MEDIA DIET
By:
March 24, 2026
A weekly series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire.
Lynn has been a valued HILOBROW contributor since 2009. Her first post was on the topic of NANCY SINATRA. Her most recent contributions to this publication include: ZAZOUS | TEN COMMANDMENTS | ENDORA.
Oakland…
HILOBROW: What are your reading habits?
LYNN PERIL: I retired from my day job at the end of 2024 and immediately began reading the way I did when I was a kid: constantly, voraciously, fiction and nonfiction, from a wide range of eras. I lean towards nonfiction (which makes sense as I write nonfiction), but lately I’m reading more novels than I used to, possibly because I need to escape from the reality of 2026. My favorite place and time to read is in bed before closing my eyes for the night, probably because I have so many wonderful memories of my mother reading me to sleep with all the E.B. White and A.A. Milne classics. I guess decent sleep is another point for books that take me away from our dystopian present.
I also enjoy weird, old books. For example, Twinkle Little Star: Laughter, Tears, Thrills (1939), which I recently pulled from the five-dollar rack at a local bookshop. It’s the autobiography of James T. Powers, a stage actor and comedian whose career spanned the late-19th and early 20th centuries, It’s wildly entertaining, though perhaps not always in the way the way the author intended; the book reminds me of Patrick Dennis’s parody memoir of a faded star, Little Me (1961).
Can we talk about little free libraries? I love them, both to grab interesting titles as well as to jettison them, sometimes after they turn out to be not so interesting after all. Speaking of which, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to not finish a book that doesn’t live up to expectations. Will I read every word of Twinkle Little Star? Probably not. Either way, I’ll be happy to leave it in a little free library.
HILOBROW: What music — genres, particular artists and songs — do you listen to during a typical day?
LYNN PERIL: I listen to a lot of ’20s–’60s jazz and vocal music, as well as ’60s garage rock. On any given day, I’m probably listening to KCEA (“the voice of the Sequoia Union High School District”) for the former and Boss Radio 66 for the latter, both available for free on TuneIn Radio.
There’s usually a batch of CDs in the carousel. At the moment that includes comps of Black British swing bands and music associated with the French proto-punks known as Zazous, who yanked Nazi chains during the occupation, along with a terrific midcentury female jazz pianist named Pat Moran.
Lately, I’ve returned to buying thrift store albums, but only if they’re a couple bucks or less. I’m pickier about condition than I used to be, but as always, a great cover overrides the vinyl being whipped! Love of music is one of the things that brought my husband, Johnny Bartlett, and I together; we’re both in the first volume of RE/Search’s Incredibly Strange Music, though that’s not how we met. We agree that one of the keys to our successful relationship is that we have never combined our record collections.
Anyway, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of vinyl in this house. Maybe that’s part of the reason I adore Hoopla, a streaming service that I get via the San Francisco Public Library. In addition to audiobooks and ebooks, Hoopla has all kinds of music available to borrow instantly, which is very satisfying at a point in my life when I’m trying to be both budget conscious and acquire as little as possible (albeit with limited success, see reinvigorated thrift store record habit, above).
HILOBROW: What music did you love as a teenager? Do you still listen to it today?
LYNN PERIL: I listened to nothing but punk rock from the time I was 16, in 1977, until hardcore took over the scene in the early ’80s. I don’t listen to those first gen punk/new wave bands as often as I did back then, but I still love The Ramones, Blondie, The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Dead Boys, Devo, Television. I could go on, but you get the picture. Punk rock gave me an acceptable outlet for my teenage rage, it was loud, it was fast, it was fun to dance to! Nowadays when I listen to music at home, I usually want it to calm me down, not amp me up, hence those jazz instrumentals.
One thing that hasn’t changed since back then is that I still see a lot of live music. Mostly my friends’ garage rock bands, but occasionally something completely different. Within the past few weeks, I’ve seen a super fun band called Squishers as well as the amazing vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. There are very few types of music that I don’t love.
MEDIA DIET series: MATTHEW BATTLES | DEB CHACHRA | ADRIENNE CREW | HOLLY INTERLANDI | CAROLYN KELLOGG | MARK KINGWELL | ADAM McGOVERN | CHARLIE MITCHELL | TOM NEALON | PEGGY NELSON | ANNIE NOCENTI | GARY PANTER | LYNN PERIL | JONATHAN PINCHERA | HEATHER QUINLAN | NICHOLAS ROMBES | CARLO ROTELLA | LUCY SANTE | SETH | MIKE WATT | JUDITH ZISSMAN | & more to come! Visit the SERIES INDEX.