Books You Can Dance To

August 21, 2011 4:09 AM

"One Day" author David Nicholls and others create music playlists to enrich the ties between writer, reader and character.
posted by kickerofelves (4 comments total)

Obviously we can't call them fanmixes when they're generated by the authors.

There are definitely some authors whose not-fanmixes would be of interest to me, so I hope this trend catches on.
posted by immlass at 7:07 AM on August 21, 2011

I was interviewed for this article, and have over 800 author-submitted playlist essays on my blog in my Book Notes series.
posted by kickerofelves at 7:34 AM on August 21, 2011

Wow, I was just going to link to largehearted boy. The Book Notes series really is fantastic and people should check it out. It deserves to be an fpp of its own if it hasn't yet. Had no idea he was a mefite too.
posted by kyleg at 7:44 AM on August 21, 2011

The article makes it seem as though novelists have just latched on to some new unique trend of mentioning specific songs or artists within their books as a way to round out the characters. Writers have been doing that forever, just without sites like Spotify to make it virtually painless for their readers to gather up all of the supplementary material.

Don't get me wrong, I have always embraced this added level of depth in a good story, but I can't help but feel like the whole article is designed to push One Day a little further up out of the hype machine.
posted by pink candy floss at 9:22 AM on August 21, 2011