How cruel the world is! You find your perfect house share and then everyday you’re expected to leave it to do something called work. Commutes can suck, so here are some great reads to keep you entertained between your double room and your office.
253 by Geoff Ryman
There are 252 seats on the Bakerloo line +1 for the driver. This experimental novel is divided into 253 pages, each with 253 words on each character. Not a traditional novel, but one that will change the way you look at people on public transport forever. It’s also 95% non-linear so you can pick it up and put it down. Perfect if your commute has a few changes.
London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
Oh this is on the list because people commute a lot in London, right? Nope. It’s here because Peter Ackroyd is a psychogeographer – and that doesn’t just mean he’s crazy about rocks.
Psychogeography is a movement which emphasizes the importance of one’s urban surroundings on the shaping of thought, behavior and attitude. The idea is to shove people off their usual paths and trails (like your crappy commute) and get them to see their city in a new way. Read this book on the tube and you’ll be pining for a spot of urban exploration.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Stranger is a book about a guy who feels detached, alone in crowds, emotionless. Other people are either sources of amusement or annoyance, but nothing more.
Sounding like your house share? We hope not. Sounding like your commute? Probably! This fascinating insight into the human condition seems almost like it was meant to be read in the soul destroying crush of a public transport system that is as lacking in investment as it is in air-conditioning.
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
Here is a book that will speak to anyone who has moved city, looked for a new double room and tried to set up independently for the first time. Rhys portrays Sasha, a woman moving to Paris, basically trying to sort her life out.
Drinking heavily and abusing medication, you may relate to her problems, or maybe they’ll put yours into perspective. Whatever you get from this modernist urban classic, your commute will be a bit more bearable for a week or two.
Collected Poems by T.S. Eliot
We challenge you to read Rhapsody on a Windy Night or Preludes on a bus journey through town on a cold, windy autumn’s day and not have a ‘moment’. A celebrity name for good reason, (most of) Eliot’s poems are both accessible and rewarding. From J. Alfred Prufrock’s lust and anxiety in the hidden world of London’s double rooms for rent, to The Wasteland’s Unreal City hidden under the brown fog of a winter dawn, Eliot is a great read when you’ve been buffeted by crowds and soaked by showers on the way back to your house share.
To find a double room you’ll never want to leave, try our room search today.
