Staff Picks by Tag

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The Archive of Feelings: A Novel By Peter Stamm, Michael Hofmann (Translated by) Cover Image
By Peter Stamm, Michael Hofmann (Translated by)
$15.99
ISBN: 9781635422757
Availability: Coming soon - available for pre-order now
Published: Other Press - December 5th, 2023

An absorbing exercise in existential contemplation. The Archive of Feelings is a memory palace furnished with isolation and melancholy, its protagonist feeling fully human thanks to Stamm's hallmark clarity and precision.


Review by Wes

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The Strangers (Spanish Literature) By Jon Bilbao, Katie Whittemore (Translator) Cover Image
By Jon Bilbao, Katie Whittemore (Translator)
$16.95
ISBN: 9781628974553
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Dalkey Archive Press - February 21st, 2023

Lights over the sky! Mysterious relatives! Ennui, domestic discomfort, ufologists who invade the streets and parks of a coastal Spanish town. A singular, upsettlingly good book that's also partially about the dangers of freelancing. Think THE EMPLOYEES by Olga Ravn but better.


Review by Spencer R.

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I Who Have Never Known Men By Jacqueline Harpman, Ros Schwartz (Translator), Sophie Mackintosh (Afterword by) Cover Image
By Jacqueline Harpman, Ros Schwartz (Translator), Sophie Mackintosh (Afterword by)
$16.95
Unavailable at this time.
ISBN: 9781945492600
Published: Transit Books - May 10th, 2022

Raised in an underground bunker with no outside contact, our protagonist has no name and no idea where she is. When she and the 38 other women imprisoned with her suddenly find themselves freed, they are released onto a vast, barren plane. Described as "Ursula K. LeGuin meets The Road" Harpman's writing is austere and beautiful. This is a book I will not soon forget. 


Review by Jade

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Cross-Stitch By Jazmina Barrera, Christina Macsweeney (Translator) Cover Image
$24.00
ISBN: 9781949641530
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Two Lines Press - November 7th, 2023

Even when Jazmina Barrera is in the business of writing novels, she can't escape the essay form. Barrera's Ferrante-esque novel of friendship, woven within a cultural history of sewing, makes for an engrossing story, the kind that has you drawing exclamation points in the margins with abundance. I'm amazed by the breadth of Barrera's thinking, her manifold interests. Christina MacSweeney, returning for a third time to render Barrera's work into English, is the only translator I want to see at the helm.


Review by Spencer R.

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A Shining By Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Translator) Cover Image
By Jon Fosse, Damion Searls (Translator)
$16.95
ISBN: 9781945492778
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Transit Books - October 31st, 2023

When think of my own death, I will forever see Fosse's dark woods and his shining, barefoot apparitions in snow-smothered quiet. I don't know how to speak of this brief book without reverence or animal fear. A book to be read aloud, around a campfire, with loved ones, in its entirety.

 


Review by Spencer R.

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Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel By Ed Park Cover Image
By Ed Park
$30.00
ISBN: 9780812998979
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Random House - November 7th, 2023

Holy cow. Home run. Outta the park. A novel clear in its ambitions, absorbed in the moment of its plot(s) in a way that is uniquely entertaining. You’ll want to tell everyone about this book An alternate history of the Korean Provision Government, a covert organization that, in Park's vision, has embedded its membership into popular culture, role-playing games, popular science fiction, slasher films. At the center of it all is a mysterious novel-within-a-novel called, yes, Same Bed, Different Dreams by a Nobel-rumored Korean author who goes by the mononym Echo. Ed Park for the Pulitzer. A novel that is so varied, comical, deliciously clever, and mad fun that it’s hard to believe it was written by a single author.


Review by Spencer R.

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Days Without End: A Novel By Sebastian Barry Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780143111405
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Penguin Books - September 12th, 2017

Vast, aching, unique...

Two young men, Thomas and John Cole Meet in the tumult of a war torn  young America.

Despite - or maybe because of - the terrors the two men flee (and some they create). Thomas and John find rare comfort and steadfastness in one another, building a chosen family...through fear and across endless days.


Review by Krystal

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The Book of Ayn: A Novel By Lexi Freiman Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9781646221929
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Catapult - November 14th, 2023

The most flummoxing, selfish search for the self you're likely to read in this lifetime. The Book of Ayn is the pinnacle of gallows humor and every page made me flinch, giggle, or question my moral code.

A sterling satire, whip-smart and deadpan, the observations of modern ideologies and their ensuing maladies also carry a ruminative quality that lets the darker humor breathe.

Lexi Freiman is either a genius or a monster but, either way, I'll be chewing over The Book of Ayn for a long, long while. 


Review by Wes

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The Premonition: A Novel By Banana Yoshimoto, Asa Yoneda (Translated by) Cover Image
By Banana Yoshimoto, Asa Yoneda (Translated by)
$24.00
ISBN: 9781640093713
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Counterpoint - October 10th, 2023

The Premonition is an exquisitely sparse meditation on how childhood traumas can chart the course of a life. Unable to escape the "premonition" that there is more to her story than she can remember, Yayoi moves in with her eccentric aunt and begins to uncover her past. The tone is somehow both melancholy and comforting, making this a lovely read over a cup of tea on a stormy afternoon. 


Review by Natalie

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The MANIAC By Benjamin Labatut Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593654477
Availability: On our shelves now at one or more of our stores
Published: Penguin Press - October 3rd, 2023

Labatut's genre is entirely his own, his philosophy both rigid and curious. With The MANIAC, we're given the lives of Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenreich; the Hungarian-American mathematician Johnny von Neumann, often cited as the grandfather of artificial life, a foundational figure in computational mathematics, a key figure in the development of the hydrogen bomb and a half dozen other surreal acts of destruction, a man endowed with abominable and limitless intelligence, like 'fog on a fog,' and yet unable to tie his own shoes; and finally, a chilling play-by-play of global Go champion Lee Sodel's historic 2016 match against Google's AlphaGo AI in South Korea—often cited as the first moment in history in which artificial intelligence expresses 'creativity.' How does this triptych form, in my opinion, one of the greatest novels of this year, a stunning, hair-raising literary achievement? It is difficult not to let Labatut's obsessions become your own. To see clearly what we will soon lose to our own intelligence. Benjamin Labatut dwells in the foggy, cosmic, uncanny valley amidst math, science, history, and literature.


Review by Spencer R.

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