11 March 2023 Books To Add To Your Reading List

Another month, another fresh set of book releases to devour. See NYLON’s monthly reading list, ahead.

Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery - Bloomsbury, March 2

Mae is 17 years old in 1966 New York City living in a run-down apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother's sometimes-boyfriend. She drops out of school only to be hired as Andy Warhol’s typist, in a coming of age romp through the countercultural movement that explores nightlife, art, and independence.

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell - Penguin Random House, March 7

Jenny Odell, author of the ahead-of-its-time How To Do Nothing, has a way of making you think about all the ways the gnarled claws of capitalism have made life utterly unlivable. In her new book, she considers the clock that we’re chained to and how the reigning system by which we operate our lives for profit is actively working against us. Spring forward, indeed!

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas - Tin House, March 7

In this sensual coming of age novel, a young woman meets a man 20 years her senior while on vacation in an isolated Australian coastal town. She’s drawn into his simple life — a salve for her chaotic upbringing. But after she witnesses something strange, she becomes unmoored, questioning everything she thinks she desires.

STASH: My Life in Hiding by Laura Cathcart Robbins - Simon & Schuster, March 7

Laura Cathcart Robbins, host of the podcast The Only One in the Room, has written a propulsive addiction memoir that has her going from stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and popping them in between PTA meetings to facing divorce and a custody battle. As Robbins tries to undo the choices in her life, she must work through self-sabotage and internalized racism to face her years-long drug addiction.

The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia - Nightboat, March 7

Aurora Mattia’s cosmic, intimate collection of coming of age trans love and fantasy tells different stories of time travel, transphobia, knifings, and T4T romance.

Tweakerworld by Jason Yamas - Unnamed Press, March 7

Crystal meth crisis meets Bay Area gay culture in this compelling memoir by Jason Yamas, a film producer who finds himself in control of the entire market for San Francisco’s gay community — where he meets a cast of decadent parties who turn the concept of “who a tweaker is” on its head, showing him a kind of deadly nirvana.

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati - Source Books, March 7

All the copies of Clytemnestra, the feminist retelling of ancient Greece’s most notorious murderess, caught fire on the way to the warehouse this week — resulting in a total loss of inventory. Looks like she still has some bones to pick from the underworld, and if that’s not a big enough indication of how hot this book is, I don’t know what is!

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe - Penguin Random House, March 14

Billed as “Girls meets Mad Men,” it’s a ripe time for a reprint of Rona Jaffe’s 1958 novel (now with an introduction by New Yorker writer Rachel Syme), which follows three young women working as typists at a New York City publishing company, which was scandalously ahead of its time. In order to write it, Jaffe interviewed 50 women about sex, assault, abortions, and everything else nobody talked about in the 1950s.

Raving by McKenzie Wark - Duke Press, March 14

Bringing big thoughts and big heart to the idea of a night out, McKenzie Wark dives into NYC’s underground queer and trans rave scenes, exploring the idea of techno music and raves as art and techniques by which marginalized people in particular can dance through the capitalism’s collapsing systems.

Flux by Jinwoo Chong - Melville House, March 21

A time-bending neo-noir novel in the vein of Ling Ma’s Severance, Flux is about the lives of three men undergoing loss, whose lives converge when a 28-year-old uncovers a time-traveling conspiracy at his new place of work that’s being used to cover up a network of dark secrets.

Y/N by Esther Yi - Astra, March 21

The high literature world meets K-pop in this debut novel about fandom, celebrity, and parasocial relationships. Y/N follows a Korean-American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop star starts innocently enough with fanfic she pens, but eventually taking her down a dark rabbit hole in Seoul.