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Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Ziwe made a name for herself by asking guests like Alyssa Milano, Fran Lebowitz, and Chet Hanks direct questions. In Black Friend, she turns her incisive perspective on both herself and the culture at large. Throughout the book, Ziwe combines pop-culture commentary and personal stories, which grapple with her own (mis)understanding of identity. From a hilarious case of mistaken identity via a jumbotron to a terrifying fight-or-flight encounter in...
Author
Publisher
Godine
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Discover the unique mind and humane vision of an under-recognized American author. Encompassing themes of race, education, fame, law, and America's past and future, these essays are James Alan McPherson at his most prescient and invaluable. Born in segregated 1940s Georgia, McPherson graduated from Harvard Law School only to give up law and become a writer. In 1978, he became the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But all the...
Author
Publisher
Archipelago Books
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English. He explores art, philosophy, literature, or something as simple as a trip to the beach with his kids, with piercing candor and intelligence. Paired with full-color images throughout, his essays render the shadowlands of Cindy Sherman's photography, illuminate the depth of Stephen Gill's eye, or tussle with the inner-workings of Ingmar Bergman's...
Author
Publisher
Little, Brown Spark
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
With both drollness and acuity, Sally Olds takes us into worlds we may not have ever visited before. In these sometimes alien spaces she explores and reports on everyday intimacies and vulnerabilities. This book is about working and not working, hating work and needing to work, intimacy and technology, money and love, labour and pleasure. Across a series of essays, Sally Olds probes the ambivalent utopias of polyamory, cryptocurrency, clubbing, communes,...
Publisher
Hat & Beard Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"A long-vanished thing that lingers in your memory--whether you want it to or not? As much as we may treasure the stuff we own, perhaps just as significant are the objects we have, in one way or another, lost. What is it about these bygone objects? Why do they continue to haunt us long after they've vanished from our lives? In Lost Objects, editors Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker have gathered answers to those questions in the form of 50 true stories...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
"Scientific methods, tools, and discoveries have shaped modern civilization and created the landscape we've built for ourselves on which to live, work, and play. Tyson shows how an infusion of science and rational thinking renders worldviews deeper and more informed than ever before-and exposes unfounded perspectives and unjustified emotions. With crystalline prose and an abundance of evidence, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette...
Publisher
Coffee House Press
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"This groundbreaking anthology of essays edited by incarcerated writers takes a sharp look at the complexity and fluidity of class and caste systems in the United States. Featuring accounts that include gig work as a delivery driver, homelessness among trans youth, and life with immense student loan debt, in addition to transcripts of insightful discussions between the editors, American Precariat demonstrates how various and often invisible extreme...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"The beloved bestselling author of Here for It presents a collection of heartening, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud funny essays about the lifelong search for community and returning home. After going viral "reading" the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas is ready to live his best life. Or, if not, at least his best-ish life. Now, in this collection...
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Christian Wiman, a thinker "at the very source of theology" (Marilynne Robinson), braids poetry, memoir, and criticism to create an inspired, career-defining work"--
Few contemporary writers ask the questions about faith, morality, and God that Christian Wiman does, and even fewer--perhaps none--do so with his urgency and eloquence. Wiman, an award-winning poet and the author of My Bright Abyss, lays the motion of his mind on the page in this genre-defying...
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
"Joan Acocella was "one of our finest cultural critics" (Edward Hirsch), and she had the rare ability to examine literature and unearth the lives contained within it-its authors, its subjects, and the communities from which it springs. In her hands, arts criticism was a celebration and an investigation, and her essays pulse with unadulterated enthusiasm. As Kathryn Harrison wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "Hers is a vision that allows art...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons -- from a crow spied on New Year's Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring -- what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2024 DMPL Reading Challenge April Bonus Category: Humor, Satire, or Comedic Writing
Beyond the Shelves Mentions - June (Pride Month Picks)
Beyond the Shelves Mentions - June (Pride Month Picks)
Description
"Beloved writer Samantha Irby has returned to the printed page for her much-anticipated, sidesplitting fourth book following her 2020 breakout, Wow, no thank you, a Vintage Books Original. The success of Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She fields calls with job offers from Hollywood and walks the red carpet with the iconic ladies of Sex and the City. Finally, she has made it. But, behind all that new-found glam, Irby is just trying to...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A hilarious and insightful collection of essays exploring imposter syndrome, from the inside and out, by the most successful fraud in comedy Aparna Nancherla is a superstar comedian on the rise-a darling of Netflix and Comedy Central's comedy special lineups, a headliner at comedy shows and music festivals, a frequenter of late night television and the subject of numerous profiles, all while co-hosting a regularly sold-out comedy show. She's also...
17) Cold fish soup
Author
Publisher
Saraband
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
Before Adam Farrer's family relocated to Withernsea in 1992, he'd never heard of the Holderness coast. The move represented one thing to Adam: a chance to leave the insecurities of early adolescence behind. And he could do that anywhere. What he didn't know was how much he'd grow to love the quirks and people of this faded Yorkshire resort, in spite of its dilapidated attractions and retreating clifftops. While Adam documents the minutiae of small-town...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A posthumous collection of journalism and other writings by Hilary Mantel, revealing in spectacular breadth the beloved writer's cutting wit and singular voice on books, films, the royals, and her own life"--
"In addition to her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel contributed for years to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. 'Ink is a generative fluid,' she explains....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"From a celebrated activist on the forefront of fighting for intersex representation and rights -- and a subject of the forthcoming documentary Every Body, from the filmmakers behind RBG -- a funny, thought-provoking collection of essays about owning your identity and living your truth"--
Author
Publisher
Arte Público Press
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"A native of El Paso/Ciudad Juárez region, acclaimed author and scholar Alicia Gaspar de Alba writes that she grew up with a 'forked tongue and a severe case of cultural schizophrenia, the split in the psyche that happens to someone who grows up in the borderlands between nations, languages and cultures". Border dwellers struggle with place and identity in the short fiction for writing seeks a job as a reporter at the El Paso Herald after World War...
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