HTSI Aesthetes on what to read and listen to this summer

Thelma Golden, curator
Book: Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound by Daphne Brooks

“So much of my time recently has been spent reading and re-reading books that are important to me. This was one of the highlights. It’s a history of black women musicians, from Aretha Franklin to Bessie Smith to Beyoncé, and shows how they’ve informed intellectual life and the black female sound.”
Curator Thelma Golden talks taste

Kengo Kuma, architect
Book: First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

“Murakami’s novels have a sort of tunnel structure and I apply this same design philosophy to my buildings. He’s my good friend and we inspire each other.”
Kengo Kuma: ‘I am not attached to objects at all’

Cynthia Nixon, actress
Podcast: Little Known Facts with Ilana Levine

“Levine is an actress who interviews all kinds of artists and celebrities and she’s like Barbara Walters in the way that she puts them at ease. For Sex and the City fans of the character Stanford Blatch, I highly recommend the two-part episode she did with Willie Garson, who played him.”
Cynthia Nixon talks taste

Claudia Roden, food writer
Track: “Ya Mustafa” by Bob Azzam

“Azzam was an Egyptian-born Lebanese-Palestinian singer, in the 1960s. This song mixes Arabic with French and Italian, and it brings me back to the Egypt of my youth, where we spoke many languages. I can’t resist getting up and dancing to it when nobody is around. Nobody wants to hear me singing, but I sing to myself.” 
Claudia Roden: ‘The first recipes I wrote down changed my life’

Lykke Li, musician
Track: “Song to the Siren” by This Mortal Coil

“This was the work of art that changed everything for me. I’m basically hoping that one day I can do a vocal take as mesmerising as that. I don’t think I’ve succeeded, though. I’ll die trying.”
The style secrets of Swedish pop star Lykke Li

Hassan Hajjaj, artist
Podcast: Drink Champs

“For this podcast, they interview hip hop artists and in the course of the discussion make their way through a table full of drinks. I grew up in that era so I love listening to the stories of acts like Busta Rhymes and De La Soul, and hearing what they’re doing now.”
The extraordinary world of artist Hassan Hajjaj

Toto Bergamo Rossi, curator and restorer
Book: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

“I first read this 30 years ago. I loved the imagined dialogue between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo: it inspired me in my battles against the deterioration of my city, Venice. I thought, let’s get more articulate and inspired, so I went back to Calvino.”
‘I’m married to Venice!’ Toto Bergamo Rossi talks taste

Virginie Mouzat, writer
Album: Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa

“I am obsessed with Dua Lipa – her voice, her looks, she’s super talented. ‘Hallucinate’, ‘Levitating’ – she has all these hits. Suddenly I am like a teenager again, dancing around my house with the music up loud.”
Virginie Mouzat: ‘I dread modernity for the sake of it’

Martha Freud, ceramicist 
Podcast: Unlocking Us, by Brené Brown

“Everything Brown says is gospel to me. She’s a researcher who specialises in shame, vulnerability and leadership, and she breaks down behavioural patterns and consequences in a way I can completely understand. She interviews fascinating people, such as psychologists John and Julie Gottman on relationships. She tries to explore all that it is to be human. And I love her Texan accent.”
Martha Freud: ‘The best advice I ever received? ‘Go to bed!’

Yalda Hakim, broadcaster
Book: A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson

“Jackson’s biography of Charles de Gaulle taps into the way I feel about Afghanistan. I loved the way this junior general convinced Churchill to have his back, then mobilised the French to stand behind him and take their country back.” 
BBC World News presenter Yalda Hakim talks personal taste

Laila Gohar, food artist
Track: “Waiting for You” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

“I was really touched by the movie One More Time with Feeling, about Cave producing his album Skeleton Tree after his son Arthur died – it’s so very sad – and I love all his music, especially the 2019 album Ghosteen.”
Food star Laila Gohar talks personal taste

Dom Bridges, founder of skincare brand Haeckels
The Blindboy Podcast

“It would be sacrilege not to mention this genuinely unique and twisted mix of psychology, humour and social issues from an Irish comedian.” 
Haeckels founder Dom Bridges: ‘Margate changed my life’

