June 2012
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jaimealyse asked: I think I've fully caught up on the answers supplied for gay protagonists. Apologies if these were already given and I missed it. But so: Michael Cunningham, specifically I think A Home at the End of the World, and Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name, which has maybe the most beautiful, dead-on writing of infatuation I've ever read. I remember both of these books as being wonderful.
macartney asked: Re "gay" protagonist: "In A Strange Room" by Damon Galgut, "Ground Zero" by Andrew Holleran (non-fiction but reads like a novel), "Maurice" by E.M. Forster, "At Swim: Two Boys" by Jamie O'Neill, "The Story of the Night" by Colm Toibin, "Another Country" by James Baldwin... to name just a few of my favorites off the top of...
mollitudo asked: Work overtook me! A brief description: Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is smart and hard and heartbreaking. It's about madness, female madness specifically, and how society (particularly with regards to race, class, and gender) conspires to destroy a mind. It's also a postcolonial prequel to Jane Eyre. Anyway, I haven't read The Bell Jar so I wasn't sure how appropriate a...
matthewgallaway asked: Off the top of my head/gay protagonists: Alan Hollinghurst is always a great choice, although lately I've been obsessed with this other British guy Adam Mars-Jones, whose books Pilcrow and Cedilla are both amazing. Anything by Jeanette Winterson. City of Night by John Rechy -- he basically invents a new language in the 1950s. Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran is to me the...
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mollitudo asked: What about Wide Sargasso Sea?
no-ones-beautiful-girl asked: There's "Will Grayson, Will Grayson" by John Greene.
Anonymous asked: Well, for the person who asked for a gay protagonist, if you don't mind reading about teenagers (they're not too teenage-ey, I promise), Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford was a fairly good book, in my opinion. It also deals with depression and other mental disorders, for the record.
whatteachersmake asked: Gay protagonist suggestion: Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
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Mavis Gallant’s journals to be published →
nyrbclassics:
…though, sadly, not by us.
Insta-sale. Not because they won’t be NURRRRRRB, I mean. I love those ladies (sorry Ed). But because I love Gallant.
exclaimtofame asked: What about A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood?
emk-irl asked: Janet Groth's new memoir The Receptionist and Eileen Myles's novel Inferno both reminded me so much of The Bell Jar--perhaps more in subject matter than in their style, all feature young writerly woman-emigres to NYC--and I would confidently recommend them to any reader who holds The Bell Jar dear.
Anonymous asked: do you have any suggestions on books that have a homosexual protagonist? so many of the "gay fiction" titles are literally just literotica-type writing.
greenapplebooks asked: Can I (Molly) jump on the Bell Jar thread? Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector is all tortured, brilliant introspection and is absolutely stunning. Angela Carter's Fireworks is OP but is in her collected short fiction, Burning Your Boats, and stars a lot of wandering women thoughtfully doubting themselves etc. Plainwater by Anne Carson for poetic prose and dry wit, and Masha...
jonboulier asked: Re: The Plath question. . . I feel like the obvious (and emotionally evolved / mature) suggestion would be Joan Didion's "Play It As It Lays." I know Joan's been getting smoke blown up her tuchas as of late, but, alas. Or maybe try Aryn Kyle's "God of Animals." Or hey, let me be so bold as to recommend Fred Exley's "A Fan's Notes." The...
housingworksbookstore asked: For some weird reason I feel confident LEAVING THE ATOCHA STATION makes sense for your BELL JAR asker.
deathinthesuburbs asked: Regarding the question about The Bell Jar, I'm not sure re: style but as for content (or mood/vibe) perhaps "The Virgin Suicides", "Girl, Interrupted", "Franny and Zooey". Maybe even "Catcher in the Rye", "Perks of being a Wallflower" or "How the Light Gets In" by M.J Hyland? Or, "Veronika Decides to Die", "White...
survivingabsurdity asked: I've been searching for years for a book that compares to The Bell Jar. None even come close to Sylvia Plath's style. Can you recommend any books that are similar to The Bell Jar?
isslaw asked: Hey, wondering if I can ask for a recommendation as I'm currently drawing a blank. Looking for a couple books for my lady, she's recently really enjoyed Jeffrey Eugenides, MFK Fisher, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and Super Sad True Love Story. I've been browsing in vain for days! Thanks.
carpentrix asked: Hi Dustin, hi McNally Jackson. This isn't a question, more a thank you note for making me know about Karl Knausgaard. I spent the last four days reading My Struggle. Goddamn. I sometimes worried that the books I was going to be most devastated and moved and wowed by were in my impressionable and enthusiastic past. Not the case! It's been a long time since I've felt this way about a...
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Missed Conneciones
tensionsuspensioninversion:
Hi. You sold me Joan Didion books in McNally Jackson this lovely Sunday afternoon. Your smile was really sweet and so were you and I’m really bad at flirting. As evidenced by my going home and blogging about it rather than trying to actually ask for your number or something like normal people would do. Whatever, I’m going to read my Joan Didion now.
I did not sell...
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The McNally Jackson list of all the books you...
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nervous-breakdown-hat asked: Re: "Stap Picks". There's more than seven books on that wall, but top down, the first seven are "Leaving the Atocha Station", "Draw it with Your Eyes Closed", "Bubblers", "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", "Cornet of Horse", "Project Japan", and "Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?"
Little, Brown and Company Spring/Summer '12: Both... →
littlebrowncatalog:
November 2012 Hardcover
David Foster Wallace
978-0-316-18237-9, $26.99
DESCRIPTION
Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a…
November people. Pre-order here. That sounds like a command because it is.
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A customer came into the store yesterday.
She was not old. That will gain relevance in a moment.
She was short. She had a cap on her very bald head, eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses and two small bandages crossed at something shy of perpendicular below her right collarbone.
She asked us, firmly, for books about death. “No, not grieving,” she said. “I’m not the one grieving.”
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Michele Filgate and Sarah Gerard love this book....
Two of our booksellers have written staff picks for Wild. That’s basically as good as the Oprah book club, right? Or at least like calling dibs?
Michele wrote:
Wild is the best memoir I’ve read since Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home. I felt like I was on the trail with Cheryl; I could see the wilderness in front of me, I could feel the monstrous backpack on...
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“I think I could have handled the rattlesnake. I could have handled the bear. I...”
– Oprah on one of her favorite passages of Wild.
OMG. You guys. Oprah basically is tumbling her favorite quotes from Cheryl Strayed’s book. OPRAH RESTARTED HER BOOK CLUB FOR CHERYL STRAYED. I watched that video and literally got goosebumps all over my body. I’m not sure why. I know it’s fucking...
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