A really beautiful, honest reflection on what it means to have lost, to have loved.
Honestly, I think this is the best book I’ve read all year. Heartbreaking and poignant, Ginzburg explores all the greatest hits—loneliness, desperation, betrayal. It’s the kind of book that explores universal experiences with such precision that you might feel like it’s written specifically for you.
What a fun, dark, playful-dark, funny, strange page-turner. I’m always in awe of an author brave enough to take on a counterfactual history project, and Binet pulls it off and hits all the right notes.
One tradition I have, maybe the only one I have, and certainly the only one I stick to, is reading Dispatches every year. Herr is a master stylist—he could write about a banana rotting and I’d gladly incorporate that piece into my tradition.
I’m adding this to the catalog because I want it. Does anyone want to buy it for me? All I want for Christmas is you… to buy me Salad Freak. Maybe we can make a salad together. Anyway, if you know anyone like me, they’d probably love this book.
Eve Babitz is known primarily for her fiction, but if you haven’t tried her nonfiction you're missing out. These essays, written from 1975 to 1997, will stun you with their wit, charm, and insight.
Truly, I have no real interest in the life of Stanley Kubrick. I adore some of his films, but when I picked up this book it was because of my love for Herr’s other writing. Herr is a master stylist, and he reflects on his decades-long friendship with Kubrick with such generosity, tenderness, and line-to-line brilliance, this is a perfect book for anyone who loves good writing, Kubrick, or both.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
An exploration of what it means to be a human, to be a woman, without history, without culture, and without future. Certainly not a plot driven book by any means, the beautiful prose and deep relationships within the novel kept me hooked.
![The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn Cover Image](https://images.booksense.com/images/books/713/253/FC9780061253713.JPG)
Yes, yes, this is a very long book, and it's just the first of three. However, if you can wrap your head around the length and the subject matter, Solzhenitsyn will blow your mind with his wit, care, and introspection. This book might change you, and if it doesn't you can at least brag about reading it at parties.
A very funny book that dives deep into the lives of celebrated Russian authors.
A super wild, violent, funny, weird, oh so weird, book.
Thomas Merton was one of the great spiritual and political thinkers not only of his time but, I think, of all time. I was not raised in Christianity, but Merton's explanation of God, faith, and contemplation lines up seamlessly with the Buddhist ideals I was raised with-- he just uses different words to describe the same phenomenon.
This book is sweet and dark and funny and moving- everything I want in a novel.
A piece of reportage that shook me when I first read it, and every time since.
Bulgakov starts us out from the perspective of a stray dog near death. A scientist finds him, heals him, cares for him ... and then transplants the pituitary gland and testicles of a petty criminal into the pup. The dog, Sharik, then becomes human, or, human-ish, and hilarity ensues. This book is weird, instantly engaging, funny, biting, and a wild satire of Bolshevism.
Samantha Irby is funny. So funny that it makes my neighbors a bit nervous, I’m sure, to hear me through our thin shared walls, laughing out loud in an otherwise silent room. But it’s not the humor that keeps me reading. It’s the idea that any kind of situation, no matter how difficult, has moments of lightness, if you can just find them.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
A practical guide to alleviating negative emotional stress and physical pain through different Buddhist meditations and visualizations. I’ve found these meditations to be very helpful in navigating this curious life, but, of course, they’re not a replacement for healthcare (get vaccinated).