Yaa Gyasi
[isbn]
Transcendent Kingdom is a searching, intimate novel about so many issues: race and the immigrant experience, the twin scourges of addiction and depression and our society's failure to grapple with them, the power and the limitations of religious faith and of scientific inquiry, and how we cope with profound loss and grief. This is a moving, urgent story, and I couldn't put it down.
Recommended by Tim B.
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Cathy Park Hong
[isbn]
This book is ruthless and funny, exacting and searching, and will make you question, deeply, your assumptions about race, language, gender, and the interactions you have with the people and the world around you. Cathy Park Hong's essays are sharp and incisive, and she doesn't let anyone, or anything, off the hook.
Recommended by Tim B.
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Rebecca Makkai
[isbn]
Set during the AIDS crisis in Chicago in the 1980s, The Great Believers is a book about the personal and the political, about love and loss, grief and guilt, memory and art. It’s an unsparing book that doesn’t shy away from the horrors of the epidemic or the holes it left in the lives of those who lived through it, but it’s also a joyful book about the power of friendship, family, and art to sustain us, even in the face of devastation.... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Ben Lerner
[isbn]
We are living in a moment defined by anger — anger at injustice and those who treat it with indifference (or even glee), anger at the gulf of understanding between divided parts of the country, anger at the impotence that many people feel in a society stratified by race, gender, class, and income inequality. The Topeka School journeys into the white-hot center of that anger, exploring its origins and its consequences, both in the 1990s... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Jericho Brown
[isbn]
I don't have words for how amazing this collection of poetry is, except to say that every word in it is a revelation. I read these poems again and again, and the best thing I can say is that it refreshed my heart and made me feel less alone, which is maybe the most important thing we can ask language to do.
Recommended by Tim B.
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Regina Porter
[isbn]
This book goes all over the place — Georgia, Germany, Coney Island, New Hampshire, France, and back again — looping around two families, black and white, across five decades. The result is a stunning novel that grabs hold of big questions and doesn't let go: What does it mean to be a family? Can you outrun the past, and should you try? Who gets to belong in this messed-up, beautiful country we call America?
Recommended by Tim B.
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Jess Row
[isbn]
In these essays, Jess Row interrogates and challenges the "universality" of the literary fiction white writers have written for the last 50 years — everyone from Raymond Carver to Anne Tyler to David Foster Wallace — and how the "absence" of race in these works has prevented white writers (and readers) from knowing "what we mean...when we say the word 'freedom.'" This book is essential reading for anyone who loves the literary fiction of the past... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Emily Nussbaum
[isbn]
This striking book of essays is more than just a collection of sharp reviews or a celebration of the medium. Emily Nussbaum posits a bold way of thinking about television as an art form in and of itself — not on novelistic or cinematic terms, but according to its own specific grammar and visual language. It's a brilliant interrogation of the place that television, both "prestige" and "popular," has come to occupy in American life, and of the ways... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Roberto Bolano, Chris Andrews
[isbn]
Want to see why everyone is so excited about Bolaño, but don't want to commit to a 700-page (or even a 1,200-page) book? This is a great place to start — enough poetry and paranoia to understand his unique allure.
Recommended by Tim B.
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Hanif Abdurraqib
[isbn]
It doesn't matter if Hanif Abdurraqib is writing about Allen Iverson or Fall Out Boy or what it's like to grow up as a Muslim boy in a post-industrial Midwest town. Each of these essays is equal parts poem, polemic, and prayer, and it's hard for me not to describe the total experience of reading this book as anything less than sacred. This book blew me away, and Abdurraqib is very much a writer to watch.
Recommended by Tim B.
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Jamie Quatro
[isbn]
A powerful, poetic meditation on love and faith, God and sex, and the parts of ourselves we compromise in order to maintain our relationships.
Recommended by Tim B.
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Rosecrans Baldwin
[isbn]
You can read and enjoy Last Kid Left on a lot of levels — it's a compelling mystery, a bold and poignant exploration of the myriad ways in which social media and online celebrity complicate and corrupt our everyday lives and perceptions, and a heartbreaking meditation on the haunting effects loss and the sins of our parents can have on our relationships and our decisions. I haven't read a book both this expansive or this compulsively... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Olivia Laing
[isbn]
You could call this book a collection of essays, or a memoir, or a work of art history. To narrow it down to one of those would be to miss the point, or at least lose some of what makes it so special. Reeling from the end of a relationship, Laing explores the work and lives of four New York City artists (Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and Henry Darger) and the myriad ways loneliness and the city define and inform their work. It's... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Jesmyn Ward
[isbn]
If this book was only what it is on the surface — a memoir of Ward’s experience watching four young men, including her brother, die before any of them turned 25 — it would be among the most deeply felt and moving memoirs I’ve ever read. But this book is also a powerful investigation of how poverty, race, and the history of injustice in the Deep South have all conspired to make simply living one’s life a dangerous proposition for young black men.... (read more)
Recommended by Tim B.
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Ben Lerner
[isbn]
Lerner delivers on the promise of his fiction debut, Leaving the Atocha Station, with this stunning exploration of the lines between fiction and nonfiction, audience and creator, and the mortality of the body and the immortality of art. I haven't read a book that better captures how it feels to be alive in the 21st century.
Recommended by Tim B.
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