novel begin: with good intentions and imperfect resolve. Delphinium Blue by Cassandra Jenkins As the novel settles in, we witness the characters at work in their respective jobs. Two tracks of thought run at all times: the autopilot track of labor, tasks, obligations, and the deeply submerged track of their real thoughts and worries. “Chin up / Stay on task / Wash the windows / Count the cash,” the singer reminds herself in this song, but meanwhile: “I hear your voice when I’m closing … I picture the sun hitting you.” In jobs that don’t require our full attention, our minds are free to wander into old and forgotten longings. Mama You’ve Been on My Mind by George Harrison When the characters of my novel catch themselves dwelling in fantasy, they try to shake themselves back to reality… with uneven results. This sweet and wistful song captures that feeling of missing someone you normally try not to think about. In fact, the singer gives us a couple possible reasons that his mind might have wandered (“maybe it’s the weather or something like that”) before he even tells us what it’s wandered to. There’s a push-pull between admission and denial in this song, as the singer tries to clarify what exactly he’s trying to do. “I am not asking for you to say words like yes and no,” he assures the woman he probably still loves. “I’m just breathing to myself, pretending not that I don’t know / Mama you’re just on my mind.” The best that the singer can claim for himself here is self-awareness… which is quite different, of course, from resisting the temptation to dwell in the first place. As the characters of my novel learn the hard way, self-awareness doesn’t always do us much good. I Can’t Stay by The Killers At this point in your music video, you should have a character who is in a mostly loving relationship, but who is also fixated on someone else. That’s not a tenable situation. It’s time for this character to make a decision—or almost time. As the singer of this song puts it: “I can’t stay very far / I can’t stay much longer.” Maybe that means: I can’t stay out, wandering the streets in indecision. I’ve got to head home. Or maybe that means: I can’t stay in this home a moment longer. The characters of my novel make different choices when they reach this impasse. Some of them decide to head back into the shelter of the status quo. Some of them decide to blow everything up and start over. Whichever they choose, the decision is summed up by the final line of this song: “Riding my decision home.” Alone Again Or by Love This whole time, while the star of your music video has been brooding and pacing the streets of their neighborhood, deciding whether to stay or to go, someone has been waiting back at home for them. This is the song of that person waiting. “I won’t forget all the times I’ve waited patiently for you / And you do just what you choose to do / And I will be alone again tonight my dear.” It’s a tough break—and yet this song has always felt joyful to me. Check out that horn solo. The disintegration of the status quo means clean slate, square one, new opportunities. That could turn out to be a good thing. After all, as the singer puts it, “I could be in love with almost everyone / I think that people are the greatest fun.” The heartbreak is big, but the world around it is still bigger. Saved by Devon Halliday The star of your music video has finally made their decision. No more pacing! They’re committed to the new path. They’re done transforming. They might even make some kind of declaration, like: “Forever’s nice, but this is what we get / I’ll take it.” But there are hairline cracks running through this new commitment. “Maybe I was saved,” the singer suggests, again and again, and that maybe never goes away. Instead, the song builds to a crescendo and then fades out, never resolving. There’s even an anguished scream embedded in the mix. The chorus repeats like a mantra, insisting that all that indecision and heartache is over. It has to be, right? I mean, your character just made their big decision. They’re not about to unmake it. Certainty by Big Thief But what if they made the wrong big decision? Is it too late to change their minds? Certainty is, it turns out, a “wild, weaving” thing. There’s indecision in every line of this song. “Why do I string you along?” the singer wonders—but she also has a vision of some future together, once all this has been resolved: “You lay beside me / Sleeping on a plane in the future.” If the singer is stringing someone along, she’s stringing herself along too. Sometimes you can’t get the competing truths in your mind to reconcile. When that’s the case, maybe the best you can do is to admit it: “I love you / Still don’t know.” It’s hard to act without certainty. But when will that certainty ever come? Maybe the thing to do is just to stick with the decision you already made—until something finally gives. Bill of Goods by Loudon Wainwright III As we close in on the end of the novel, the characters have settled into the aftermath of their big decisions—but that aftermath isn’t working, and the characters know it. This song captures that in-limbo period when it’s too late to fix anything, but too soon to leave: “Everything will be all right / Remember when you thought that? / I sold you that bill of goods / Remember when you bought that?” There’s bitterness in the song, but there’s also the kind of close observation that can only come from love. It’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins: “We gave each other such a hard time / But it sure was fun / Or was it?” If there’s a moral to the whole mess of this decision-making process, it’s too soon to tell. We’ve moved beyond reason, justification, the weighing out of the pros and cons. There’s only one thing left to try. Wild Ambitions by Yellow Magic Orchestra All our resolutions, all our careful habits, all the things our friends have told us, all the things we’ve told ourselves—they fall away in the face of what we truly want. This song feels to me like running back across the plains of all my mistakes, retracing all those steps I took in the wrong direction. “I’m on my way to where you are / I’m running through the wildlands.” The characters made their big decision, yes. But it didn’t stick. Now they’re going to make the opposite big decision. Have they got it right this time? Come On Up to the House by Tom Waits The truth is, there is no right decision. There are just the decisions we make, and the stories we tell to make sense of them. The star of your music video has been through a lot in the last thirty-eight minutes. They fretted about a huge, life-changing decision. They made that decision. They tried their best to stick with it. And then they went right back and made the opposite decision, because they simply couldn’t stay the course once they realized what they actually wanted. This is the journey that the characters of my novel go on—and on the last page of the novel, you can see the characters starting to fit their decisions into a new story, a story that they’ll tell from now on. We always say hindsight is 20/20, but I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s just persuasive. The last song on this playlist is an invitation—to the star of your music video, to the characters of my novel, to you, to me, to everybody—to relinquish the illusion of agency. “There’s nothing in the world that you can do … You been whipped by the forces that are inside you … You’re high on top of your mountain of woe … You know