アナザーチームがこの夏休みに持っていく本

Hannah Lack, deputy and literary editor 

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

Whenever I walk across Vauxhall Bridge, I wonder who actually lives in those empty-looking luxury high-rises that have sprung up in the last decade … investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s twisty, compulsive new book supplies a few answers. London Falling delves into the deeply murky underside of the city, told through the tragic story of one bright but troubled teenager who got in way over his head. That London’s gilded surface does not spring from the cleanest of sources (we all know the Docklands were built on Brink’s Mat gold) is a tale as old as the city itself and Keefe’s book feels almost Dickensian in its scope. It takes readers from Mayfair casinos to private schools whose students get dropped off by limo, to East London strip clubs, peeling back the layers of corruption and greed as it follows the money sloshing up and down the Thames.

Rebecca Perlmutar, senior fashion editor

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Overstory is a beautiful book about connection in a disconnected world. I was heavily influenced by Susannah Frankel who insists it’s the best book she’s read in a long time.

Susannah Frankel, editor-in-chief 

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I didn’t read it when I was growing up so this is my first time and I now understand why it is on everyone’s list. It is majestic: incredibly profound, mythical and mystical, all with humour. It also feels especially poignant now as a statement on democracy, patriarchy and, of course, America. To me, it is a beautifully human book, as brutal in places as it is compassionate.

Alexander Fury, fashion features director

Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-De-Siècle Paris by Caroline Weber

Seemingly five centuries ago, I bought the book Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-De-Siècle Paris by Caroline Weber, who also wrote one of my favourite books ever, 2006’s Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. She does a great line in subtitles. I love the geekiest fashion books imaginable, and have never found a moment to even crack the spine of Proust’s Duchess, which examines the real-life trio of aristocratic women who inspired Proust’s composite Oriane de Guermantes. I’m hoping this summer I’ll finally get around to dusting it off.

Bryanna Kelly, producer

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A few summers ago, a friend of mine from California gave me Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer to read on a flight back to the UK. It’s become a book I keep by my bedside and have brought on most trips since. Kimmerer weaves anecdotes from her indigenous upbringing in rural North America with lessons in ecology and community building without forcing any political agenda, which is why I think anyone would love this book. Her stories feel almost like a warm embrace, rather than dystopian. She shares her challenges with conforming to eurocentric ideologies while attending university, and about how she is unlearning those ideologies through oral history, land preservation and learning her native tongue. There are so many teachable moments like how to implement community building in a scarcity driven economy as she provides a truly unique perspective on anti-capitalism by introducing the “gift economy” which is a common practice among indigenous cultures. Her gift to her daughters and to her home environment moved me to tears – a first for me. My goal is to pass the book along to someone else in order to pay it forward, but, it’s been really difficult to give up …

Precious Greham, fashion coordinator

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto by Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel’s Misfits has become a comfort read for me (I read it, like, twice a month). It’s a one-sitting read and exactly the kind of reflective, funny and charming thing I want to consume while sunbathing on the beach.

Rose Dodd, editorial assistant 

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan; Ulysses by James Joyce; Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Like underwear, I tend to pack more books than are necessary. This time, I’ll be packing Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, because who doesn’t want to read about a fateful summer on the French Riviera when on a fateful summer holiday of one’s own, not quite on the Riviera but only down the road in the Languedoc. When I finish that, I might try my hand at Ulysses again, which I pack every holiday just to make my luggage that little bit more painful to carry. I imagine I’ll quickly put that back down, and instead skim Romeo and Juliet because it’s my Roman Empire. Favourite lines: “O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon”; “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move”; “For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch. And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” Perfection.

Alex Peters, Dazed Beauty, beauty director

Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu; Greasepaint by Hannah Levene

I was recommended Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu by a colleague whose pop culture taste swings wildly from immaculate to baffling, with nothing in between. She’s refused to tell me anything about the book except to mysteriously, knowingly say that I, specifically, will enjoy the story and in particular the relationship dynamic between protagonist Ruth and her best friend Maria. With that as my only information, of course I was immediately intrigued and got my hands on a copy. How can you resist a recommendation like that? 

