This is the greatest manga ever written. Read this and Meet God.
The sequel to the best book (Scattered All Over The Earth) about an apocalypse that doesn’t immediately become the trolley problem with extra steps. A comedy of errors as mediated through a travel story with a linguistic framework, Suggested in the Stars goes absolutely nuts. For fans of science fiction, wordplay and exploring identity.
My man Bobby Bolaño back at it again with the hottest anti-fascist literature ever to come out of Chile. In this gorgeous reissue, Bolaño’s typical encyclopedic style is here tempered to deal directly with what’s human, with what’s in the margins of society. If you have a heart in your chest, get ready for it to break.
![The Dispossessed [50th Anniversary Edition]: A Novel By Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler (Foreword by) Cover Image](https://images.booksense.com/images/books/930/382/FC9780063382930.JPG)
One of 20 books to ever win the triple crown in science fiction (Nebula, Hugo, Locus), The Dispossessed observes a mathematical genius traveling from his anarchist moon to the capitalist planet it orbits, and the culture shock that ensues. As always, LeGuin is just as invested in the art of storytelling as she is in the story she is telling.
"♫ Werewolf Rumspringa - Spooky, Scary. Boys becoming men, men becoming wolves ♫ (For fans of Robbins that wish he was Eerier, and fans of Saunders that wish he liked Thrash Metal) Happy Amish Halloween."
High school was hard for many of us. It's harder for Marcus when he doesn't fit in, keeps getting bullied by the jocks (sons of the KGBs top assassins) and his final paper is killing Ronald Reagan. Undeniably cool, slick and sharp, Deadly Class is as much a pleasure to look at as it is to read. Full of the grandiose philosophizing of teenagers, young love, young heartbreak and highly stylish depictions of teen on teen violence, this comic is one of the most deeply enjoyable reads I've had in a long time. Take it home and spend a night in with some misfit teens in the 80s - or don't, if you're some kind of jock.
Ditzy alcoholics read too much Greek in upstate New York and kill another Kennedy :( RIP Bunny, you would have loved voting for RFK Jr.
This book, in which Palestinians recount their own history and experience, should not be a rare thing. It should be another collection of incisive, sharply written essays among many others. It is, however, a rarity. In the words of Edward Said, "Palestinians have been denied the permission to narrate their own histories and experiences." This book, born of the Palestine Festival of Literature, makes the case that All Liberty Is Bound Together, that colonial violence affects us all.
This ur-example of perfect combinatory literature is a love letter to fabulism, semiotics and math from Italy's beloved Italo Calvino. Presented as a fictional dialogue between Marco Polo and Kubla Khan in a rigorously mathematic structure, Calvino divdes the book into 9 chapters, in which 55 cities (all named after women) are described, each of which fit neatly into 11 thematic categories, which, when placed into a simple matrix, are symmetric with respect to inversion about that center city in the matrix, Baucis. In the words of Calvino himself, "this book was made as a polyhedron, and it has conclusions everywhere, written along all of its edges." Tap in, find some conclusions, explore some edges - you'll enjoy your time doing so.
Oops, all Borges! (haha, just kidding...unless?)
Girl goes to Italy. Girl meets Girl. Girl eats Girl. Girl Loves Girl. I Love Girl. Girl, read Girl.
Syllabic, rhythmic, and economic. Lucia Berlin fills the pages of this collection with teeth and laundromats and coming for for christmas. It's like if Annie Ernaux took a handful of reds. Buckle up, coward.
Have you ever wondered what might happen if someone wrote the Ideal Young Adult Novel? If it was your first favorite book? If you brought it to show and tell every week? It would be this book, The Golden Compass.
This is, simply, a perfect book. It is clever and joyful and sad and existential and for kids. The illustrations by Jules Feiffer (which he famously hated) are inextricable from the text. Together, they are again, perfect. Buy your next heirloom today.
I shouldn’t write about Ursula Le Guin right now. Unfortunately, the highest compliment I can pay a book is to compare it to her. So, to wit: Gene Wolfe is the best science fiction writer that has ever lived that isn’t named Ursula K. Le Guin. Enjoy.
This is the first cookbook my mother ever gave me. It, likely, is the last one I will ever need. This book has been there for every night I cooked for people I love. It has all you might want and more.
Poetry to break your heart; Free Palestine
It's like Murakami, if Murakami could write a woman to save his life and was funny and lighthearted and charming and knew how to yearn better and was just overall better and more normal.
This is a top 5 Seinen all-time, dead or alive. A reimagination of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy in the style of a murder mystery, Pluto follows Inspector Gesicht (a Europol investigator and robot) as he investigates the deaths of all the world's most famous robots. Written and inked by Naoki Urasawa (of Monster and 20th Century Boys fame) and supervised by Macoto Tezuka (Osamu's son), this series aboslutely goes. It changed my brain chemistry as a teenage boy, and spun me right back up as an adult. It's expertly plotted, drawn outrageously well, and as with all Urasawa's work, grapples effectively and thoughtfully with definitions of humanity, morality and atrocity. Read this book, coward.
"Ursula Le Guin can lift fiction to the level of poetry and compress it to the density of allegory." - Jonathan Lethem
After reading that, anything I write will read like wet, broken burger. Buy this book, coward.
Jamie Loftus is for the fuckin workers. This time out she wrote a whole book about labor rights by way of hot dogs, with a healthy dose of being horny for Joey Chestnut. She can do no wrong. Open up coward, it's time for your hot dog flavored medicine.
It's ice cream season, baby - and this is one sweet treat. A sci-fi book in verse, a story that's in conversation with itself, literally, and a depth of linguistic flavor that will leave Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams shaking and howling and gnashing their teeth. You're gonna love it, just like I did. Just remember, if I'm wrong and you don't like it, then it wasn't my idea, it was yours. And I begged you not to. Enjoy your treat.
My mom wrote this book. Please buy it, I love her.
Tonight on KTLA: local man found crying on bus while reading this book and begs us not to tell. Tough luck, dummy. More at 9.