Shelfies #28: Helen Barrett

This is the shelf closest to my bed where books join the to-read queue, or are recently finished and I'm still thinking about them, or I just like to keep them to hand.

The Blue Meanie card came from a shop in Liverpool, an illustration by Heinz Edelmann from the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. If you've seen the film, you'll know the Blue Meanies are the baddies to the Beatles' goodies; a quasi-fascist, goose-stepping and ultimately ridiculous army of music-hating beings out to destroy music and joy. They terrified me as a child. Now I keep a Blue Meanie close to remind me that fears are ludicrous.

H.B. Cresswell's The Honeywood File is a comedy masterpiece about the folly and petty vanities of house-building and the acquiring of property, in the form of a series of letters between an architect, his clients and a shifting cast of builders, lawyers and various hangers-on. It was written nearly 100 years ago but of course, as long as there are architects and clients it remains fresh and sparkling: humans' ability to mess things up never changes. My husband bought this 1969 Faber edition for me in a charity shop a few years ago - the best 85p ever spent. 

Hanif Kureishi's writing has helped me time and again, ever since I first read The Buddha of Suburbia in the early 1990s. I re-read his Collected Essays recently when I was stuck, for subject matter, for structure, for purpose. Of course Kureishi can do fiction, journalism, screenwriting, memoir, diarist, the lot - I'm just a journalist. But a few of his essays concentrate on the frustrations and humiliations of writing, which are highly relatable and made me want to start again. He has a clear sense of his own ridiculousness, too, which I love.

Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal was written in 1938 as an account of living through the 1930s, everyday living and private thoughts set against frightening events of the outside world, the settlement in Munich and the slow defeat in Spain and the fall of Barcelona. It's terrifying. 

Most other stuff here relates to articles I'm working on: books about Germany because I'm writing about some events in Hamburg. Elton John's biography because it's ghost-written by Alexis Patridis, whose writing makes me howl with laughter. Tim Marshall's book I've yet to read. All of it will get read eventually.

I am a writer and editor based in London, though I grew up in the north of England. From 2012 - 2022, I was a journalist at the Financial Times. Today, I write for the FT, the Telegraph, the New York Times, the Spectator, the Critic and other publications on art, design, architecture, fashion, music, travel, books, modern life and popular culture.

Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin. If you are interested in sharing a shelfie, please let us know.