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Spring Reading

April 19, 2018 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Books Tagged With: books, fresh, list, new, reading, recommendation, season, spring

Spring has sprung, which means it’s time to head to the park for an afternoon—or several of them—of outdoor reading. Below, our recommendations for the best new books to read under a Prospect Park tree:

 

1. The House of Broken Angels

by Luis Alberto Urrea

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Urrea (The Devil’s Highway) comes a multigenerational saga of loss, love and the borderlands between cultures. The family of Miguel de La Cruz, or “Big Angel,” has gathered to celebrate the dying patriarch’s final birthday, when, unexpectedly, Big Angel’s elderly mother passes away. As the weekend unfolds and the Mexican-American clan recounts its family legends, Big Angel’s half-brother, “Little Angel,” wrestles with his half-Mexican, half-gringo identity. Urrea, whose brother was dying of cancer when his own mother passed, has said the sprawling narrative is based on true experiences.

 

2. The Chandelier

by Clarice Lispector

This sophomore novel of literary giantess Lispector is available in English now for the first time. Initially published in Portuguese in 1946, The Chandelier is a stream-of-consciousness account of the life, loves and densely worded thoughts of our protagonist, Virginia. We follow Virginia through her childhood with her brother and best friend, Daniel; across the years with a group of aesthetes; and as her heart breaks when Daniel becomes engaged. Lispector would go on to write such classics as The Passion According to G.H., and to be remembered by American author Benjamin Moser as the most important Jewish writer in the world since Kafka.

 

3. The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

When ambitious Greer Kadetsky lands her dream job at the foundation of her feminist icon, Faith Frank, her future could not seem brighter. But as time passes and Kadetsky is forced to contend with twists and tragedies, her understanding of Frank the woman, as well as what it means to be a woman at all, changes. Wolitzer’s first book for adults since her 2013 hit The Interestings tackles the female zeitgeist with, according to TIME, “a gimlet eye.” 

 

4. Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

A coming-of-age novel set in Britain just after WWII, Warlight tells the story of Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, who, as children, were left by their mother to the care of a mysterious man named “the Moth.” They soon learn their mother lied to them when she gave her reason for leaving. Years later, Nathaniel pieces together all that he failed to understand as a child, taking us along for the unconventionally written ride through recollections, facts and speculation. Ondaatgje previously won the Booker Prize for the romance, The English Patient. 

 

5. Islandborn

by Junot Diaz

The acclaimed author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao makes his first foray into children’s literature with the picture book, Islandborn. Everyone in Lola’s class is from somewhere else. When their teacher asks that they draw “the country you were originally from,” Lola becomes anxious. She knows she’s from “The Island,” but she doesn’t remember the place. Soon she’s embarking on a quest to understand her heritage, interviewing family, friends and neighbors, who describe a beautiful, vibrant land, which was yet rife with fear and turmoil. Questions of belonging and collective memory give this slim book, illustrated by Leo Espinosa, novelistic heft.

 

6. Tomorrow Will Be Different

by Sarah McBride

McBride may be only 27, but the eventful life she has led to date more than justifies this publication of her memoirs. For those who can’t place the name, McBride is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign as well as the first transgender person to speak at a national convention. Tomorrow Will Be Different chronicles her struggle to come out while acting as American University student-body president, her political fights for equal rights, and her relationship with the transgender man who would become her husband before tragically dying of cancer. Alternately political and personal, Tomorrow Will Be Different is a stirring account of one remarkable woman’s life and loves.

 

7. The Recovering

by Leslie Jamison

The author of The Empathy Exams returns with this nonfiction examination of her journey toward sobriety. Interwoven among autobiographical accounts are reflections on famous alcoholic writers, including John Berryman and Raymond Carver, as well as works of reportage and literary criticism. The book’s erudition and, yes, empathy, have earned the writer, who has been compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, high praise.

 

8. Not That Bad

Edited by Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist’s Roxane Gay edits this anthology of essays—some previously published, others issued here for the first time—on rape and sexual assault. Writer-contributors include actors Gabrielle Union and Ally Sheedy and authors like Amy Jo Burns and Bob Shacochis. Not That Bad is an unflinching examination of a world in which women who speak out are, in the words of Gay, “routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied.”

