For SLEEK 62, out now, Raven Smith shares his favourite books with a healthy dose of humour. From Zadie Smith to Candace Bushnell, these are books not just for last minute summer getaways and sandy beach reads, but for life!
Sex and the City — Candace Bushnell (Abacus)
It’s interesting to go back to the source material of big era-defining moments, those totems of culture that had everybody water cooler-ing. Picking through the collected New York Observer columns, you feel like an archaeologist, excavating the precious fragments of an ancient civilisation. Bushnell’s original book surpasses the trite Cosmos and Monolos of the TV show, and cuts to the prehistoric bone with effervescent observations of 30-somethings sniffing out Manhattan’s eligible bachelors like truffles.
Calypso — David Sedaris (Little Brown)
Great books are like dinners with old friends when you’re all laughing at a private joke based on a collective history. This book of stories functions in much the same way, as if it has known you for years, each seemingly throwaway line referencing a bespoke multilayered relationship between you and Sedaris. Whether feeding his tumour to a convivial turtle, or obsessively collecting litter, Sedaris beachcombs his own life for personal and familial flaws that pepper the book and spice up the anecdotal traffic at his guesthouse in North Carolina.
Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights: A Journey Deeper into Dining Hell — Jay Rayner (Faber&Faber)
Staying in is fine, but you inevitably end up masturbating and laughing at your own jokes, whereas going out always has the thrill of the unknown. We live in exhaustingly likable times – digital platitude clicks – so it’s refreshing to hear ruminations of dislike from Rayner here. The book relives his 20 most terrible dining experiences in warts-and-all detail. No good restaurant review is made-up of the texture of potato waffles. It’s about ambience and service and being seated, catastrophically near the toilets. Pull up a chair.
Feel Free — Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
A Zadie Smith text changes the tempo of my day, forcing me to stop and contemplate both the fundamental and the trivial aspects of modern life, focussing the mind like a dose of Adderall. More probing than definitive, this book kneads the dough of discourse, not necessarily producing finished loaves. As curious about the depiction of corpses in Renaissance paintings as how Michael Jackson dances, Smith performs a dexterous intensifying and underlining of the status quo.
Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker — David Remnick (Modern Library Inc.)
Nothing says “I’m an intellectual with a thirst for intelligent news and culture” like a New Yorker subscription, even as the unread magazines pile up by the toilet like a miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa. It’s important to read about war and famine and global-scale suppression, but once in a while we all need a good laugh. Step forward this anthology that silver-lines every news cloud. The joking is wry and cerebral but sometimes you laugh so hard you get a nosebleed.