Books We Read and Loved in 2018
Phew! The holidays are over and here at City Lit we are warming up by the store's fireplace and reflecting on 2018. First of all, we continue to be so grateful for all of the book readers that frequent the store and make it the place that it is! Then our minds inevitably wander over all the books we read in 2018 and we excitedly want to share our favorites. So, imagine each one of the books in this post being hugged then held out to you, because it's like that.
Audie's favorites: Disoriental by Negar Djavadi, Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Severance by Ling Ma, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Allison's favorites: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, Outline by Rachel Cusk, The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
Clare's favorites: The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Outline by Rachel Cusk, Notes from No Man's Land by Eula Biss, Motherhood by Sheila Heti, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, New People by Danzy Senna, Sabrina by Nick Dranso, Jillian by Halle Butler, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, Bobcat by Rebecca Lee
Chris' favorites: Satin Island by Tom McCarthy, Heroines by Kate Zambreno, End of Eddy by Eduard Louis, Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis, Gate of the Sun by Elias Khonig, Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, Atonement by Ian McEwan
Cody's favorites: Cody is currently on a boat in the Caribbean and not with us huddled around the fire, so we'll update this later.
Jordan's favorites: Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman, The Walk by Robert Walser, You & A Bike & A Road by Eleanor Davis, Order of the Day by Eric Vuillard, Anti-Gone by Connor Willumsen, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, A Thousand Distant Radios by Woody Skinner, Motherhood by Sheila Heti, Comemadre by Roque Larraquy, Sabrina by Nick Dranso
Teresa's favorites: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, Mem by Bethany C. Morrow, An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim, Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love, The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, Tangerine by Christine Mangan
Willie's favorites: Wild is the Wind by Carl Phillips, Stags Leap by Sharon Olds, Letters to Max by Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritro, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, Feeld by Jos Charles
Here is the unforgettable story of Jomny, a lonely alien who, for the first time ever, finds a home on our planet after learning that earthlings can feel lonely too. Jomny finds friendship in a bear tired of other creatures running away in fear, an egg struggling to decide what to hatch into, an owl working its way to being wise, a tree feeling stuck in one place, a tadpole coming to terms with turning into a frog, a dying ghost, a puppy unable to express itself, and many more.
Jenny Xie's award-winning debut, Eye Level, takes us far and near, to Phnom Penh, Corfu, Hanoi, New York, and elsewhere, as we travel closer and closer to the acutely felt solitude that centers this searching, moving collection. Animated by a restless inner questioning, these poems meditate on the forces that moor the self and set it in motion, from immigration to travel to estranging losses and departures. The sensual worlds here--colors, smells, tastes, and changing landscapes--bring to life questions about the self as seer and the self as seen. As Xie writes, "Me? I'm just here in my traveler's clothes, trying on each passing town for size." Her taut, elusive poems exult in a life simultaneously crowded and quiet, caught in between things and places, and never quite entirely at home. Xie is a poet of extraordinary perception--both to the tangible world and to "all that is untouchable as far as the eye can reach."
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet. Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human. Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December--through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit--not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."
Sphinx is the debut novel, originally published in 1986, by the incredibly talented and inventive French author Anne Garréta, one of the few female members of OuLiPo, the influential and exclusive French experimental literary group whose mission is to create literature based on mathematical and linguistic restraints, and whose ranks include Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, and Raymond Queneau, among others. Sphinx is a remarkable work of literary ingenuity: a beautiful and complex love story between two characters, the narrator, “I,” and A., written completely without any gendered pronouns or gender markers referring to the main characters, all the more difficult with the strict gender requirements of the French language. In addition to her creative output, Garréta is a scholar of French and Romance literatures, and teaches half the year at the University of Rennes in France, and the other half of the year at Duke University. Sphinx is Garréta’s first novel to appear in English, and was published with support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.
Teenage Linda lives with her parents in the austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outsider at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is faced with child pornography charges, his arrest deeply affects Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong. And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy. But with this new sense of belonging comes expectations and secrets she doesn't understand and, over the course of a summer, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. One of the most daring literary debuts of the year and a national bestseller, History of Wolves is an agonizing and gorgeously written novel from an urgent, new voice in American fiction.
A beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul. Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams--invasive images of blood and brutality--torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It's a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that's become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman's struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon--the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell." But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations. A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Fredrik Backman's novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others.
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J.M. Coetzee returns with a haunting and surprising novel about childhood and destiny that is sure to rank with his classic novels. Separated from his mother as a passenger on a boat bound for a new land, David is a boy who is quite literally adrift. The piece of paper explaining his situation is lost, but a fellow passenger, Simón, vows to look after the boy. When the boat docks, David and Simón are issued new names, new birthdays, and virtually a whole new life. Strangers in a strange land, knowing nothing of their surroundings, nor the language or customs, they are determined to find David's mother. Though the boy has no memory of her, Simón is certain he will recognize her at first sight. "But after we find her," David asks, "what are we here for?" An eerie allegorical tale told largely through dialogue, The Childhood of Jesus is a literary feat-a novel of ideas that is also a tender, compelling narrative. Coetzee's many fans will celebrate his return while new readers will find The Childhood of Jesus an intriguing introduction to the work of a true master.
Typing up positive-thought messages for a self-help guru isn't exactly Daphne's idea of dream job. But to regain custody of her nine-year-old son, she's willing to try. A few weeks later, when that same self-help guru asks her to take care of 100 endangered parrots, Daphne is willing to try that too. What ensues is a hilarious, heartbreaking tragicomedy involving the love of her life, the landlady from hell, three house painters, a flock of passenger pigeons and a super-sized bag of mite-killing powder. With text by acclaimed author Deb Olin Unferth and stunning illustrations by artist Elizabeth Haidle, I, Parrot is not only a poignant, literary graphic novel, but also a portrait of woman who will do anything--no matter how ridiculous or revolutionary--to care for her child and find a to triumph in world where idealists and misfits rarely win.
It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flãneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women's Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco--a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Andrea Lawlor's debut novel offers a speculative history of early '90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals--while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel "the unbearable lightness of being." A major achievement from one of the world's truly great writers, Milan Kundera's magnificent novel of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender--by the renowned Yugoslavian writer Dubravka Ugresic--begins in the Berlin Zoo, with the contents of Roland the Walrus's stomach displayed beside his pool (Roland died in August, 1961). These objects--a cigarette lighter, lollipop sticks, a beer-bottle opener, etc.--like the fictional pieces of the novel itself, are seemingly random at first, but eventually coalesce, meaningfully and poetically. Written in a variety of literary forms, The Museum of Unconditional Surrender captures the shattered world of a life in exile. Some chapters re-create the daily journal of the narrator's lonely and alienated mother, who shops at the improvised flea-markets in town and longs for her children; another is a dream-like narrative in which a circle of women friends are visited by an angel. There are reflections and accounts of the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Civil War; portraits of European artists; a recipe for Caraway Soup; a moving story of a romantic encounter the narrator has in Lisbon; descriptions of family photographs; memories of the small town in which Ugresic was raised. Addressing the themes of art and history, aging and loss, The Museum is a haunting and an extremely original novel. In the words of the Times Literary Supplement, "it is vivid in its denunciation of destructive forces and in its evocation of what is at stake."
Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That's what it felt like for Keats in 1819. How about Autumn 2016? Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand-in-hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.
The six stories in Haruki Murakami's mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami's characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever collects eighteen brilliant short stories from James Tiptree, Jr. This updated edition is the quintessential Tiptree collection and contains revisions from the author's original notes. Tiptree's fiction reflects the darkly complex world its author inhabited: exploring the alien among us; the unreliability of perception; love, sex, and death; and humanity's place in a vast, cold universe.
England, 1959. Free-spirited widow Florence Green risks everything to open a bookshop in a conservative East Anglian coastal town. While bringing about a surprising cultural awakening through works by Ray Bradbury and Vladimir Nabokov, she earns the polite but ruthless opposition of a local grand dame and the support and affection of a reclusive book loving widower. As Florence's obstacles amass and bear suspicious signs of a local power struggle, she is forced to ask: is there a place for a bookshop in a town that may not want one?
