I really enjoyed the unique structure and concept - 618 short passages, some authored by Shields, while others are quotations, bits of interviews or other materials to fit each chapter's theme. Those themes also cover interesting intellectual topics on the fraught border between fiction versus nonfiction. But I kept hearing this implication that traditional fiction is tired and some new experimental fictive nonfiction is superior somehow 👇

Interesting structure where each story is about the main character Yolanda Garcia (Yo) as seen through the eyes of someone in her life. The first one is told from her mom about Yo as a child and they follow her forward into her life as a writer in adulthood. We meet a diverse array of voices throughout, but Yo's character shines in her eagerness to influence the lives of those around her, even while being thwarted by indecision in her own life 👇

#bookhaul
Some acquisitions from a first-time visit to Frenchtown Bookshop in New Jersey (formerly The Book Garden). Small shop with lots of interesting selections, and an NYRB bookshelf to top it off.
Not related to these three choices, but I'm always intrigued when I see an author who I haven't heard of with multiple novels in a tiny shop - there must have been six or seven from Rachel Cusk. Is anyone a fan of hers?

Saunders presents seven short stories from Russian authors and follows each with an essay that analyzes the story and discusses why stories work in general - what keeps us reading and why a good story ends where it does. I recommend the audiobook - each story has a different celebrity narrator, but I like Saunders' own narration of the essays best. They already have the right mix of scholar and superfan, and his own voice lends a personal touch.

Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
Reading those opening lines in the book store, I imagined they were spoken by a cheerful alien rather than a suicidal teenager. But their immediacy struck me, and Nao's narrative has an urgency that compels us, just as it does for the fictional Ruth Ozeki who reads it. Magical in spite of large helpings of death and misery.

Had I never listened to Elena Passarello's podcast, I might have assumed this was just coincidental and not a Duran Duran reference dropped without comment into an otherwise entirely straight-faced essay. But knowing a little about the author's personality, this was 100% intentional. I've only just started the second essay and I'm hooked. I also recommend the podcast which is about the literary essay - linked in the comments.

Final NYRB Bonus Question!
We've read so many great novels during this book club - do you have a favorite? Or a top 3-5?

Q6: At the end of the novel, Clarence is depressed at being deceived about his role in Aziana and is reluctant to face the king (let alone put on clothes). Was his final meeting with the king what you were expecting? How did you interpret this encounter?

Q5: Clarence makes many references to odors that make him sleepy, first “the crowd‘s herd-like odor” and later in the forest “the terrible odor of flowers and decay.” When he further considers the forest‘s odor, he thinks, “it is not just an odor of decaying vegetation; it is subtlety itself, a seductive perfume, or rather the seductive mingling of a thousand perfumes […] all of them far too heady, disturbing, caressing, […] far too delectable.”

Q4: There is lots of dialogue concerning the difference between ‘favors‘ versus ‘rights‘. At one point, when Clarence asks why the beggar couldn‘t ask the judge to pardon him, he responds, “Can‘t you get it into your thick head that one cannot beg the favor of receiving something that is one‘s ‘right‘?” What is the novel‘s philosophy on justice when it comes to ‘favors‘ versus ‘rights.‘?

Q3: Clarence is constantly confusing one thing for another—faces look the same, a corridor in Aziana looks like one from the legal offices in Adramé, he believes the path the beggar leads them through the forest is going in circles. Why is Clarence perpetually confused?

Q2: Right from the novel‘s opening, Clarence has a belief in white supremacy that guides his actions and observations. How would you describe his journey throughout the novel when it comes to racism? What factors lead to his change?

Q1: In the Introduction, Toni Morrison notes that for previous novels by Western authors, “Africa was simultaneously innocent and corrupting, savage and pure, irrational and wise. It was raw matter […] to examine desire and improve character. But what Africa never was, was its own subject.” How does Laye use previous stereotypes about Africa to craft a novel about Africa itself?