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes is a book I will always return to. Famously inscrutable, I struggled with it for years until finally unlocking its secret: don’t read it as a plot that you need to keep track of (or even as sentences that need to make sense) – just release control completely, relax and get carried along by the free-flowing poetry of the language. Hannah Levene’s Greasepaint has been described as New York’s answer to Nightwood which was enough to sell me on it. Taking place across eternal Friday nights at a lesbian bar, a cast of butches and Yiddish anarchists dance, flirt, organise, and debate Gershwin. A perfect beach read.

Sophie Bew, editor

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This is the summer I will read Wolf Hall. I get a perverse pleasure from steeping myself in the texture of cold rainy England while lying on a sun lounger – it gets me into back-to-school mode. I’ve been told countless times just how compelling Hilary Mantel’s enveloping Tudor trilogy is and it’s finally time. I have two small kids though, so another essential acquisition to help me on this time travelling mission is the Yoto Mini Adventure audiobook kit, complete with Harry Potter, Disney Hits and Draw Along cards. And the daisy-chained headphones means We Don’t Talk About Bruno, happily, has an audience of just two.

George Pistachio, digital features and content editor

Famesick by Lena Dunham

I have always been a die-hard Lena Dunham defender. We do not need to spend too long discussing the newer rom-com … but Girls is, to my mind, one of the greatest television series ever made. This is not up for debate. So I have been saving Famesick, Dunham’s highly publicised memoir, for the right moment. The book traces Dunham’s life before, during and after Girls, including the behind-the-scenes material that has been leaking onto my Twitter timeline in pearl-clutching morsels. There is, apparently, the rocky relationship with Adam Driver, the rocky relationship with Jack Antonoff, the rocky relationship with … well, you get the idea. As someone who likes to pretend I am above celebrity gossip, I am extremely ready. If there are old grudges, ill-advised romances or previously undisclosed interpersonal moments, I would like to receive them exactly as god intended – horizontal on a sunbed with a margarita.

Hannah Lack, deputy and literary editor 

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

Whenever I walk across Vauxhall Bridge, I wonder who actually lives in those empty-looking luxury high-rises that have sprung up in the last decade … investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s twisty, compulsive new book supplies a few answers. London Falling delves into the deeply murky underside of the city, told through the tragic story of one bright but troubled teenager who got in way over his head. That London’s gilded surface does not spring from the cleanest of sources (we all know the Docklands were built on Brink’s Mat gold) is a tale as old as the city itself and Keefe’s book feels almost Dickensian in its scope. It takes readers from Mayfair casinos to private schools whose students get dropped off by limo, to East London strip clubs, peeling back the layers of corruption and greed as it follows the money sloshing up and down the Thames.

Rebecca Perlmutar, senior fashion editor

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Overstory is a beautiful book about connection in a disconnected world. I was heavily influenced by Susannah Frankel who insists it’s the best book she’s read in a long time.

Susannah Frankel, editor-in-chief 

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I didn’t read it when I was growing up so this is my first time and I now understand why it is on everyone’s list. It is majestic: incredibly profound, mythical and mystical, all with humour. It also feels especially poignant now as a statement on democracy, patriarchy and, of course, America. To me, it is a beautifully human book, as brutal in places as it is compassionate.

Alexander Fury, fashion features director

Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-De-Siècle Paris by Caroline Weber

Seemingly five centuries ago, I bought the book Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-De-Siècle Paris by Caroline Weber, who also wrote one of my favourite books ever, 2006’s Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. She does a great line in subtitles. I love the geekiest fashion books imaginable, and have never found a moment to even crack the spine of Proust’s Duchess, which examines the real-life trio of aristocratic women who inspired Proust’s composite Oriane de Guermantes. I’m hoping this summer I’ll finally get around to dusting it off.

