Hugh Ryan’s Book Notes music book for his book My Bad

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Hugh Ryan’s My Bad melds personal experience with history to form a book as inspiring as it is informative about queer life in the modern era. Kirkus wrote of the book: “Bracing…A clear-eyed reckoning with a decade that promised freedom and delivered transformation, unevenly and at a price.” In his own words, here is Hugh Ryan’s Book Notes music playlist for his book My Bad: I got my first Walkman in the fall of 1992, right as I started my freshman year of high school. It was safety yellow and indestructible, and though at the time it seemed like magic, I now realize it added a backing track of hiss and grain and warp to every song it played. It was my most precious possession: a portable…