“The streets of Chicago have never been as dirty as in Nelson Algren's tale of hookers, hobos and petty thieves. First published in 1956, A Walk on the Wild Side is the perfect uncomfortable companion to Selby's Last Exit To Brooklyn. ”
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Staff Picks
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“'I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.' Ravaged is a good word to describe The Lover, a unique level of intimacy and eroticism both in the actual writing and in the content, the best type of confusing blend between the beautiful and perverse, nonfiction and fiction, the strange and lyrical story.”
Lauren
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“As if crime fighting and time traveling Native Americans weren't enough, novelist Sherman Alexie delivers a wonderful comic yet darkly humorous novel about one young boy's quest for identity.”
Ryan
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“To some The Moonstone is considered the first true detective novel, to others the greatest. less controversially it is without a doubt a great read. Everything you love about great Victorian epistolary literature, everything you love about great detective fiction, all in one book.”
Jack
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“Inherent Vice may be a lesser, and is certainly a less ambitious, work by Thomas Pynchon, but it remains never less than purely enjoyable. The Big Lebowski meets Sam Spade, as written by a postmodern master. (N.B. it is being made into the next Paul Thomas Anderson film, so be hip and buy it before it has the movie tie-in cover.)”
Jack
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“A book my mother and I have always shared. Left for me one day with the note, "Read this," it's a novel I've never grown out of. A story of family, class, race, and the hot-iron soul of life in one of the Midwest's most tragic cities. Indisputably the best novel in the Wonderland Quartet and more than that, the first literary novel to shake me awake to the world around me. Thanks, Mom.”
Andrew
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“Carol Shields graduated from Hanover College in 1957. I graduated in 2011. Hidden in the college archives is a tiny short story from which this novel blossomed. It's an incredible insight into the mind of one of America's greatest forgotten writers. She has been labelled post-structuralist, deconstructive, feminist, and can't ever seem to shake the Canadian-American stigma. More than all of those things, though, she is a writer of life's nuances. Before there was Alice Munro (if anyone can imagine a time) there was Carol Shields. Your mom will love this book, and so will you.”
Andrew
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“In the opening of this tragicomic novel, the narrator's wife returns home one day, and he is convinced that though this woman looks and sounds just like his wife, it is not really her. What follows as he tracks this "simulacrum" from New York City to Argentina, is a mind-bending story that examines the fluctuating natures of everything from weather patterns to identity, reality, and love.”
Bonnie
STAFF PICK | May 5, 2013
“The complexities of the mother-daughter bond are revealed through these 31 original, short story-like portraits by women whose names will be familiar to you. Some of the memories are funny, some are sad; all of them are powerful & revealing.”
Mary