recommended by b (books)
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Chelsea Girls
Eileen Myles · 2015
Ne'er Duke Well
Alexandra Vasti · 2024
Little Weirds
Jenny Slate · 2020
Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times bestseller about love, heartbreak, and being alive -- "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders).<br/><br/>You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of "Obvious Child." But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility.<br/><br/>As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, where everything has changed.<br/><br/>One of Vanity Fair's Great Quarantine Reads.
Spring: A Novel (Seasonal Quartet)
Ali Smith · 2019
From the Man Booker Prize Finalist comes the third novel in her Seasonal Quartet—a New York Times Notable Book and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020 What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tell the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown, Smith opens the door. The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal.
Eve’s Hollywood
Eve Babitz · 2018
Dune
Frank Herbert · 2003
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Jia Tolentino · 2019
Detransition, Baby: A Novel
Torrey Peters · 2021
Dancing at the Edge of the World
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1997
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017
A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle).<br/><br/>NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE<br/><br/>Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post<br/><br/>NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER<br/><br/>"There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones."<br/><br/>In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.<br/><br/>Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.<br/><br/>*Includes reading group guide*
The New Me
Halle Butler · 2019
A Wicked Kind of Husband (Longhope Abbey Book 2)
Mia Vincy · 2018
The Other Bennet Sister: A Novel
Janice Hadlow · 2020
<p><b>A NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR</b><br><br><b>"Jane fans rejoice! . . . Exceptional storytelling and a true delight." </b><b>—Helen Simonson, </b><b>author of the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling novels <i>Major Pettigrew's Last Stand </i>and </b><i><b>The Summer Before the War</b></i><br><b><br>Mary, the bookish ugly duckling of <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>’s five Bennet sisters, emerges from the shadows and transforms into a desired woman with choices of her own.<br><br></b>What if Mary Bennet’s life took a different path from that laid out for her in <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>? What if the frustrated intellectual of the Bennet family, the marginalized middle daughter, the plain girl who takes refuge in her books, eventually found the fulfillment enjoyed by her prettier, more confident sisters? This is the plot of Janice Hadlow's <i>The Other Bennet Sister</i>, a debut novel with exactly the affection and authority to satisfy Jane Austen fans.<br><br>Ultimately, Mary’s journey is like that taken by every Austen heroine. She learns that she can only expect joy when she has accepted who she really is. She must throw off the false expectations and wrong ideas that have combined to obscure her true nature and prevented her from what makes her happy. Only when she undergoes this evolution does she have a chance at finding fulfillment; only then does she have the clarity to recognize her partner when he presents himself—and only at that moment is she genuinely worthy of love.<br><br>Mary’s destiny diverges from that of her sisters. It does not involve broad acres or landed gentry. But it does include a man; and, as in all Austen novels, Mary must decide whether he is the truly the one for her. In <i>The Other Bennet Sister</i>, Mary is a fully rounded character—complex, conflicted, and often uncertain; but also vulnerable, supremely sympathetic, and ultimately the protagonist of an uncommonly satisfying debut novel.</p>
Natural Beauty
Ling Ling Huang · 2023
Foster
Claire Keegan · 2022
Finished
The Halifax Hellions
Alexandra Vasti · 2026
From USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti comes The Halifax Hellions: a pair of sexy, hilarious romps in which the most scandalous ladies in London finally meet their match.<br/><br/>From the day of their debut, when Matilda smoked a cheroot and Margo tied a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue, the Halifax twins have flouted convention at every turn. But when Matilda runs off with the dangerous Marquess of Ashford―who has every reason to hate her―she may have gone a bit too far.<br/><br/>Determined to stop Matilda’s inexplicable elopement, her sister Margo turns to her oldest friend for help: because if anyone can get her to Scotland in time, it’s starchy solicitor Henry Mortimer. But the road to Scotland is paved with secrets. Beneath his buttoned-up exterior, Henry is ardently, wildly, miserably in love with Margo. And Matilda and Ashford’s relationship too may not be quite what it seems.<br/><br/>Between salacious engravings, secret identities, and demanding feral cats, nothing about the journey goes as planned. With the Halifax Hellions at the reins, a week in a carriage is exactly enough time to turn the world upside down . . . and, perhaps, find the love stories they never expected.<br/><br/>For the first time ever in print, The Halifax Hellions brings together Margo and Matilda’s novellas, along with a swoony new epilogue.
