Staff Picks

The next time you have 6+ hours to kill, try out the Bo Ssam miracle on pg. 166. 

It will change.

YOUR.

LIFE!

--Hal 

If you enjoyed Loving Frank, this is a book for you. Reading about Hadley and Ernest Hemingway's adventures in Paris, Sweden, and Spain allowed me to be a fly on the wall of the glamorous literati lifestyle of the time.

-- Suzy T 

The people who will enjoy this trilogy are the people who have to read it. You are not a Civil War nerd if you haven't read these, and you will learn and you will enjoy.

 -- Sam 

Set in rural Montana in the late 1980s, Emily Danforth's debut novel is narrated by the fiesty and remarkably honest Cameron Post, a teenager dealing with her burgeoning sexual attraction to women, as well as her devoutly religious Aunt Ruth, who believes God can "cure" Cameron of her "disorder." Relatable characters and spot-on teenage vernacular make this coming-of-age tale feel searingly real-- and, of course, relevant.

-- Derek 

After becoming briefly obsessed with the Jean Luc Godard film based on this book, I knew I had to read Contempt immediately. It is essentially a love story but the kind of love that turns to hate which of course is the most interesting kind. Told through the desperate and delusional lens of the husband while he tries to adapt The Odyssey for the silver screen, it is as much about the struggles of art and film making as it is about the collapse of a marriage.

--Sky 

Gender, religion, alienation, insanity, hope. This one has it all. It's certainly over-the-top with its various narrators/speakers, not to mention the actual author & editors. Hint: Danielewski is probably laughing at you the whole time you squint down at his pages, ravenously scribbling your intellectual little marginalia. I say this because I wrecked those margins. Badly wrecked 'em. The novel's weight took some time to settle in the belly of my head, but I can truthfully say this is the best time I've had reading all year. I don't even like ghost stories necessarily, but I do love Love stories, and this is both, encrypted in such a way you can believe both actually do exist.

-- Chelsea