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Welcome to ‘The Book Blogger Hop’ originally hosted by Jen @ Crazy for Books

So here I am again, jumping on the ‘Book Blogger Hop’ band wagon, even if I am a couple of days late. This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs that they may not know existed.

The ‘Book Blogger Hop’ has a new question every week that every blog participating must answer. This week’s question is:

Do you listen to music when you read, and if so, what are your favorite reading tunes?

The answer is, yes, I love a bit of background music or ‘mood music’ as I like to call it. In fact, I use music as a primary source when writing too, so I have little collections of albums that help conjure up certain themes and emotions. One of my most treasured playlists is called ‘One For The Road’. It’s full of tracks that are sometimes dark and laid-back that conjure the essence or experience of late-night driving. It took me a while to get the tracks in order, but when they play, they tune in and out of each other seamlessly. Oh, and the tracks are all Japanese. I love my Japanese music. 

Here’s what’s on the list:

1. Buck Tick – Utsusemi
2. AYA – Overnight
3. Buck Tick – Gessekai
4. AYA – Chains
5. Atsushi Sakurai – Sacrifice
6. AYA – Sentaku No Asa
7. Atsushi Sakurai – Wonderful World (Injection to NY Mix)
8. Buck Tick – Kagerou
9. HYDE – I Can Feel
10. Mika Nakashima – Isolation
11. Kagrra – Satsuki
12. Ken – The Shadow of Your Smile

There’s an awful lot Buck-Tick and Sakurai (frontman of Buck-Tick) because I LOVE him. No seriously, I feel an affinity with his music. Firstly, we share the same birthday (7th March, same as Brett Easton Ellis!), and secondly, he’s got the most awesome voice, and there is not a single track that he has made that I can say is bad. I highly recommend his work. He’s like a Japanese David Bowie, but with a lot of cybernoir thrown in. The same goes for HYDE and all the Laruku songs. Ken and Kagrra got added to the list after much consideration, but I think they fit well too.

Best song on the list? WONDEFUL WORLD!!! Cool, americano, loose. The best intro yet… to put it simply, I’m quite literally cruising across the Las Vegas desert in the ‘Great Red Shark’ with the good doctor and the Great Gonzo.

I’ve read Murakami’s ‘After Dark’, the Ring Trilogy’ and Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ to these songs as well as ‘Fear and Loathing’. Though for ‘Fear and Loathing’ I had to make some agjustments in the way of ‘White Rabbit’ by Jefferson Airplane.

Well, that’s my literary soundtrack. What’s yours? I’m hopping off to find out! 

See you on the blog hop!