Bryanna Kelly, producer

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A few summers ago, a friend of mine from California gave me Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer to read on a flight back to the UK. It’s become a book I keep by my bedside and have brought on most trips since. Kimmerer weaves anecdotes from her indigenous upbringing in rural North America with lessons in ecology and community building without forcing any political agenda, which is why I think anyone would love this book. Her stories feel almost like a warm embrace, rather than dystopian. She shares her challenges with conforming to eurocentric ideologies while attending university, and about how she is unlearning those ideologies through oral history, land preservation and learning her native tongue. There are so many teachable moments like how to implement community building in a scarcity driven economy as she provides a truly unique perspective on anti-capitalism by introducing the “gift economy” which is a common practice among indigenous cultures. Her gift to her daughters and to her home environment moved me to tears – a first for me. My goal is to pass the book along to someone else in order to pay it forward, but, it’s been really difficult to give up …

Precious Greham, fashion coordinator

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto by Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel’s Misfits has become a comfort read for me (I read it, like, twice a month). It’s a one-sitting read and exactly the kind of reflective, funny and charming thing I want to consume while sunbathing on the beach.

Rose Dodd, editorial assistant 

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan; Ulysses by James Joyce; Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Like underwear, I tend to pack more books than are necessary. This time, I’ll be packing Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, because who doesn’t want to read about a fateful summer on the French Riviera when on a fateful summer holiday of one’s own, not quite on the Riviera but only down the road in the Languedoc. When I finish that, I might try my hand at Ulysses again, which I pack every holiday just to make my luggage that little bit more painful to carry. I imagine I’ll quickly put that back down, and instead skim Romeo and Juliet because it’s my Roman Empire. Favourite lines: “O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon”; “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move”; “For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch. And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” Perfection.

Alex Peters, Dazed Beauty, beauty director

Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu; Greasepaint by Hannah Levene

I was recommended Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu by a colleague whose pop culture taste swings wildly from immaculate to baffling, with nothing in between. She’s refused to tell me anything about the book except to mysteriously, knowingly say that I, specifically, will enjoy the story and in particular the relationship dynamic between protagonist Ruth and her best friend Maria. With that as my only information, of course I was immediately intrigued and got my hands on a copy. How can you resist a recommendation like that? 

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes is a book I will always return to. Famously inscrutable, I struggled with it for years until finally unlocking its secret: don’t read it as a plot that you need to keep track of (or even as sentences that need to make sense) – just release control completely, relax and get carried along by the free-flowing poetry of the language. Hannah Levene’s Greasepaint has been described as New York’s answer to Nightwood which was enough to sell me on it. Taking place across eternal Friday nights at a lesbian bar, a cast of butches and Yiddish anarchists dance, flirt, organise, and debate Gershwin. A perfect beach read.

Sophie Bew, editor

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This is the summer I will read Wolf Hall. I get a perverse pleasure from steeping myself in the texture of cold rainy England while lying on a sun lounger – it gets me into back-to-school mode. I’ve been told countless times just how compelling Hilary Mantel’s enveloping Tudor trilogy is and it’s finally time. I have two small kids though, so another essential acquisition to help me on this time travelling mission is the Yoto Mini Adventure audiobook kit, complete with Harry Potter, Disney Hits and Draw Along cards. And the daisy-chained headphones means We Don’t Talk About Bruno, happily, has an audience of just two.

George Pistachio, digital features and content editor

Famesick by Lena Dunham

I have always been a die-hard Lena Dunham defender. We do not need to spend too long discussing the newer rom-com … but Girls is, to my mind, one of the greatest television series ever made. This is not up for debate. So I have been saving Famesick, Dunham’s highly publicised memoir, for the right moment. The book traces Dunham’s life before, during and after Girls, including the behind-the-scenes material that has been leaking onto my Twitter timeline in pearl-clutching morsels. There is, apparently, the rocky relationship with Adam Driver, the rocky relationship with Jack Antonoff, the rocky relationship with … well, you get the idea. As someone who likes to pretend I am above celebrity gossip, I am extremely ready. If there are old grudges, ill-advised romances or previously undisclosed interpersonal moments, I would like to receive them exactly as god intended – horizontal on a sunbed with a margarita.