Since 2013, Florence Welch aka Florence + the Machine has been sharing her undying love for literature. Via Instagram, the musician has been collectively turning pages with fans via Between Two Books, her very own book club.
The page now has over 80,000 followers, and it works like this: fans and fellow bookworms send photos of their favourite works, design their own bookmarks, and collectively read a work of Florence’s choice. Since starting out, it’s evolved from a few literary plugs to a shared, collective glee about some of her favourite works. Each few weeks, a new book is added to the pile, and some of Florence’s celeb mates are getting in on the action, recommending their personal favourites. The Maccabees have tipped Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, fans have expressed their love for Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and everyone’s become a bit smarter in the process. Here’s a selection of Between Two Books’ faves:
Maggie Nelson – The Argonauts
Recommended by: Greta Gerwig
Greta says: “It is about feminism and gender and sexuality and human rights and art and academia and families and addiction and creativity and ambition and money. It is a blending of the very personal and the very global. It doesn’t prescribe anything, it raises questions… It allows the reader to feel as if they are watching this brilliant woman think, in real time.”
Durga Chew-Bose – Too Much and Not the Mood
Recommended by: Tavi Gevinson, aka founder of Rookie
Tavi says: “This book is so beautifully descriptive that you feel you’re not just getting an author’s worldview, but the worldview of every one of her senses. Then she extracts meaning from these seemingly minor interactions with the aesthetic like she’s both a magician and a scientist. Even though the book consists of non-fiction essays, they are as transporting as a novel, while grounded in wisdom and insight that I’ve passed along to so many friends. That is why I’m sharing it again with you all now.”
Amy Liptrot – The Outrun
Recommended by: Florence Welch
Florence says: “I was profoundly affected by this book… To get swept out to sea and make it back to tell the tale is a kind of grace… that anyone who has managed to get sober will recognise.
Jonathan Safran Foer – Here I Am
Recommended by: Nick Cave
Nick says: “It is a dangerous business recommending a book, especially to a book club, especially a long book, but I fled through ‘Here I Am’ and halways through I was in tears and again a bit further on, more tears… a deeply melancholy book about a doomed family, it is wickedly funny, so that you are laughing too, as it all goes to hell. I loved it.”
Hubert Selby Jr. – Last Exit to Brooklyn
Recommended by: Natasha Khan, aka Bat For Lashes
Natasha says: The book inspired her second album ‘Two Suns’. She describes it as having “great energy and rhythm, and takes on an almost episodic filmic format… It’s a really great and gripping read!”