you should surrender, but you can’t let go.” Maybe you’re not really in control of your decisions, your desires, your fate. Maybe that’s for the best. “You’ve got to come on up to the house,” the singer calls you. Everyone else is up here waiting for you.h For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. Devon Halliday is a Pushcart Prize–winning writer. Her fiction appears in Ploughshares, One Story, and People Magazine, among other journals, and her criticism appears in Liberties and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She writes a popular Substack on craft, publishing, and the writing life. Devon holds an MFA in Fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation scholarship, and a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University. She grew up in southeastern Ohio, and teaches creative writing at Ohio University. Her debut novel To Stay, To Stay, To Stay, published by McSweeney’s, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/27/devon-hallidays-book-notes-music-playlist-for-her-novel-to-stay-to-stay-to-stay/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Book Notes music playlist for the anthology The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay is filled with inspiration for both writers and teachers of writing. Ander Monson wrote of the book: “The lyric essay is at heart a freaky space. The lyric essay is resistance to norming forms. The lyric essay is characterized by leaps: through white space, between different registers of meaning, between ledges of one kind of thinking or writing or genre and another. The lyric essay does not hide its stitches or its seams. What it seems is what it is. The lyric essay is disjunctive and refuses to be simplified for your convenience. The lyric essay is unruly and dislikes boxes. Like Super Happy Fun Ball we do not taunt it. Like a jart, we throw the lyric essay in the air and close our eyes and wait for it to fall. It could pierce us or something else. That it’s sharp means it works, that it reveals. I mean it’s dangerous. It’s risk. It’s that and these and all of this. Read instructions before application. Use The Rose Metal Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay with care.” In their own words, here is the editors’ and contributors’ Book Notes music playlist for the anthology The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay: Heidi Czerwiec, Co-Editor: “Frontier Psychiatrist” by The Avalanches Like the cover image for this Field Guide, lyric essayists are crows and magpies, collecting shiny interesting bits and collaging them into something marvelous. The first time I heard the song “Frontier Psychiatrist”—composed entirely of samples from such sources as John Waters’ Polyester, recordings of comedy bits by Wayne & Shuster and Flip Wilson, and a 1968 orchestral and vocal performance by the Enoch Light Singers—I giggled all the way through it, which is how I react when delighted. Music critic Matthew Horton’s description of it equally applies to many of the best lyric essays: “busy, daft, composed of countless unconnected parts, yet somehow entirely natural as a whole.” Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh, Co-Editor: “Your Ghost” by Kristin Hersh Kristin Hersh’s “Your Ghost,” from her 1994 debut solo album, Hips and Makers, is about a haunting, a loss or absence so powerful it becomes palpable. Not the jangling post-punk edge of Throwing Muses, or the reverbed ferocity of 50-Foot Wave, but something that hybridizes the emotional intensity of both bands into something new, something lyric, something stunningly vulnerable. Here, Hersh’s voice is unadorned, a raw wild honey that’s all sweetness and sting, accompanied by a simple background of acoustic guitar. She is Orpheus, with his lyre, padding down a darkened hallway, ready to “wake your ghost.” Poetry, song, and image all awaken, blur, complicate, and clarify the narrative in this liminal space between worlds, and Hersh, the singer/artist/writer, is unafraid to cross between the overworld and the underworld. The chorus consists simply of Hersh repeatedly singing “I think last night / you were driving circles around me” surprisingly harmonized by Michael Stipe, until everything becomes pattern, repetition, and visual poem as elegy, invocation, and resurrection. We also invited contributors to this book to suggest songs that they felt captured the lyric essay quality or strategy that was the focus of their piece in the Field Guide. Many thanks to those who played along! Their picks are below: Camille T. Dungy: “Shockedelica” by Prince The ways Prince can weave narratives, tones, and influence to create such splendor of strength and tension while remaining ultimately playful never ceases to amaze. And the is song also braids in multiple vocal registers, all produced by the same voice. Prince name checks his alter ego. Listen carefully and you’ll not that he pitches his voice at a different register when Camille comes on mic. What an object lesson in telling more than one story from the same mind, much like the braided essay. Sarah Minor: “The Problem With Your Daughter” by Lord Huron Lord Huron’s album Lonesome Dreams came out the year I started writing my visual essay “Into the Limen” (an excerpt of which appears in this book), which would take me another 5 years to complete. I wrote another piece from the same collection by staying up all night in the University of Arizona library, listening to the album on repeat. Once I was also a daughter with a problem, a kid who put words to what the family passed wordlessly. “Into the Limen” explores that kind of in between space as both a subject and a visual metaphor-—the wee hours and doorjambs where lyric essays seem to be able to reach their tendrils. Diane Seuss: “Tom’s Diner (DNA Remix)” by Suzanne Vega Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner (DNA Remix)” makes broad use of the present tense via concrete details from the point of view of an alienated speaker. It contains a newspaper story, and rain, and rain-drenched hair, all of which appear in my model poem from frank: sonnets, and then the cathedral bells call Vega’s speaker back to a nostalgic past, a beloved “you,” and a picnic, but time’s pressure comes along in the form of the train the speaker must hurry to catch in the song’s present tense. Vega first recorded it a cappella. It was then remixed by the duo DNA, and it became a dance club hit. I love the notion that Vega wrote the song using tried and true narrative strategies, and then DNA brought the beat to the party. This is an example of the process of literary influence and improvisation, playing between forms. Rowan McCandless: “My Favorite Things” by John Coltrane I love to write while John Coltrane, a Black jazz artist, plays over my stereo system. This song, “My Favorite Things,” reminds me of the memories I collect, write about, and collage together. The way he weaves experimentation and improvisation inspires me; how he is able to take this song, a white musical piece, and transform it to become his own. torrin a. greathouse: “Lateralus” by TOOL Many of the same qualities that drew me to Alice Fulton’s engagement with fractals are the very same qualities that underlie my interest in progressive and experimental rock/metal. In particular, this track by TOOL embodies a complex utilization of fractal logics. Organized around the Fibonacci Sequence, “Lateralus” is at once winding and deeply structured. To name only a few of the constraints the band employs, the syllables in each line of the verses correspond to numbers within the sequence, while several of the lines occur at moments that align with the Golden Ratio. Despite this complexity, the lyrics of the song urge listeners to embrace randomness and a lack of control, to “swing on the spirals of our divinity and still be a human.” It’s hard to imagine a more valuable imperative for the application of fractal poetics than that. Chelsea Biondolillo: “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead Like a great essayist, one called upon to balance research, memoir, and no small amount of fine art, Radiohead is a band of many talents—from infectious earworms (“Creep”) to soaring cinematic epics (“Exit Music for a Film”). I saw them play in Portland in the 1990s for a couple of bucks and have been a fan ever since. One thing they do incredibly well is weave disparate parts into complex sonic wholes. “Paranoid Android” is a stellar example of this—we start in a subdued ballad, Yorke’s voice full of longing, then after two verses, wander into a starker bridge with a snarl. Suddenly we’re in a banger—guitars and drums thrashing. The song seesaws through these two sides, keening and rage, which seem as different as oil and water (or image and text), and yet…the result is cohesive, nuanced and moving. Just like a killer lyric essay. Aimee Nezhukumatathil “Homegrown Tomatoes,” by Guy Clark I double-dog dare anyone to listen to this song and not have a big goofy grin on your face: “Plant ‘em in the spring, eat ‘em in the summer / All winter without ‘em is a culinary bummer.” As I tend my vegetable garden, I find myself humming this song while I’m checking for pests and plucking off any leaves scorched by the brutal Mississippi sun in late June. And if you can’t grow tomatoes at home, please do treat your tastebuds to getting your summer tomatoes from a local farmers’ market, I beg of you. What a bounty and burst on your tongue. My wish for you is that this song opens your heart up for a little joy, a few hours (days?) barefoot, no socks, wider possibilities and shapes for your food odes, and the taste of a summer day on your tongue. Natanya Pulley: “It’s In Our Hands” by Björk I prefer the live version because of the choir of Inuit women—in particular the youtube live version, because you get to see the choir and it’s a better recording—but the studio version is also wonderful. Listening to Bjork always feels like entering an environment-–which is my favorite part of writing and reading as well. It’s not pure escapism, which allows us to disconnect and hurdle ourselves into a new realm, but living in the art is a commitment of the senses to be present in another’s voice, audio textures, and rhythms. I crave this and it is how I understand my own experience of writing. I chose “It’s In Our Hands” because of the layering of beats and the anaphoric returns it offers—the delightful surges and deep pulls of it. But also because of the possibility shared in the lyrics. We all need the hope that is inherent in seeking possibility—especially at a time when it is very easy either to escape to safer places in our minds or to churn in a political reality that seeks and has succeeded in dehumanizing sentient beings and sacred earths. I also suggest looking for the live version performed at the Royal Opera House in 2001 because of the performance’s joy and energy. Ching-In Chen: “Sound Patterns” by Pauline Oliveros I can think of no musician who had a greater influence on my time in Houston where I wrote the lyric essay “Elgin” (included in the book) than the musician and composer Pauline Oliveros. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening technique reflects my own method of paying attention to the landscape of my neighborhood, including the nighttime song of incessant frogs. Oliveros’ improvisational compositional strategies also deeply influenced some of my closest collaborators. I chose “Sound Patterns,” created for a cappella mixed chorus in 1961, because of the movement that the work makes from white noise (created vocally using consonants “sh” and variations) to ring modulation (changing the vowel content) to percussive envelopes using the various instruments of the body (tongue clicks, snap fingers) and filtering through muting, as discussed in Heidi Von Gunden’s The Music of Pauline Oliveros. These techniques create transformations from section to section, a journey through the variation and mixing of techniques, much like the leaping between segments in the lyric essay. Katrina Vandenberg: “The Long One” (medley, side two of Abbey Road) by The Beatles The first time an editor asked me to write a 4,500-word essay for a magazine, I froze: that was nearly half the length of a book of poems. But I said yes, thinking that, even though I didn’t know how to write a piece that long, I knew how to write forty-five words one hundred times. From there I delved into the exciting process of figuring out how to sustain a lyric over longform. What worked for me was writing a series of fragments around my subject, knowing that I could eventually edit and arrange them to make a whole. I think of this process when I hear The Beatles’ arrangement of eight fragments, arranged into a cohesive sixteen-minute suite. I print out my fragments and arrange on my studio floor, using scissors and Scotch tape, and find the process satisfyingly analogue, like playing vinyl. Julie Marie Wade: “On the Air” by Girlyman In the final passage of my lyric essay “Third Door” (excerpted in the book), a disembodied voice, representing my parents speaking in unison, eschews the vision I’ve rendered of them as contestants on a game show during the time of their courtship in the mid-1960s: Come now, we were never On the Air. As it happens, several years after I wrote this essay, I bought all the CDs I could find by a band called Girlyman, a folk trio I had heard open for Dar Williams in Pittsburgh and whose sound and lyrics I loved. The first track on Girlyman’s album Little Star is fittingly titled “On the Air,” and even the sound of the song without the lyrics evokes the era of my lyric essay. The speaker in the song is a game show host, disgruntled now in the new era of “On Demand.” He reminisces about the years of his televisual reign—”Back when Bob Hope was king / Back when every choice felt right / Back when life was black and white”—which hearkens to a time of certainty and (false) binaries that my parents also embraced. Lyric essays, of course, are about what happens after we surrender those black-and-white illusions, when color comes in—and with it, so much ambiguity and complexity regarding our identities, our choices, and our dreams. For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. 