A dazzling date with the comedian AZIZ ANSARI, plus a sun-drenched odyssey through the pages of Corsican travel classic GRANITE ISLAND.
The Happy Reader Series
This series is a celebration of the pure pleasure of reading and the calming luxury of being offline. Each issue offers in-depth interviews with passionate readers and delves beneath the surface of classic literary works. It is a visually captivating design object that inspires, informs, and entertains book lovers. Discover the joy of literature through carefully curated stories and insights into the minds of those who adore it.
Recommended Reading Order
The Happy Reader - Issue 9
- 64 pages
- 3 hours of reading
For avid readers and the uninitiated alike, this is a chance to reengage with classic literature and to stay inspired and entertained. The concept of the magazine is simple: the first half is a long-form interview with a notable book fanatic and the second half explores one classic work of literature from an array of surprising and invigorating angles. In The Happy Reader 9, our summer classic is Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island
The Happy Reader – Issue 10
- 64 pages
- 3 hours of reading
Former Pulp frontman JARVIS COCKER is a voracious bookworm and an ideal addition to the Happy Reader pantheon. In this winter issue he discusses his reading habits and literary foibles with the great poet SIMON ARMITAGE. Accompanied by glorious photographs by ALASDAIR McLELLAN, the chat covers everything from the stories of Carson McCullers to the dreams of Carl Jung.In part two, a pretend-perfect society is ruthlessly satirised in YEVGENY ZAMYATIN’s early sci-fi novel WE. The book inspires an interview with MARIA ALYOKHINA from dissident punk band PUSSY RIOT plus writings on state-controlled love lives, patriotic poetry, weather manipulation and cosmic links between Russia and California, with contributors including WILL SELF, NICHOLAS LEZARD, RICHARD GODWIN and HARRIET ALIDA LYE.
The Happy Reader - Issue 12
- 64 pages
- 3 hours of reading
LAURIE ANDERSON became a household name in 1981, when her 8-minute avant-garde monologue ‘O Superman’ became the world’s strangest-ever hit single. Anderson, now 71, is an artist whose work encompasses whatever she needs it to, from performance to music, from CD-ROM to virtual reality. Interviewed in Denmark, she discusses the dizzying breadth of her reading habits, which underpin everything she does, her useful belief in multiple realities, and the old Kindle she carries from her late husband, LOU REED.FRANKENSTEIN by MARY SHELLEY was published exactly two hundred years ago. Two archetypes — the manmade monster and the mad scientist who created him — have been loping around in the collective unconscious ever since. To honour this incredible act of literary invention, part two of this issue presents a sequence of monsters, as fed through various prisms of association, and emerging as everything from chatbots to man bags. Contributors include GEOFF DYER, JEFFREY LEWIS, JEAN HANNAH EDELSTEIN and JUSTIN E. H. SMITH.
The Happy Reader - Issue 13
- 64 pages
- 3 hours of reading
For avid readers and the uninitiated alike, this is a chance to reengage with classic literature and to stay inspired and entertained. The concept of the magazine is simple: the first half is a long-form interview with a notable book fanatic and the second half explores one classic work of literature from an array of surprising and invigorating angles.