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This memoir could easily fit under the rubric of "misery lit" or "misery memoir." What saves it from this label is the writing on sex and art as modes of survival, self-understanding, and connecting with others. The voice is unique and honest in these moments, showing the hesitations and passions that come out when exploring the body and voice.

What is squiddity? The essence of the squid. In Miéville's smart, thrilling novel, it's godhood. This is a whodunnit, but with a missing giant squid at the center and several underground religious cults and nefarious organizations swirling around it. The language here is as wonderful as it always is: lines with a poetic cadence, neologisms like "endsick" (a disease that afflicts those feeling the end times). The story doesn't begin in the author's usual territory of fantasy but smoothly and delightfully moves in that direction, and then you're drawn in.

I fell right into this intricate novel. It resonates with classics like Robinson Crusoe and Tin Drum, is dense with Maori language and culture, and introduces challenging characters. A woman hermit meets a mute boy with an unavailable history and his tender and violent caretaker. Truly stunning.

Infographics are the darlings of the media, designers, activist organizations, and homespun programmers. This book pulls together the "best", but really the best from large media organizations. There are some exceptions to that sourcing, but most come from the likes of National Geographic and New York Times. If you're new to this media, you'll be captivated. There's almost no commentary on each image; it's all up to you. If you follow visualizations, you won't find much surprising here, but the quality of the book production is good.. In the future, Cook should consider offering more background. Given that infographics are new (sort of. New in that we didn't study them in school as we did poetry, short stories, essays, etc.) and now everywhere, the editor should give readers a sense of the history to which they belong.

A classic collection of essays on modernizing culture--poetry, novels, film, newspapers, music, painting--and our place in history. Benjamin speaks from the position of historical materialism but with a lyricism we don't always associate with versions of Marxism. They were written in the 1930s during the rise of Nazism and try to find a place for art in a political situation when art's being put in the service of fascism. These essay's influence far exceeds their short length.

Gregerson weaves together voices from her life, her fellow poets, her reading of ancient history, and her landscapes. She moves through a variety of forms and creates breathless reading moments through the most mundane.

Many of Sontag's criticisms of photography will still ring true over 30 years after she published these essays. Some will make you wonder how her arguments might have changed if she were writing them in our age of Instagram, imgur, and Pinterest. What violence does the photograph do now? What's the status of the photo taker when her images roam free on social media, by choice or not? As always, Sontag writes crisp, passionate prose that's pleasurable for all readers.

I missed the buzz on this book and thus didn't come with the outsized expectations that others have. That's for the best, as always. I find it utterly charming and stimulating for something, like myself, who's interested in the relationship between words and images in books and art. But, that aside, it regularly makes me smile and even cringe at the coldness of our most intimate relationships. It does start out stronger than it ends, but don't let that keep you away. If you know David Foster Wallace's work, you're hear echoes in how Larsen depicts precocious, prodigy children. Take that as you will.

They'll call it regionalist; you'll just call if wonderful if you don't know that term. With gems of thoughts like this one, "'I'm willing to own a relation that has such proper ideas of doughnuts'"--you'll be smiling, daydreaming, and maybe even salivating at every turn of the page. And if you buy this edition from one of my favorite small, indie presses, Melville House, those pages will be small and have a pleasing texture. Read this classic and feel the Maine sea air against your skin, be inspired to enter into unexpected relations, and be provoked to think about how you determine what you think about others.

Miéville's novels are brilliant, and this is no exception. He invents worlds based on philosophical concepts but makes them work through keen world-building and plotting and sharp sentences. This is no exception. The premise here is linguistic, a language that's made up of doubled words that can be spoken only by natives and non-native twins; it will fascinate language theory-heads and fantasy lovers alike. But it's also masterfully paced. While dark this is less dark and less peopled with odd beings than other Miéville novels, which makes it more pared down but no less engaging.

A beautiful collection of unconventional--and yet sometimes formally conventional--love poetry. Lindenberg adopts a number of poetic forms as well as book parts (index, footnote, dictionary definition) to write about the daily pleasures of love and the quiet and loud pains of loss. It's a wonderful debut; you'll step away with lines sparking in your mind and likely tears moistening your eyes.

