Reading Recommendations from the staff of the American Writers Museum.
We can’t recommend these books highly enough! Check back every month for more reading recommendations, from classics that we reread over and over to new favorites. If you’re looking for your next book, you came to the right place.
Our June staff picks are also available on Bookshop.org, which benefits independent bookstores. We also strongly encourage you to support your local bookstore by visiting them in person or ordering online through them directly.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
From the publisher: “Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life…Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.”
—Christopher, Director of Operations
The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez
From the publisher: “When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves… The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories. Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.”
—Cristina C., Guest Services & Operations Supervisor
Certain American States by Catherine Lacey
From the publisher: “Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States, her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels, she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating… These are stories of breakups, abandonment, and strained family ties; dead brothers and distant surrogate fathers; loneliness, happenstance, starting over, and learning to let go. Lacey’s elegiac and inspired prose is at its full power in this collection, further establishing her as one of the singular literary voices of her generation.”
—Deanna, Storyteller
Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games edited by J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado
From the publisher: “In these pages, writer-gamers find solace from illness and grief, test ideas about language, bodies, power, race, and technology, and see their experiences and identities reflected in—or complicated by—the interactive virtual worlds they inhabit… From the earliest computers to the smartphones in our pockets, video games have been on our screens and part of our lives for over fifty years. Critical Hits celebrates this sophisticated medium and considers its lasting impact on our culture and ourselves.”
In the same vein, our newly opened exhibit Level Up: Writers & Gamers also celebrates the last impact of game writing. Critical Hits is one of many books featured in the exhibit, which is on display now at the AWM. Experience the magic of game writing today!
—Nate, Digital Content Associate
Exhibit by R. O. Kwon
From the publisher: “From bestselling author R. O. Kwon comes an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life… Kwon takes her investigations into desire, identity, and ambition to new heights in this novel, hailed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Andrew Sean Greer as ‘brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true’ and with ‘the most exquisite prose in the bookstore.'”
We recently hosted Kwon on June 5 for a fascinating discussion about Exhibit with fellow author Nami Mun. We recorded the program, and you can watch it on YouTube here or listen to it on the AWM Author Talks podcast here.
—Nate, Digital Content Associate
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr
From the publisher: “Clayton Stumper might be in his twenties, but he dresses like your grandpa and fusses like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution. When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton’s life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. So begins Clay’s quest to uncover the secrets surrounding his birth, secrets that will change Clay—and the Fellowship—forever.”
—Matt, Community Engagement Manager
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
From the publisher: “A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother’s loneliness. Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book…Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of ‘extraordinary depth and beauty’ (Newsday).”
—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate
Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish (album)
From the record company: “Billie Eilish’s third studio album, released via Darkroom/Interscope Records, is her most daring body of work to date, a diverse yet cohesive collection of songs—ideally listened to in its entirety from beginning to end—does exactly as the album title suggests; hits you hard and soft both lyrically and sonically, while bending genres and defying trends along the way. With the help of her brother and sole collaborator, Finneas, the pair wrote, recorded, and produced the album together in their hometown of Los Angeles.
—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate
Horror Movie: A Novel by Paul Tremblay
From the publisher: “In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick…Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot. The only surviving cast member remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned. But at what cost?”
We’re excited to host Tremblay on June 13 at 6:00 pm for a discussion about Horror Movie. Books will be available for purchase and Tremblay will sign them following the program. Register to attend in person here. If you cannot attend in person, you can watch it online! Register for the virtual link here.
—Nate, Digital Content Associate
I Could Chew on This: And Other Poems by Dogs by Francesco Marciuliano
I am getting an inordinate amount of joy from these “poems by dogs” — a great complement to another favorite collection, Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs (poems about dogs). We dog lovers love projecting cute thoughts and voices onto our best friends. Francesco is a kindred spirit and the poems are both familiar and surprising — and of course, funny!
—Linda, Director of Development
LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority by Marie Arana
I love the blending of history and personal narrative in Marie Arana’s latest, a must-read.
From the publisher: “An exceptional, all-encompassing overview of Hispanic America based on personal interviews, deep research, and Marie Arana’s life experience as a Latina. At present, Latinos comprise 20% of the U.S. population, a number that is growing. But Latinos are not a monolith. They do not represent a single group. They are varied culturally, racially, and politically. In LatinoLand, Arana celebrates Latino resilience and character and shows us why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.”
