by Charlie Gladstone

These are my recommendations this month.

Books.

To read Edmund de Waal’s The Hare With the Amber Eyes was to fall in love with his beautifully constructed narrative.

This year de Waal has a new book out; from the first page Letters to Camondo is every bit as beautiful as The Hare…

One day, when I’m rich, I’ll buy a piece of de Waal’s wonderful pottery. How can one man be so good at two completely different disciplines? It’s not fair.

Art.

Until then I have been enjoying the new catalogue of David Hockney’s wonderful show at the Royal Academy. I have managed to book tickets for September (the Academy are currently operating at 25% capacity) but they also have an excellent interactive tour which I recommend very highly.

I hugely enjoyed Rachel Cusk’s new book, Second Place. I don’t think it’s quite as good as her recent trilogy, but she is a wonderful writer.

And I have bought lots of posters from the new Shrig Shop by the genius that is David Shrigley and his friend, the Copenhagen gallerist Nicolae Wallner. Every day, D Shrig draws a new picture for the window and if you have £2500 available you can buy those from the gallery (given how hot his work is at the moment -you have to enter a lottery to win the chance to buy some of his prints- this is probably a good investment).

Music.

Lorde’s new single Solar Power is that rare beast, the perfect pop song. I am also fascinated by the hard-to-track-down Sault and their new album Nine, which is apparently only available for 90 days. It’s an incredibly strong, confident work with all of the sparkling originality and varied ideas of something like Massive Attack’s magnum opus Blue Lines. I know, high praise indeed, but give it a listen.

Big Red Machine is a collaboration between two of the greats of US alternative music -Aaron Dressner and Justin Vernon- and they have a new album out soon. From what I’ve heard of How Long Do You Think It’s Going to Last? it’s pretty great.

Podcasts.

I’ve been doing a lot of long drives between Hawarden and Glen Dye and I seem to have become a bit of an addict of long form podcasts. Floodlines from the excellent Atlantic (subscribe to the mag, if you don’t already) is a wonderful study of the damage wrought on impoverished communities by Hurricane Katrina. It’s brilliant. 

Lost Hills is an absorbing study of police corruption and murder in Malibu Creek State Park. And Unfinished is a brilliantly told tale of a community of fundamentalist, polygamous Mormons in Utah. By the way, if you didn’t ever listen to West Cork, do so now. It’s the story of the unsolved murder of a French socialite and it is being made into three separate tv series, the first of which, Sophie is out now (it’s good but not as good as the podcast). 

Oh, and Malcolm Gladwell has a new series of Revisionist History, which is good news.

If I was in the market for a new tent (which I sort of always am but can’t justify the import charges and shipping) then I’d definitely go to the US start up The Get Out.

More GOOD recommendations…