We’ve been privileged to read several trenchant stories set within the long, sad saga of slavery in recent years (thank you Mr. Coates, Ms. Jeffers especially), but the severity and hilarity of Everett’s particular point helps it dig in all the deeper. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll curse every moment of American history.
Look, you had me at the pork store sign, okay? But beyond New Jersey's favorite glorified crew, Kamine’s unscrambling of the film and television industry’s messy machinations is what makes this such an absorbing read. The injection of his personal past and present into his time alongside the Sopranos folks and other familiar Hollywood types only adds to the appeal. (And it all starts with stories from the set of Quiz Show! I freaking love Quiz Show!)
This is a seriously fun, tragicomic trip through our national foibles, follies, and festering capitalist wounds all aided by that most American of foods: the hot dog. Loftus is hilarious and sharp as a tack, and her honest exploration of herself, the rest of us, and bun length sausages won me over from jump street.
An imagined oral history of John von Neumann that has more than a whiff of Labatut's previous novel vis-à-vis its exploration of the terror and tension that accompany scientific breakthrough, THE MANIAC truly flourishes as a meditation on the spectre haunting our present age: artificial intelligence. Can we resist our thirst for discovery and desist before it's too late? Will we cede power to survive? Or simply wither in the wake of a storm of our own creation?
I swear I had this one in my TBR pile before Fosse won the Nobel, I did, I did! But even if I was just hopping on the award-season bandwagon, who cares because this is a stunning little book that hit me like a gut punch. It’s as dark and moving and brooding as a wintry night on the fjord, with a graceful interiority that proves Fosse is absolutely worthy of all that high praise.
A picaresque, a road novel, a hilarious exploration of faith and fundamentalism—not to mention the worst parts of our despicably American cultural proclivities—all featuring a nine-foot, clay-formed creature of Jewish myth that begins in New York City and ends in this very Commonwealth? Alright let’s do it.
I was often reminded, reading NORTH WOODS, of another bewitching book that takes place across a place’s history: HERE, the groundbreaking graphic novel by Richard McGuire. Both revel in revelations that the passage of time can endow, and both transport us to a 4-D locale that lingers long after their respective last pages are turned.
I like to describe Ben Winters as the thinking man’s thriller writer, and as ever, THE BONUS ROOM has a lot to chew on around the edges of it’s page-turning plot. Creepy, crawly, and calculated, this fresh reprint of one of his early novels is sure to sink it’s teeth into you too.
Whenever I get in a little reading rut I go for something short and atmospheric to get me back on track, and a new Rikki Ducornet was just what the doctor ordered. The plot line is left slack and slippery for most of these brief 88 pages, but when Ducornet yanks it taut she does so with a suffocating force and a chilling reminder of what’s really at stake as the world spins on around us.
Guys like Mike Rothschild (no relation) are the real heroes of our modern age, digging through the grimiest alleys of conspiracy city to report back on just how insane it all is. His book on Qanon was ridiculously fascinating, and the follow up left me scratching my head all over again at how some of the most repugnant myths of our age are really just tales as old as time.
Joy Priest quotes Baldwin along similar lines in her moving introduction, and I’ll turn to Williams for a variation here: “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” That feeling suffuses this collection, as our city’s poets explain and explore our time and place with an adroit and piercing insight.
For me, Mayakovsky is like one of those bands all my friends had been listening to for years but somehow never told me about. Denis Johnson dug him? He’s in the City Lights Pocket Series? His stuff is as defiant and personal as it is empathetic and relatable? Get outta my way already!
The poetry here is near to the heart but always on the edge of something soured and scarred, and man do I like it. Bates fashions a haunting specificity with her imagery, and the way she adheres it to mood and memory led me from one poem to the next with a chilly, anchored grip.
I always hated the term “flash fiction” so let’s call Mr. Herrera’s latest book a collection of “very short stories” that are “very freaking good.” I’ve loved damn near every word Herrera has put to page and this is no exception, as he trips the life fantastical in each brief burst of prose. It’s like Calvino and PKD went on a bender together and wrote of all they saw.
If you don’t know who Richard Ayoade is, that’s okay I'll fill you in: he’s a sort of goofy, curly-haired British dude with glasses, but that’s all part of what makes him so cool. He’s also the fella that wrote this book, which is about a different book, and just might help you realize the magic of how a book becomes a book, and that sure is a story worth reading!
In a long form essay of the kind I lean in for, Auster pulls the weed of gun violence up by the root so we can truly see how far down into our national psyche it goes. He isn’t here to grandstand or problem solve, but to expose us as a society and a country, with Ostrander’s photography crisply underlining the author’s intentions.
