A Calvinist Narrowly Avoids Pleasure

A couple of recommendations for you.

Book
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
The latest novel from David Mitchell and it's very good. It's probably his most straightforward novel yet, focusing on 13 year old Jason Taylor growing up in a small town in England. It covers his discovery of girls, his writing of poetry, bullying, family problems, the Falklands and his stuttering over the space of a year and it is very well written. You are transported back to your own early teenage years and can easily picture what life was like for Jason. Apparently it's semi-autobiographical which may account for this. Black Swan Green is Mitchell's fourth book and he is one of my favourite writers.

Music
Ballad of the Book - Various
This is a collaboration between Scottish writers and musicians. Various Scottish writers including some famous ones such as Ian Rankin have written song lyrics and passed them onto Scottish musicians. They have then written music to go with the lyrics and recorded the songs for the album. It's a very good way to showcase new and existing talent in Scotland, I hadn't even heard of some of the artists so it was a good introduction. Song lyrics are a form of writing/poetry so the collaboration works well, it's a surprise that this kind of album doesn't happen more often. As you can probably guess some of the lyrics are very good and my personal favourite is The Rebel On His Own Tonight which is by Malcolm Middleton & Alan Bissett. There are some great random rhyming such as "you are steaming, you are Stephen King" or "nights at the Manique, dancing to Britney, wishing your home town wisnae so shitty". There isn't really a weak track on the album, all of them work well.