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Seth Fleisher’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel The Farther Shore In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Seth Fleisher’s novel The Farther Shore is a deeply atmospheric and profound debut. Kirkus wrote of the book: “A compelling novel inspired by the pioneering naturalist Eugène Marais and his son, Charles, who was abandoned in the name of science…This is an absorbing work of historical fiction and an impressive and welcome debut.” In his own words, here is Seth Fleisher’s Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel The Farther Shore: Seth Fleisher’s Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel The Farther Shore Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford said that the secret to being a successful novelist is never to have kids. (He didn’t put it precisely this way, but that’s always been my read of what he meant.) In any event, I have two. And at the time I started researching and then writing my debut novel, The Farther Shore, the two were on the smaller side. I also had a relatively full-time job with the World Bank Group that kept me busy and regularly traveling abroad. It struck me on more than one occasion that trying to write a book, raise great humans, and save the world might be mutually exclusive goals. Ten years later, having achieved two out of three feels like cause for celebration. Every evening my wife and I took turns putting our kids to bed amid endless requests for one more song or one more book. Then, when they were finally settled, I’d steal away to Au Coquelet to work on the novel, alongside my regular late-night dinner order: a grilled chicken, mushroom, and jalapeño sandwich—an order that never got old—and a single pint of whatever happened to be on tap that night. Au Coquelet was one of the only establishments in downtown Berkeley open past midnight. Alas, it was also a COVID casualty—my favorite writing haunt has since been replaced by condos. I rarely listen to music when I write. It distracts me from the rhythm and musicality I strive to build into prose. Plus, I have an internal playlist that rarely stops, even when I try my best to quiet it. Here are some of the internal tunes I recall being on replay in those early days, some directly relevant to the novel, and some, well, less so. Lake Street Dive: “Hypotheticals” The novel begins with a hypothetical of sorts, or more precisely, a counterfactual: What if the protagonist had made one different decision? He might have salvaged a life. He might have saved his father. Old Crow Medicine Show: “Methamphetamine” That father—one of the two protagonists in the novel—is inspired by the historical South African naturalist Eugène Nielen Marais. In the novel, Marais is a morphine addict, as he was in real life. And while meth and morphine are drugs of completely different classes, the link feels salient. Plus the false cadence at the end of the chorus of this Old Crow tune still leaves me breathless each time I hear it. Jason Isbell: “Children of Children” This Jason Isbell song is an exploration of inheritance: what parents unintentionally transmit to their children, and the baggage children carry without ever having consented. In the novel, Marais is so devastated by personal tragedy that he abandons his infant son and disappears into a remote African forest where he studies and lives among a troop of chacma baboons. He is intent on discovering the origins of memory as a way of understanding his own psychic suffering. Decades later, that son, Charles Marais, now a professor of Buddhist history at Harvard, finds himself trapped by his father’s research—which has been co-opted by university faculty for sinister ends—and constrained by his own genetics. Fokofpolisiekar: “Hemel op die Platteland” The first song in Afrikaans ever playlisted on 5FM, a national South African radio station. At the time, it enraged conservative Afrikaners. Fokofpolisiekar is an Afrikaans punk band whose chief project was tearing apart white Afrikaner nationalist and religious identity, dismantling notions of inheritance—as the novel also sets out to do. Richard Wagner: “Kaisermarsch” Okay, this was not actually part of my internal playlist. It’s the one composition on this list that appears in the novel. Wagner composed Kaisermarsch in 1871 to crown the new German Empire. In 1935, as Marais’s son gradually comes to realize that senior leaders at the university are flirting with Nazi ideology, he confronts a band of students performing this Wagner composition in Harvard Yard, and things get ugly. The New Basement Tapes: “Kansas City” Topically, this one is not directly related to the story. But when Marcus Mumford takes on Bob Dylan, the result is perhaps the greatest earworm in the history of roots music. After hearing Mumford play this one live, it didn’t leave my internal playlist for at least a year. Johnny Clegg: “The Crossing (Osiyeza)” A white South African musician who croons in English and Zulu about crossing over to the other side, channeling western folk rock traditions while conjuring southern Africa. This theme of crossing over is embedded within the title of the novel, The Farther Shore. It comes from a curious line in the Buddhist Dhammapada: “Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present and cross over to the farther shore.” For the novel’s protagonists, the crossings are both literal and metaphorical, as they travel the globe to find each other—and themselves. Del McCoury: “I Need More Time” A plaintive cry by one of the godfathers of bluegrass for more time to live. For me, it was a plea for more time to write. The two, I suppose, are not unrelated. But the song also forces us to consider how we choose to spend the shockingly few moments we have on this planet. Charles Marais, reflecting on this question, chooses to leave behind everything he’s built over decades in search of a more meaningful life. Leonard Cohen: “Going Home” Ultimately the novel is a story about the vast distances we’ll travel—across decades and continents—to find our way home. And Leonard Cohen merges Buddhist and Jewish identities with some of the most glorious poetry ever set to music: “He wants to write a love song / An anthem of forgiving / A manual for living with defeat.” Isn’t this also what Charles wants from his one precious and heartbreaking life? What all of us do? ________________________ Seth Fleisher is an American author whose work has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Pearl, the Journal of Anthropological Research, and elsewhere. Based in Berkeley, California, he has worked with the World Bank Group and other NGOs in more than 40 other countries, and co-founded a U.S.-based democracy initiative to counter the rising tide of authoritarianism. A former Fulbright scholar in Sri Lanka, Seth did Ph.D. work at Harvard in Buddhist social history, a fellowship at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and a B.A. in literature at Swarthmore, where he and his wife first met in a Chaucer seminar. The Farther Shore is his debut novel. You can visit him online at @sethfleisher and sethfleisher.com. For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. Seth Fleisher is an American author whose work has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Pearl, the Journal of Anthropological Research, and elsewhere. Based in Berkeley, California, he has worked with the World Bank Group and other NGOs in more than 40 other countries, and co-founded a U.S.