This novel is for those who are already Murakami devotees, and not only because it's ~1200 pages. The story itself envelops you, but the laconic prose might turn off those who don't already know how the author builds worlds. It's a generic hybrid of love story, detective story, and mystery-laced fantasy. It's divided into 3 books (that were separately released in Japan) with each chapter oscillating between two characters. In the 3rd book, a 3rd character becomes the focus of chapters. This was an unwelcome change to the narrative pacing.

Adler has an inimitable voice, but you might also hear Lorrie Moore, David Markson, and even the new writer Vanessa Veselka in this novel that doesn't really have a plot but has a feel. The novel's a collection of fragments and often written in concise sentences that, when stitched together, produce atmospheres of excitement, despair, ennui, confusion, and exuberance. I'll be reading more from this author I've just discovered.

Before you see Baz Luhrmann's version of razzle dazzle--3D'd and Jay Z'd--read the original. Fitzgerald's distinctive prose, a wandering romance, the threats to morality from NY money, more and more. The precursor to so many later novels of note, recently O'Neill's Netherland.

You won't always know what's happening as this cross-generational, place-based novel unfolds. Set in an Ohio city, it moves across time to tell how working Italian immigrants settle into the urban US, especially as demographic and cultural changes take place. But more than the plot, Scibona's skill appears at the sentence level. He gets the pacing right: moving between short and long sentences and paragraphs, sometimes making sources of dialogue clear and sometimes opaque.

An author I hadn't heard of until a friend tossed his name my way, an author I'll keep returning to. This novel is spectacular. The plot is based on stasis--Central American seamen stuck on a ship in Brooklyn harbor--but ventures to the civil war in Nicaragua, the Amazon rainforest, penthouse Manhattan apartments, and hair salons owned by a gay exile from Cuba. The prose is captivating; Goldman has a talent for the terse metaphor that crosses the somber with the shocking.

If you're looking for a poetry volume to celebrate National Poetry Month, go for this. Calvocoressi's often brief lines punch you as her boxer characters do. She addresses suicide, racial violence, (same) sex, psychological injury but in the subtlest of ways and alongside pure joy at the moments of heroism in everyday life.

You read this novel for how it has you experience the time of the mind, the time of family, the time of the memory one leaves with others, the time of lived history. The plot isn't worth relating because it's about the sentences that travel through emotion, through certainty and into doubt, from endorsement to estrangement, all between the space of periods. Rooted in Iowa, in a town that may slowly fade into a history that only a few will remember, and in a time in US history that some see as a Golden Age and some as an age of delusion. Just excellent. One of the few recent novels to earn that Pulitzer that actually deserved it.

Robinson's fabulous first.

This will appeal to those with a dark side. In this black and white comic, Burns doesn't let up in his depiction of a sexually-transmitted disease that alienates even the most popular suburban teenagers from their families and "normal" friends in a 1970s Seattle suburb. Other communities form but with an unstable, sinister center. Oddly, no one is concerned about curing the disease. Burns focuses only on effects through a non-linear narrative divided across different character-narrators. I couldn't stop reading it, but know that it won't catch everyone by the lapels.

The writing here is beautiful, but there's something kitschy about the plot and characters. The magical can feel forced, quirky for its own sake. Read it for its creativity and prose.

Americans are quite insular when it comes to their reading habits. We read few novels in translation, far fewer when the original language is Arabic. I admit to having read only a few. And this is a spectacular one, especially as it's even more relevant now than it was when it was first published in the 80s. It's set in the first oil era, when US & other corporations rushed in to extract crude while exploiting and destroying social and environmental systems. Of course, this is an era we're still in. While deeply political, this isn't propagandistic. It's rich in symbolism and stories of family struggles. Let this be your first Arabic novel.

A memoir of illness and discovering an unexpected companionship with a species we don't normally consider companionate: an everyday garden snail. The author is living through another bout of an undiagnosed debilitating infection and discovering the largeness of a life lived small and slow. The prose shifts from short, clipped sentences, and longer ruminations as she visits memories.

For the Texas-, literature-, and film-lovers out there, this book by Don Graham probes the culture that has made the state what it is, which is more than outsiders' stereotypes. Graham is learned but not stuffy, perfectly straddling the scholarly, the personal, and the irreverent.

A perfect portal to Wallace's fantastic writing. Essays in which he solidified his reputation as one of the most important writers--across genres--of the new millennium. And without the length and commitment that Infinite Jest and The Pale King require. These are delightful, thought-provoking essays that cover everything from TV, cruises, tennis, and David Lynch.

