Waterline, by Aram Mrjoian: All Happy Families Are Different

Tolstoy famously wrote "Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is, of course, bullshit. Well, the second part is probably right, but the first part makes no sense. What even is a "happy family"? Does a "happy family" require that every member of the family is happy 24/7?  What happens when a happy family suffers a tragedy? Do they immediately become in irredeemably unhappy family? 

Aram Mrjoian's debut novel Waterline is a beautifully rendered portrait of a previously happy family, the Kurkjians, who become an unhappy family when tragedy strikes. 

Brothers Edgar and Karo, live next door to each other with their wives and families in Grosse Ile, Michigan, a small community south of Detroit. When Karo's daughter Mari commits suicide, both families are jolted from their quiet, middle-class lives. 

Mrjoian's portrays each family member's attempt to come to terms with the trauma over the course of a couple months in the immediate aftermath of Mari's death. One goes on a cross-country roadtrip. One finds relief in pot and booze. One, has an affair.  

All the while, the legend of their patriarch Gregor, who escaped the Armenian Genocide and heroically helped save members of his village, casts a contextual shadow over the family's post traumatic resilience. In fact, I'd argue that family legends -- not how families are unhappy -- are what make even happy families unique.

I loved this book -- read it in two days. (I can't help but think I when I read a book so quickly that at some level it must be frustrating to the writer to spend so long writing, polishing, and publishing a novel, only to have it whisked through like a dinner buffet. Sorry, Aram!) Mrjoian writes with subtle humor, deep insight, and sharp wisdom. He's a joy to read, and I can't wait to see what he does next! 

The New Dork Review Best Books of 2025...So Far

I thought it was strange that "best of the year so far" lists started appearing in mid-May this year. What's happening? Way too early! Does Esquire Magazine not know how to count? (Because if you're going to do a mid-year "best of" list, you have to at least wait until the halfway point of the year, right? I know, I know, Old Man Yells at Cloud.) 

But so, now that we ARE past the halfway point of the year, here are my six favorite books of 2025 so . 

Home of the American Circus, by Allison Larkin -- I rather like this quote from my original review of this fantastic novel, so here you go again: "The novel is about how to re-carve out your space in the world when you basically have to start from scratch. It's about choosing your friends and the people you love carefully...and cutting out the people in your life who hurt you, even when they're family. Family is a privilege, not a responsibility."

The Heart of Winter, by Jonathan Evison -- One of the highlights of my year so far is this conversation at Chicago Review of Books with Evison about this novel -- his best yet, in my view. This was the first 2025 book I read, and it'd be a massive upset if this sweet tale of a 70-year marriage doesn't wind up on this same list at the end of the year, too.

So Far Gone, by Jess Walter -- Jess Walter, as you know if you read this post, is one of my all-time favorites, and this book feels like something of a "greatest hits" album for his career. In the best possible way.

The Antidote, by Karen Russell -- This is easily the biggest surprised-that-I-liked-it-so-much book of 2025 so far. A multiple narrator, magical realism, historical fiction...that somehow just works amazingly well. Part of the reason it works amazingly well is that Russell writes sentences that leave you breathless. 

Deep Cuts, by Holly Brickley -- This is the recommended-to-me book of 2025 that now I can't stop recommending to everyone else. A story about the fraught process of collaborative creation, especially when feelings get involved. 

The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie -- This is the best genre-bending novel of the year so far -- a thriller with the heart of literary fiction. I was so excited to hear Ron Currie was back this year, and even more excited at how great this novel is. 

The Whyte Python World Tour, by Travis Kennedy: Don't Need Nothin' But a Good Time

In John Wray's recent metal novel Gone to the Wolves, there's a scene at a party in late-1980s LA. The characters, who are into death and extreme metal, take in a full room of glammed-out buttrockers and wonder, wouldn't this whole scene just come crashing down if one person were to look around and laugh at them. I mention that now both because that is an absolutely hilarious observation, and because it's a perfect preamble to this review. 

Sure, the 80s glam/buttrock/hair metal scene seems objectively funny in retrospect. But what if there was a method to the hairsprayed, headbanging madness? In Travis Kennedy's hugely fun debut novel The Whyte Python World Tour, we are taken on a wyld ryde with the world's greatest glam rock hair metal band as they quite literally endeavor to change the world. 

Wow, is this book fun...and yeah, a lot silly. 

Our star is one Rikki Thunder, a drummer for a just-hanging-on hair metal band called Qyksand. But Rikki finds his fortunes turn when a beautiful woman named Tawny (if you didn't read her name and, like me, immediately think of this 1987 Whitesnake video, well, I'm sorry your sexual awakening wasn't more fun) enters his life. At first, Tawny seems like a typical 80s metal groupie, prowling the Sunset Strip for her next score. But as Rikki soon learns, Tawny is much more complex. She gets him an audition for the up-and-coming band Whyte Python, which he nails, and the band begins its quick ascent to rock stardom.

But here's the question: Can butt rock really change the world? In the waning days of the Cold War, it just might. Whyte Python whips around the world, playing for rock-starved audiences behind the Iron Curtain, as various intelligence agencies and secret police organizations jockey for control of the band's tour and the hearts and minds of its fans. 

The flap copy for this novel describes it this way: "Crafted on the satirical knife-edge between high suspense and headbanging hilarity." I'd say it very much crosses the line into hilarity -- it's more spoof than satire. But what it does well is make you keep turning the pages to find out what ridiculous goofball scheme these rock stars will get up to next. And of course there's a big twist. 

Unlike Whyte Python's power to change the world, this book may not change your life. But it will leave you with so many good laughs. If you dug the Mark Wahlberg vehicle Rock Star or the more recent Netflix movie Metal Lords, which my brother Geoff and only partly facetiously call "the greatest movie of all time," you'll love this book, too.

Like a butt rock song itself, it's pure brain candy -- 400 pages of dumb fun. I had no idea this book was in the world until a few weeks ago when the brilliant Liberty Hardy of Book Riot fame posted about a new novel that's an "80s metal band spy adventure." I freaked the f&*k out, honestly -- talk about a book written squarely in my wheelhouse. And it delivered: What great fun! Bret Michaels even makes an appearance. 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong: Beauty in the Sorrow

The heavy metal band Trivium isn't your traditional heavy metal band. To accompany the band's crushing guitar riffs, frontman Matt Heafy writes poetic, evocative lyrics based on Greek myths, traumatic events from his childhood, and art, war, and history. I love the stories in the band's songs as much as I love their sound.

When I picked up Ocean Vuong's stunning new novel The Emperor of Gladness, it only took a few pages before Trivium's song "Beauty in the Sorrow" became the theme music for this read. Sure, a heavy metal song and a literary novel may sound like an odd pairing. But odd pairings are very much the point of The Emperor of Gladness. A major theme is that we should look deeper into the disparate, and when we do, we can often find commonalities.

Vuong, of course, is also known for his poetic, evocative prose, and though this is the first time I've read him, I suspect this novel is fairly representative of his style. What surprised me about this book, though, is how readable and accessible it is. Sharply crafted sentences. Images that make your jaw drop. But also, characters who are doing interesting things, have fascinating backstories, and interact with each other such that even if there's not much plot, you still read along quite quickly.

