five books entertaining enough to keep me off TikTok
but I'll admit, watching a woman eat a 5kg ‘monster burrito’ at warp speed is profoundly entertaining
I’ve been trying to swap out my nightly rendezvous with the Chinese dopamine machine for 45 minutes of reading.
By all accounts, the overabundance of internet slop that we’re all exposed to nowadays - even those of us who aren’t as hooked on TiketyTok as I am - is making us dumb, depressed, anxious and possibly infertile (if not clinically, then certainly on a practical level in that we’d rather stay home and consume content than go out and eat a dick).
Shitposts and meme culture are radicalizing teenagers and degrading our critical faculties - and while watching a woman eat a 5kg ‘monster burrito’ at warp speed is damn entertaining, it’s probably not enriching my soul in any meaningful way.
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Anyway, what I’ve found is that when I get out of the habit of reading, I need to return to a book that I once found deeply entertaining to get the reading mojo back. After a few nights it’s like that part of my brain has come back online (and my cravings for monster burrito content have quietened).
So this isn’t a list of the best books I’ve ever read - although, all the ones below are really great, beautifully written, some bordering on genius - it’s a list of books that I found funny, interesting and gripping enough to keep the itchy scrolling finger from straying over to my phone.
I've tried to avoid the blindingly obvious (like Great Expectations at Christmas or whatever) but if you're looking for something joyful or strange that will actually hold your attention, maybe one of these is worth a try?
Or just enjoy your downtime on food-challenge-tok, no judgement.
Crudo by Olivia Laing
Okay, so, ‘experimental’, ‘stream of consciousness’ and ‘written in real time’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘entertaining’ but this book, christ, I re-read parts of it maybe once a month.
If you haven’t read it, my attempt to explain might put you off but basically, it’s Laing writing as the artist Kathy Acker… Acker died in the late 90s, but I guess in the timeline of the novel, Laing imagines what Acker would think if she was still alive to experience the advent of social media, Trump’s first presidency, Brexit etc - the slow disintegration of society as we once knew it.
Laing wrote it in ‘real time’, meaning that she bashed out a couple of thousand words each day for a few months, reacting to the news cycle in 2017. So what you're reading is effectively her first draft, which obviously makes me feel profoundly mediocre by comparison but whatever, I guess we can't all be geniuses.
Anyway, all of that is just background really because the most important thing to know is that it’s fucking funny, and sharp - a satire on class, wealth, social media. It takes the piss out of what society has become in prose so precise that reading it puts me into a kind of flow state.
My friend Zoe said she didn’t really like this and didn’t get why I loved it so much but whatever, it’s great!!!
Expectation by Anna Hope
I've re-read this so many times I've lost count - I've been trying to pinpoint exactly why I find it so compelling. Ostensibly there's nothing wild about the story - it follows the lives of three female friends as they navigate later adulthood (like in your thirties etc - what’s the bit after youth but before middle age?) But it's beautifully written, stark, evocative and structured in a way that ratchets up the tension to the point where you're desperate to find out what's going to happen next.
Hope captures the ache of unmet expectations, the shape-shifting nature of female friendship, the quiet desperation of wanting more from your life.
And all the characters feel real, like real people.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Should have won the Booker a few years ago IMO. It's about different generations of an Irish family and again, Murray is a master of structure - he leaves each chapter on some kind of emotional cliffhanger so it's a very compulsive read.
It’s also genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Which is rare. The humour sneaks up on you, just as the emotional depth hits like a freight train. Gripping, moving, occasionally unhinged – a perfect reading-reset book.
Luster by Raven Leilani
This book is all nervous energy and emotional combustion. It follows Edie, a twenty-something Black woman who starts an affair with an older white man in an open marriage – and then ends up moving in with him, his wife, and their adopted daughter.
Leilani’s prose is jagged and brilliant and her observations about power, art, sex, precarity, New York, weird jobs, loneliness etc are darkly funny and occasionally brutal.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
This book is strange and haunting in the best way. A woman returns from a deep-sea research mission... different. Her wife begins to wonder who – or what – actually came back.
It’s tender and eerie and beautifully written. The prose has this dreamy stillness that pulls you under, like the sea itself. It’s not fast-paced but it’s totally immersive, i.e. a perfect break from the visual chaos of the internet.