Now that the balmy days of summer are upon us, it’s time to pack your bag with books (or your e-reader of choice) for some beach reading. You could get bold and try to tackle the likes of Ulysses, Anna Karenina, or Infinite Jest, but maybe you’d be better off polishing off shorter but still substantial fare. Short novels (defined as being about 120 to 200 pages long) aren’t low on quality content just because they’re low on pages — they are, in fact, part of a great tradition that includes classics like The Turn of the Screw, Candide, Death in Venice, and The Call of the Wild. If you’re on the lookout for more contemporary shorties, though, we’ve got you covered. Along with books published in the past few years, we’ve also included some first-time English translations that have come out recently.
Setting down the right words to describe the magic of sleeping under one cool sheet or making s’mores around a bonfire is easier said than done. In case this triple-digit hot spell isn’t enough of an initiation into the dog days of summer for you, here are our top picks for novels where the essence of the season was done justice. Leave a comment if your favorite summer read didn’t make our list.
We’re halfway through 2010 — can you believe it? It seems like just yesterday we were waking up with a New Year’s Day hangover. Of course, since the year began, we’ve been consuming media like mad. We’ve already covered some of the best albums that have been released so far; now, to keep you up to speed, we present five must-read fiction favorites from the first half of 2010. These are in arbitrary order, but all equally essential.
While we never would have admitted it back in our school days, we always found required reading lists kind of fun. In fact, outside of shopping for new school supplies, it’s probably the thing that we miss most about childhood. That’s why we’ve asked Stephanie Anderson, manager of WORD (one of our favorite independent bookstores in New York City), to give us her top 10 picks for summer reading. Check what she — and a few intrepid staff members! — came up with after the jump, and feel free to add to her list in the comments.
There are a million random reading lists out there, but few that are grouped together based on the type of person doling out the recommendations (ergo our lit-hipster reading list from last month). For this new installment we’ve decided to go in a different direction, and collected the suggested reading of a few of our favorite comedians. (The result is a lot less funny than you might think.) Most of the books here aren’t new, but they are completely awesome. Leave a comment if you were as shocked by what’s on Tina Fey’s bedside table as we were.
The relationships in Jay McInerney’s new short story collection How It Ended end pretty much as one would think — with tears, confession, self-hatred, or resignation. And in between there is that time-honored McInerney trope — drug use and impulsive sex. But something else emerges in these 26 stories, written in 26 different years. Read More »
Mary Robison is widely considered to be a charter member of the canon of literary minimalists. She prefers “subtractionist,” according to a 2001 interview in Bomb Magazine, because “that at least implied a little effort.” After publishing short stories in several magazines, including The New Yorker, back when magazines other than The New Yorker still published short fiction, she published her first story collection, An Amatuer’s Guide to the Night, in 1983. Read More »
Art. Design. Literature. Poetry. Music. Culture. These are the elements artists Brice Brown and Trevor Winkfield promise to deliver in the latest edition of their genre-defying anthology, The Sienese Shredder, and those of us lucky enough to have scored a copy before its official release can confirm they have succeeded. With nearly 300 pages of poetry, prose, prints and paintings, the latest Sienese Shredder is not intended to be a quick read — rather, something to page over in your pajamas while enjoying a nice (read: $15 bottle) Malbec.
This volume is likely to occupy a permanent spot on your bedside table in the coming months, and if you have not yet had a chance to peruse the first two editions, well… you’ll be busy for awhile. Shredder fans can pre-order volume three online, or you can pick up a copy at the launch party tonight at the Kitchen, where we’ll be toasting Brown and Winkfield. In the meantime, after the jump a preview of the visual delights in store.