The Emperor of Gladness is set in 2009 amidst the Great Recession in a small, drug-addled, rusty town in Connecticut. It's about two sad (indeed, sorrowful) characters who form an unexpected symbiotic relationship which blooms into a deep friendship. When we first meet 19-year-old Hai, he's about to jump off a bridge and end his short, drug-addicted life. But Grazina, an 82-year-old Lithuanian woman, sees him and talks him down. Grazina, who is descending into dementia, knows she needs help and so invites Hai, who has no where else to go either, to live with her. The story follows the two of them as they lean on each other to navigate this confusing world that is stacked against both of them.

If that doesn't exactly sound like a page-turner, I'm here to tell you this novel will surprise you in so many ways. There's a scene set in a slaughterhouse. One set during an amateur wrestling show at a dive bar. And lots of space dedicated to the day-to-day of a crew of fast food workers. Not your usual fare in hyper-literary novels. How does this possibly work?  

It works because it's all so relatable. The novel is about finding support and friendship in unexpected places. It's about sifting through the myths, lies, and misinformation with which we're constantly pelted to find truth. And it's about finding elegance amidst the chaos and sadness of modern life -- the beauty in the sorrow. 

Look for The Emperor of Gladness on lots of year-end "best of" lists, and don't be surprised if it takes home one of the Big Literary Awards, as well.

Shelf Lives, Vol. 4: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Do you remember the book that turned you into a CAPITAL R Reader? What I mean is, do you remember the book that moved you from a casual fan of the printed page to a person deeply in love with books and willing to spend the rest of your life surrounded by them, immersed in them, thinking about them constantly? 

That book for me was John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Whole buncha John Irving novels on my shelf.

Many readers can probably cite more than one book, and if I'm honest, I could too -- but Owen Meany is the main one. Owen Meany is a book that came to me at exactly the right moment, as these books tend to do. If you're lucky, you only get a handful of books over the course of a lifetime that do that: Come to you at exactly the right moment, and as a result, literally change your life. 

If that sounds too dramatic, or like a too-rosy or apocryphal interpretation of something long in the past, I assure you it is none of those things. Owen Meany is a book that not only made me a lifelong lover of books, it literally altered my trajectory.  

It was December 2001. I'd graduated from college in May of 2000 and had spent the next eight months working for a catering company, trying (but not that hard) to find a "real" job. Amazingly, magazines or newspapers just weren't hiring new Writing Intensive English graduates for staff-level writing jobs. 

When my money ran out, I had to abandon my apartment in Milwaukee and move back home to Ohio with my parents. I was miserable. Missing all my friends. Embarrassed that my life hadn't started yet. Starting to despair that life ever would start. 

Then I read this book. I loved it so much. It was the first book I stayed up all night reading. I wrote in my reading journal the day after finishing: "Well, I finished this novel at 4am last night and I’ve been thinking all day what to write here about it. I still get the chills when I think about how absolutely awesome it was." 

What those lines lack in profundity or craft they make up for in impact. I still get chills, now, when I read those lines, remembering my state of mind after finishing. Just absolutely destroyed, awed, amazed. 

Owen Meany is a beautifully crafted, heartbreaking story about lifelong friendship. It's a novel about finding your destiny, about identifying what it is you are supposed to be doing, which for me I realized at that moment was trying to find more books like it. And if I couldn't find more books like that one, I knew the quest would keep me happy for however long I got to stay on this floating rock in space.

As importantly, reading this book shocked me out of my life-malaise, and helped me understand I needed to turn things around. Within the year, I'd moved out of my parents house and had my own place in Dayton, and within a year of that I finally got my first job writing at a magazine back in Milwaukee. 

Since Owen Meany, I've read more John Irving than just about any other writer. Though his novels lately have been, um, uneven, I still love the warmth of his prose and his unusual casts of characters. He has a new novel out this fall titled Queen Esther, and I see this as an absolute gift. He's 83 years old now, so who knows which of these books will be his last. 

If you've never read John Irving, I can't recommend Owen Meany enough. I can't tell you it'll have the same impact on you as it did on me. But I can tell you it's a beautiful novel, a beautiful piece of art, and truly a book that changed my life. 

Home of the American Circus, by Allison Larkin: On Found Family and Coming Home Again

One of my very favorite subgenres in fiction is the "return to small hometown after extended absence" narrative. There are a million examples, but a few of my recent favorites are Halle Butler's Banal Nightmare, Lee Cole's Groundskeeping, and now, Allison Larkin's wonderful new novel, Home of the American Circus.

Why do these novels work so well? One reason is that the conflict, and therefore the drama, is built in -- how will the characters interact with once-familiar surroundings that either have or haven't changed (usually haven't) while they've been away? The drama is especially rich when the narrator left her small town under mysterious circumstances, and no one, not even the reader, knows why.

That's the case for our narrator Freya in this story. After a run of bad luck as a bartender in Maine, and with nowhere else to go, 30-year-old Freya returns to Somers, New York, to live in the dilapidated home her parents left her when they both tragically died in a car crash the year previously. Not close to her family, including her brutally mean older sister Steena who is the de facto Queen of Somers, Freya reconnects with her 15-year-old niece, Aubrey, and her former best friend, a piano prodigy named Jam (Benjamin) who has also crashed out and is back home. Freya's mission now is to come up with enough cash to pay the upcoming tax bill on the house, decide what her next move might be, and stay out of Steena's way. 

The novel is about how to re-carve out your space in the world when you basically have to start from scratch. It's about choosing your friends and the people you love carefully...and cutting out the people in your life who hurt you, even when they're family. Family is a privilege, not a responsibility. 

The novel is also about the "real" stories behind stories. That is, how are stories told, how should they be told, and which versions of stories should be believed. Whether we're talking about the history books or women who are catfished by powerful and evil men, the first draft is always written by the victors or the more influential, and that's why there should be more than one draft. 

Larkin slowly reveals details about why Freya left in the first place, about her fraught relationship with her parents and sister, and about her soul-saving relationships with Aubrey and Jam. This theme of found family is one she continues from her incredibly great novel The People We Keep (READ IT!), and it's a theme in which she clearly feels comfortable. 

I absolutely love how Allison Larkin writes -- she is sad and sweet and funny and wistful and joyful and she imbues her characters with such an amazing sense of empathy. We want good things for them because we can tell she does too. This novel would make an absolutely ideal book club pick -- so many terrific discussion points. But even if you're not the book club type, it's a novel not to be missed from a writer who is gaining some serious momentum. I cannot wait to see what she does next!  

My only minor complaint about this novel is that noted dog lover Allison Larkin did not include any dogs in this novel. There is a pet rat named Lenny Juice and a temperamental cat named Coriolanus, but no dogs. What the hell?  😅

Have You Even Read Jess Walter, Bro?

This week, I got to review Jess Walter's latest novel, So Far Gone, for the Chicago Review of Books. It's a fantastic novel -- one of my favorites of the year. And as I wrote in that review (please go check it out!), it reminds me of a greatest hits album, "incorporating career-spanning elements of all of Walter’s best fiction: Punchy, hilarious dialogue, long passages of touching interiority, and astute commentary on the absurdity of our current political moment."

As I read that book and then wrote that review, I thought back on all Walter's fantastic books I've read over the years. I've been reading him since 2009's The Financial Lives of the Poets, one of the first books I reviewed when I was a young, bright-eyed book reviewer. The guy's one of my all-time favorite writers -- a writer with whom I just...connect.

To steal an idea, Book Riot does a feature titled Reading Pathways, which gives readers a roadmap to follow to introduce themselves to a new-to-them writer. Let's do Jess Walter! If you've never read him, or if you've only read his most famous book (we'll get there in a second), here is a suggested reading pathway to his roster of novels and stories.

1. Start with the Financial Lives -- This book is a perfect gateway to Walter's work -- one of the funniest sad novels I've read. 

2. Try some short stories -- Walter's two short story collections, We Live In Water (2013) and The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories (2022), are both terrific. 

3. Deep backlist time -- Walter actually published four novels before Financial Lives. I haven't read his two hard-boiled detective novels, Over Tumbled Graves (2001) and The Land of the Blind (2003). But his novels Citizen Vince (2005) and The Zero (2006, a National Book Award finalist) are both tremendous -- both also mysteries, but in both these novels you can see Walter begin expanding his range. 

4. The Cold Millions (2020) -- Walter wades into politics with this early 20th century story about two brothers who find themselves mixed up in the founding of a labor union. It’s part a crime drama, but part a literary thriller, and part social commentary. 

5. Beautiful Ruins (2012) -- It's not a coincidence that Walter's best novel is his most well-known. This book is a masterpiece -- a skewering of the movie industry, a love story, and just a story about how lives are stories. I've honestly never met someone who has read this book and hasn't loved it. This is one of my hall of fame handsells for bookstore customers who come in, especially during the summer, and "just want a good book." 

6. So Far Gone (2025) -- Now you're ready to read Walter's latest. I can't wait for what's next from him!

Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025

This year, hot girl summer will give way to old white guy fall. New novels from Dan Brown, Ian McEwan, Thomas Pynchon, and John Irving are on tap. Can someone get The Franzen on the horn? He's missing the party!

But beyond the old white guys, this fall is absolutely loaded with great new books: A sequel to Mona Award's Bunny, a new novel by the HILARIOUS Patricia Lockwood, and new essays by Zadie Smith. I can't wait! 

Here's my list of most anticipated fall books. (Please note -- all links are Bookshop affiliate links, so when you preorder any of these books from these links, not only do you help these authors, you also help me!)

Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang (August 25) -- I read Yellowface earlier this year and LOVED it. So I've definitely wanted to try to take on some of Kuang's speculative fiction, and this novel about two friends descending into hell is perfect. 

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan (September 2) -- This debut novel is a multigenerational tale set in a small town in Ohio. I am myself a multigenerational tale formerly set in a small town in Ohio. Let's go! 

The Secret of Secrets, by Dan Brown (September 9) -- I'm not going to lie to you, I did the laugh-out-loud-deep-sigh combo when I learned the new Dan Brown -- his first since 2017's Origins -- is 688 pages. That's a whole lot of Langdon! 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai (September 23) -- It's been 19 years since Desai's The Inheritance of Loss captivated readers. This new novel "is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next." This is definitely a winter read for me. 

We Love You, Bunny, by Mona Awad (September 23) -- For many readers, this sequel to Awad's 2019 campus horror hit Bunny, is THE most-anticipated novel of the fall. The way people in the crowd gasped at an event last year when Awad casually dropped into her remarks that this novel was forthcoming...

Will There Ever Be Another You, by Patricia Lockwood (September 23) -- There is not another writer working who is sentence-by-sentence funnier than Lockwood. This new one sounds like a mix of humor and harrowing, though. It's about one woman's descent into...well, not madness, exactly, but something Lockwoodian kind of like it? 

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan (September 23) -- A love poem and a catastrophic nuclear disaster are the apparent tentpoles of this new novel from McEwan, who has been a bit uneven in his past several offerings. But I'm optimistic about this one. 

One Of Us, by Dan Chaon (September 23) -- Woohoo! Dan Chaon does an early 20th century carnival novel! Come one, come all! 

Shadow Ticket, by Thomas Pynchon (October 7) -- One last foray into Pynchon's mind before he heads off into the great Gravity's Rainbow in the sky is an absolute gift. This novel is set in Milwaukee during the Depression. This is my most anticipated book of the fall. 

Dead and Alive: Essays, by Zadie Smith (October 28) -- I will follow Zadie Smith anywhere, and I'll love it: Obscure artists, movies I've never heard of, poets. This collection apparently includes a piece about Philip Roth, so that's fun. 

Tom's Crossing, by Mark Danielewski (October 28) -- There were some odd social media posts from Danielewski (are there any other kind?) late last year teasing...something, and leaving people to speculate that because this is the 20th anniversary of House of Leaves, something related to that was coming this fall. Instead, it's a 1,232 page novel about two friends who set out to save some horses. I'll be honest, I may never read this, but I'm anticipating it anyway. 

Queen Esther, by John Irving (November 4) -- Like Pynchon, every new Irving novel feels like an absolute gift. This one sounds like sort of a prequel to The Cider House Rules. 

Honeymoon Stage, by Julie Fine writing as Margaux Eliot (November 4) -- A story about early 2000s reality TV? Oh hell yes! 

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch. Tell me about your most anticipated books! 

The Antidote, by Karen Russell: Sparkling with Life and Originality

Karen Russell's new novel The Antidote is absolutely freaking brilliant. It's a novel about injustice, which though set in the 1930s Dust Bowl, sparkles with life and originality. Truly, only Karen Russell could've written this novel. 

But let me back up a second: I set sail on this novel with some trepidation. Honestly, when this novel came out, it wasn't one I was seriously considering reading. And despite the many glowing reviews, despite other writer posting quotes from the novel online and breathlessly explaining that this book was blowing their minds, and despite the fact that I've loved Karen Russell's short stories, I still wasn't sure if a 400-plus-page novel about a small town in Oklahoma in the 1930s was a wise reading choice. (Also...Swamplandia! -- Russell's first novel -- was reading agony for me.) 

I present all this simply as a peek inside the mind of a sometimes very indecisive, risk-averse reader. 😅 But...it was a risk that paid off immensely. 

The eponymous Antidote in this novel is a character -- her real name is Antonina Rossi, but she also refers to herself as The Prairie Witch. She's what's known in the world of this novel as a Vault -- she takes "deposits" of people's memories, and stores them until they're ready to withdraw them. This helps people sleep at night, basically. But the problem is that during a huge dust storm at the beginning of the novel, somehow The Antidote's vault has been cleaned out. She doesn't know why, and she doesn't know how to get the deposited memories back. This is a big problem, to say the least. 

Why this is a big problem for The Prairie Witch is the meat of this story, which is also about a farmer named Harp Oletsky whose crops are the only ones in the area growing (why!?), and Harp's niece Dell who loves to play basketball ... oh, and a possibly sentient scarecrow. There's a shady and corrupt sheriff (who might remind you a bit of a corrupt contemporary leader for whom justice is a punchline), a possible serial killer, and a Black photographer from Washington, D.C. who finds herself all mixed up in the small-town doings. 

Russell alternates between the points of view of these characters, seamlessly intertwining (hugely important) backstory with present plot, into a story that examines injustice related to Native American land, police authority and overreach, racism, immigrant treatment, and so much more. My go-to line about historical fiction: The best historical fiction echoes clearly in today's world, and this novel certainly does that. 

I've been thinking about this novel for more than a month now, thinking about what to write about it. It won't leave me, and I'm still not sure I'm thinking coherently about it, except for this: I'm pretty sure this is my favorite novel of the year so far. Possibly a new classic. Watch for this on the end-of-year awards lists for sure. If, like me, you have been on the fence, I wholeheartedly implore you to give it a shot. 

Shelf Lives, Vol 3: Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

In the spring of 2012, as a fledgling books website called Book Riot was just getting its legs, one of its leaders, Rebecca Joines Schinsky, began evangelizing for a yet-to-be-published thriller titled Gone Girl by a little-known writer named Gillian Flynn. Rebecca repeatedly professed to the Book Riot team and anyone who would listen on Twitter that Gone Girl was destined for greatness.

Was she right, or WAS SHE RIGHT?! Gone Girl published on June 5, 2012, and absolutely exploded. Rebecca is VERY RARELY wrong. 

But here's another strand of this story: Book Expo America, the book industry's (now defunct) annual gathering, was held in New York City June 5-7 that year, and I got to go. It was the first time many of the Book Riot contributors got to meet in person. I remember walking into Javits that first time with my press pass for Book Riot, looking around, and thinking, man, this is the life for me. Surround by writers and books. Talking with book people. This. Is. IT!

But so, Gone Girl was the absolute belle of that ball -- both at the BEA conference generally, and for all the Book Riot contributors specifically. The buzz was palpable. Everyone was talking about it. 

As soon as I got home from that trip, I bought and read Gone Girl my first free moments. (Here's my full review, and here's one quote from that piece if you don't care to read the whole thing: "When I finished this book it felt like my brain had curled up in a ball, mewling, like a kicked puppy.") 

That's my original hardcover copy I'm holding in the photo above. It IS a first edition. Anyone know if that's worth anything? 😅

For the rest of the summer, I couldn't shut up about Gone Girl either. No need explaining here how successful that book went on to be, or how it launched its own cottage industry of copy cat book titles and thrillers with alternating perspectives of unreliable narrators.

Recently, as I began thinking about these books on my shelf that have stood the test of time, I realized how crucial both Gone Girl, and Gone Girl Summer, have been in my life as a reader, writer, and general book nerd. That book and that summer were a turning point for me. Writing for Book Riot, and being surround constantly by book people, was what I knew I wanted to do. The worst advice someone ever gave me was don't do what you love professionally because it'll ruin it. That summer is when I realized how absolutely asinine that idea is. 

It took a minute, but now here I am: Working at StoryStudio Chicago, a nonprofit where I'm constantly surrounded by talented writers and amazing books; working as a bookseller at a local indie; and working as a daily editor at the Chicago Review of Books. Life is good, man. Always good to remind yourself of that when it's true. Thank you, Gone Girl Summer. 

Support Indie Presses That Lost NEA Funding: Open Letter Books Edition

Last week, The Chicago Review of Books published a tremendous tribute to indie publishers and literary journals who lost their National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding. 

If you hadn't heard, a few weeks ago, the Trump Administration summarily canceled millions of dollars in funding to dozens of arts organizations -- money that had already been awarded, and that these organizations had counted on as part of their 2025 budgets. Why were these grants canceled? No good reason, really, and certainly not fiscal conservativeness -- the NEA's budget represents 0.003 percent of federal spending, basically a rounding error. More likely, the grants were canceled because fascists hate art. Art reminds them of how unimaginative and joyless their lives are.

Anyway, now, there are dozens of extremely worthy literary organizations doing amazing work that need our support. Americans for the Arts has a great page explaining what you can do to help.

But I wanted to highlight one of personal favorites indie publishers here: Open Letter Books. Open Letter Books is a nonprofit that publishes works in translation from writers from all the world. The organization actually recently sort of merged with Deep Vellum Books, though Open Letter continue to operate as its own entity. 

Deep Vellum is running a "replace our NEA grant" fundraiser and you can support them that way. Or, you can buy books! Need some recommendations? Here are six of my favorite Open Letter books!

6. Street of Thieves, by Mathias Énard -- This was the novel that kicked off my Open Letter love. I found this thanks to a bookseller shelftalker at an indie bookstore (57th Street Books) and I absolutely loved it. It's the coming-of-age story of a young Moroccan kid named Lakhdar, a lover of books, who, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, begins to see the world as the oppressive place it is.

5. Zone, by Mathias Énard -- Full disclosure: I haven't read this yet, but it's the thrilling story -- told in one long sentence -- of a "spy" traveling by train from Milan to Rome and reflecting on his life.

4. American Fictionary, by Dubravka Ugresic -- Oh man I love this book from the fierce and funny Croatian writer Ugresic, god rest her soul. In these short essays "the comforting veil of Western consumerism is ripped apart as the mundane luxuries of the average citizen are contrasted with the life of a woman whose country is being destroyed." If you read and enjoyed Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, this is similar but much more biting.

3. Fox, by Dubravka Ugresic -- A episodic, dreamlike, possibly autobiographical meta-novel about a woman trying to escape her hometown. This book is filled with literary trivia, details about how stories become stories, and plenty of Ugresic's signature wit.

2. The Invented Part, by Rodrigo Fresán -- The first in a trilogy by Argentinian writer Fresán, this strange, post-modern, all-but-plotless novel consisting of a series of set pieces about the literary life, about inspiration for writers, about how readers understand fiction, and the Kinks, Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Wuthering Heights, and a lot more. 

1. Four by Four, by Sara Mesa -- From Spanish writer Mesa, this unsettling novel is a little like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, with a little The Secret History, and a sprinkle of the movie Get Out. There’s a sinister undercurrent of something nefarious happening, and everyone but the narrators seem to know what it is. 

Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon: To the World Wide Web...and Beyond!

My head hurts, and I'm tired. It's like I'm hungover. Pynchon-blitzed, as it were. Here's a thing I don't recommend: Reading 150 pages of Pynchon in one day. That's what I did yesterday, and I had the absolute strangest dreams last night, and as I write this the morning after finishing Thomas Pynchon's 2013 novel, Bleeding Edge, I'm not sure if I'm awake or still dreaming. 

Pynchon is a madman. A comic genius. A brilliant writer. Maybe a kook? (Did you ever hear the conspiracy theory that the notoriously elusive Pynchon is actually the Unabomber?)

Look, when you pick up a Pynchon novel, you have to expect to be by turns amazed, frustrated, immensely entertained, bored, confused, tickled, and awed. Thankfully, most of these are the reasons why I read, and that's why I picked up this book. 

Why now? Because Pynchon is publishing a new novel (and almost certainly his last) this fall titled Shadow Ticket, and I wanted to remind myself what he's like (and also maybe I'm just a little bit of a reading masochist). This is my third time reading Pynchon. I still have Gravity's Rainbow PTSD, but I absolutely loved Inherent Vice.

Bleeding Edge is definitely more Inherent Vice than Gravity's Rainbow. It's a zany caper about New York City in 2001, before during and after the tech boom and bust in Silicon Alley, and before, during, and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Pynchon seems to think these two are connected, though not in a conspiracy theory way, more in a thematic way -- that they both were the end of an age of innocence and excess (innocently excessive? excessively innocent?), and that they both resulted in fundamental changes to this American life. 

The story is actually about Maxine Tarnow, a fraud investigator, who is tipped off to some shady dealings by a start-up called hashslingrz and its tech bro CEO Gabriel Ice. Then a guy who was skimming money from hashslingrz's skimmed money winds up dead, and Maxine now has not just a fraud investigation but a murder mystery on her hands. Then Maxine gets a mysterious video of some guys on the roof of a NYC building practicing with a Stinger missile launcher. Then 9/11 happens. How the hell are all these things connected?

Or maybe they're not. Maybe everything is totally random. Who knows? At least there's some good Pynchon Puns.

Lemme give you an example. Maxine's son Ziggy is watching a movie when she comes back to the apartment one evening. It's the (fictional) 1990 film Scooby Goes Latin!, in which the Scooby-Doo gang travels to Columbia to bust a dirty DEA agent mixed up in a drug cartel. "And I would've got away with it, too," he complains, "if it hadn't been for these Medellin kids." God dammit, that's funny. 

Is the madcap plot and these puns and clever-alities (a Pynchon-esque non-word?) enough to keep you turning pages? Just barely, I think. Yes, I'm glad I read this but knowing what I know now having finished it, I'm not sure I'd read it again. This book is like tasting a whiskey you're not sure you like, but keep drinking anyway. 

"How Can I Be Brave?": An Interview with Samira Ahmed of Authors Against Book Bans

I have an interview piece up today on the Chicago Review of Books and I humbly implore you to read it; not because I did anything spectacular, but rather because my interview subject -- Samira Ahmed, a Chicago author and one of the national leaders of the group Authors Against Book Bans -- is an absolute force of nature. 

I've been writing about books on the internet for 17 years, and I've interviewed dozens of authors in that time, and I can tell you Samira is one of my all-time favorite interviews. 

The piece is part of Chicago Review of Books' Reading Your Resistance series, and in the interview, Samira talks about a topic near and dear to all of our hearts: Fighting back against book bans. 

Samira is as passionate as she is inspiring. I literally got choked up during one point in the interview, as Samira talked about how the current administration is emboldening book banners. Try this quote on for size: 

"Authoritarians hate art and they hate books for a few reasons. For one, art shines a light on truth. Books shine a light on truth. And when you ban books, when you censor books, when you control what information people are allowed to have, you can create an ignorant populace. Books and art allow us to be fully realized. Authoritarians want to oppress us. They want us to feel downtrodden. But art gives us hope."

Another highlight is Samira's anecdote about one of her own books being "soft banned" in a rural red state school district because "there are no Muslims or Indians here." She said her first thought was "You have books with dragons in your library, but there’s no dragons at your school either." But the truly inspiring part of this story is the teacher who wanted her students to read Samira's book asked Samira, "How can I be brave?" Samira talks about how that question has stuck with her. 

Let's all be brave. Let's fight back! Read the full interview here. 

Dream State, by Eric Puchner: A New Take on the Multi-Generational Family Saga

Normally, you hear "multi-generational family saga" and your thoughts go to a novel starting around World War II and finishing up in present day. Eric Puchner's new novel, Dream State, is not that. Instead, it starts in 2004 with a wedding, and traverses 50 years forward, obviously well past our current moment. 

This allows Puchner to explore the "what-ifs" of these characters' lives, all amidst the backdrop of impending climate catastrophe in rural Montana, the novel's idyllic setting. 

It is so close to working. That is to say, most of it works. Parts of it don't, quite. 

The story is about a group of friends who sort of flit in and out of each other's lives over the 50+ years of the story. But it starts with a terrible betrayal. On the day that Cece and Charlie are supposed to get married at his family's home in Montana, Cece has a change of heart, and instead winds up with Charlie's best friend, Garrett. And we go from there. 

The first half of this novel reminded me of Nickolas Butler's Shotgun Lovesongs, one of my favorite novels of the last 20 years or so. It's about reconnecting with friendships formed in the crucible of college. I saw a post just today, actually, from a college student: "Dear Future Child, I wanted you to know I haven't found your mother yet, but I have found your Fun Uncles." That's how a lot of male friendships in college are -- definitely how mine were and still are. And that's largely how they're portrayed here. Garrett and Charlie, of course, reconcile (that's not a spoiler) and Charlie and Cece maintain something of a friendship as well.

Cece and Garrett build a life in the small Montana town. Garrett works for the state, studying and tracking wolverines and climate change's tragic effect on their habitat. Cece opens a bookstore in town. 

This novel will always be memorable to me for the "bookstore scene." Here's what happens: Cece convinces a famous author to come read at her small store in the middle of nowhere. But there's a thunderstorm that night, and Cece accidentally takes a sleeping pill and falls asleep during the event, and no one has shown up anyway. It's as cringe as cringe gets, but so relatable if you're in the bookselling world -- like all your worst fears about events come to life in this scene. This scene forms the basis for a major plot hinge, however, which sets the stage for the second half of the novel.

The second half to me -- as we go forward into the future in several-years-at-a-time-intervals, and the characters are wrestling with wild fires and heat waves and erratic weather and the other effects of climate change -- wasn't quite as successful. Time moves much more quickly and we sort of lose touch with the characters. In the first half, we get to know them so well because we spend several hundred pages on only a few years. In the second half, we only check in on them periodically. It was a risky strategy that didn't quite pay off. But it reads quickly and you're never bored. It just doesn't quite have the same emotional impact the first half of the novel did. 

I've been thinking about this book for several weeks, trying to parse what I think about it, whether to recommend it or not. It's definitely a unique take on the multi-generational novel, and Puchner is a talented writer who is adept at keeping things moving. So give it a shot, if for no other reason than I need someone to discuss it with. :)  

Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino: What Even Is a Human?

A few weeks ago, I got to hear Marie-Helene Bertino read from the short story that became the basis for her novel, Beautyland. The passages she read were quirky, silly, and really really funny**. I immediately picked up the novel, excited to read more and expecting something along the lines of (but much, much better than) the 1999 movie The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (if you know this movie, we should be friends).

It is like that movie in a cursory sense -- the idea here is that Adina, who we follow through her whole life, is reporting back to her alien race on the foibles and factualities of humans. Adina makes friends, experiences loneliness, strives, struggles, and reports it all back to her own folks via an enchanted fax machine. 

What I did not expect from this novel is how profound, insightful, often very sad, and skillfully rendered it is.*** As the story unfolds, there is a constant juxtaposition of the "oh, humans are so silly and absurd and funny" with "oh, humans are so cruel and awful and how do they even get through this life?"

The gimmick of Adina being non-human and observing human foibles begins as a way for her to report objectively -- though often very humorously (I was getting Nate Bargatze Washington's Dream sketch vibes for a while) -- about we silly humans. But of course, this can't last. Adina becomes more human than human (with apologies to Rob Zombie) and experiences heartbreak and loneliness and deep emotional pain so much so that, Adina begins to wonder not what makes humans human, but what allows humans to KEEP BEING human. 

Whenever I'm faced with a book that affects me deeply, as this one did, my instinct is just to gush and gush and gush. And I'm exercising every ounce of self-control not to do that here. But I'll tell you this: I really did love this quite a bit and it left a massive mark on me. It's an example of a book that I read at exactly the right time and place -- a piece of reading serendipity you can't ever create on purpose or reproduce again once it's happened. This book is an example of why I love reading. It's like a runner's high -- it's rare, but when it hits, it's absolutely the best feeling in the world. 

**Human beings, Adina faxes, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their day off.

***Anyone questioning whether god exists need only consider the brevity of a dog's life span. If there was a god, let alone a benevolent one, dogs would have life spans similar to parrots. We'd have to provide arrangements for them in our wills. We wouldn't have to see their muzzles fill with gray at age four. We'd never have to find them in the morning turned to stone. 

Shelf Lives, Vol 2: Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace

(To read an introduction to Shelf Lives, and the first "issue" about Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's Americanah, click here.)

It's bonkers to me that this photo is nearly 15 years old. Look how young and bro-ish I look? 😅 (If you've never met me IRL, just take my word for it: This is Young Bro-ish Greg.) This photo is from 2011. I "posed" for it for a Book Riot piece in which contributors were asked to write about a favorite book. This photo is basically the culmination of three years of me talking about Infinite Jest nonstop to anyone who would listen, and many who wouldn't, or stopped listening and walked away mid-sentence. 

And but so, it's probably not a shocker that Infinite Jest is the second entry in this Shelf Lives series. Here's this book's story: In the fall of 2008, I got a text from my then-girlfriend-now-wife. It said something like "I just saw David Foster Wallace died. Didn't you like that guy?" 

Yep, David Foster Wallace had died (he died by suicide Sept. 12, 2008). And yes, I really did like that guy. But I was a DFW bandwagon fan. I'd only stumbled upon his work a few years prior, when somebody gave me a copy of Consider the Lobster. I was floored. I didn't know writing could do what writing was doing in these essays -- to surround a topic from all angles, to turn something inside out, examine it, and put it back together with words, and to make it so immensely readable you just can't look away, whether he's writing about if lobsters feel pain or the Adult Video News Awards. So then I read just about everything else he'd written -- even the terrible, impenetrable short stories, like "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," which DFW himself admitted later he'd crossed the line between reader enjoyment and reader aggravation. But I loved them anyway. I loved how he wrote. I loved his intellect. I loved his fart jokes. 

But I held off reading Infinite Jest. At that point, as we arrive in the fall of 2008, it'd been 12 years since he'd published a novel, and I told myself when news of something new of his was imminent, I'd finally read this thousand-page tome. Then he killed himself. And nothing new would be forthcoming (though of course, something did: The Pale King -- a sad facsimile of a DFW novel). So I read Infinite Jest. 

I expected it to be brilliant. It's brilliant. And impossibly sad, in light of DFW's death.

Reading Infinite Jest to me is significant not just because it's the best work by my favorite writer, but also because, while I read it, I wrote about books on the internet for the first time. To keep me motivated in my reading (Infinite Jest is brilliant, have I mentioned that? But it's also really difficult), I started a web log, or "blog" for brevity's sake -- at that time, a new and growing form of content creation. My blog was called Choad vs. Infinite Jest and I wrote about my progress through the novel and whatever else was on my mind. It was very raw and, now looking back, very cringe-worthy. (Side note: If you didn't think I was bro in my late 20s to early 30s already, let me explain the blog's title: "Choad" was my fraternity nickname in college. It comes from Beavis & Butthead. When I started the blog, it never occurred to me at all that anyone other than people I knew would be reading this thing. Or that 17 years later, I'd be writing about it and linking to it.)

When people ask me if they should read Infinite Jest, my answer is always along the lines of  "Yes, by all means. But prepare to be frustrated." (A bookstore colleague who tried to read it on my recommendation began calling it "Infinite Rest" because every time she picked it up to read, she'd fall asleep within five minutes.) The novel disorients you on purpose for more than 200 pages, until you finally get your bearings and settle in. Sure, I understand why that can be off-putting. And I know fans of David Foster Wallace generally and this novel in particular have become somewhat of a punch line these days. That's fine by me. Punch away. I unashamedly love it. 

So here we are, 17 years after reading Infinite Jest, and not only is this edition of the book (which is, strangely, a paperback, but with the hardcover's art. I don't remember, even, where I got it) still on my shelf, I have another as well -- a 20th anniversary "collector's edition" with a forward by Tom Bissell. Every year, I tell myself it's time for an Infinite Jest re-read. But I haven't done it yet. I'm not worried about a re-read affecting my memory of reading it the first time, or whether the novel "holds up." I just haven't done it. But if there were any book on my shelf that is screaming for a reread, Infinite Jest is it. 

Who's in?  

2025 updated photo

Ron Currie Is Back, Let's Celebrate! (Or, a Peek Inside the Reviewer's Mind)

Ron Currie's 2009 novel Everything Matters! blew me away -- it's a story about a kid who knows the exact moment he's going to die. I was so amazed how Currie made that conceit work through a full, satisfying, and really smart read.

When I sat down to write a review of Currie's new novel, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, for the Chicago Review of Books, I first went back to my reading journal to remind myself about some of the details of why I'd loved Everything Matters!. That idea of killing a character or foreshadowing a character's death, but keeping a reader engaged was front and center in what I'd written when I'd read it 15 years ago. So that felt like a natural entry point to the review, since Currie basically does that again here! 

But it didn't all go smoothly. I wrote two drafts of the review in which I called the idea of killing your character in the title the "Titanic Trick," a not to how we all sat through that three-hour movie even though we knew the boat was going to sink and Jack was going to die. I couldn't make it work through the whole review, though. Turns out it was too cute by half, and I was struggling with the piece for a solid week before just deciding to kill that darling and start over. Within an hour, I had the whole thing nearly done -- same idea, just not calling it something stupid. Lesson learned. Killing your darlings is important.  

And so, kudos to Currie for making the "Titanic Trick" (haha, resurrected darling!) work not once, but twice in Babs Dionne. It's a truly fantastic novel -- a favorite of 2025 so far for sure. I hope you'll take a second to check out my CHIRB review here:

I've loved everything Currie's written -- he's a writer who just makes sense to me. My brain absorbs his sentences quickly and with very little friction. Some writers you just connect with. He's one for me, and I couldn't have been more excited that he was back after eight years with this novel. 

Definitely check out his other novels, if you haven't read him. After Everything Matters!, 2013's Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles (the best all-time novel that refers to a nicotine patch in the title) reads like autofiction but isn't (or is it?), and 2017's The One-Eyed Man, a novel about very troubled times, is likely as relevant today as it was then. (His 2007 debut God Is Dead I realized as I'm writing this I haven't actually read yet. I'll need to fix that soon.) 

More Than Words, by John Warner: Pushing Back Against Our AI Overlords

Like Amazon, avocados, and Colleen Hoover novels, my reflexive reaction to any conversation about generative AI is to wince and turn away. I don't teach writing myself, but I work for a nonprofit literary arts organization whose whole mission is to teach writing (StoryStudio, shout out!), and for that reason I'm terrified of generative AI. I'm also angry at tech bros like Sam Altman who used copyrighted material to train his large language model, ChatGPT. And I'm worried AI is a shortcut for so many youths these days who don't seem to need too much convincing to take shortcuts (old man yells at cloud!).

Because it's so distasteful, I've largely avoided going much deeper than surface-level knowledge about generative AI. The extent of my experience with ChatGPT is the one time I asked it to give me a list of 1990s grunge band names. What it gave me was so hilariously bad (Mudstain! Soggy Flannel! Gravel Gaze!), I've never been back. AI may be stupid, but it's still ubiquitous, and so still very concerning.

So John Warner's new book More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI is a soothing balm; a book that will help demystify AI and gently talk you off the ledge. If you're a Chicago book person, you're probably familiar with Warner. He writes as the Biblioracle in the Sunday Chicago Tribune (as books coverage has dwindled, his column remains a stalwart). He also writes about books and writing in a terrific companion Substack titled The Biblioracle Recommends.

More Than Words truly meets the moment in terms of explaining what AI is, what it is not, and most importantly, how writing can and will still thrive in the age of AI. 

Warner writes: "Writing is thinking. Writing involves both the expression and exploration of an idea, meaning that even as we're trying to capture the idea on the page, the idea may change based on our attempts to capture it. Removing thinking from writing renders an act not writing."

There is a lot to love in this book, but that quote to me is the central takeaway. Though what ChatGPT does *resembles* writing, of course, what ChatGPT does IS NOT writing. What ChatGPT does is placing tokens in syntactically correct order. Writing requires thought. And more thought. And pain. And then some more thought. Despite its name, artificial intelligence does not think. So artificial intelligence does not write. 

Further, what ChatGPT does is DEFINITELY not creating art. Art requires feeling. And obviously, AI has none. "What I want to say about writing is that it is a fully embodied experience," Warner writes. "When we do it, we are thinking and feeling. We are bringing our unique intelligence to the table and attempting to demonstrate them to the world, even when our intelligences don't seem too intelligent." 

How to teach writing in the age of AI, how to pushback (resist?!) against the most nefarious uses of AI, and maybe even some positive use cases for AI (if we're careful) related to writing are all discussed in this book, as well. 

I needed this book badly and I can't recommend it more highly to you if you care about books and writing, as well. 

Halfway Through the Knausgaard-verse

Reading Karl Ove Knausgaard brings with it a heightened level of nose-crinkling cringe when I tell some of my much younger colleagues what I'm reading. I find it hilarious, but never has my book taste been more sus to them than when I tell them I'm reading an old white Norwegian dude whose books have no plot. 

Last week, after I finished the third book in the six-volume My Struggle series, I found a way to put these terrific books in their terms: These books are to middle-aged (sometimes pretentious) white dudes what Ali Hazelwood and Emily Henry are to them: Pure reading enjoyment! You don't have to completely understand it. It is what it is. And the heart wants what the heart wants. They're not tempted to rush out and buy copies of Knausgaard's books, but at least they get it a little bit now. 

And but so, I started this 3,600-page series with a whole bunch of  questions in mind: What makes these books so popular? Why are writers from Zadie Smith to Jonathan Lethem besotted with these novels? How do readers pull themselves through these long books with no ostensible plot? What is so "compulsively readable" (as many of the blurbs breathlessly point out), exactly, about an irascible middle-aged Norwegian writer telling us about his kid's birthday party or traveling to see his grandparents or so much else that's so mundane any writing teacher would tell the writer to cut it?

I think part of the answer to all these questions is that against all odds, Knausgaard is relatable. He struggles with every day life. He struggles with trying to be a good person when it's so much easier not to be. He struggles simply being a person in the world populated with other people with whom he has trouble connecting, getting along with, or even tolerating. 

You can still like people and like these books, but having at least a streak of curmudgeon in you may enhance your enjoyment of these books. Despite my outward sunny disposition and consistent optimism (LOL), you may be surprised to learn that sometimes People (not individual persons, but People collectively) get under my skin. 

And that brings me to Philip Roth, perhaps the most famous curmudgeonly writer of them all. One thing that drew me to these books is how much I love Philip Roth's novels. Roth's writing is as detailed, insightful, and profound as anything I've ever read. Roth and Knausgaard are similar this way. Even when nothing is happening, and nothing is happening frequently in Knausgaard, reading them is still a delight. 

But to reiterate, don't read Knausgaard if you need plot. There ain't none. Each book has an overarching theme (death, love, boyhood) and each book includes frequent long scenes that feel like plot (the 50-plus-page birthday party that kicks off the second book, for instance), but the only real overarching action is Knausgaard continuously ramming his skull into the brick wall of life.

These aren't books I read 100 pages at a time. I dip in and out slowly and read until I get tired. I think that's the only way. But yes, here at the halfway point of the Knausgaard-verse, I'm encouraged and excited to keep going. Who's with me? 😅

My Friends, by Hisham Matar: On the Loneliness of Exile

Hisham Matar's 2024 National Book Award-finalist novel My Friends is about making your way in the world when you can't go home again. It's about the loneliness of exile, the importance of friendship, and the horrors of authoritarianism.

Imagine your life being on pause for more than 25 years. You exist in limbo, away from your country, apart from your family, even having to lie to them, knowing your infrequent correspondence and even more infrequent conversations are monitored. Such is the fate of our narrator, Khaled, a Libyan national who arrives in Edinburgh in 1984 on a university scholarship. Young and idealistic, but also naive, Khaled becomes swept up in political currents much stronger than his ability to deal with him.

He rues the day he didn't listen more closely to his university friend, who told him when he arrived in Edinburgh: "I have resigned myself to the fact that I live in a world of unreasonable men and the only reasonable thing to do in this situation is, best we can, avoid their schemes."

So for reasons I won't spoil, Khaled becomes stuck in the UK. He can't return home because if he does, he likely won't be allowed to leave Libya again. Being trapped in an authoritarian state, though, might be the best case scenario. In a worst case scenario, he'd be murdered by the regime, as so many before him had.

So he stays in London, building a life with his friend, Mustafa, and later, a writer named Hosam Zawa, who'd been one of the inspirations for him to go to university and study literature in the first place.

When the revolution breaks out in the spring of 2011, each of these men must again weigh his priorities. Each man must take an accounting of his courage. 

The pace of this novel is deliberate and contemplative, and the tone is sober and earnest. The story is told in 108 short chapters, which gives the effect of pulling you along a little more quickly than you might read otherwise. But to me this still felt a little like homework. Yes, it's a VERY GOOD NOVEL. The reviews are universally exceptional and it's won tons of literary awards. But it felt more like something I *should* be reading, like a long New Yorker expose, than something I'd read strictly for pleasure. That said, I'm still really glad I read it. It's a stunning piece of literary fiction, and provides fascinating context and a new perspective on events on which I'd only known a little about.  

Shelf Lives, Vol. 1: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Today I'm excited to introduce a new feature at the New Dork Review of Books: Shelf Lives.

