From André Leon Talley’s The Chiffon Trenches to Emily Henry’s aptly-named rom-com, Beach Read, there are plenty of just-published books that are ripe for reading poolside, preferably with a daiquiri in hand. But there are also page-turning reads that never get old, some even attaining the venerable status of literary classic. We plundered the One […]
Ten Books Chosen by Ten Black Notables from Lupita Nyong’o to Ta-Nehisi Coates
In this tragic year in which the failures of the America’s promise to its citizen have been made abundantly clear, we have looked in our archives to identify ten books by Black writers chosen by Black notables. All should be required reading.
Notes from a Small-Town Bookshop
Nothing, of course, is easy. Or not for long. When Dasha began homeschooling her son, her art work took a hiatus. And despite her love of New York, she never lost the sense of being an outsider. “I had a lot of luck at the beginning but this luck did not translate
The 1970s Book Club is Here
Vote for ten books you want to read (or reread) from the year in which the Concord made it’s maiden flight, the Beatles disbanded, and Apollo 13 aborted its mission to the moon. Last year we launched our first book club, reading 10 books first published in 1969. This year we’re moving on by […]
Have a Mitford Christmas with our exclusive holiday gift
Three classics by Nancy Mitford chosen by Rufus Wainwright, Tilda Swinton, and Marianne Faithful, with a quarter pound of our favorite tea.
Children’s Author of the Month: Wanda Gag
About the time that A.A.Milne began writing his tales of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, and 12 years before the arrival of Curious George, the Minnesotan artist Wanda Gag, the daughter of impoverished immigrants from Bohemia, was quietly, almost inadvertently, launching a revolution in book publishing. Her first title, Millions of Cats, the oldest […]
Remembering Toni Morrison
“I really only do one thing,’ the writer Toni Morrison, who has died at the age of 88, told Hilton Als in 2003, when she was profiled for The New Yorker. “I read books. I teach books. I write books. I think about books. It’s one job.”
What We’re Reading in April
Three Very Different Books Connected By a Quest for Identity The Gooze Fritz, by Sergei Lebedev (New Vessel Press) There’s a natural inclination to fill in the missing pieces of our personal narratives. It partially stems from the belief that understanding where you come from, can ultimately shape where you’re going. Such stories allow us […]
Pete Buttigieg and the Love that Dare Not Speak its Name
If Peter Buttigieg was only the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Twitter would care less about what he reads. But he is running for the highest office in the land, and that makes a difference. Aaron Hicklin People love lists almost as much as they love to hate them. Take our latest, by the Democratic […]
Wheels Within Wheels: Revisiting Slaughterhouse-Five
“All of this happened, more or less.” The famous opening line of Slaughterhouse-Five, is a tease of a sentence. Is Vonnegut giving us a memoir, or fiction? Or is he challenging the very nature of memoir? Who says that fiction is any less true than non-fiction? In an era when memoirs are frequently unmasked as […]
