“You can’t be your own therapist, dice can’t shake themselves, and at the desk you can’t always dig yourself out of a mental hole. But you can go to the kitchen and make another sandwich and press play. Play (the fun kind or not) is exactly what you need, even if that’s not what the button actually says. It’s just an arrow, pointing right. Where it’s really pointing is: somewhere else—which is where you want your thoughts (sometimes your whole mindset) to go. That is music’s great gift to a writer. . . . For me, writing Trondheim, each of the following songs was model, permission, catalyst, encouragement.”

Read more about and listen to Cormac’s playlist for Trondheim at Largehearted Boy—one of our favorite places on the Internet. It is, in the words of its curator David Gutowski, “all about sharing the love for music, literature, and popular culture.” In the “Book Notes” series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.