For Your Reading List

Credit: Grand Central Publishing; Oona

The New One: Painfully True Stories From a Reluctant Dad by Mike Birbiglia, with poems by J. Hope Stein

In previous specials from stand-up comedian and national treasure Mike Birbiglia, he’s told stories about getting cancer at age 19, being diagnosed with a sleepwalking disorder at 25 and jumping from a two-story hotel window, and being T-boned by a drunk driver in a near-fatal accident. But the already high stakes have been impossibly elevated in his newest book, The New One, based on his one-man Broadway show and Netflix comedy special of the same name, in which he focuses on his existential confrontation with fatherhood.

Birbiglia’s stories find that every avenue for parenthood and marriage is a new opportunity for emasculation and embarrassment, cowering in the shadow of the work of his wife, Jen. He’s worried that he’ll accidentally drown their baby daughter Oona during a bath or “squeeze her too tight and she’ll slip out of my hands like a bar of soap.” During a trip to the grocery store, he muses that milk will help him be a better dad: “Jen’s whole thing is breast milk but maybe my angle is purchased milk.”

As always, Birbiglia is hysterical, and his self-characterization as the family’s “pudgy milkless vice president with record-high approval ratings for no reason” is complemented by Jen’s gorgeous poems about pregnancy and being a mother: “I never loved my body until she was inside it. I never loved my breasts until they made milk for her,” she writes.

Early on, he outlines his seven specific reasons for not wanting a kid (among them: “My body is a lemon,” “I have a cat,” and “I don’t know anything for certain. I think it’s entirely possible that consciousness is a hallucination. How do I explain that to a kid?”). Jen follows this up with a tender poem: “I am nothing as useful as a lover or scientist / I don’t know anything.” When their cat dies and Mike grows a beard, she writes: “You grew me a beard / for fuzz to pet.”

The New One finds a more adult, ruminant Birbiglia from his previous stories, but the one true constant in all his works thus far is his borderline erotic relationship to pizza, to which he devotes a few pages here: “I don’t know if it’s the circularity or the softness or the warmth but it’s almost sexual. I wouldn’t have sex with pizza but if I ate a pizza in private I wouldn’t mention it to my wife.”

The New One was initially slated to come out May 5, but has been pushed to June 16 — just a few days ahead of Father’s Day. Preorder your copy now. —Emerson Malone

Alisha Rai Recommends: Comfort Reads

Credit: hazydazyreading

Alisha Rai's latest novel Girl Gone Viral is about a reclusive investor whose innocent chat with a stranger at a cafe is misconstrued and live-tweeted as a meet-cute — and whose dreamy bodyguard whisks her away to his family's cabin for her safety and privacy. Here, Rai recommends five of her favorite comfort reads.

I'll be honest with you — I was a little nervous about having a book release during these wild times, but then I realized this might be when we need books the most. For me personally, books are what are providing me the hope I need to get through all of this. Here are some of my favorite comfort reads that are sure to give you a little dose of much-needed happiness.

In The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon, three women discover via Twitter that they're all dating the same man, and they confront him and each other at a restaurant. In the plot twist you always hope is coming, they dump the guy and become best friends. Farrah's books always feel like a warm hug and this one is no different. I loved the romance but I loved the friendships even more.

I'll warn you right now — if you have bad penmanship and you read Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn, you'll still be tempted to go get calligraphy lessons no matter how much of a lost cause it might be. In this book, the heroine is a calligrapher who likes to insert secret codes into the things she creates. No one is the wiser until the hero walks into her shop one day and demands to know how she knew that his marriage would get called off. She'd inserted a code into his wedding invitations and of course he cracked it. This is partially a love story between a couple, but it's also a love story with New York City. And if you happen to love that city like I do, I think you'll really enjoy this book.

What's worse than being jilted at the altar? Well, it depends who's doing the jilting. But something that's pretty bad is having to work with your ex-fiancé's brother afterwards. In The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa, I laughed out loud multiple times, and I haven't done that in a while. This book has some of the freshest banter, and I loved the family dynamics.

Now, I'm not a huge Jane Austen retellings fan. However, it's probably because I didn't have these two books in my life before last year or so. Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev is a gender-flipped Pride and Prejudice, set amidst a wealthy Indian American family, whereas Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin is another Pride and Prejudice retelling that's very different, set amongst a Muslim community in the Canadian suburbs. These two books take something that is very familiar and timeless, and flip it and turn it into something fresh and new and delightful. They are exactly what retellings should be.

Find more info on Girl Gone Viral here, and check out a reading by Alisha here.