Category: books

16. A Princess In Theory

Written by: Alyssa Cole (An Extraordinary Union, A Hope Divided)
Publish date: February 27
Why it’s worth reading: Cole is known for historical romances set at pivotal moments in American history, but here she tries out contemporary rom-com, with winning results.The cultural and political relevance aren’t gone, they’re just tweaked and lightened a bit. Ledi is an epidemiology PhD student who suddenly starts getting a flood of spam emails claiming she’s the long-lost betrothed of Prince Thabiso of Thesolo. But the emails are not spam, and this former foster kid is indeed a long-lost princess. What follows is a fairy-tale romance rooted in the very real world. What’s most fantastical might be the kingdom of Thesolo, a wealthy and technologically advanced state that will leave anyone longing for a thoughtful, benevolent government instead of whatever’s going on in Washington now.

15. The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America

Written by: Isaac Butler and Dan Kois
Publish date: February 13
Why it’s worth reading: Angels in America is one of the most important — and best — plays of the 20th century, but if you’re not a theatre aficionado, why should you care about this oral history of the play’s birth, life, and legacy? Well, how about an incisive look at reactions to the AIDS crisis and the Reagan era, with chilling parallels to our own time? Or what about a soaring testament to the power of collaborative art and its reach beyond the theater seats? Maybe you’d prefer a dishy, enthusiastic chorus of behind-the-scenes tales and reminiscences from people like Meryl Streep, Nathan Lane, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeffrey Wright? The point is, this is a book about one play and about so, so much more. It sprang from an article for Slate, and there’s a reason that niche oral history went viral, far beyond the theatre-loving world. The World Only Spins Forward is funny, moving, and utterly fascinating, a portrait of artists coming together to make something radically new and beautiful.

14. Beneath the Sugar Sky

Written by: Seanan McGuire (October Daye series)
Publish date: January 9
Why it’s worth reading: Fantasy books are rife with children who go on magical adventures; Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children takes them in when they return. In Beneath the Sugar Sky, a girl named Rini falls from the sky into a pool on the school’s grounds, seeking her mother — long dead, since before Rini was even conceived. Which makes it even more important that Rini find a way to save her mother before Rini herself ceases to exist. Rini is joined on her quest by several young residents of the Wayward home into a world called Confection, equally dark and whimsical. The adventure that follows carries a sincere belief in the power of friendship.

13. When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought

Written by: Jim Holt (Why Does The World Exist?)
Publish date: May 15
Why it’s worth reading: Jim Holt approaches some of the biggest questions on the blurry boundary between science and philosophy, not as a journalist making a beeline for empirical truth, but as an essayist, circling and spiraling toward understanding. It’s an unusual and invigorating approach — Holt’s voice is warm and engaging, and his writing is lucid. This book also offers a collection of biographical sketches of some of the greatest thinkers from the last century, including Benoit Mandelbrot, Alan Turing, and the titular pair, specifically the unlikely friendship they developed at Princeton in the ’40s. Together these essays create a complex (though unfortunately overwhelmingly male) portrait of the great minds of the twentieth century and an illuminating exploration of their ideas.

12. The House of Impossible Beauties

Written by: Joseph Cassara
Publish date: February 6
Why it’s worth reading: In The House of Impossible Beauties, Joseph Cassara brings readers into the Harlem drag ball scene of the 1980s, awash in glitter and beauty and pain. This is a fictional story built on the foundation of the real-life House of Xtravaganza, with the house’s first “mother,” Angie, re-envisioned as Cassara’s Angel, a trans woman who builds a family in order to find her own home. As Angel’s house grows, so does the scope of the novel, with characters that, whether based on real people and invented whole-cloth, are rich and vibrant. Many are runaways, literally or figuratively, searching for a place where they can be known as themselves and loved. And they find it, however fleetingly: a queer, Latinx sanctuary that’s not a subculture but a whole wide world. The story of that world is full of anger and sorrow and joy.