Nothing more or less than a simple summary of the research and what we can expect under different scenarios. Could it have used another editing pass to get rid of some repetition? Sure. Does he spend a weird amount of time dismissing hydrogen fuel cell electric videos? Yeah, a bit. But it was refreshingly straightforward. I'm not sure I left feeling 'hopeful' exactly but informed and not as depressed as with most
#climatechange education.

#SummerHeat
I'm (once again) behind on my reading and posts so I'm on page 76 of the novel and have no steamy playlist created. So I'm going to cheat and recommend an artist called Stas THEE Boss (Stasia Irons). She is formerly one half of the Seattle-based duo THEESatisfaction and is an exceptional beat maker who really deserves a much wider audience. Her lyrical content is diverse, but when she does a steamier track, trust me, it is 🔥 🔥🔥

My favorite book I read last year that I never posted a review on and my new favorite poetry collection. I've still read so little poetry, and barely any complete collections, but this one has a perfect combination of potent imagery and a mix of ideas that run the gamut from satirical to bleak to comic. I discovered this author during a #ReadingEnvy readalong last year and Jenny recommended I read more of Natalie Diaz's work - very glad I did!

#nyrbbookclub
There's a certain kind of novel about a female heroine with mental health issues who sees the world differently and at first BBwP fits nearly into that literary box. When the novel opens with Shirley decoding messages from her spy lover, it seemed like par for the course. Yet, as it went on I started to question that assumption, almost like the opposite of a novel where you find at the end that a character hallucinated everything 👇

For anyone who was a fan of the #ReadingEnvy podcast and hasn't already heard, I'm sorry to report that Jenny Colvin recently passed away unexpectedly. If you knew her and listened to her show, then you already know how amazing of a human being Jenny was: there is a memorial wall on Goodreads that I have linked in the comments if you'd like to share your memories. If you haven't yet, I'd strongly recommend you try her show, also linked below:

#nyrbbookclub
I'm really enjoying this one so far! I'm not quite halfway through, but there's a scene involving this Bonnard painting in the Toronto gallery the main character visits that is pretty surreal and, without preempting our eventual discussion where we can dig into its meaning, I'm wondering if those who've read it can confirm if my reading of the basic 'what's happening' level is the same as yours. I'll summarize in the comments...

Here are the July #NYRB options. Hopefully it's not cheating to use two that were unchosen from the last time I facilitated, but I still really want to read them🙂

@arubabookwoman @BarbaraBB @batsy @catebutler @daena @emilyhaldi @GatheringBooks @LeahBergen @Leftcoastzen @Liz_M @merelybookish @mklong @quietjenn @readordierachel @Reviewsbylola @saresmoore @sarahbarnes @sprainedbrain @vivastory @youneverarrived

#nyrbbookclub @merelybookish @vivastory
Last month's pick allowed me to appreciate this reference in a Lorrie Moore story I'm reading. Good literary timing is always nice! 🙂

I'm so upset with this book! It feels like I just ended a dysfunctional relationship 😅 The beginning was so good that when it only got worse and worse, I felt weirdly betrayed. It opens with the narrator being witness to the death of a married woman whom he was just about to sleep with for the first time. He tries to quietly remove himself from the scene but after mysterious circumstances becomes obsessed with observing her family afterwards 👇

In All About Eve, an aspiring actress charms her way into the inner circle of star Margo Channing and exploits the connection to launch her career. Malcolm's chronicle of an odd moment in the field of psychology casts unknown Sanskrit scholar Jeffrey Masson in the Eve role as he courts famed psychoanalyst Kurt R. Eissler. Unlike Channing though, Eissler isn't suspicious in the least and takes Masson under his wing, with results that are...weird 👇

After realizing two of my current reads feature birds on the cover, I decided to do a little bookshelf birding. A fun activity I'd recommend to other bird and book lovers when it's a little chilly for the outdoor variety. #bookshelfbirding #birdsoflitsy #birds

"Two warring factions in the Department of Elevator Inspectors..." begins the back flap description, which should be enough to pick up this strange and wonderful blend of 'speculative noir'. In this society that looks a lot like Civil Rights era New York, elevators are an academic discipline of sorts and lie at the center of a conspiracy that our elevator inspector hero Lila Mae must unravel. A creative and hilarious spin on the detective novel.