—Carey, President
Small Moments: A Child’s Memories of the Civil Rights Movement by Mary M. Barrow
From the publisher: “Jim Crow. Segregation. Separate but equal. At the dawn of the Civil Rights movement, these words mean little to Mary, an eleven-year-old Southern transplant in New Jersey. Forced to grow up in an place so unlike her old home, Mary clings onto one thing she knows and loves: Amelia, her family’s African American housemaid. At once a stern caretaker and a tender mother-figure, Amelia’s constant presence in Mary’s life gradually exposes Mary to the rippling tide of unrest and inequality spreading through the nation, as well as the violent and heartbreaking ramifications of the Tuskegee experiment. Based on a true story, Small Moments is a gripping and heartfelt tale of how one uneducated and underprivileged woman taught a young girl to see the world not in terms of color, but in terms of kindness, equality, and love.”
—Carol, Institutional Giving Manager
Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Mark Fried
I’ve been enjoying this book immensely as summer heats up. With short chapters, it is perfect to pick up when you have a moment and enjoy Galeano’s love of the game and his humor.
From the publisher: “One of the greatest, magical, and most lyrical accounts of the beautiful game. In this witty and rebellious history of world soccer, award-winning writer Eduardo Galeano searches for the styles of play, players, and goals that express the unique personality of certain times and places…Soccer is a game that bureaucrats try to dull and the powerful try to manipulate, but it retains its magic because it remains a bewitching game—’a feast for the eyes…and a joy for the body that plays it’—exquisitely rendered in the magical stories of Soccer in Sun and Shadow.”
—Nate, Digital Content Associate
Video Games Have Always Been Queer by Bonnie Ruberg
Bonnie Ruberg explores the history of queerness in video games beyond the modern, mainstream games with LGBTQ+ characters. More from the publisher: “Revealing what reading D. A. Miller can bring to the popular 2007 video game Portal, or what Eve Sedgwick offers Pong, Ruberg models the ways game worlds offer players the opportunity to explore queer experience, affect, and desire. As players attempt to ‘pass’ in Octodad or explore the pleasure of failure in Burnout: Revenge, Ruberg asserts that, even within a dominant gaming culture that has proved to be openly hostile to those perceived as different, queer people have always belonged in video games—because video games have, in fact, always been queer.”
We’re celebrating gay gamers of all kinds at this month’s happy hour Get Lit: Gaymer Night! This event will feature a gamer trivia challenge, DIY pride flag station, a delicious specialty cocktail, and more! Hope to see you there! Click here to get your tickets now!
—Matt, Community Engagement Manager
We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib
From the publisher: “Samra Habib has spent most of their life searching for the safety to be themself. As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, they faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From their parents, they internalized the lesson that revealing their identity could put them in grave danger. When their family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage…So begins an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes them to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within them all along. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one’s truest self.”
—Cristina P., Storyteller
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
From the publisher: “A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger—and a possible murderer—to inherit his vast fortune, one things for sure: Sam Westing may be dead…but that won’t stop him from playing one last game!”
—Cassidy, Guest Services/Operations Assistant
Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler
From the publisher: “The aim of Who’s Afraid of Gender? is not to offer a new theory of gender but to examine how ‘gender’ has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations, and transexclusionary feminists. In their vital, courageous new book, Butler illuminates the concrete ways that this phantasm of ‘gender’ collects and displaces anxieties and fears of destruction. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of ‘critical race theory’ and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonizes struggles for equality, fuels aggressive nationalism, and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who’s Afraid of Gender? is a bold call to refuse the alliance with authoritarian movements and to make a broad coalition with all those whose struggle for equality is linked with fighting injustice. Imagining new possibilities for both freedom and solidarity, Butler offers us a hopeful work of social and political analysis that is both timely and timeless―a book whose verve and rigor only they could deliver.”
—Deanna, Storyteller
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
“Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her…Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.” —Off Our Backs
I couldn’t agree more. I read this book in preparation for our recent podcast episode, Nation of Writers: Audre Lorde, and enjoyed every page. In the episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with R. O. Kwon (see above event with her!) about Lorde’s influence on her own life and writing. Check it out at the link above or wherever you listen to podcasts!
—Nate, Digital Content Associate
Visit our Reading Recommendations page for more book lists.