11. Hurts to Love You

Written by: Alisha Rai (Forbidden Hearts series, The Karimi Siblings series)
Publish date: March 27
In the third and final installment of her Forbidden Hearts series, Rai brings the whole thing home with satisfying closure. Eva Chandler, who so far has been a meek and polite minor character, comes vibrantly to life as she struggles with oppressive family expectations, her emotionally abusive father — and a longstanding crush on Gabe, her big brother’s gregarious, and of course gorgeous, best friend. This isn’t love at first sight, but the culmination of years of mutual longing and their history gives this romance more heft and believability than many others. It’s sweep-you-off-your-feet delightful, and the weightier aspects of the story add depth to the romance rather than souring the mood. If you’re new to the series, the whole thing is worth reading — while Gabe and Eva’s story is self-contained to Hurts to Love You, the conclusion to the epic intergenerational drama that Rai’s been weaving may be disorienting to a new reader.

10. The Pisces

Written by: Melissa Broder (Last Sext, So Sad Today)
Publish date: May 1
Why it’s worth reading: The Pisces had its origin in a thought experiment: What if the traditional mermaid-human man love story were flipped? What if a woman fell in love with a merman? It’s a simple flip, but in Melissa Broder’s hands, filtered through her dark, wry worldview, it’s anything but an old story. Lucy leaves behind her languishing dissertation and the ashes of a long-term relationship to spend the summer pulling herself together in her sister’s Venice Beach home. Long story short, she meets Theo, who turns out to be a merman. What follows is sexy, funny, dark, and surprisingly complex. Broder’s willingness to write through taboo is coupled with (or rewarded with) sharp and surprising insights. The result is a book about reality and fantasy, love and obsession, mental health and so much more. But it’s never too heavy, and always a pleasure — if a twisted one — to read.

9. Heart Berries

Written by: Terese Marie Mailhot
Publish date: February 13
Why it’s worth reading: Mailhot started writing her memoir after suffering a breakdown and committing herself to a psychiatric hospital. Soon after, doctors diagnosed her with PTSD, bipolar II, and an eating disorder. Heart Berries chronicles Mailhot’s experience, though her memoir writing doesn’t fall into pat cliches about mental illness and suffering. Instead, the work is transcendent in the most literal sense, surpassing every readerly expectation about genre and form to create a truly unique book. Mailhot, who grew up on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in British Columbia, writes deftly about mental illness and indigenous identity, about failure and yearning and ambition. And all of it is unified and amplified by Mailhot’s singular voice: bold and poetic and elegant. This is a short book that packs a punch.

8. Circe

Written by: Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
Publish date: April 10
In The Odyssey, Circe is just one of many obstacles Odysseus must overcome, the witch or nymph who turns his men into swine. In Circe, Madeline Miller’s novel, she is sui-generis, as she says in the novel’s first line, “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” What follows is a story of coming of age and coming into power, as Circe grows from the awkward daughter of the sun god, Helios, into a commanding sorceress. Miller is in full command of the Greek tales that she spins into something utterly, brilliantly new. This is a book of magic of mortals, of myths and mysteries, that honors its ancient origins while being powerfully of our time.

7. And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

Written by: Meaghan O’Connell
Published on: April 10
According to one school of thought, a writer must have lived something remarkable to warrant writing a memoir; according to another, great writing elevates the mundane into worthy material. In And Now We Have Everything, Meaghan O’Connell satisfies both camps at once, writing beautifully, thoughtfully, and honestly about the commonest thing in the world — pregnancy and childbirth — while clearly showing that the experience, for all its familiarity, is extraordinary, too. And this isn’t “extraordinary” in the miracle-of-birth way — O’Connell’s experience was, in many ways, harrowing, from her traumatic 40-hour labor to a first year of motherhood wracked with anxiety and emotional pain. So it’s even more remarkable — and a further testament to O’Connell’s skill — that in the end this is a kind of a love story, with O’Connell’s son, with her husband, and with the woman and mother O’Connell discovers she can be, or always was.

6. Semiosis

Written by: Sue Burke
Publish date: February 6
Why it’s worth reading: What if a clutch of human colonists landed on an alien planet and discovered that it was home to sentient plants? In Semiosis, an amazingly assured debut novel, Sue Burke takes this simple concept to soaring heights. Sentient plants seem like both a stretch of imagination and paltry grist for drama, but Burke’s inventiveness and sensitivity make this a not only plausible but utterly gripping book. In scenes spread across a century, Burke writes deeply believable characters — young and old, men and women, and life beyond that, too — and paints her human society and alien ecosystem with equally deft brushstrokes. This is up there with Ursula K. Le Guin: science fiction at its most fascinating and most humane.

