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10 Great American Novel Contenders From the Past Decade

By Emily Temple on

Publisher’s Weekly has asked readers to identify the Great American Novel. Fun! While we have no beef with the books on their list, we did notice that only two of the options — Edward P. Jones’s The Known World and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — were published in the last decade. Are there no more than two worthy contenders for Great American Novel status from recent years? We think there are. Here are ten books published since 2003 that should at least be in the running for that shifty, subjective Great American Novel… Read More

Books

25 Notable Books Unfairly Overlooked by ‘The New York Times’

By Emily Temple on

Earlier this week, The New York Times published their annual year-end list of the “100 Notable Books of 2012,” as chosen by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. As usual, the list is filled with very predictable (though often very worthy) choices, but this year we were surprised not only by the amazing, under-the-radar books the Times ignored, but by the equally amazing but high-profile and relatively commercial books that also got snubbed. To that end, we’ve compiled an alternative, or an addendum, if you will, to the Times’ list, including both lesser-known books we loved this year, and some big name books we can’t believe didn’t make the cut. Click through to read our list, and if you so desire, register your own addendums to our addendum in the comments. … Read More

Books

10 Books That Are Meant to Be Savored

By Emily Temple on

As Francis Bacon famously wrote, “Some books are meant to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; That is, some books are to be read only in parts; Others to be read, but not curiously; And some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” As voracious readers, we like to think we give each book we read its due diligence, but you can’t deny that some are worth lingering over, worth turning over in your mind, worth cherishing, longer than others. Of course, such a thing is only objective to a certain extent — everyone has their own favorites, and everyone’s own favorites are, for them, just as important as anyone else’s. Here, we present a list of ten books we think are worth savoring, poring over, and thinking about for years — add to it with your own choices in the comments. … Read More

Books

The 10 Best Books of the Year (So Far)

By Emily Temple on

As you may have noticed from the boiling temperatures, it’s the last day of June, which means we’re pretty much halfway through the year. To mark the year’s midpoint, Amazon put together a list of their picks for the best books of the year so far, but of course we have our own ideas about which books have made the biggest splash so far. It’s been a great six months in the book world, but we’ve got some heavy-hitters coming up this fall (new books by Michael Chabon, Zadie Smith, Junot Diaz and Paul Auster, just to name a few), so we’ll be interested to find out which of the books below hold on to their rankings when the year-end lists come around! Click through to read our picks for the ten best books of the first half of 2012, and let us know which you would have chosen in the comments. … Read More

Books

10 of the Best Books Set in the Midwest

By Emily Temple on

There’s something a little bit strange about Midwestern literature — no one seems to have much of a handle on it. Any avid reader can easily rattle off a host of Great Southern Writers, books about New York, and their favorite Westerns, but no one really talks about America’s heartland as having its own literary tradition. However, with Patrick Somerville’s newest novel This Bright River, a gorgeous, stirring novel set in St. Helens, Wisconsin, hitting the shelves this week, we thought we’d take a look into some of the best literature of the flyover states, at least in our own humble opinion. Click through to check out our list, and let us know which Midwestern books you’d add in the comments. … Read More

Books

10 Contemporary American Essayists You Should Be Reading Right Now

By Emily Temple on

Today marks the release of celebrated novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson’s newest collection of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books. We’ve been excited about this book for a while now, so if you’ve been reading our books coverage with any regularity you probably already know we think it’s something worth picking up. Great as it is, Robinson’s collection only whet our appetites for more essays by contemporary writers, so in case it does the same for you, we’ve put together a list of contemporary essayists we think everyone should be reading right now (or, you know, whenever you finish watching Downton Abbey). We’ve tried to stick to authors who are still alive — so David Foster Wallace and Christopher Hitchens are off the table, though they both would have made this list with flying colors were they still with us — and limited ourselves to American writers, but even with those caveats, there is enough in these writers’ oeuvres to keep you up and thinking for weeks on end. Click through to read our list, and please do add your own suggestions for top-notch essayists we should all be reading in the comments. … Read More

Books

10 New Must-Reads for March

By Emily Temple on

Though winter (at least in New York City) has been relatively easy on us, we still can’t escape the dreariness of this time of year — when it feels like the cold has been beating on our doors and noses forever, and that it will never stop. In weeks like these, we need something to distract us from the fact that it’s still winter, and obviously the best distraction is a wonderful, immersive book to give you that final boost before spring. Our must-reads for this month include short story collections by the legendary, brand-new, and somewhere in-between, a long awaited follow-up or two, and a graphic re-imagining of Goliath as an admin junkie. Click through to check out the books that get us pumped for this month, cold or nay, and let us know which books you’re most excited to pick up in the comments! … Read More

Books

Flavorpill’s Most Anticipated Books of 2012

By Emily Temple on

Since the world is going to end this year and everything, it’s never been a better time to follow the advice of P.J. O’Rourke, who recommends that you “always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” Not that anyone will be around to see you, we guess. Luckily, there are a ton of really exciting books coming out this year, including many that we’d be racing to read apocalypse or no, and good looks aside. Since publishing schedules are not often announced super-far in advance, and they’re subject to change based on a million factors, this is really a first half of 2012 list, heavy on spring releases, to be followed by a second-half of the year list in the summer. Click through to check out the books we’re most looking forward to in the first half of this year (boy was it hard to narrow it down to just ten!), and let us know which others you’re having trouble waiting for in the comments. … Read More

Books

Books That Changed The Way We Think About the Earth

By Kathleen Massara on

We may be incredibly pessimistic about the direction our country is headed at the moment, but so were many residents back in the last days of Manifest Destiny, when Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden. (If you’re angry with President Obama, think about having Franklin Pierce as the commander-in-chief. That New Hampshire pretty boy came out in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for chrissakes.) The titles below are books that changed the way we see the environment and the world at large, whether it was during the tumultuous political situation in the mid-1800s or today, where people are still arguing with each other about whether global warming actually exists. Some of these books changed laws, and all served (and continue to serve) as the Cassandras of our time. So happy Earth Day, everyone! Grab a book and get informed about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and what you can do about it. … Read More

Books

The Best Interviews in The Paris Review

By Kathleen Massara on

In 1953, three American ex-pats (Harold “Doc” Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton) decided to start a magazine that would promote, as the author William Styron confirmed in the first issue, “the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they’re good.” The spring issue of the Paris Review is out now, so we decided to make a list of notable interviews in the venerable literary quarterly. The best of “the art of fiction” contains writers from the past 58 years of its publication; they all have a way of commanding the page that is entirely their own, and this quality is reflected in each author’s interview style. Nabokov is authoritative yet bemused, Didion has a terse way of speaking that is plagued with anxiety, and Vonnegut is playful, despite the conversation about the bombing of Dresden. And, as the publication date for The Pale King approaches, we realized the Paris Review missed its chance to interview David Foster Wallace. We can only imagine how the late author would have approached the conversation. Would there have been footnotes? We hope so. … Read More