Books I Recommend Reading After Listening to Everything I Know About Love : A Guest Post from Laufey

Dive into Laufey’s album, Everything I Know About Love, while reading these books recommended by Laufey herself. The album is the perfect pairing for these amazing books, so fill your ears with these melodies and your eyes with these books.

Eve Babitz has quickly become one of my favourite authors since moving to Los Angeles. Sex and Rage is a story about a girl who is an LA girl to the core — she goes about LA meeting all kinds of interesting characters and experiences all the best and worst LA has to offer. Babitz’ writing style is just so witty. I enjoy being crafty with my lyrics and Eve definitely proves that you can be comedic in writing and still be taken seriously.

Similar to Babitz, Joan Didion played a role in teaching me to love my new city, LA. However, her voice contrasts to Babitz’ in that her writing style and tempo felt more like a mother’s voice giving me honest advice. Slouching Towards Bethlehem takes the form of a collection of essays/short stories — my favourite chapters are “On keeping a Journal” and “On self Respect.”

Although this novel was written many centuries ago, so many of the actions and thoughts of the young women in it remain true. It’s no secret that Jane Austen is the master of the romantic novel and this one is her best in my opinion!

Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve encountered. The Summer Book tells the tale of a young girl named Sophia and her grandmother who spend their summer on a tiny remote island off the coast of Finland. The book is absolutely magical and reads like a children’s book for adults. Sophia is a curious and menacing little child with lots of questions for the universe (It was also the first book we read in the Laufey Book Club).

We all know the story of Dorothy from Kansas. It felt wrong to not include one of my favourite childhood books on this list. Children’s books are a great source of inspiration in my own songwriting. Books written for children are so whimsical and imaginative but always have a pretty clear plot line — something I attempt to do in my songs!