5. Back Talk

Written by: Danielle Lazarin
Publish date: February 6
Why it’s worth reading: There are 16 stories in this book’s 237 pages; together, they leave you with a sense of crystalline fragments, sharp-edged shards of stories and experiences that paint a fractured picture of life as a woman and a girl. There are stories of friendship, loving and barbed, of the tender violence of familial love, and of the freedom and pain of loneliness. There’s a little bit of romance, too, but at the center are always Lazarin’s vibrant, peculiar, brilliant girls and women navigating getting what they want in the world. This is a powerful and tender collection. (Please read it even if you’re not a woman. Come on.)

4. Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV

Written by: Lucas Mann (Lord Fear, Class A)
Publish date: May 1
Why it’s worth reading: You don’t need to love, like, or care about reality TV to connect to Captive Audience, a savvy blend of memoir and cultural criticism, but know that author Lucas Mann loves reality TV. He sees it for what it is, with all its flaws and pitfalls, but this brilliant, insightful book is hardly the story of a guilty pleasure. Instead, Mann writes about reality TV with his eyes wide open, about what it is and why he loves it. He also writes about who he loves it with, namely his wife, and the result is a twinned exploration of popular culture and personal experience, rich with resonance and nuance. Mann writes eloquently about powerful moments and characters from reality TV — his ode to Rob Kardashian is especially intense — and casts that same searchlight on his most personal experiences, of love, shame, loneliness, and joy.

3. An American Marriage

Written by: Tayari Jones (Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, Leaving Atlanta)
Publish date: February 6
Why it’s worth reading: Oprah’s Book Club sticker is a powerful imprimatur: it promises both literary excellence and cultural relevance. An American Marriagedelivers on both. It’s the story of a young black couple, Roy and Celeste, who feel the lucky promise of their lives stretching ahead of them. But early in their marriage, Roy is falsely convicted of a crime, and his years in prison — and then sudden release — bring irrevocable change to their lives and their marriage. Oprah said of the novel, “It’s a love story that also has a huge layer of suspense. And it’s also so current and so really now that I could not put it down.” Coupled with that suspense are heartbreaking empathy and a sharp look at America, on a powerfully intimate scale.

2. You Think It, I’ll Say It

Written by: Curtis Sittenfeld (Eligible, American Wife, Prep)
Publish date: April 24
Why it’s worth reading: The title story of this collection — like every story in its pages — is very, very good, but the real stand-out (which, granted, would’ve lent the book a less fitting title) is “The Prairie Wife.” I first read it online last summer when it was published in The New Yorker — I read it twice then, actually, starting again as soon as I’d finished, to try to figure out how Sittenfeld pulled off such an extraordinary narrative coup. It’s a marvel of a story, with a gut-punch of an ending that completely recasts everything that’s come before it — but rather than a gimmick, it’s an added depth to a sensitive and melancholy story about love and growing older. Those themes resonate throughout the collection, culminating in a wash of longing — for the past, and also for what we might make of the present. Each story is a gem in this extraordinary book.

1. The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

Written by: Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams, The Gin Closet)
Publish date: April 3
If you loved Leslie Jamison’s break-out hit essay collection, The Empathy Exams, let me say: this is even better. If you didn’t love that first book, or haven’t heard of Jamison before, let me say: this book is fucking amazing. Part memoir of Jamison’s alcoholism and recovery, part critical inquiry into the myth of the addict-genius artist, part cultural history of addiction treatment in America, this is a beautiful behemoth of a book, 544 pages that absolutely fly by. Jamison is a notably lyrical writer, but what really shines is her curious, generous, sensitive mind, as she reframes stories we think we know — John Cheever, Amy Winehouse, the War on Drugs itself — and shines a light on new ones. In bringing together the voices of great artists, everyman alcoholics, and Jamison’s own past, she replicates the story-sharing of an AA meeting. It’s a rich and powerful chorus.

Article by Thrillist.