Read People Who Eat Darkness (Richard Lloyd Parry)

The murder in 2000 of Lucie Blackman, a young English woman working in Tokyo, caused a media storm at the time. Richard Lloyd Parry’s book was published in 2011; over the intervening period Mr Lloyd Parry spent time with everyone involved in the murder: the Blackman family, the police, and the suspect Joji Obara. The resultant book is far more than a ‘true crime’ story; rather it is a forensic yet humane peeling-back of the different layers of the story. Resisting glib generalisations, the book paints a nuanced picture of the background to what was a horrific crime, and of its effects on the Blackman family. It is particularly interested in questions of identity and conformity – and perhaps most remarkably without expressing sympathy for the killer it does nonetheless explore his humanity, not least the links between the experience of growing up an institutionalised outsider in a highly conformist country and his subsequent actions.

Listened to Electric Cables (Lightships)

Bucolic and lilting this is a perfect soundtrack for the brief respite which passes for the Scottish summer. Lightships is a solo vehicle for Gerard Love, writer and singer of many of the sweetest Teenage Fanclub songs, and Electric Cables follows the same template: gentle melodies, sun-kissed harmonies, chiming guitars and woozy flutes, all tinged with a melancholic wistfulness. Yes, the fireflies may be buzzing in the haze of a sticky summer evening but the nights will soon be drawing in.

Watched Mistaken for Strangers (Tom Berninger)

Tom Berninger is the (much) younger brother of Matt, singer of The National, and Mistaken for Strangers is part tour documentary, part meditation on their relationship. Filmed in 2010 when the band’s popularity had taken a leg-up (the film shows them on the Obama campaign trail) the tour section often makes for uncomfortable viewing: the younger Berninger (invited on tour by his brother) looks and feels like an intruder. Life on the road looks like a bit of grind compared to his expectations (he complains at one point that the band is too ‘coffee-house’). Eventually he is kicked off the tour for what looks like a series of small misdemeanours (his brother’s horror that Werner Herzog has been forced to wait out on the street because Tom lost the guest list is palpable) and, adrift, he sets about trying to get the film finished. This section is unexpectedly moving as his brother and sister-in-law rally round.