Sébastien Foucan, freerunner
Book: Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable by Tim S Grover

“Grover was Michael Jordan’s trainer and this is a book about the mindset of a champion. He talks about how there is some part of ourselves we often reject, and how we can tap into this and control it. He calls it our ‘dark side’, which, when you think of it from a Darth Vader perspective, sounds negative – but the way he explains it, it can be a good thing when it’s controlled. For me, working on big sets and coaching athletes, it all makes sense.” 
Parkour pioneer Sébastien Foucan: ‘I’ve kept the bullet Daniel Craig shot me with’

Leanne Shapton, artist and graphic novelist
Book: Moms by Yeong-shin Ma

“This graphic novel is based on the author’s mother and his mother’s friends. It was a subculture I knew nothing about: middle-aged Korean women. He writes about these women with love and sympathy and a little brutality. It reminded me of how Alice Munro writes women and how Haruki Murakami writes cities.”
Leanne Shapton on vintage swimsuits, David Hockney and learning to love a 40-watt lightbulb

Joe Gebbia, AirBnB co-founder
Album: Battle Lines by Bob Moses

“This album by a Canadian electronic duo is a mix of wistful lyrics, pop beats and synths.”
The Airbnb co-founder on his favourite things

Joël Andrianomearisoa, artist
Track: “Il Cielo in Una Stanza” by Mina

“We listen to this song, recorded in 1969 by the Italian singer Mina, every day at the studio. It has this melancholic melody, and the lyrics speak of the feeling of being in love and the walls becoming a forest and the ceiling turning into a sky… I love the image and the idea of emotional elements becoming a physical architecture.”
The monochromatic majesty of Joël Andrianomearisoa

Arthur de Villepin, gallerist
Book: Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel

“This is about the New York art scene in the 1940s and ’50s from the perspective of five female artists: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. I found it so interesting to revisit history through their lens, and you realise there was a lot happening in the shadows of other successful artists from that period such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.”  
Gallerist Arthur de Villepin: ‘I’ve just had a run with Van Gogh’

Gia Coppola, film director and winemaker
Book: Wine Girl: A Sommelier’s Tale of Making it in the Toxic World of Fine Dining by Victoria James

“I loved reading about James’s personal journey, working her way up to becoming one of the top female sommeliers. I never knew how complicated and expensive it is, especially for young women.”
Gia Coppola loves Vans, Vegas and her grandfather Francis Ford Coppola’s vineyard

Karla Welch, stylist
Album: Serpentine Prison by Matt Berninger

“The last music I downloaded was this album by the lead singer of The National. I love that he’s a postmodern man – a bit sad, a bit sensitive and interested in supporting powerful women.”
Celebrity stylist Karla Welch on why ‘good clothes open doors’

Sinéad Burke, accessibility advocate
Podcast: The Ezra Klein Show

“I’m listening to a particular episode from this, when Klein had sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom as a guest. It was a wide-ranging interview but I’m a person who listens to things with Post-It notes at the ready, and in it she talked about status, which she defines as separate from class. Status is the currency you bring into a room with you but we haven’t built a deep vocabulary around it because people are reluctant to articulate the part that status plays in their success. She’s one of the best people I follow on Twitter and wrote a book called Thick in 2019 that I think everyone should read.”
Sinéad Burke: ‘The door opened for me. I’m trying to ensure that door doesn’t close’

Timothy Taylor, gallerist
Book: Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series

“These are spectacular to listen to on Audible. I heard Lee interviewed by Jeremy Paxman recently, and Paxman was asking him about his style of literature. He said it’s very difficult to design a Rolls-Royce, but it’s extremely difficult to design a Ford Escort. That kind of sums it up.”
Gallerist Timothy Taylor: ‘Style is the ambition and freedom to follow your own path’ 

Shiza Shahid, co-founder of cookware brand Our Place
Various, from Coke Studio Pakistan

“The last music I downloaded was from Coke Studio Pakistan – a mix, both new and old, of folk music, qawwali and other traditional genres with a modern beat. Some great renditions include ‘Alif Allah’ by Arif Lohar and Meesha Shafi and ‘Afreen Afreen’ by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.”
Shiza Shahid: ‘Cooking reconnects you with your body, the food system and each other’