-based democracy initiative to counter the rising tide of authoritarianism. A former Fulbright scholar in Sri Lanka, Seth did Ph.D. work at Harvard in Buddhist social history, a fellowship at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, and a B.A. in literature at Swarthmore, where he and his wife first met in a Chaucer seminar. The Farther Shore is his debut novel. You can visit him online at @sethfleisher and sethfleisher.com. If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/25/seth-fleishers-book-notes-music-playlist-for-his-novel-the-farther-shore/ #booknotes #farthershore #sethfleisher #notesmusic #musicplaylist #shorepulitzer #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #laurengroff #roxanegay #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Matt Kish’s Book Notes music playlist for his book Moby-Dick in Pictures In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Matt Kish’s Moby-Dick in Pictures brilliantly shares an illustration for each page of Melville’s classic n0vel, and this new edition celebrates Moby-Dick’s 175th anniversary next month. The Atlantic wrote of the book: “Woven of equal parts visual mastery and creative bravery, Moby-Dick in Pictures is a treasure in and of itself, one that not only pays homage to Melville, but also reimagines what it means to embark on a modern-day epic voyage of creative restlessness.” In his own words, here is Matt Kish’s Book Notes music playlist for his book Moby-Dick in Pictures: Over the course of 543 days, from August 2009 to January 2011, I created 552 illustrations for Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick. What led me to this endeavor is long and rather complicated, but the short version is that I had recently turned 40 years old and was consumed by the fact that despite two decades of work as a self-taught artist, I had never experienced any kind of measurable success. I was very close to quitting art permanently but decided to attempt one final idiotically ambitious project before putting the brushes down for good. Moby-Dick was one of my favorite novels and had fascinated me for most of my life through multiple readings. I had always been a visual reader, vividly picturing the events of whatever story I was reading in a kind of internal, cerebral movie theater. Intuitively and perhaps rashly, I decided my final chapter as an artist would be to create one illustration for each of the 552 pages of the Signet Classics paperback edition of Moby-Dick. At that time, my partner and I were living in one room of my in-laws’ house, so my “studio” was a small walk-in closet with no windows and barely enough room for a drawing table and a shelf for art supplies. I painted the interior a bright turquoise blue to remind me of the warm seas I had loved as a child, and began. I used found paper like pages cut from old books, charts, maps, and things of that sort. The illustrations would function as a kind of visual parallel of the novel in that my ink and paint would float over the lines and words already on the paper allowing the viewer to see multiple images and connections at once, similar to the way that Moby-Dick can be read as an adventurous whaling novel, an allegory, a history, a myth, and so much more. The project became a journey I never expected, and changed my life forever. I began with hope, excitement, and a laugh, but over time fought against self-doubt, isolation, and despair. Illustrating the final chapters felt almost hallucinatory because I had inhabited the novel for so long, and so intimately, that at times the world of the Pequod felt more real to me than my life. Working in solitude, alone in a tiny closet, would have been maddening without music. I listened to a lot over those 543 days, but the tone and content changed as I moved through the novel. This playlist is a rough approximation of my emotional state from the first “Call me Ishmael” through the final “another orphan.” “Electric Counterpoint III: Fast” by Steve Reich I mentioned the warm seas I had loved as a child, and in my memories, these shores have become someplace almost magical and fantastic. Time has almost certainly distorted reality, but in my mind, I can effortlessly relive the feeling of warm sun on my skin, hot sand between my toes, the diamond-gleam of the cresting waves, and the deep blue of the ocean. Reich’s piece, with the bright guitar notes, brings me back to those childhood days wondering about the endless possibilities hidden beneath and beyond the waves. “Jason and the Argonauts” by XTC Even though I began the illustration project as a 40-year-old, at the time I still thought of Moby-Dick as a kind of American myth, complete with heroes, monsters, and a sea-journey quest. I could easily imagine the Pequod and the Argo in the same milieu, and Ahab was Jason and Zeus, hero and villain. This sense of wonder was essential in giving me the drive and the resolve to live in Melville’s book artistically and emotionally. This song, with the constantly swelling and ebbing guitar and hints at strange places beyond the horizon embodies my state of mind at the beginning. “Do It Again” by the Kinks I settled into a daily rhythm fairly quickly, and that was fine, for a while. Each morning, before my day job, I would read and re-read and re-re-read the page of the novel that I was to illustrate that day. All day, I would think about that page, what it suggested to me, what it provoked in me, and how I saw it. Over the hours, an image would develop and I would slowly but continually refine it. By evening, with the image fixed in my mind, I would enter the closet studio and work furiously with the few hours I had before nightfall, trying my best to record the image from my mind to the paper. And this would repeat, day after day, week after week, month after month. Each morning brought a new page, a new beginning, and the same task, the same process. Do it again. “Ship of Fools” by World Party I began to feel like something was wrong. In my real life, I had no time to do anything beyond sleep, eat, work at my library job, and make art in the evenings. I saw my friends less and less. I saw my spouse less and less. I saw the sun, and the sky, and the outside less and less. I began to feel more and more like I was a member of the crew of the Pequod, walking the decks with the sailors, mates, and harpooneers. And I knew what was coming. I knew the end of the story. What had I gotten myself into? And where would this take me? “Drunk on Salt Water” by Xela About halfway through the project, my grasp on reality became tenuous at times. I thought about ships, white whales, oceans and blood as often as, if not more than, eating dinner, mowing the lawn, or talking to my spouse. The feeling was new, and strange, not yet uncomfortable, but not pleasant. Xela’s bizarre, hypnotic instrumental, with its dry as a bone percussive loops and ghostly tones epitomizes the shifting fever dream of my reality. “Good Morning Captain” by Slint For the first time, I began to resent the project, its demands, and what it was robbing me of. Just as this song is about a losing one’s childhood, innocence, and happiness, I could feel myself slipping away and being forced by circumstances to become something I never imagined or wanted. When the singer whispers “I’m trying to find my way home. I’m sorry. And I miss you…I swear, I’ll make it up to you” leading into his agonizing, repeated howl of “I miss you” all I could think about was my spouse, how much I longed to be with them instead of alone in a closet chasing monsters. “Vaulted” by Reigns A simple, quiet, piano-centered instrumental piece, accompanied, appropriately enough, by the soft dripping of water and the distant sounds of glacial ice rumbling and cracking. I was alone. That was it. It didn’t feel good, but it had taken root in my heart. There was only one way out, and that was to finish the work. I was resigned to this. It didn’t bring peace, but maybe it brought clarity. “Is There Anybody Out There?” by Pink Floyd By December 2010, I had hit the bottom. The Ohio winter was closing in, ice and darkness were far too present, and even though I was nearing the end of the novel, it still seemed so far off and I knew