Have you ever wanted to listen to a song mentioned in a novel? Now you can enjoy ‘fictional’ mixtapes, as authors have begun creating their characters’ playlists for their readers to listen to

It may not be the most obvious reaction, granted, but my first thought when hearing news that David Nicholls had written Us, his follow-up to his bestselling novel One Day, wasn’t about his knack for “unputdownability” or his enviable ability to write novels that cry out to be adapted into blockbuster movies. No – my first thought was: “Ooh, I wonder if it’ll have a good mixtape.”

Inspired by the compilation tapes his character Emma Morley makes for Dexter Mayhew in One Day, author Nicholls decided to put together a full playlist of the mixtapes, imagining what other tracks Emma (who has “far better taste than Dexter”) would have included.

There’s form here, of course: Horror author Stephen King did something similar upon the release of his sequel to The Shining; putting together an “official” Spotify playlist for Doctor Sleep.

Alan Warner’s novel Morvern Callar also includes a mixtape as a central plot device. The official soundtrack to Lynne Ramsay’s film adaptation consists of tracks from the mix tape – but completists, frustrated at the anomalies between the songs in the book and those in the film, have compiled their own Spotify playlists that are more faithful to the original novel.

One of the year’s less-likely hits has been the soundtrack of the comic book adaptation Guardians of the Galaxy. The mixtape Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol.1 plays an incongruous role in the sci-fi hit as an actual cassette tape, is originally made by the mother of hero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt).

There’s form here, of course. Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity was essentially one long mixtape. Hornby even sets some rules for making the perfect mixtape:

You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention… and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and... oh, there are loads of rules.

The trouble with High Fidelity is how much the film and the book differ, not just in location (Chicago instead of London), but also in music choice. The soundtrack of the film bears little resemblance to Hornby’s lists in the book, but there is a playlist compiling strictly only the tracks mentioned in the book:

With soundtracks proving an obvious extra revenue stream, record companies and TV/film producers are understandably keen to jump on any opportunity to “extend their brand” via the music featured in shows. Not wishing to miss a trick, book publishers are also actively working with novelists to build soundtracks for their books. A quick search on Spotify reveals the number of punters willing to do the legwork in compiling their own literature-inspired playlists, from Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 to 50 Shades of Grey. More authors will no doubt be encouraged to follow Nicholls’ example and create their own compilations: an ingenious way to extend their character’s stories beyond the printed page and – as Nicholls himself says: “a distraction from real work.”



Do you have a favourite playlist from a book? Or have you ever made a playlist to listen to while you read a particular book? Share yours in the comments below.

Guardian Reader Events: join us for an event with David Nicholls, the author of One Day, in Edinburgh on 2 October. Book now.