A Literary Palate Cleanser: Do You Have One?
Yesterday on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast, hosts Stephen Thompson and Nate Chinen discussed some new albums released. It’s a great podcast and one I look forward to listening to every week.
At one point, the pair are discussing Marshall Allen’s new debut album—the guy is 100!—and Thompson talks about how approachable Allen’s new album is, comparing it to the music of Juan Garcia Esquivel, which he describes as having a ‘hi-fi, cocktail jazz” feel. Thompson then mentions that Esquivel is music he dips into when he needs a palate cleanser.
That got me to thinking: do I have a palate cleanser for reading?
The short answer is no, and for a very simple reason: I read so many varieties of books that each subsequent book is the palate cleanser. For example, here are the books I’ve read/listened to this year:
- The Great When by Alan Moore (fiction, fantasy)
- Mozart by Peter Gay (non-fiction, biography)
- The JFK Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer (non-fiction, history)
- The Human Target by Tom King and Greg Smallwood (comic, noir/super-hero)
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckey (fiction, science fiction)
- Food for Thought by Alton Brown (non-fiction, memoir/essays)
In my reading life, I’ve long learned that I can’t just blaze through the same author or similar genres back to back to back. My palate cleanser is different genres and fiction/non-fiction.
How about you? Do you have a go-to palate cleanser author and/or genre?