Fiction
Deborah Levy – August Blue (2023)
A beautiful and atmospheric novel about a contemplative concert pianist.
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Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
Didion's powerful book on grief, injected with remarkable brevity, in which she guides readers through her experience with a striking sense of calm.
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Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.”
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Olga Tokarczuk – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2018)
An eerie murder mystery, dark feminist comedy, and a refreshing take on vegetarianism, all packed into one
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John Hersey – Hiroshima (1946)
An incredibly raw retelling of the destruction and death visited upon a population almost eighty years ago
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Nick Cave & Seán O'Hagan – Faith, Hope and Carnage (2022)
A generous and incredibly articulate conversation.
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Natalia Ginzburg – The Dry Heart (1947)
A compact book, brilliantly subdued in its anger.
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Mieko Kawakami – All The Lovers In The Night (2022)
A calm and gentle treasure.
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Ed Yong – An Immense World (2022)
A monumental book, bound to leave its readers flabbergasted by nature.
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Claire Wilcox – Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes (2020)
An endearing collection of brief essays on the objects that made her who she is.
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Andrey Kurkov – Grey Bees (2020)
An account of war that is at once chilling and warm-hearted.
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Benjamin Moser – Sontag: Her Life (2019)
A landmark biography.