 

9. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

by Zora Neale Hurston

A remarkable literary achievement, Barracoon is Zora Neale Hurston’s nonfiction account of American slavery, based on her interviews with one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade. The author of Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of elderly Cudjo Lewis, whom she met in 1927, and who was abducted from Africa before being taken to the United States 50 years after the U.S. officially abolished the slave trade. From his childhood in Africa, to the horrors of abduction and The Middle Passage, to life in America and the founding of an African-centric community in Alabama, Cudjo’s story is told in Hurston’s inimitably compassionate style.

 

10.  The Opposite of Hate

by Sally Kohn

With this book, CNN commentator—and Park Slope resident!—Sally Kohn has set herself a difficult task: “to discover why we hate and how [we] can stop it.” She speaks with researchers and scientists in an effort to learn about the cultural and evolutionary roots of hate, travels around the world, from Rwanda to the Middle East and around the United States, profiling people commonly associated with notions of hatred: white supremacists, terrorists and Twitter trolls, to name a few. And she probes several shameful moments from her own past, when she failed to do what, with this book, she hopes to help others do: wander out from “this wilderness of hate.”

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: books, fresh, list, new, reading, recommendation, season, spring

Park Slope Reading: Our Winter Reading List

February 7, 2018 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Books, Local Literature Tagged With: community, fall, list, Literature, options, reading, season

The weather outside is frightful–and we couldn’t be happier for the excuse to stay inside and read. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Books with which to hibernate this winter. 

 

Eat the Apple

by Matt Young 

This formally inventive memoir by ex-Marine Young comes specially recommended by Community Bookstore’s Ezra Goldstein. Young had only recently graduated from high school when he joined the Marines back in 2005, a decision that would, as Publishers Weekly describes it, change him into a “dangerous and damaged man.” Sections written in the third person, in the second person, as screenplay, and as imagined dialogues, as well as with a host of other techniques, give this account from an ex-grunt-turned-creative-writing-professor a singular power.

 

What Are We Doing Here?

By Marilynne Robinson

A favorite of Community Bookstore’s Stephanie Valdez, Marilynne Robinson returns this winter with a collection of essays on the little things in life, such as culture, history, and human decency. Among other topics, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author writes eloquently on our political climate and the “human capacity for grandeur.” For those who like their ideas as deep as they are expansive.

 

Feel Free: Essays

by Zadie Smith

‘Tis the season for lady authors with formidable intelligences. This second collection of essays from celeb (one who is celebrated as well as a celebrity) author Smith includes her thoughts on cultural touchstones from Facebook to global warming. It is divided into five sections—In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free—and is certain not to disappoint her numerous fans.

 

Sunburn

by Laura Lipmann

This highly anticipated novel is no. 23 from the bestselling Lippman. A former reporter and author of the popular series about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan, Lippman has written Sunburn as a noir in the vein of James M. Cain (of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity fame). A young mother up and leaves her husband and daughter while on a beach vacation. Who she is and just how many skeletons she is hiding in that closet of hers filled with items to complement her sexy red hair are just two of the questions that drive the twisty plot.

 

Madness is Better Than Defeat

by Ned Beauman

A Hollywood crew intending to shoot a film on the location and members of a New York corporation who want to ship it back to the U.S. simultaneously descend upon a Mayan ruin in 1930’s Honduras. Twenty years later, they’re all still there. This raucously comic novel from the Man Booker-nominated Beauman (for 2012’s The Teleportation Accident) is filled with the author’s trademark wit and features a host of colorful characters, incident, and a wrestling match with an octopus.

 

The Man of Mokha

by Dave Eggers

This is the sort of true tale for which the phrase “stranger than fiction” was invented. Eggers’ nonfiction story centers on Mokhtar Alkhanshali, an American raised by Yemeni immigrants in San Francisco. At 24 and unable to afford college, Alkhanshali was working as a doorman when he learned that coffee originated in his native Yemen. He traveled to the country determined to revitalize its coffee industry—and was still there when civil war broke out, leaving him unable to return home. A real-life hero’s journey.