Here's the story behind Shelf Lives: My bookshelf is a trip into my past. Every book there has a story about how I came to it, when/where I bought/read it, and what was going on in my life at the time I bought/read it. Many, probably most, of these stories are pretty mundane. Some are not, and these are the stories I want to tell. Why does a book make me feel a certain kind of way when I catch a glimpse of it sitting on my shelf? What specific memories does it evoke? What connections does my brain immediately begin making to music, food, time/place, and other books? 

Over the years, I've had to purge hundreds of books from my shelves to avoid being buried, so the ones that remain are truly special. Getting older makes you nostalgic, and so I decided I wanted to spend a post or two each month writing about some of the stories behind my most beloved books. It's entirely possible these stories are only interesting to me. But I do hope you enjoy them too. I also hope these stories give you occasion to think about the stories behind your own most-loved books.

---

Volume 1: Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It's Labor Day weekend, 2013, and my then-fiancée-now-wife's mother is in town to help her shop for wedding dresses. So I decide to make myself scarce and head out on an epic road trip. My plan is to drive around the Midwest to new-to-me bookstores, including Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, and Subterranean Books and Left Bank Books in St. Louis, among others. 

I wrote a blow-by-blow account of this pretty epic adventure here. (Amazingly, the links to the photos on Flickr still work! Also, I still have the trusty blue Honda Civic. 😅) Writing about that trip was nearly as much as the trip itself. Rereading that post now makes me laugh. 

So of course I came back from that trip with a huge stack of new books. But of all the books I bought on that trip, by far the most enduring, most important, and my favorite is Adichie's Americanah. I've written a lot about how much I love this book (here is my original raving review), and I've been thinking about it a lot lately as I'm about to read her new novel, Dream Count (out March 4) -- her first novel since Americanah. 

Americanah is such a terrific examination of American foibles (especially related to race) and so it remains a perfect match in my mind for that road trip, in which I also discovered my share of Americana and American foibles -- the dude who draped his jeans and underwear over the bed of his truck (presumably to dry after he'd washed them in his room? I hope?) in the parking lot of a motel, for instance. 

Even though I didn't actually read the novel until two months after this road trip, Americanah and that adventure are inextricably linked in my mind. This was also the first time I'd read Adichie, and I've since read every word she's written -- easily one of my top 5 favorite writers.

Because I loved the book so much, and think about it often, the book also gives me an excuse to think back fondly on that trip. Maybe it's time to do that again. I never re-read books, but maybe it's time to give Americanah another look, too. 

Are You Ready to Rock?! Here Are 6 Amazing Music Novels

There is no subgenre of novel I love more than books about music. And I just finished what will likely wind up as one my all-time favorites. Deep Cuts, by Holly Brickley, is a novel about collaboration and inspiration, about jealousy and love, and, simply put, making great art. It's stunning to me that this is a debut novel, but it's the best thing I've read so far this year.

Brickley's novel got me thinking about some of my all-time favorite books in this subgenre. Here are six:

The Song Is You, by Arthur Phillips -- This is a bit of a deep cut itself, but I deeply love this book about a sad, mid-40s divorced man and a beautiful Irish singer who sort of fall in love with each other through their mutual love of music, though without ever meeting in person. Brickley's novel reminded me a lot of this book in terms of how the characters sort of flit in and out of each other's lives and speak to each other through various non-in-person channels. This novel came out in 2009 and was one of the inspirations for actually starting to write about books in some sort of formal way -- and lo and behold The New Dork Review of Books was born. One note about this book, if you decide to pick it up: Almost everyone else who has read it has HATED it. I'm definitely in the minority of people who really liked it.

Lo Fi, by Liz Riggs -- Another debut, this one set in Nashville, about an aspiring songwriter navigating love and life as she tries to find her voice as a musician. Riggs writes with a phenomenal sense of place here, and even if you've never been to a sweaty Nashville club, this novel is a great facsimile. 

Charm City Rocks, by Matthew Norman -- It's not a coincidence that so many novels about music are also love stories, and this one is too. An affable middle-aged dude who harbors a crush for a drummer in an all-female band takes a chance (well, sort of) and contacts her. Will they or won't they? A charming romcom with music at its heart, I loved this book!

Mary Jane, by Jessica Anya Blau -- This coming-of-age story gives big-time Almost Famous vibes. It's about a teenaged girl who spends a summer at the beach as a nanny and meets a famous rockstar who is trying to get clean. Mary Jane begins to realize her so-far sheltered life is not how the world really is. 

Gone to the Wolves, by John Wray -- People are always a little surprised when they find out I love heavy metal. But I do, and I loved this book about a group of teenagers in the 1980s who become obsessed with black metal. The novel is based on a real-life events about the tragic black metal band Havoc. If you know even a little bit of their bonkers story, you'll love this book. There's some great 80s metal references throughout, as well. The characters all sit around and listen to "...and Justice For All" when it for comes out. And at one point in the novel, they're at a glam-rock party in Los Angeles, and one of the characters muses about how if someone just took a look around and laughed, the whole scene would collapse under the weight of its own ridiculousness. It's funny because it's true. 

Daisy Jones & the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid -- Though the hipster characters in Holly Brickey's novel would probably not enjoy this obvious choice, Reid's novel (along with High Fidelity) are the two main comps for Deep Cuts. 

A Couple of Bright Bookish Things in Otherwise Dark Times

In January 2017 when the Orange Thing began his first term of catastrophic assault on human decency, good governance, and basic common sense, I had the most productive reading month of my life -- 12 books in those 31 days. That certainly wasn't a coincidence. Nor is it this time, when I've been almost maniacally productive in January in terms of reading, writing here, and writing generally. Keeping yourself busy with things you love is absolutely crucial in times of gathering darkness. And, friends? Things are bleak. Anyway...sorry not sorry for the speech. Hugs to everyone. 

Here are two fun things I worked on in January, both of which were actually published this week.

I got to interview Nickolas Butler for the Chicago Review of Books --  I've loved Butler's work since I read his debut Shotgun Lovesongs in 2014. We've met in person a few times since (he did a reading at RoscoeBooks a couple years ago), and he's an absolutely delightful person. 

His new novel, A Forty-Year Kiss, is out today! It's a sweet, heartwarming story about second chances in life and love. PLEASE BUY IT -- the hardcover is a truly beautiful physical object, complete with variegated sprayed edges and colored inset pages. It feels like a collector's edition! 

We actually did the interview on Zoom (as opposed to over email) and it was so much fun getting to talk with him. I think I even annoyed him at one point, asking him if his new novel could've taken place anywhere but in the Midwest. 😂 I think he's tired of being asked that about his books. But he's such a kind human, he wouldn't overtly show annoyance. If you've liked his other novels, you'll love this one too. And if he's a new-to-you writer, I urge you to take a chance on him and give him a read. 

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I'm on a new episode of the Chicago Writers Podcast -- I once again got to join host Dan Finnen and now-cohost and editor-in-chief of the Chicago Review of Books, Michael Welch, as well as CHIRB managing director Rachel Leon to talk about books. The angles this time were a short review of our favorite books of 2024, and then a longer discussion of our most anticipated 2025 books. (Spoiler: A Forty-Year Kiss was one of my picks. Everything is connected.) I also talked a little bit about Emily Henry, which I guess you'll have to listen to believe.