Sure, yeah, it’s a riff on a Bond novel, you know, if James Bond were an on-the-spectrum mathematician with a one-legged dog whose specialty is nothing. With a plot that is by turns hilarious, surreal, meditative, and action packed, DR. NO is breezy, bustling, and over before you can realize just how damn good it is.
I had a bout of existential dissonance reading this biting travelogue/critique/theoretical journey through our country that rocked me to my core. How does a book about the America of 1986 resonate so thoroughly in 2023? What does it mean for our near future, when our present so unnervingly resembles our recent past?
Yes, alright, Bo Jackson is the hero of my youth (and okay fine my adulthood too) but his story transcends my laudatory bias, I promise! Tales of Bo’s talent are that of an athletic Paul Bunyan, a sporting John Henry, a UFO armed with a Louisville slugger and shoulder pads—and you won’t tire of their telling, all the way through.
To say that McCarthy’s first novel in fifteen years is worth the wait is patently obvious, but THE PASSENGER transcends mere satiation, challenging us to think about nearly every facet of our brief time here on earth. Spiritually harrowing, intellectually ravishing, and sublimely fulfilling.
You could argue that STELLA MARIS should simply have been incorporated into its companion novel, THE PASSENGER, but to me it matters not. This continued exploration of the themes, scenes, and meaning within McCarthy’s story of the Western siblings is equally stunning and just as essential to understanding these spellbinding binary stars.
An impressive and immersive take on the WWII spy novel that isn’t just good at hiding its plot turns, but crafts a palimpsest of subterfuge out of each of its dueling narrators. Sexual, cultural, national, and fraternal identities are all part of a roiling stew that simmers off into exactly my kind of page-turner.
The discerning of what’s real or not, true or false, sane or insane, funny or heartbreaking—it will all fuel your curiosity throughout, but it wouldn’t work so damn well without Burnet’s tasteful touch in tying it all together. Charming, waggish, and deceptively somber all at once.
This book cannot be returned.
A captivating, imaginative series of vignettes stitched together to form a dream-like outline of our titular character's character. Much like one of my favorite writers, Kathryn Davis, Ramirez lets his imagery, intellect, and insight drive the book's impact, rather than relying on normative storytelling. Is that a good thing? It's a very good thing!
There are a few literary giants that by dint of their unique style (and some luck in how their surnames finish out) earn what I call an “—ian.” Orwell, Faulkner, James, Vonnegut—there’s more of course but you get it! Saundersian is for sure the only way to describe George’s heart-rending short fiction, which is among the best in the whole fuzzy free world.
I love to read about math, and physics, and the smart people who study them, so a book like this one always hits the spot. There's endless fun to be had diving into how math shapes our universe, and Padilla deftly describes the latest twists in our ever-undulating road toward understanding it all.
This one is a few things—a baseball book, a how-we-made-it book, a book on screenwriting, a book on directing—but mostly it’s about how to tell a good story. One that connects, and lasts, and entertains us throughout. Aptly, the book does as good a job as the movie itself at all of the above.
I was clearing out some shelves at home the other day and came across this book, one of the few I’ve kept from childhood. A frisson shot through me like I was 8 again. Such fright and wonder and creative inspiration all in one place. Stories that make you want to tell your own stories, they really are the best kind.
It makes sense that a director’s first novel would be a vivid, stirring tale meant to be finished in one sitting, and it’s no surprise either that a filmmaker of Herzog’s caliber turned out a very good first novel at that. A fascinating true story, told with concision and dignity.
The rare account of a scientifically dubious line of inquiry that casts little to no judgment on its advocates. Knight relates the story of John Barker—and his pursuit of the strange correspondence between our minds and time—with such skill and style as to craft an almost un-categorizable book. Science, history, biography, and parapsychology all float in the enchanting ether.
A sober and skillfull exploration of classical liberalism as it is practiced (and prodded at) in our times. Fukuyama tackles malpractice and malcontents on either side of our wide political divide, describing how we might find our way through this charged and challenging period of history.
What Dan Charnas’s DILLA TIME did for another hip-hop pioneer we lost too soon, Walker does just as well here for DJ Screw: outlining a legend’s impact using their hometown’s musical history as set design and those that knew him best as cast. Heads should eat this up.
This is both a testament to our shared lot as the boiling frogs of history and—for me—a much needed literary sermon to the choir. Erickson outlines in real time what this span of our recent past has wrought upon him and us with a fierce spirit and incredulous hilarity.
Plenty of music books are great at the “why” of a particular artist’s esteem, but Charnas does a fantastic job in giving us the “how” of Jay Dee’s lasting legacy. A must for any rap fan, DILLA TIME is a powerful reification of this preeminent Detroiter’s sui generis sonic schema.