Hi! My name is Allison and I am the baby bookseller here at City Lit Books. I say “Baby bookseller” because I have been doing this for the shortest amount of time - not because I only sell books to the tiniest of the humans.
Time for another well-loved book on its way to classic status! This month’s selection for the Instant Classics book club is a winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson!
Nothing beats the way summer feels when you’re a kid, but this month the Graphic Content book club is trying to recapture the feeling of those easy days in the sun. Check out this graphic novel about crossing from childhood to adolescence: This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki!
It’s back to the ‘classics’ for the Wilde Readers book club this month. We’re reading The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal!
Next up for the Found in Translation book club is The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated from the French by Alison Anderson!
Our newest book club is back for its second meeting! This month W.W.B. will meet to discuss How Should a Person Be? By Sheila Heti!
It’s weird! It’s wonderful! It’s our monthly celebration of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, magical realism, or any genre otherwise strange – the Weird & Wonderful book club! This month we’re reading The Devourers by Indra Das!
This month our club for non-fiction and current events, the Tell Me How It Ends book club, is reading a shop favorite, Eula Biss and On Immunity!
With David Sedaris’ latest (and maybe best) book out this summer, we’re taking it back to one of his earlier collections! This month the In Brief book club is reading Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris!
And don’t forget the ongoing Lit & Luz Book Club with MAKE Literary Productions! There are three chances to meet in the month of August for a discussion about Julian Herbert’s Tomb Song!
Keeping up with your summer reading? The days are long, and our “to be read” lists are longer… but we like it that way. Whether you’re on your way to the beach or scrambling for a seat close to the air conditioner, our book clubs have lots of great book choices for you this summer!
Set against the tumultuous political backdrop of late 1960s Chicago and narrated by 10-year-old Karen Reyes, Monsters is told through a fictional graphic diary employing the iconography of B-movie horror imagery and pulp monster magazines. As the precocious Karen Reyes tries to solve the murder of her beautiful and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a Holocaust survivor, we watch the interconnected and fascinating stories of those around her unfold.
Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them. In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph. Yet it is Kimiâ herself––punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”––who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel.
The first volume in McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
When Myriam decides to return to work as a lawyer after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect nanny for their son and daughter. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite, devoted woman who sings to the children, cleans the family's chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint, and hosts enviable kiddie parties. But as the couple and the nanny become more dependent on one another, jealousy, resentment, and suspicions mount, shattering the idyllic tableau. Building tension with every page, The Perfect Nanny is a compulsive, riveting, bravely observed exploration of power, class, race, domesticity, motherhood, and madness--and the American debut of an immensely talented writer.
With President Trump suggesting that teachers arm themselves, with the NRA portrayed as a group of "patriots" helping to Make America Great Again, with high school students across the country demanding a solution to the crisis, everyone in America needs to engage in the discussion about our future with an informed, historical perspective on the role of guns in our society. America is at a critical turning point. What is the future for our children? Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, is a deeply researched--and deeply disturbing--history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator Dunbar-Ortiz explains, in order to understand the current obstacles to gun control, we must understand the history of U.S. guns, from their role in the "settling of America" and the early formation of the new nation, and continuing up to the present.
From Lauren Groff, author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling novel Fates and Furies, comes Delicate Edible Birds, one of the most striking short fiction debuts in years. Here are nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a twentieth-century American woman. In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime--or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif--sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles recur; they're in every story--love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths, which are understood too late; some of the love is shallow, and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme--Groff's women swim and baton twirl, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom. Overall, these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident, Delicate Edible Birds further solidifies Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.
In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine...to a shattering revelation about mankind's destiny in the universe. Robert Charles Wilson has crafted a brilliant science fiction novel--a view of an utterly different 20th century.
Independent Bookstore Day is almost here! It’s a day to celebrate your neighborhood bookstore, your favorite place to find a new book. Indie Bookstore Day was started just a few years ago to recognize the important place that these stores hold in their communities. Amidst the discussion of these physical spaces in an industry dominated by online outlets, the necessity for spaces where people can go to meet real people, to share passions, to exchange ideas, is commemorated each year by a day at the end of April.