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Michelle Obama’s memoir, Andrea Bartz’s boss-babe thriller, Cathy Park Hong’s essay collection, and more fantastic books that are finally available in our favorite format — no offense, hardcovers.
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More for your TBR list Tell Us Your Zodiac Sign And We'll Give You A Fantasy Book To Read 17 Great LGBTQ Middle Grade Novels You Need In Your Life Grab bag 22 Bookstagrammers On Instagram To Follow If You Love Reading People Are Sharing Things Authors Do In Books That Distract Them, And I Agree With All Of Them Longer reads Excerpt: Why Are Millennials So Worried About Moving Back In With Their Parents? Author Interview: The Pleasure And Pain Of Gay Bars
For your reading list Credit: Penguin Art Group No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood The unnamed narrator of Patricia Lockwood’s first novel has found herself thrown into the public eye after a seemingly inane observation she posts online (“Can a dog be twins?”) goes viral. And thus in the first section of No One Is Talking About This, our narrator invites us into the mental whiplash of living a life that is now Extremely Online. She writes in quick sketches and streams of consciousness not much longer than tweets themselves, strung together in a style that resembles Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, as she touches on climate change, that one weird Folger’s commercial, and conspiracy theories about our sudden cultural obsession with butt stuff. In one of the novel’s many moments of startling self-awareness, Lockwood gives her explanation for the book’s form: “Why were we all writing like this now? Because a new kind of connection had to be made, and blink, synapse, little space-between was the only way to make it.” In Lockwood’s attempt to capture what it feels like to be online, her fragmented observations build to a simultaneous ode to and indictment of the internet. It’s disorienting and often very, very funny.
But suddenly in its second act, the book becomes something else entirely. Without giving too much away, we move from our narrator encapsulating a collective consciousness to instead trying to make sense of a deeply personal family tragedy. While the first half of the novel is likely to be polarizing to readers in its fractured flashes, the novel in its entirety is something to marvel at as Lockwood adeptly tackles questions that seem too big to cover in 200 pages. How do we put words to the collectively felt nonsense of being online? How do we talk about the human condition, about grief, when words feel entirely inadequate? Can we create a new language and form to capture the spaces between being the digital and the real? It seems that Lockwood has found a way. Get your copy. —Jillian Karande
Virtual book events we highly recommend: March 8-13
Monday, March 8 Forsyth Harmon discusses Justine with Kristen Radtke — hosted by McNally Jackson, 7 p.m. ET. More info. Cathy Park Hong discusses Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning with Charles Yu — hosted by Loyalty Bookstores, 8 p.m. ET. More info.Tuesday, March 9 Roxane Gay, Melissa Broder, Melissa Febos, Tracy Clark-Flory, and Yin Q. discuss “messy, imperfect, and complex” sex in their writing, moderated by Elissa Bassist — hosted by McNally Jackson, 7 p.m. ET. More info. Rebecca Solnit discusses Recollections of My Nonexistence with Jia Tolentino — hosted by Powell’s, 5 p.m. PT. $16. More info. Kevin Brockmeier discusses The Ghost Variations with Karen Russell — hosted by Politics & Prose, 6 p.m. ET. More info.Wednesday, March 10 Mary H.K. Choi discusses Yolk with Jenna Wortham — hosted by Loyalty Bookstores, 8 p.m. ET. More info. Clare Beams discusses The Illness Lesson with Jeniffer Thompson — hosted by Warwick’s, 4 p.m. PT. More info.Thursday, March 11 Abraham Riesman discusses True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee with Mark Caro — hosted by Bookends & Beginnings, 12 p.m. CT. More info. Micah Nemerever (These Violent Delights), Elisabeth Thomas (Catherine House), and Amy Gentry (Bad Habits) discuss dark academia, in a conversation moderated by Sarah Weinman — hosted by McNally Jackson, 7 p.m. ET. More info. Anne Lamott discusses Dusk Night Dawn: On Revival and Courage with Duncan Trussell in a pre-recorded event — co-hosted by multiple bookstores, 7 p.m. CT. $20. More info.Friday, March 12 Jasmine Mans discusses Black Girl, Call Home with Danez Smith — hosted by Books Are Magic, 7 p.m. ET. More info. Patricia Engel discusses Infinite Country with Lupita Aquino — hosted by Loyalty Bookstores, 6 p.m. ET.More infoSunday, March 13 Talia Hibbert discusses Act Your Age, Eve Brown with Casey McQuiston and Thien-Kim Lam — hosted by Loyalty Bookstores, 2 p.m. ET. More info. Kazuo Ishiguro discusses Klara and the Sun with Ruth Ozeki — co-hosted by Third Place Books, Elliott Bay Book Company, and Village Books; $35.More info.And many more — find the full list here.
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