I thought it might be interesting to document my current TBR shelf with the start of the New Year. 21 books doesn't seem like a lot but it also seems inevitable that some will be procrastinated on and unread by year's end. They strike me as a strong bunch though from what I've heard so I guess we'll see what happens!

#nyrbbookclub
Dreamy novel about an island in the East Indies during what may be the early 20th century but is absent of historical context. It reads like magical realism except we don't see the magic before our eyes - the island's lore is so vivid through the stories told by its inhabitants that we feel like we've witnessed what we haven't. The style was memorable: it made me feel as if I was reading this on a beach after getting too much sun.

One of my favorites this year was this collection of stories that may be lost from history: tales of runaway slaves or freedmen trying to survive, strange goings-on in monasteries and orphanages, and unexpected encounters with historical figures. They also take on styles that fit their historical settings so they felt extra immersive. I really enjoyed how varied they were: magical realism, satire, suspense - all excellent no matter the genre.

#Top21of21

Thanks for the tags @Centique and @Nute
There were certainly lots of great reads to consider. Unlike other years where I've had one favorite in particular, I think it was a three-way tie between Counternarratives, Written on the Body, and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Close behind are Gorilla My Love, The True Deceiver, and The Intuitionist.

Tagging any other fellow procrastinators on choosing their year-end picks!

Arizona Territory 1893. Missing family members. Drought. Outlaws. Journey. Ghosts. Camels. Those words should be enough to pick up Inland, especially if you've read Obreht's debut The Tiger's Wife. And if you haven't, you definitely should. I went in expecting to be disappointed as you do when you read an author's next book after one you love. But Inland landed pretty close: it's a magician trick of a novel that seems to hold more than its size.

#nyrbbookclub
Felix begins this novel arriving in Jerusalem to live with his aunt (Miss Bohun) after his mother's death and what unfolds is a coming of age story in the extreme. Felix is initially a teenager who acts more like a 10-year-old, but in witnessing his aunt's tendency to exploit her tenants (including Felix), he gets a crash course in greed and hypocrisy that makes his grief for his mother that much more heartbreaking.

#DecemberChill
My dad is cleaning out some old boxes and recently sent me the upper left pic, which shows my favorite place to chill as a kid: on vacation by the beach or pool (often with Agatha Christie novels). As an adult it's been a little different - an Airbnb in upstate New York, a park with a pond in New Jersey, hiking by a Brooklyn marsh, or birding in Cape May. But naturally, nothing beats the reading chair for day to day relaxation.

#DecemberChill #MusicalMatters
My favorite playlist when I'm looking for something chill has a mix of soul, jazz, and hip hop. It's a list of full albums, which doesn't lend itself to screenshots, so I created a version with one song from each of the 38 artists: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3goqyM1XPG1ldD1YKqRI22?si=3qeR4VBtTMuTPZYBGKep...

I read Vol 1 of My Struggle earlier this year and really liked Knausgard's style but wished it were shorter. As it turns out, Ditlevsen's trilogy of short memoirs is exactly what I wanted: hyper-conscious, yet carefully curated recollections. Ditlevsen is brilliant at knowing what moments to focus on and what is most fascinating about her perceptions of experiences with family, writing mentors, romantic partners, or her struggles with addiction.

😅 https://lithub.com/somebody-finally-fixed-the-ending-of-the-giving-tree/

A Halloween read about a missing girl and a nameless, watery horror terrorizing a tiny island town. Lindqvist is compared to Stephen King in eight blurbs, and although I haven't read enough King to judge the accuracy, it has a King-ish length of 500 pages. I would have enjoyed a shorter version more: the problem for me was all the flashbacks ruined the forward momentum. But the writing is excellent - it cultivates a great, haunted atmosphere.

