Culture
11 May 2022 Books To Add To Your Reading List
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman - Penguin Random House, May 3
In a fun debut novel that feels like the life story of half of Brooklyn, Eve has a girlfriend she loves but is afraid she’s wasting her youth being with just one person. She posts some nudes online and meets Olivia and Nathan, who all begin a relationship together, causing her to ask question everything she thought she knew about sex, sexuality, and desire.
Penguin Random House
BAD GIRLS: A Novel by Camila Sosa Villada, Translated by Kit Maude - Other Press, May 3
Bad Girls is about a community of trans women living in Córdoba, Spain in the 1990s who shelter from the everyday horrors of disease and violence at the hands of cops, clients, and boyfriends with 178-year-old Auntie Encarna, and take turns sharing fables and their own stories, with a dose of humor and a lot of magical realism.
Other Press
THE OTHER MOTHER by Rachel Harper - Counterpoint, May 3
In this novel that’s as suspenseful as it is touching, a college freshman’s life gets turned upside down when, searching for answers about his father, he learns about his mother’s secret lover — a woman named Juliet. A queer generational saga set in academia? Sold!
All The Secrets of the World by Steve Almond - Zando Projects, May 3
Steve Almond, who wrote the original Dear Sugar online advice column before Cheryl Strayed made it famous, is a master of capturing gritty details and ugly emotions in a way that leaves you feeling more in touch with the world. His latest novel is a thriller that takes place in 1981 Sacramento that follows Lorena Saenz and Jenny Stallworth, two middle schoolers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. After Lorena’s family is thrust into the criminal justice system, she must uncover the truth about what happened, which takes her to a religious cult in Mexico.
Zando Projects
The Year of the Horses by Courtney Maum - Tin House, May 3
In this memoir for the recovering horse girls out there, Courtney Maum goes back to her childhood love of horses to help her fight her existential depression. The book alternates between her personal journey towards finding a fearlessness she thought she lost and historical portraits of women and horses and how society has tried to tame both. Cute!
Tin House
AS SHE APPEARS by Shelley Wong - Yes Yes Books, May 10
This debut book of poetry has the stamp of approval from Ocean Vuong, and if that’s not enough of a cosign, Wong’s prose stands confidently alone. As She Appears is about queen women of color in their becoming stages of life: a time that Wong explains in the images of Pride dancing, late-night meals in Chinatown, Los Angeles on fire, and trees that “burst into glamour.” "As a girl, I never / saw a woman / who looked like me," Wong writes. "I had to invent her."
Girl Online: A Users’ Manual by Joanna Walsh - Penguin Random House, May 10
We know, we know: You read books to not think about the internet. But what if instead of thinking about the internet in a “get me off of this thing,” way, we deepen our understanding of how it functions in our lives? In this book of essays in alternative forms, including programming language, tweets, and lyric prose, Joanna Walsh explores what it means to be a woman on this thing called the internet. Expect some philosophizing on tech, identity, selfies, and social media.
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub - Riverhead Books, May 17
Queen of the beach reads with literary merit, Straub is back with a 13 Going On 30-esque novel about a woman who wakes up on the morning of her 40th birthday to find herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday, in what is surely a psychological nightmare.
Riverhead Books
Either/Or by Elif Batuman - Penguin Random House, May 24
Elif Batuman is the author of the greatest novel of all time regarding the humiliating experience of having a crush. Bautman’s The Idiot, which followed the strange relationship between Selin, a Harvard linguistics major and her crush Ivan, is finally getting its much-anticipated sequel. Either/Or takes places in 1996 and follows Selin throughout her sophomore year as she attempts to make sense of everything that happened the summer before.
You Made A Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi - Atria, May 24
For her sixth book, the acclaimed Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi has written a love story based on the Florence + The Machine song of the same title. Yes, you may blast it now. A women who has been grieving the death of her great love for the last five years starts to move forward. Her art career is going well and she’s met a new guy — but then someone else arrives that keeps her from being able to fully move on. Ugh, life!
Atria