Our 2016–2017 Reading Recommendations!
With the summer in full swing and plenty of lazy evenings and layovers still ahead, our literary department handpicked some must-reads for the coming weeks — that may or may not include a few peeks at our upcoming fall season authors.
What critics are saying:
“The prose is lean and inviting, but the constant shifts in point of view, the peripatetic chronology, and the ever growing cast of characters will keep you on your toes.” — Kirkus Review
What our lit department says:
Commonwealth is Ann Patchett’s latest novel, and her upcoming Thalia Book Club will be one of the highlights of this season. Like Ann herself, the book is funny, charming, and and capable of melting anyone’s heart. Over the course of the book, Patchett gracefully weaves together multiple story lines and all of her characters are incredibly vibrant and compelling. A touching and satisfying read by a masterful writer.
What critics are saying:
“Lispector should be on the shelf with Kafka and Joyce.” — LA Times
What our lit department says:
As part of this year’s Source Project, we’re dedicating an entire evening to Clarice Lispector, an author who is legendary in Brazil, but until recently, has been relatively unknown the U.S. But thanks to an award-winning translation of her complete stories, her surreal and bewitching writing has been reintroduced to the literary world. Colm Toibin called “one of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century”, and we couldn’t agree more.
What critics are saying:
“A new work by Etgar Keret is always an occasion, if only because one is guaranteed a stretch of pure entertainment.” — Chicago Tribune
What our lit department says:
The absurd, hilarious, and charming stories of Etgar Keret have been a staple of Selected Shorts for years, and still, we can’t get enough. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God is one of Keret’s oldest collections, and was recently reissued to remind us all of his genius.
What critics are saying:
“Can effective fiction be written in the format of a standardized test? Pretty much, and few are as equipped to do it as well as Chilean writer Zambra, who has a penchant for experimentation.” — Kirkus Review
What our lit department says:
This is at the top of our to-read pile after reading an excerpt of it from The New Yorker last June. Zambra’s collection of short stories My Documents established him as one of the predominant voices in modern Latin-American literature, and was one of our favorite reads last year. His stories are playful and daring, and his voice is unlike any other author writing today.
What critics are saying:
“It’s hard to top the locale of “The Vacationers” — a sunny island in the Mediterranean Sea — but in Straub’s skillful hands, the Brooklyn setting of “Modern Lovers” is just as colorful a destination. Summer in the city has never felt so good.” — Washington Post
What our lit department says:
Emma Straub is simply one of the coolest people we know! We’ve been fans of her since she published her short-story collection Other People We Married, and she’s grown tremendously as a writer. Her new novel, Modern Lovers has been the book of the summer, and we think she’s the perfect person to interview Ann Patchett at our Thalia Book Club this September.
What critics are saying:
“Johnson brings together eleven down-and-out stories linked by their disagreeable narrator — a lowlife of mythic proportions who abuses drugs, booze, and people with reckless indifference. But this eventually recovering slacker reveals in these deceptively thin tales a psyche so tormented and complex that we allow him his bleak redemption.” — Kirkus Reviews
What our lit department says:
A few years ago, Josh Radnor read the story “Emergency,” at Selected Shorts and we’ve been thinking about Denis Johnson’s collection ever since. This year marks the 25th anniversary of its publication, and we’re inviting authors, actors, and admirers to pay tribute to this dark, funny, and monumental book. If you haven’t read it yet, you’ve been missing out!
What critics are saying:
“Brownstein is self-mythologizing, but in a way that’s the opposite of most rock stars… [She] is interested in telling us who she is — and how she sees herself — without a guitar in her hands. ‘I was relieved that music had done exactly what I had always wanted it to do,’ she writes in this both candid and evasive book, ‘which was turn me into someone else.’ ”— New York Times
What our lit department says:
Carrie Brownstein made a name for herself though her band Sleater-Kinney, and later starring on Portlandia, but with Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, she’s proven herself to be one of the most talented and honest writers around. She’s got tons of admirers, including Miranda July, Emma Watson, and George Saunders, who is just as excited as we are to have her at Selected Shorts this season.
What critics are saying:
“Love, McCullers suggests, is not simply, or even primarily, pleasure and passion. It is pain and torture: powerful, inscrutable, and with dim and dangerous depths that nobody can really sound. And just as you begin to get an idea where the love relationships explored in The Ballad of the Sad Café are leading, McCullers turns the tables and springs a surprise on the reader, in a way that makes lines like the above all the more haunting.” — Author Mari Biella
What our lit department says:
We recently included McCuller’s story “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud” in a Selected Shorts performance at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and were reminded that McCullers is a master of the short story. Whatever loneliness and disconnection McCullers confronted in her daily life, she had a great capacity to translate her difficulties to the page and render them universal. We are delighted to revisit the stories of this quintessential Southern writer in preparation for an evening of readings celebrating her centennial.
What critics are saying:
This is a beautifully written fable for people of all ages, not just those in grades 3–6, as suggested by the publisher. — Jane Litte of ‘Dear Author’
What our lit department says:
We’ve have been fans of Grace Lin’s work for many years now and are so excited to finally meet her in person this fall. Lin expertly mixes Chinese folklore and fantasy together to tell unique and riveting stories which she illustrates beautifully!