it was filled with nihilistic fury, destruction, and death. And while I was still resigned to finishing the work, a cold black depression took root. I understood that everything I was feeling and everything I was fighting was the result of my own choices and actions. My isolation was nearly total, and yet I was the one who had put up those walls, closed the doors, and hidden away. “Never Going Home” by Xela Another haunting, isolated instrumental. I was in the final stages of the project. The end was near. Strangely though, over the previous 500+ days, as my perceptions of reality flickered between my waking life and the Pequod, I had come to see the characters that I had been thinking about and drawing as not only real people but also companions. And I knew that very soon, I would be drawing their deaths, by drowning or by violence, and saying goodbye. I think that as my isolation increased, the constant presence of Queequeg, Starbuck, Ishmael and the rest became a comfort. And I knew that the journey had changed me, revealing parts of myself and aspects of reality I may have been happier not realizing. I was never going home again. “Peaceful Repose” by Vincent Diamante (from the “Flower” game soundtrack) The ending came quietly. There was guilt. I had willingly accompanied the men of the Pequod to their deaths, and had been callous enough to make a permanent visual record of it. And all with the undeniable comfort of knowing that I could and would safely step away, back into life. But, much more painfully, I had walled myself off from my friends, my life, and my spouse for more than a year. And for what? Was it worth it? I still think about that, to this day. But, in spite of this, I did feel some unexpected peace. The work was complete. The story was over. When I finished the final illustration, I put the brush down and cried. I was finally free. For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. Matt Kish is the illustrator of the recent reissued Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page (Tin House/Zando). If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/22/matt-kishs-book-notes-music-playlist-for-his-book-moby-dick-in-pictures/ #booknotes #mattkish #notesmusic #musicplaylist #pictures #melville #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #laurengroff #roxanegay #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Linda Kass’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel World News from Waverley High In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Linda Kass’s novel World News from Waverley High is a transportive coming-of-age story. In her own words, here is Linda Kass’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel World News from Waverley High: World News from Waverley High is set against the backdrop of national unrest and some of the most vital music ever created. Music has always been a focal point for me, so it felt essential that the soundtrack of the era permeates this story. The Sixties produced music that was socially inseparable from the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the cultural upheaval of the era. The music wasn’t just a soundtrack. It was part of the argument. It became both the mirror and catalyst for the movements of social change. During the November 1969 Second Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, the biggest turnout of its kind that Washington had ever seen—described as the size of two Woodstocks—rock and folk performers galvanized demonstrators gathered across from the White House as Pete Seeger led the crowd in singing Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.” When I learned about this real scene, I knew I had to include it. In reimagining this consequential historical period, I knew I would weave in moments where music grounded the story, made it feel authentic and come alive. This was one of those moments. My novel begins with Sly and the Family Stone. In fact, four of the sixty songs included in World New from Waverley High are by this rock-pop-funk band that emerged from the Bay Area in 1968, preaching a message of peace and equity. Sly and the Family Stone was the first racially integrated band in rock history. Their hit and the title of my second chapter, “Everyday People,” reflected their ethos, a protest song wrapped in joy. Released in November of 1968 and the band’s first No. 1 hit, the song is a plea for peace and equality between differing races and social groups. It suggests we celebrate our differences, with “different strokes for different folks” which became a well-known catchphrase. It is this idea, that it makes no difference what group you’re in, that narrator Lena Rosen shares when she says, “Waverley’s energy comes from all of us, thrown together with different socioeconomic backgrounds, different religions, different races.” Toward the end of the second chapter, the Beatles song “Blackbird,” is featured. Written by Paul McCartney in 1968, the song was primarily a metaphor for the Civil Rights Movement. McCartney was deeply affected by news of the 1960s race riots and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.. Rather than explicitly writing a localized political protest song, McCartney veiled the lyrics, writing it as a message of hope and empowerment to Black women facing racial oppression in the American South, using the British slang term “bird” for girl. Lena’s growing friendship with Derrick Wright, a fellow reporter for the school paper who is Black, leads to a conversation about music and Lena is surprised by his interest in this song. Derrick tells her he heard McCartney on a radio interview talking about the song and how he dedicated it to people affected by discrimination. Derrick said he felt a calmness when he listened to the song and remarked how that was odd given that it was racial tension that inspired the lyrics. By the spring, Waverley High experiences a bomb threat and then the nation experiences the well-known series of bombings in an elegant brownstone in Greenwich Village, near Lena’s grandparents’ home. Protests are going on everywhere, even close by at Ohio State University. Lena calls her sister, Sylvia, attending a college in northern Ohio, to make sure she’s safe and to try to understand what college students are thinking. After a girl answers the dorm’s house phone, she leaves the phone cord dangling and Lena hears someone yell, “Play a new LP!” Lena hears the needle scratch vinyl, and an electric guitar slowly plays two notes followed by a quiet pulse-like drumbeat. “There’s something happening here. But what it is ain’t exactly clear.” While Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” originated on a Hollywood street corner, its amorphous lyrics allowed it to become a universal anthem for the anti-war movement and 1960s counterculture. It remains an enduring classic about youth, generational friction, and protest. Ben King’s 1961 classic, “Stand by Me,” is a powerful anthem about loyalty, companionship, and finding strength in numbers. At its core, the song conveys that if you have a trusted person by your side, you can endure and overcome any of life’s hardships. Because of its message of unwavering solidarity, the song was widely adopted by Civil Rights activists in the 1960s. There’s a cool garage band in my novel called the Halcyons who play a concert for peace for their high school and surrounding community in early 1970. As the school year draws to a close, Kerry Ross, Halcyon’s lead guitarist and Student Council President, strums the solo in Rich Kohn’s garage (Rich is the band’s drummer and concert organizer) while Lena and a few others gather and listen. It reminds Lena of the friendships forged at Waverley and the realization that they may be listening to the Halcyons for the last time. During a weekly Current History class, where the textbook is Time Magazine and discussion covers national and world news, students lament over the death marches and nationwide protests. Lena makes an emotional plea for it all to stop, and the classroom becomes silent until Derrick steps in. “It’s all in the music, man. Those songs tell our story. I mean, listen to this piece on Pete Seeger’s new album called ‘Bring Them Home.’ The words. They’re an explicit retort to this senseless war.” The music of the 1960s transcended mere entertainment to become a cultural force, helping shape collective consciousness during one of America’s most transformative decades. also at Largehearted Boy: Linda Kass’s playlist for her novel Tasa’s Song For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. LINDA KASS began her career as a magazine journalist and correspondent for regional and national publications. She is the author of three previous works of historical fiction: Tasa’s Song (2016), A Ritchie Boy (2020), and Bessie (2023). Her fourth novel, World News at Waverley High, was just released and includes a soundtrack of the era’s iconic music. A longtime civic leader, she is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookstore in Central Ohio. Linda lives in Columbus, Ohio. Find her online at lindakass.com If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/22/linda-kasss-book-notes-music-playlist-for-her-novel-world-news-from-waverley-high/ #waverleyhigh #booknotes #lindakass #novelworld #notesmusic #musicplaylist #familystone #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #laurengroff #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Bradley Sides’s Book Notes music playlist for his novella The Volcano Keeper In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Bradley Sides’s novella The Volcano Keeper is a moving fable of family and love. The Southern Review of Books wrote of the book: “Beyond clear-eyed descriptions of the world Charlie inhabits, the deeper beauty of this story is the way grief and life spin together like a thaumatrope (a spin art toy) to create a picture of love.” In his own words, here is Bradley Sides’s Book Notes music playlist for his novella The Volcano Keeper: It was August of 2023. My wife and I were leaving Mount Rainier National Park and headed toward Crater Lake National Park. I was processing all the grand beauty I’d observed from the past few days—this was the first time I’d seen a volcano, after all. Tyler Childers was on in our vehicle, as he often is, and there were volcanoes—majestic, terrifying, awe-inspiring volcanoes—surrounding us. I didn’t know it at the time, but I should have. A new book had been conceived. For the longest time in my pre-writing phase, I sat with only the image. There was a volcano. There was a volcano. There was a volcano. But, then, it hit me. Finally, music was there, too, and the stories Tyler Childers was telling reminded me of my rural home. All of it. The laughter and joy and grace and loss and love. I had my inspiration for the world inside The Volcano Keeper, and I knew exactly where Charlie Melvin, my book’s protagonist, and his cattle farm, garden, and creek would be—exactly where all of his family, friends, and neighbors would be, too. Without music, this book wouldn’t exist. I’d just have a volcano, but with no place to put it. Here is the playlist to take you into The Volcano Keeper’s fictional Lynnville County, Alabama and the people who live there: Tyler Childers’ “Universal Sound” It’s the song that took me home—and the one that also helped find Charlie Melvin, the protagonist of my novella, his. “Universal Sound” really is the song of my life, and I think this book is the most me I’ll ever write. Iris Dement’s “Let the Mystery Be” So much of The Volcano Keeper is about belief. How it shapes us. How it enriches us. How it haunts us. This is my go-to song for contemplating belief. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s “Dreamsicle” I structed my novella as a series of vignettes to reflect the hazy, brief, and fragmented reflection of memories. Isbell, with his Alabama history, helps me go back to the past—and to imagine Charlie’s, too. Adrianne Lenker’s “Free Treasure” I love Lenker’s work, both as a solo artist and with Big Thief. “Free Treasure” has to be on this playlist because it so tenderly looks at the value of love. The song feels like a celebration of those relationships we hold dear. I imagine some of the family scenes in The Volcano Keeper being like treasured photographs, and this beautiful song is what I hear in the background. Mavis Staples’ “Sad and Beautiful World” So much of The Volcano Keeper is about how we process grief. For Charlie, the beauty of the natural world is one of the ways. It’s a sad, sad world, but there’s so much absolute wonder and beauty. Waxahatchee’s “Right Back to It” (feat. MJ Lenderman) There’s a lot of water in my book, and I promise you, each time I listen to “Right Back to It,” I’m floating in the creek. Watchhouse’s “Old Ties and Companions” Time is fleeting, and we have to hold on to those we love. They won’t be here forever. The Volcano Keeper explores this idea more, and this song from Watchhouse captures that feeling so movingly. Sierra Ferrell’s “Lighthouse” Love, in its best form, can help us find our way. Charlie is lost a lot in my book. He’s searching and searching and searching. He believes he finds the titular object Ferrell sings of. Valerie June’s “With You” Valerie June’s “With You” is one of the greatest love songs ever written. I’ll believe that until I die. It’s a celebration—of love and of life. While The Volcano Keeper certainly has sadness and darkness, I hope, at the end of the day, it reads like a celebration. Brandi Carlile’s “You and Me on the Rock” I have to add one more great love song on here. The Volcano Keeper is set on literal rocks that keep expanding as the story goes further and further—and the love gets deeper and deeper. Kacey Musgraves’ “The Architect” I don’t want to give away too much of my book’s ending, but, as I’ve said, the journey of Charlie’s life is so much about belief. Who/what guides him? Does he even a guide? Musgraves’ “The Architect” asks these same questions… The Avett Brothers’ “Murder in the City” “Murder in the City” has one of my favorite lyrics of the band’s catalog: “Always remember there was nothing worth sharing / Like the love that let us share our name.” For a book so focused on family, this song has to be on this playlist. Sturgill Simpson’s “Panbowl” I imagine most of us have those songs that just make us tear up each time we hear them, no matter how many times we hear them. Welp, Sturgill Simpson’s “Panbowl” is one of mine. It’s so full of loss and longing and sadness and pain, but it’s mixed with so much love and beauty that it feels like it’s a whole damn album (or novel) in itself. Sarah Kate Morgan’s “Heaven In My Mind” I can think of no better song than the folk gem “Heaven In My Mind” from the incredibly-talented Sarah Kate Morgan to match the ending of The Volcano Keeper. This song transports us with such peace and beauty, and that’s the very thing I hope the ending of my little book does, too. also at