Beth Orton shares her favourite books

The musician, famed for her "folktronica" sound, picks her favourite books. She is one of the judges of the International Booker Prize 2025, the winner of which is due to be announced on Tuesday.

Self-Portrait

Celia Paul, 2019

In this mysterious yet clear-eyed memoir, the artist tells her life through the painting of loved ones, immortalising shared time with a graceful generosity. I found this book in the Aldeburgh bookshop, and Paul's writing, like her painting, conjured the landscape beneath my feet.

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A Life's Work

Rachel Cusk, 2001

This was one of the first books that opened the door to shitting on the hallowed ground of being a mother. It tore through me, a conversation that I needed to have with myself but wasn't prepared for. Its true weight is in how Cusk describes the guilt inherent in trying to be both a loving mother and an artist.

All Fours

Miranda July, 2024

I am calling this novel one of my favourite Miranda July films, as everything she writes translates into technicolour, and her dialogue is properly funny. "All Fours" often hides behind seeming off the cuff, but it is unfathomably deep, a work of heartbreaking genius.

This is Not a Pity Memoir

Abi Morgan, 2022

The first book to inform me of the Holocaust, it was the start of a lifelong education that continues to this day, inspiring some of my own most famous novels. It remains one of the most upsetting but important narratives ever committed to print. Essential reading.

Swann's Way

Marcel Proust, 1913

I started listening to "Swann's Way" before the 2020 lockdown. As I lay awake in a world as still as I've ever known it, the sensory nature of Proust's writing calmed me and carried me gently through uncertain nights. Some of the hypnagogic state of that time is recorded into "Weather Alive", the record I ended up making.

Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop