Blog Posts tagged with "Bookseller Recommendations"

In precise sentences and assured prose, all three of these writers have crafted singular works of personal nonfiction.

My reading of novels is often framed by a theme, be it an idea or location or era. Lately, that theme is novels that contain both sadness and humor.

Like all of us at Milkweed Books, I like to read across genres, but I have a soft spot for books that are themselves cross-genre, and particularly those that mess up the lines delineating what is and isn’t fiction. The following selections are a few such titles I’ve loved. One I received at a party, one I bought on a whim at another independent bookstore (shout-out to Subtext Books, my neighborhood store), and another I read after seeing it in the social media feeds of a few other trusted bookstores and booksellers. I wouldn’t normally include two books from the same press, but The Gift comes out in early May and I want everyone to read it right away, so Coffee House gets two this time.

“Masterpiece” is a label I am quite wary to use on contemporary literature, but Lincoln in the Bardo has won me over so completely that I’m afraid I can’t avoid it. In fact, I didn’t even want to write this post. Colson Whitehead has already reviewed the book masterfully and George Saunders certainly doesn’t need our help in boosting sales for his eighth book of fiction—even though this is his first novel. But: there are books we read and enjoy for their prose or creativity in storytelling; books we enjoy while reading and then forget fairly quickly. This, for me, is no such book.