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One Grand Books, founded by Out magazine editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin, was built upon one simple, brilliant premise–the project asks celebrities, writers, and artists that age-old question: If you were stranded on a desert island, which ten books would you bring with you to read and reread? The bookstore, located in Narrowsburg, New York, is curates…
This is Why I Came Mary Rakow Counterpoint, December 15 2015 204 pp; $24 Buy hardcover | eBook To tell you that Mary Rakow’s lyrical novel This is Why I Came is a recasting of biblical narratives hardly sets the book apart—the Bible, with its knotty metaphors, unequaled cast of complex characters, ebullient wisdom, and…
Proust famously stated, “The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.” In “Souvenir Button,” Rosalyn Drexler (A Public Space) explores paradises rendered, imagined, inhabited, and lost. Drexler opens the story with the unnamed narrator receiving a souvenir button made for her by an artist hanging out at the playwright Tom O’Horgan’s famous Greenwich…
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE Alexandra Kleeman Harper, August 2015 283 pp, $25.99 Buy hardcover | eBook | trade paperback | audio Seeming unmoored from both tangible responsibility and abstract constructs, like Mersualt in Camus’ The Stranger, “A”—the narrator of Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine—drifts…
Literary Enemies: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie vs. Maud Casey Disclaimer: I bet they’d love each other. There are two authors who have a special place on the fiction shelves at the bookstore where I work. The first is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, though “on the fiction shelves” isn’t quite an accurate locution in her case, since we…
Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey first caught my attention with her long poem “The State of the Prisons” about the 18th century reformer John Howard’s humanitarian mission to bring some sanity and basic decency to England’s prisons. Morrissey brought to life a fascinating story from history using regular stanzas and a bit of rhyme, which struck me as…
Barnes & Noble may soon be extending its reach. CEO Ron Biore recently told Alexandra Alter at the New York Times that the company is looking to offer more games, toys, and small gifts in the future, sparking concern that the retailer would slowly move away from its core offering: books. There’s no doubt book retailers have suffered…
When I teach creative writing at the college level, one of the tasks I always assign early on in the semester is to have my students pick out a short work outside (preferably diametrically opposed to) the student’s preferred genre, read it, and offer a brief informal presentation of their experience. These reports always vary…
The City at Three PM: Writing, Reading, and Traveling Peter LaSalle Dzanc Books, December 15 2015 280 pp; $15.95 Buy paperback We read travel writers for a variety of reasons, but often it is for the vicarious thrill of the journey, somewhat akin to schadenfreude in that we can happily wince at a traveler’s discomforts…
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