{"id":388840,"date":"2025-09-01T08:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T08:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/388840\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T08:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T08:17:11","slug":"an-essential-reading-list-from-lucy-dacus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/388840\/","title":{"rendered":"An essential reading list from Lucy Dacus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lucy<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Lucy Dacus)<\/p>\n

Mon 1 September 2025 4:00, UK <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always felt there\u2019s something intrinsically connected between the indie canon and literature; something artistic, mystic, and spectral. If there\u2019s one artist who embodies all those things, it\u2019s Lucy Dacus<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s related to the level of poeticism in many indie lyrics<\/a> that seems to connect it to novels and prose \u2013 also a certain romanticism and introspection that laces through the words in both forms, wherever the journey may take you. That\u2019s something which, after creating four solo studio albums, three EPs, and various other bodies of work with Boygenius, Dacus is pretty accustomed to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as is the mark of any artist worth their salt, Dacus\u2019 literary lens on songwriting has only ever been learned from the greatness of books themselves, of which she has many and massive favourites. Ranging from the totally classic to the cutting-edge contemporary, this is a woman who most definitely knows her stuff when it comes to bridging the worlds between sonics and novels together \u2013 and not only that, but she does it with aplomb. <\/p>\n

Reminiscing on her experience of working in a bookstore during the pandemic lockdowns, Dacus explained in an interview earlier this year, while promoting her latest album Forever is a Feeling<\/a>, that literature has played a pivotal role in both her personal and musical life. As such, she\u2019s the prime person to sort us out with a new reading list as the summer draws to a close, we all head back inside, and spend some more time nestled between the pages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, hardly in the most warming of spirits, she began with War and Peace, the Leo Tolstoy magnum opus that Dacus said she read in those feverish pandemic days and said she was unable to ever put down. \u201cI was so sad that it was going to end,\u201d she said. \u201cI read, like, 100 pages a day, and then the last 300 pages I put off for months because I didn\u2019t want it to be over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who have taken on the beast that is War and Peace will know what a task it is in hand, but Dacus clearly sets hard homework for herself. Next on her reading list is a similar mammoth, James Joyce\u2019s Ulysses, which she has not yet picked up due to \u201chaving to go to college\u201d to read up on the background before you ever come anywhere near close or qualified to be seen fit to open the first page. <\/p>\n

But in terms of some potentially more accessible reads, Dacus has plenty of those covered as well. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and Beloved by Toni Morrison are two novels she feels are essential to the very fabric and functioning of society, while Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and the poetry collection Punks by John Keene stand has her selection of contemporary picks, gifted down as recommendations to the masses. <\/p>\n

Of course, with a fanbase as devoted and attuned as hers, they\u2019re sure to devour these books up to gain even a hint of the true magic of the muses Dacus cultivates in her songs. It\u2019s true that if you love an artist, you should also read what they read, in order to access even some small portion of their inner mind. Never trust a musician who isn\u2019t happy to swap the guitar for a novel every once in a while.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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