Bittman does it all, vegetarian style. I respect him immensely for his writing on health, food politics, and food justice in The New York Times, but he first earned his chops for his recipes. This immense cookbook explains the role of different ingredients, breaks down cooking techniques, and offers thousands of recipes, many of which are quick but delicious. Perfect for any cook, especially those leaning toward a meat-free or reduced meat diet.

Musicians choose the charity, you buy the coloring book, Yellow Bird uses your money to support the charity. All the while you and your kids (or just you) can color pictures inspired by great bands like Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Historian and one of the best environmental writers in the US explores what our relation to nature looks like today--pink flamingos, The Nature Company at the mall, SUVs on the streets--and how our purchasing behaviors have shaped that relation for the past centuries. Wonderfully written and full of surprising observations.

Before the movie hits the screens, read Mitchell's captivating novel that travels across time, across genres. Reviewers call it "virtuosic" and that's an apt description. The novel chronicles a 19th explorer and a cloned human, a journalist, a composer, and a publisher all against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world.

An indispensable study of the concerted campaigns of unknowing that conservative groups like the Heartland Institute and the Koch brothers have been waging since the 1960s. It's no coincidence that global warming is the new anti-tobacco. The same parties fund efforts at obfuscation and faux science. This is a must-read for all those affected by US failure to respond seriously to climate change. And that's all of us.

Richard Powers's award-winning novel is a double plot about crane migration that's told in a lyrical mode and neurological injury told in more didactic mode. Family drama, romance, environmental contests, and even a detective story also thread through these two main tales. The novel shows Powers's respect for the less-traveled parts of the US even as he shows the threats to them from brain drain and unsustainable development that ruins farming and crane habitat. The information about neuroscience will interest some and put off others. As will the characterization, which is the weakest part of the novel. The ending, however, will definitely surprise.

Humorous and promoting humor as the key to tribal survival. A wild ride, in typical Vizenor fashion, but it falls flat in the last third after a major character drops out of the scene too abruptly. The premise is wonderful: Christopher Columbus had indigenous ancestry and his heirs are now members of the Anishinaabe tribe who implant Columbian genes to heal sick children. And that's just one plot line.

Williams published only 3 novels during his years writing and teaching writing at the University of Denver. Each novel is on a completely different topic; it's the prose that makes you wanting more. An idealist Easterner heads to the Kansas frontier following the insights of Emerson. He ends up in an ill-fated buffalo hunt that will test his ideas about the West.

This novel by a young author addresses the difficulties of immigrant experience in the US, telling the story of a woman from Bangladesh who moves to Rochester to marry an American man she barely knows. The first third takes on stereotyping in a typical idiom. However, the rest of the book is more engaging as it reveals the husband's deceptions and the Deshi wife's second thoughts about pursuing the American dream. The prose and structure are straightforward, and the ending bittersweet.

An important study of the connections between development, immigration policy, and environmental threats in the New West. Ross sets out to discover whether Phoenix, AZ's claims to sustainability are accurate and uncovers the structural inequalities that must change to make sustainability a reality here and throughout cities in the US.

Miéville's talents shine in this unexpected detective novel that is also a urban metaphysical mindbender. He leaves his regular genre of fantasy much to the side to explore a city divided, not literally but in citizens' consciousness of it. A great introduction to Miéville for those wary of fantasy.

This is fantasy that transcends the designation and attracts those not yet initiated into the genre. Mieville is always inventive, his voice urgent, and his imagined worlds far from our own yet reflections on our own.

This novel is an impressive debut that is a stunning complement to devastating mountain top removal mining practices. It is as faithful to the complexity of the environmental and economic issues as it is to the complexity of narrative voice. It's the book that this urgent issue and contemporary fiction need.

A very accessible introduction to what's also known as 'global capitalism' or, in some part, 'globalization.' Harvey argues that neoliberalism's main effect and perhaps even deliberate aim is class warfare of a new type. It's an improbably page-turner, perhaps because it makes so much else make disturbing sense.

A startling novel about a boy on whom Somalia's history is inscribed and through whom it's refracted. Beautiful and unafraid. It also illuminates the civil war in Somalia that led to the US's involvement in the 1990s, a war about which most Americans probably know little.