Largehearted Boy: Bradley Sides’s playlist for his story collection Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood Bradley Sides’s playlist for his story collection Those Fantastic Lives For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. Bradley Sides is the author of two previous short story collections, Those Fantastic Lives and Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood, a 2024 Book of the Year finalist at Southern Literary Review. His writing appears at Chapter 16, Electric Literature, LeVar Burton Reads, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Southern Review of Books, where he also serves as the host of “The Southern Summer Book Club.” He lives in Madison, Alabama, with his wife, and, on most days, he can be found teaching writing and literature at Calhoun Community College. His latest book is The Volcano Keeper. If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/20/bradley-sidess-book-notes-music-playlist-for-his-novella-the-volcano-keeper/ #volcanokeeper #booknotes #bradleysides #notesmusic #musicplaylist #nationalpark #charliemelvin #tylerchilders #universalsound #danaspiotta #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

James Elkins’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Stories, Like Illnesses In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. James Elkins’s novel Stories, Like Illnesses is truly uniquely told and a mesmerizing treatise on memory and self. In his own words, here is James Elkins’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Stories, Like Illnesses: This is a wonderful site. I love the difference between authors who have favorite songs on deep background, giving them the feeling of their life, and authors who play particular songs in their head while they write, or the difference between authors who cite songs in their writing, and authors who hide them. My work is an outlier in all this, because it centers on music, and there’s music in the book—actual sheet music, which can be played or just seen on the page. That’s not to say I don’t have a playlist in my mind, and my book has references to some of those tracks—Dylan’s My Back Pages, the Grateful Dead’s Ripple—but the music in the novel is very different. The book is the story of a person who’s undergoing a crisis. He keeps a diary of his year. At the end it’s all too much for him, and something happens (I won’t say what). Then, forty years later, we meet him again, aged over ninety. He has just been down in the basement and rediscovered his notes from that year. He reads them, hoping to relive his past—but he fails to remember much of anything that’s in the notebooks. He’s forgotten places, events, and even people. But as he reads, he realizes that he has taken the feelings he had for those people and places, and found them again in the music he plays on the piano. He has been living alone, playing the piano for forty years, and he sees that some of the music he plays lets him relive the emotions of the past without remembering the particulars or even the people. He sets out to write notes to describe what he’s discovered. The book Stories, Like Illnesses has notes at the end, written by the elderly narrator. In different sections, he retells the stories of the book as music. His notes create a parallel text, a second text, in which the stories you’ve read in the book are retold as music. The older narrator says this is true portraiture, very exact in its emotions, not distracted by the actual people and events. It’s my attempt at a new kind of storytelling. The composers and pieces I mention here are all real, but none of the music is theirs. It’s reminiscent of the original composers’ pieces, but it’s changed, because it’s the way the character remembers the music. That’s why I don’t have a Spotify list: you can go and find the original pieces, but they aren’t the ones in the book. These videos are the only place to hear the music that is printed in the book, and played, in my imagination, by the old narrator. 1. Like all five of these, the first video is only an excerpt of the pages where the narrator talks about Rosie, a woman he had an affair with forty years earlier. The place she had in his mind was taken by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. The narrator talks about Martinu’s lovely naïve music, which is very simple, but tends to evaporate, like Rosie evaporated from the narrator’s life. 2. Nikolai Medtner was a conservative Russian composer, a friend of Rachmaninoff. The narrator associates his melodies with perfect midsummer days in his very distant youth. He grew up in Watkins Glen, New York, and had a briefly idyllic childhood that he now rehearses by playing passages of similar simple happiness in Medtner. 3. Catherine was the narrator’s co-worker when he had a job in Guelph, Ontario, before his crisis set in. She was prickly and aggressive. The narrator associates her with Leo Ornstein, a wild modernist composer. Like the others, the piece here, called Suicide in an Airplane, is a real one, which however only exists in fragments in Samuel’s mind. 4. Iannis Xenakis is a favorite of listeners who like experimental postwar music. He was a mathematician, and composed pieces far beyond the capacity of most performers. This excerpt is about a piece called Mists, which asks pianists to play at several different speeds simultaneously. It reminds the narrator of his life during the year of his crisis, when many voices impinged on him and tore his attention in different directions. The music here begins like the real Mists, but most is my own composition. 5. Anton Webern was Schönberg’s most important student. As the narrator says, he composed very short pieces because he was trying to compress the excesses of old-fashioned music like Beethoven or Brahms. He didn’t trust what they wrote; he needed music to be purged of sloppy emotions. The narrator is reminded of Webern when he reads a chapter of his old notebooks describing how he had once tried to understand his own family by comparing them to the parts of a microscope. If he only managed his microscope properly, he thought, he could control everyone’s emotions. The comparison, Webern to microscope parts, is meant to conjure the hopelessness of containing emotion. I hope these are interesting. They’re only small windows onto the novel, but large windows beyond the novel and back to the original composers. also at Largehearted Boy: James Elkins’s playlist for his novel Weak in Comparison to Dreams For book & music links, themed playlists, a wrap-up of Largehearted Boy feature posts, and more, check out Largehearted Boy’s weekly newsletter. James Elkins is Chair of the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is an art historian and critic as well as a recognized authority on the experimental use of images in works by W.H. Sebald and Anne Carson to Claudia Rankine and Teju Cole. Elkins grew up in Ithaca, New York and for the last twenty years he has lived, studied, and taught in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of several books on fine art and photography which focus on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider supporting the site to keep it strong. https://largeheartedboy.com/2026/10/20/james-elkinss-book-notes-music-playlist-for-his-novel-stories-like-illnesses/ #likeillnesses #jameselkins #booknotes #music #novelstories #musicplaylist #danaspiotta #hanifabdurraqib #laurengroff #roxanegay #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit