Bob Stanley is a musician, writer, DJ and film producer, best known as a founding member of indie pop group Saint Etienne. Alongside his music career, he has written extensively about pop culture for magazines and newspapers including NME, the Face and the Guardian, and has curated film and music programmes for the Barbican and Southbank Centre. His books include Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop and Bee Gees: Children of the World. His latest book, The Shadows: The Definitive Story, a biography of the influential rock group, will be published on 24 September and he’ll be on a book tour in September and October. This month he’s also playing a series of farewell gigs with Saint Etienne across the UK and Ireland.

I've been drawn to traditional cafes since I was a kid – I put it down to a kids’ TV show called Joe by Alison Prince and Joan Hickson, which was quite radical for its time – it was one of the few BBC kids’ programmes where a working-class family was central to it, working in a transport cafe, later running a B&B. There's still an original transport cafe near us, Steeton Top Cafe, which does the best chips I've ever eaten. I love Rafferty’s, too, which has only been in Otley for 10 years or so – although you’d never guess. It’s all home-cooked food (liver and onions with mash is my regular meal) and reassuringly cheap. The couple that run it might be a mother and son, but it feels a bit wrong to ask.

I’d read The Electric Michelangelo, which I loved, so was excited when I heard Sarah Hall had written a book about a wind called Helm, something like a localised El Niño. Helm as a character is surprisingly charming and very cheeky. The novel places Helm at various points in history, where they are largely disrespected by secondary characters like a Victorian scientist and a modern-day environmentalist. I always like writers who can write so well and so variedly about the area they live in, whether it’s London, New York, or – in this case – northern Lancashire.

There aren't many people whose announcement of a new album can get me excited, but L'Rain is one of them. The group is essentially a musician from Brooklyn called Taja Cheek – I first heard her on Sheila B's show on WFMU a few years ago. Like the previous albums, Fata Morgana is a collage of found sound, ambient, shoegaze, and occasional beats and bursts of noise that catch you unawares. Cheek's voice is something else, breathy and pure, and she loops and layers it so it becomes hypnotic. It's definitely night-time music. I read that she listens to brown noise to help her sleep, and I can relate to that.

My son has become a birder, so we’ve spent much of the summer at different RSPB sites, looking for marsh tits and bitterns. Leighton Moss is beautiful, on the southern edge of the Lake District, with multiple hides and plenty of tree cover for when it’s too hot or too wet. We saw a spectacular flock of lapwings on our last visit, circling the trees for ages. It’s also just north of Morecambe, my favourite seaside town in the north. Morecambe has a modesty that places like Blackpool and Brighton don't seem to have. You can have a peach melba at Brucciani's, the 1930s ice cream parlour, and then head on to The Old Pier Bookshop, one of those wildly jumbled places you don’t think exist any more; last trip, I picked up a book on the history of Dunwich, a Mae West biography and David Cassidy’s memoir.

The actor Tim Robinson is incredible. His comedy is entirely based on uncomfortable social interactions, usually in the workplace. So niche! Everyone seemed to like his sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, and it’s pleasing to know something as leftfield as his series The Chair Company could be properly funded. Friendship didn’t seem to get as much attention, though; maybe films are just easier to miss these days. It’s about the awkwardness of trying to make new friends as an adult, men trying to talk to other men. Terrifically bleak.

The Shadows: The Definitive Story by Bob Stanley is published on 24 September by New Modern and you can order it at a discount here from the Nerve bookshop. Details of the book tour are here and Saint Etienne’s final UK/Ireland tour dates are here