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Top Ten Books of 2021

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In a year that felt like an unwelcome doppelgänger of the last, the most essential books of 2021 asked timeless questions but in forms and structures that renewed our senses. Each of these ten titles were not balms but smelling salts that made us feel as alive, and demonstrated that there are ways to thrive […]

Shelf Life: John Birdsall

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The writer and essayist John Birdsall grew up in San Francisco where he learned to cook at Green’s restaurant before exiting the kitchen after 17 years to focus on food criticism and essays. He’s won several James Beard awards for his writing, notably for his game-changing essay for Lucky Peach magazine, “America, your food is so gay,” […]

Shelf Life: Nic Stone

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In this episode, the best-selling YA author, Nic Stone, revisits two childhood faves: Louis Sachar’s classic 1998 novel, Holes, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides – two books that left their impression on her own career as the author of  young adult novels that center the stories of Black youths, so long absent in fiction. Best known for […]

Joan Didion’s Vogue Years

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In 2003, shortly before the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion agreed to participate in a recorded conversation for BlackBook with the writer Meghan Daum. The interview was moderated by the magazine’s editor Aaron Hicklin, and took place in her Manhattan apartment on a warm fall afternoon. One detail stands out all […]

The Sitwell Inheritance

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For months Denise Kelly, a general books specialist and valuer with the British auction house, Dreweatts, has been listening to the ghosts of the Roaring Twenties. “I have a diary of Sacheverell Sitwell, and everyone is in it, everyone,” she says. “There isn’t a line where there isn’t a reference to a Virginia Woolf or […]