More great stuff from Darnielle, whose third novel infuses the same eldritch rhythm as his previous two into the vicissitudes of growing up. He’s got a knack for exposing a shared, forgotten feeling inside us all—one that he limns with a singularly eerie voice.
I loved Øyehaug's collection of short fiction KNOTS, and this is like an extended release tab of the same kind of good medicine. With wit and care and propellant insight, she takes a few puzzles of the universe and uses them to delve into the puzzles of our human experience, from the micro to the macro.
With my layman's zeal for quantum physics, cosmology, and mathematics, this book's subject matter grabbed me from the start. But the real satisfaction in Labuatut's novel comes from his explorations into the terrors of war and discovery, as he outlines the serrated edges of these brilliant minds so we might dare to reach out and touch them.
Herrera’s three short, stunning novels collected and wrapped in one beautiful hardcover volume is the kind of book you just have to have on your shelf. His magisterial writing about Mexico and the American border exhibits a transcendent care for his characters and an undeniable mastery of craft.
Few authors can make a true tale cook quite like PRK, and with a story like the Sackler Family’s, things are all the more enthralling. Peel back the museum dedications and artistic philanthropy, and you’ll find a family tree rotting from the inside out by dint of a truly American mixture of avarice and cunning.
An epic of the American identity as much as the single American family at its center, this debut novel is as ambitious as it is remarkable. Both the book’s titular figure and its centuries-spanning pages impel us to remember: the souls and stories and traumas of black and indigenous folk are those of our country itself.
Instead of focusing on his NBA career, Carmelo tells the tale of everything that would lead him to draft day and the success that followed. It’s a touching story of family and friendship and a young man’s search for meaning—and it made me love Melo even more than I already did. Plus, D. Watkins with the assist doesn't hurt one damn bit.
Shea Serrano has stayed ten-toes-down for us here at Carmichael’s ever since he harnessed his Twitter superpowers to help us sell more than 1,000 books in a day way back when his first book about hip-hop—THE RAP YEAR BOOK—was fresh on the shelves. Now, after forays into basketball and movies as part of his “and Other Things” series, he’s back to his rap writing roots, and we’re happy to say the results are as hilarious, informed, and debate-inciting as ever.
Maggie Nelson’s writing—from the personal to the political to the poetic—always manages to perform brilliant acts of synthesis. Sometimes an array of emotions come together, at others, rhetorical variations crash into a larger whole. Regardless, the breadth of her knowledge and expert tact help churn together consensus thought and her own intellectual explorations to form something that wasn’t there before. These thoughts on freedom, and how much that word and idea and feeling can move before we ever have a chance to find its true shape, are another example of Nelson’s undeniable prowess and a concentrated description of our most raggedly human aspects.
This book cannot be returned.
I know right? Why would you read a science book from freaking 1966? Well, because most of our quantum knowledge was all gained in this amazing stretch of history, and Gamow is the OG when it comes to explaining science with wit and humor (and cartoons!).
I'm going to get a little interdisciplinary here and describe this one as a KILL BILL-type story with a DEADWOOD vibe that moves with the momentum of a train Butch and Sundance might have robbed. Throw in a solemn exploration of the souls of both men and nations, and you’ve got yourself a damn fine debut novel.
Using her personal history in Texas alongside her scholarly acumen, Gordon-Reed examines both the state and our nation alike with a practiced and pointed mien. These essays describe what creates our shifting concept of America, but insist we first and foremost remember what that idea means to a people united in their former bondage.
What Seth said!
Look, if Hanio Yamada is cool with his failed suicide attempt, we should be too right? As funny and slapstick and swinging as it may be, this book's grin flashes to a scowl often enough to make sure you don't miss its deadly serious point.
This right here is the most enjoyable, portable, and fulfilling college course you’re likely to find at its cover price. Saunders' short fiction chops are unassailable, and letting him guide you along the museum of Russian masters of the form provides spectacular insight into life, art, meaning, and above all, how to read well.
Can you describe a book set during the Thirty Years' War as a delight? Well hell, I'm gonna, because this book's tone and tenor somehow make enjoyable a series of dark vignettes that twist politics, religion, fear, and epistemology around the origin story of one of the world's legendary tricksters. Bloody fun, this one.
The supremely creative Mr. Kingsnorth (see: The Wake) offers an ontological exploration of what writing really is, and what it very much isn't. His personal prism helps us ponder both the freedom and stricture that come when we attempt to turn human language into the written word.
A loose retelling of the tale of Theseus, OREO is an overlooked classic now back in print after 40 years. It is a wickedly funny look at race, culture, and betweenness—even if it's sometimes hard to tell what truly lay on either side.