@shawnmooney has a great new Booktube program I would recommend: "Bite-sized Book Chats". Shawn has a short conversation with four readers and talks with them about a book they recently read in fun half-hour episodes. They are great for expanding your TBR further via recommendations from readers around the world. I was excited to speak with Shawn in the most recent episode about the tagged book. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/TFC7mIg53Z4

This is definitely resonating now that the summer weather is on the verge of disappearing.

My favorite mysteries are the weird ones. Why have a detective investigate when it could be an elderly woman who takes care of her neighbor's homes during the brutal winters of a remote Polish town? And one who loves astrology, prefers animals to people, gives others names like Oddball or The Gray Lady, and obsesses over William Blake. That's Janina and she's on the case when her neighbor 'Bigfoot' turns up dead. Lively, dark comic perfection.

There's a lot that could be said about a post-apocalyptic novel set in a Russia populated by a society of mutants who subsist on mice and are raised to fear books and a mysterious creature who steals your sanity. But my favorite thing was how Tolstaya created a novel of ideas that still lets itself get carried away by poetic descriptions, no matter how weird things get. I was happy not understanding everything and just hanging on as a passenger.

There's a lot packed into the less than 100 pages of this novella. The story of an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant in New York is told through the voices of everyone she encounters: her aunt, cousin, co-workers at the series of jobs she works, and...a stone wolf, crystalline dog, motmot bird...you know, the usual NYC crowd. A transfixing story told almost entirely through dialogue that switches from unvarnished realism to odd fantasy on a dime.

Dialogue is something that can make or break a story for me, and Bambara shines in this area. These stories are filled with memorable characters from New York or the American South, many of them strong-willed girls and teens. At the same time, they and the stories they inhabit are all very different. Bambara isn't content to revisit old terroritory: the styles, themes, and ideas shift in brilliant ways in each of these 15 perfect stories.

I love this: it's a character explaining her ambivalence about befriending writers 🙂

When a 464-page mockumentary novel goes off the rails before the end of Chapter 1, where can it go from there? When its subject is Hollywood excess in the 1970s and 80s, having no limits when it comes to violence, sex, and general lack of decency, works surprisingly well. This novel mirrors the horrendous B-movies that its controversial filmmaker subject produces, and even when the films get better, it's still Mommie Dearest behind the scenes 👇

#nyrbbookclub
Sorry to have missed the discussion, but it was great to read what everyone thought. I was ambivalent: on the one hand, I loved the voice of Galla, sarcasm, bitterness, and all. She was allergic to hypocrisy in adults and even with all of the misfortunes she faced, she still maintained a resilient spirit. I only wished the narrative moved a little more: it had the feel of an overlong short story rather than a short novel.

@Reggie
Such a great gag 😅

I love the dark humor in this passage and 'dull sofas ' cracked me up 😆

#nyrbbookclub
The Go-Between's portrayal of a 12-year-old's thought process in its protagonist Leo is so good, it's almost eerie. It made me remember what it was like to be that age: how much you want the respect of adults and feel compelled to trade your child's imagination for obeying rigid social signals (which, honestly, is a pretty bad deal!) And for such a sensitive book, it's got a fair amount of action and mounting suspense.

#currentread
It's not that I'm not enjoying it, but I assume everyone who reads this or the later volumes has moments of disbelief that there is still so much more left...

Take love poetry that is passionate and desperate, mold it into a novel, and you have Written on the Body. The result isn't exactly romantic. Love is under a microscope in some ways: we witness the main character's obsession in a new light, not even knowing their gender. This choice distinguished it from any other love story I've seen, removing the distraction of male-female or female-female dynamics. It's daring, uncomfortable, brilliant stuff.