Recommended Reading

Our former Managing Editor Lisa Marie Corso is now freelancing her incredible wordsmithing skills, but her wit and wealth of amazing recommendations are never far from our minds. Most recently we hit her up for some good-book intel, and she had us ordering Heartburn by Nora Ephron – express delivery. ‘I’ve read it so many times during different stages of my life and it always leaves me feeling invigorated, like I’ve just taken my brain to a Daylesford day spa where people only call me Miss Corso,’ LMC divulges. The story is a semi-autobiographical account of Ephron’s marriage breakdown to Carl Berstein, who she left during her second pregnancy, after she found out he was cheating on her. ‘I love how Rachel, the protagonist, navigates the crisis with humour and heart.’

At the moment, Suspicious Minds by brothers and psychologists Ian Gold and Joel Gold is the book on Lisa’s bedside table. It’s about modern-day delusions brought on by pop culture and the film The Truman Show.

Just beside that one, of course, is Meryl Streep’s biography Her Again by Michael Schulman. ‘No one wants to think they have a ‘type’ but after looking at the last three books I’ve read, I definitely do. If I did a BuzzFeed ‘What Book Are You?’ quiz, my results would say: The RomCom book where the woman sucker punches life and really likes eating, or the book where humanity is dissected, but ultimately can never be explained.’

Professor Corbett Lyon is the director of Lyons Architecture and co-founder of the incredible Lyon Housemuseum. His home (museum) library is chock-full of inspiring biographies and stories of people who have in some way changed the world for the better. As an architect, he notes the most inspiring book he has ever read was one he picked up as a young student: Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. ‘It turned architectural thinking on its head, and is a book that continues to underpin how I think and work as a designer today,’ he tells.

Corbett is currently contemplating a book on philosophy by Benedict Spinoza, published in 1677!! ‘Spinoza’s Ethics presents a very different way of thinking about the world –  how we perceive it, and how we live and work in it,’ explains Corbett. ‘For a work that is over 300 years old, it’s a book that’s remarkably relevant to today, and offers some great insights into our contemporary society and culture.’

Like LMC, Corbett (and an increasing number of other people) have a special affection for the printed page. ‘There’s something special about holding a book in your hands – the tactile quality of the paper, being able to flick through its pages and how it feels as a design object,’ he explains. ‘You don’t get any of that reading text on a screen.’