It may be tough to accept, but these days, it’s beginning to look like R.E.M. are truly broken up and moving on. For their part, Peter Buck and Mike Mills have stayed relatively busy with new projects in the interim, but frontman Michael Stipe appears to be enjoying his time away from the spotlight—at least for now.
That’s really no surprise for someone as notably reserved as Stipe (he was originally so shy that he had to sit next to the drums while the rest of the band was interviewed by David Letterman in 1983), but appropriately enough, given his personality, he’s popped back up briefly this week in the literary world.
Conceived by editor Aaron Hicklin, One Grand is a new installation bookshop in New York that exclusively stocks books chosen by creative figures as their ten books that they’d take with them to a desert island. So far, Carrie Brownstein, Alice Waters, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have been among the most notable contributors, and now Michael Stipe has joined that list with his own submissions, which includes books from Rimbaud, Didion, Vonnegut, and Smith (Patti, that is).
You can read Stipe’s little blurbs (which are very charming) about each selection here, or just see the complete list of books below.
1. Complete Works by Arthur Rimbaud
2. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
3. Dhalgren by Samuel R Delaney
4. Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
5. All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland
6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
7. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
8. Four Plays by Aristophanes translated by William Arrowsmith
9. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
10. Just Kids by Patti Smith
(via NME)
