It’s time for our annual look at what we’ve been reading over the summer break. John, Andy and Nicky discuss David Keenan’s fourth novel Monument Maker; Open Water, a promising debut novella from Caleb Azumah Nelson; Deborah Levy’s three-volume ‘living autobiography’, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate; a reissue of Percival Everett’s satirical diatribe Erasure; Life With a Capital L, Geoff Dyer’s selection of essays by D.H. Lawrence; and Vivian Gornick’s The End of the Novel of Love and Unfinished Business, in which the author re-reads favourite classic books and comes to fresh conclusions about them. Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length) 06:12 - Monument Maker by David Keenan 17:47 - Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson 25:24 - Erasure by Percival Everett 33:38 - Things I Don’t Want to Know; The Cost of Living; Real Estate by Deberah Levy 40:55 - Life With A Capital L: Essays by D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer 48:33 - The End of the Novel of Love; Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick *To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops *For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.