 

The Children of Blood and Bone

by Tomi Adeyemi

This 600-page fantasy novel earned Adeyemi a hefty payday that included seven figures and a movie deal. Not too bad for a 23-year-old debut author. In this first installment of a planned trilogy we meet 17-year-old Zélie. She embarks upon a quest to retrieve the magic that has been banished from her homeland by an evil king. The Nigerian-American Adeyemi draws heavily upon the West African mythology she studied in Brazil after graduating from Harvard, and speaks to timely issues of race, power and oppression.

 

Jagannath

by Karin Tidbeck

WIRED calls this first collection of English-language short stories from the Swedish Tidbeck “weird in all the right ways.” Her influences range from Jorge Luis Borges and Ursula Le Guin to H.P. Lovecraft. Strange creatures lurking in the Swedish countryside, strange reproductive facilities operating inside the belly of an aircraft, strange happenings between sisters and the fairylike beings they encounter…For those who like their literature to transport them far off the beaten path.

 

Extraordinary People

by Michael Hearst

This latest from Park Slope local Hearst includes mini profiles of 50 fascinating and fairly off-kilter individuals. Curious about the man who agreed to jump Niagara Falls for a whopping $75? How about the woman who walked to the North Pole solo, or the guy who MacGyvered his own personal version of Up using helium balloons and a lawn chair? For the full effect, purchase the book-and-CD (called Songs for Extraordinary People) combo.

 

Unraveling Rose

by Brian Wray

In this children’s book by Wray of Windsor Terrace, a stuffed bunny named Rose loses interest in all the things she once loved when a tiny loose thread dangling from her arm becomes all that she can think about. The author hopes his book can help parents and teachers discuss with children the effects of obsessive thoughts, as well as be a helpful tool for kids who suffer from anxiety disorders. A charming and timely offering.

 

Filed Under: Books, Local Literature Tagged With: community, fall, list, Literature, options, reading, season

Park Slope Reader Fall Reading Recommendations

October 26, 2017 By Anna Storm Filed Under: Books Tagged With: authors, books, reading

“With the arrival of chillier weather comes a new batch of books with which to curl up. Here, a list of 11  titles to enjoy this fall.”

 

Sing, Unburied, Sing

— by Jesmyn Ward —

In her first novel since 2011’s National Book Award-winning Salvage The Bones, Ward tracks a mixed-race family through rural Mississippi. Jojo is a lonely 13-year-old who helps his grandparents raise his baby sister, while his mother, Leonie, struggles with drug addiction, visions of her dead brother and an obsessive love for Jojo’s white father, recently released from prison. Combining allusions to The Odyssey and The Old Testament with elements of magical realism, Ward has written a book, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, whose “Southern gothic aura recalls the dense, head-spinning prose of William Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor.”

 

The Origin of Others

— by Toni Morrison —

Nobel and Pulitzer-winning Morrison draws on her 2016 Charles Norton Lecture series at Harvard for six essays that try to answer the question, “What is race (other than genetic imagination), and why does it matter?” As she engages with historical events and literary texts, from those of Hemingway to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Faulkner to Flannery O’Connor (and several of her own novels), the author examines the process of “othering” and racial dehumanization. Foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

 

A Legacy of Spies

— by John Le Carré —

Fans of the indubitable master of the spy thriller, David Cornwell, aka, John Le Carré, rejoice: the author has returned with his first George Smiley novel in over 25 years. The focus here is on Smiley’s aged colleague and disciple, Peter Guillam, who has been living on a remote farm in Brittany when a letter from the British Secret Service arrives to summon him to London. It seems his Cold War past has returned to haunt him…The novel deftly weaves past with present, so one may want to revisit its predecessors, including The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, first.

 

Tales of Two Americas

— edited by John Freeman —

If the bombast and vitriol of today’s news cycle has gotten you down, or if you’re someone who understands large questions best when they’re distilled to human scale, you may enjoy this collection of essays, longform journalism, short stories, and poetry that addresses contemporary American inequality. Heavy-hitters including Roxane Gay, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Patchett, and Karen Russell, among others, contribute their insights as they “look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation.”

 

Manhattan Beach

— by Jennifer Egan —

This novel recently longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, from the author whose A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and

National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, is a noir-like tale set during WWII. Our heroine is Anna Kerrigan, a young woman who has taken advantage of the employment opportunities that a country at war has newly afforded women, and become the first female diver. One night she runs into an old friend of her father’s, a man who may help her understand the reasons for her father’s disappearance. Publisher’s Weekly raves, “the novel is tremendously assured and rich, moving from depictions of violence to deep tenderness.”

 

The World Goes On

— by Lázló Krasznahorkai —

The Hungarian Krasznahorkai is a favorite of none other than Krauss herself, who calls him “one of the finest writers at work today.” In this collection of what could best be described as short stories, although their form, like many Krasznahorkai tales, defies categorization, a narrator addresses the audience directly before telling 11 stories. Krasznahorkai explains, “Each text is about drawing our attention away from this world, speeding our body toward annihilation, and immersing ourselves in a current of thought or narrative.” A must for those who like their fiction with an overtly philosophical bent.

 

The River of Consciousness

— by Oliver Sacks —

This posthumous collection of essays from the late scientist, bestselling author and polymath explores several of the grand themes with which Sacks engaged throughout his life’s works: memory, time, consciousness, and creativity among them. It is one of two books on which he was working at the time of his death, and includes reflections on misheard words and the importance of Darwin’s botany.

 

Mrs. Caliban

— by Rachel Ingalls —

This reissue of the 1982 novel centers on suburban housewife Dorothy, who, while doing chores and waiting for her husband to return from work, hears a radio announcement warning of a monster that has escaped from the Institute of Oceanographic Research. Naturally, a romance between the lonely woman and the lizard-like creature ensues. Reviewers have compared the book to “King Kong, Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, the films of David Lynch, Beauty and the Beast, The Wizard of Oz, E.T., Richard Yates’ domestic realism, B-horror movies, and the fairy tales of Angela Carter.” How could you resist?

 

Five-Carat Soul

— by James McBride —

From the author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird comes a collection of short stories that treats our “struggle to understand who we are in a world we don’t fully comprehend” with humor and inventiveness. The stories themselves follow, among others, an antiques dealer tracking a toy once commissioned by the Civil War commander, Robert E. Lee; Abraham Lincoln himself; and the members of the titular Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band, each of whom recounts a tale from his entertainingly messy life.

 

 Keeping On Keeping On

— by Alan Bennett —

The man who wrote The History Boys, The Madness of King George and The Lady in the Van returns with his third collection of prose. Included are expanded versions of the diaries he publishes annually in the London Review of Books, and which address fame, public libraries and “tweeness.” He takes witty aim at his public persona: “I am in the pigeonhole marked ‘no threat’ and did I stab Judi Dench with a pitchfork I should still be a Teddy Bear.”

 

Forest Dark 

— by Nicole Krauss —

Krauss’ fourth novel follows two Americans – the wealthy retiree, Jules Epstein, and the Brooklyn novelist, Nicole – as they travel to Israel in search of new meaning. What the LA Review of Books calls Krauss’ “most inward-looking novel” and The Guardian “a brilliant achievement” is a meditation on self-transformation and that which lies beyond the visible world.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: authors, books, reading

Summer Reading

August 9, 2016 By Darley Stewart Filed Under: Books Tagged With: author, books, de Silva, de Witt, family, indie press, Larsen, Leibowitz, novel review, reading, Solomon, summer

Summer reading is better than ever. 

It’s true that most of us would rather spend our time during the summer eating BBQ, visiting Aruba, or finding any excuse to avoid our professional obligations. But summer reading at its finest isn’t work. It’s a clear, pure moment we find for ourselves as the weather gets hotter, muggier, messier. Some of us can’t afford anything other than a staycation, anyway!  

Without a good summer book to fall into, we are minimizing introspective pleasures that are as good as an intoxicating (or intoxicated) night by the blissful waterfront. A subway ride is almost intolerable without a good book, no matter the season, but especially summer as the tourists flood the city and every good urban citizen needs to bury their eyes in an alternate reality. Even more convenient when the alternate realities are as seductive as the ones I have listed below. The list doesn’t end — it merely begins here. Think of a good summer read as a new pair of shades, a really good pair, blocking out the sun in style. Substitute sun with urban idiocy and style with … style.


