Reading “classic” books never goes out of style, and there are so many reasons customers come in looking for a new copy of an old favorite. Check out these gorgeous and affordable new editions:
Reading “classic” books never goes out of style, and there are so many reasons customers come in looking for a new copy of an old favorite. Check out these gorgeous and affordable new editions:
I always come back to one word when it comes to Daisy Johnson's writing: feral. It's coated in muck and nettles, and moves like wounded animal still hungry for a hunt - desperate and disjointed as it builds up momentum until the frenetic moment when the words bite down with bloody fangs and send everything reeling. I texted my friend immediately after closing Johnson's newest sibling psychological horror with a single excited phrase - Sisters just punched me in the gut.
The world Vanessa Veselka builds in her novel Zazen is a singular and astonishing literary creation: not-quite-satire, not-quite-dystopia, it's a world much like our own but viewed through a layer of unreality so subtle it's often indiscernible. Della, our protagonist, navigates a bleak and alienating urban landscape while two faceless, nameless wars (War A and War B) rage ominously in the background. Her friends, would-be revolutionaries of various radical stripes, have one by one begun to flee the country. Amidst all this, Della develops a habit for calling in phony bomb threats, a habit that threatens to become something far more dangerous. This slim novel is so many things at once: exhilarating, funny, frightening, beautiful.
It's hard to describe how much of an impact this series had on me as a young adult. In what is often considered a retelling of "Paradise Lost", Pullman envelopes us in sparkling, luminescent language and plunges us into a world so lush and intricate that by the end it is painful to leave. Do yourself a solid and just read the whole series in one gorgeous volume.