Leaving LucyLeaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon 

Fiction

Sink into Park Slope author Anna Solomon’s novel, about the entangled lives of two women in 1920s New England, who share their status as mothers of Lucy Pear, the beating heart of a novel that may be set in a historical framework but feels satisfying outside of the solidity of this composition, as the narrative moves with the force from its subtle substructures. You aren’t going to run into any comparisons to Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work or Pamela Erens’ Eleven Hours here. You aren’t going to find any comparisons from me, at least, as I think this is a rare novel, not for subject matter or technique (an omniscient narrator tells the story in order to bring clarity to how all the lives in the novel are changed by Lucy Pear), but for a fullness and hyper-dimensionality that heats up the page.

Though there are always twenty other writers a stone’s throw away, Anna Solomon is proud to call herself a local author. She has worked at the Brooklyn Writers Space for a number of years, where writers forge a community of genuine literary support. Perhaps some of the intense energy of returning to Park Slope after a few brief years in Providence, constantly surrounded here by other writers, has filtered into this gorgeous novel. Pack this novel with you on your next vacation, and don’t miss Anna’s summer readings at BookCourt on Wednesday, July 27 and at Community Bookstore on Thursday, July 28. There will be perry available, an alcoholic pear cider that is featured in Anna’s Prohibition era-based novel.


Stranger FatherStranger, Father, Beloved by Taylor Larsen

Fiction

Who says summer reading has to be light? In this novel about the American family and its deepest, most sordid secrets, nothing is as it appears. Michael wants to have himself replaced. He sees no redemption for his family as long as he is the head of it. Pure language you can sink into, knowing that while all that perfect summer scenery rolls in your view of emotion, memory and family will never be quite the same. This is more than a marriage falling apart, an ode to a fancy house with unhappy people in it, or a man fighting with the fragilities of his own mind. Taylor Larsen, based in Brooklyn, has written a searing first novel that takes us on a journey into the most fearful chambers of our own hearts.


Square Wave by Mark de Silva  

Fiction

Mark de Silva’s debut novel on indie press Two Dollar Radio is a literary gem you won’t want to miss this summer. de Silva, who writes both from and beyond an academic background in philosophy, is not necessarily taking an obvious “cerebral” approach to his narrative structures, though the novel has been noted for its difficult prose. Dystopian fiction is a term that you can leave behind at the beach. If you want rewarding, brain-battering prose with flashes of heart, Square Wave has at its center a crumbling America in which Carl Stagg investigates an assault and prepares a series of lectures about his ancestors’ exploits in 17th-century Sri Lanka.


White Nights In Split Town City Finale cover trimmedWhite Nights in Split Town City by Annie de Witt

Fiction

Tyrant Books is run by Giancarlo Trapano, who has published father and son Lish (Gordon and Atticus) and here we have Annie de Witt’s first novel, White Nights in Split Town City, a slender elegant beast set to cure your summer wanderlust. Not all of us have the luxury of leaving town this summer, but the pages of this novel will penetrate your notion of what it means to belong to a place. Praised by Ben Marcus as a “word-drunk novel,” you will read Jean’s thirteen-year-old “coming-of-age” story that fully possesses the lyricism you would expect from a tale set on the last unpaved road in a rural American town in the summer of 1990. What you may not be prepared for is how strangely and (at first glance) simply the prose disintegrates any ideas you might have about fixed identities and escapist fantasies — in less than two-hundred pages, you will be coldly pressed into dialogue and lifted up into shards of light. Take a risk.


Fran Hi-ResThe Fran Lebowitz Reader

Vintage, Non-Fiction

Laugh a little. Fran Lebowitz will take you there. You can’t always read new books. In Fran’s own words, “Summer has an unfortunate effect upon hostesses who have been unduly influenced by the photography of Irving Penn and take the season as a cue to serve dinners of astonishingly meager proportions.” Revise your summer literary menu with these short, crisp essays on everything from water chestnuts to conceptual art.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: author, books, de Silva, de Witt, family, indie press, Larsen, Leibowitz, novel review, reading, Solomon, summer

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