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Staff Recommendations A listing of staff proclivities, recommended by both past and present bookstore and publishing employees. Check back for new recommendations each month as we bring you the best of what we're reading or have read. Browse by title, author or staff member!   Andy   |  Caitlyn   |  Cassie   |  Chris   |  Don   |  Elaine   |  Erin   |  Garrett   |  Greg   |  Ivy   |  Jared   |  Lawrence   |  Linda   |  Michael   |  Nancy   |  Paul   |  Peter   |  Ryan   |  Scott   |  Stacey   |  Tân   |  Vanessa

1 2 3 4 5 6 >>>     sort list by title | publication date Flaneuse Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London The "flaneur" has long been explicitly gendered male, but we city women know better. Elkin delves into the history of both the term and the act itself through literature, film, cultural criticism, and her own experience, leaving no doubt that a woman walking alone in the city has been—and still is—a subversive figure.—Recommended by Erin Large Animals Stories Like telling a joke at a funeral. Like getting the spins in a friend's car. Like losing a limb but gaining some costume-shop wings. —Recommended by Ivy The Mirror Thief A Novel Seay's debut novel is a true delight, a big, beautiful cabinet of wonders that is by turns an ominous modern thriller, a supernatural mystery, and an enchanting historical adventure story." Set in three cities in three eras.—Recommended by Andy Perfect Hair Gender, sex, & love(?) presented as spectacular sequential art. This beautiful debut troubles the line between pleasant human interaction & detachment. Feels like floating above your body in a movie about yourself dreaming(?). —Recommended by Jared, City Lights Books Sallies, Romps, Portraits and Send Offs Selected Prose 2000-2018 A delightful and cantankerous collection of essays and criticism about good poets and bad poets, homicidal musicians, obsessive music collecting and the eerie delights of San Francisco fog. A perfect introduction to the local bard's tender and curmudgeonly oeuvre. —Recommended by Micheal, City Lights Bookstore Welcome to Painterland Bruce Conner and the Rat Bastard Protective Association The Rat Bastard Protective Association was an inflammatory, close-knit community of artists who lived and worked in a building they dubbed Painterland in the Fillmore neighborhood of midcentury San Francisco. The artists who counted themselves among the Rat Bastards—which included Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Michael McClure. Bukowski in a Sundress Confessions from a Writing Life Kim Addonizio Behold the memoir of sex-positive rebel Kim Addonizio! This book moves from gritty/funny/sexy, to emotionally raw, in swift seamless strokes. By the end, you will feel that Kim is an old friend whom you know far too well, but who you think the world of because she's way cooler than you are. —Recommended by Jared, City Lights Books Mortal Trash Poems Kim Addonizio Chew with your mouth closed and read this book. —Recommended by Ryan Speedboat A Novel Renata Adler This reads like a walk through a particularly outrageous dinner party—overheard intellectual chatter, salacious gossip, and mundane offhand remarks swirl around, reigned in by a cool narrator who perhaps most evokes Didion at her driest, wit-wise. The Angel of History A Novel Rabih Alameddine Set over the course of one night in the waiting room of a psych clinic, The Angel of History follows Yemeni-born poet Jacob as he revisits the events of his life, from his maternal upbringing in an Egyptian whorehouse to his adolescence under the aegis of his wealthy father and his life as a gay Arab man in San Francisco at the height of AIDS. The Hakawati Rabih Alameddine Undertake The Hawakati with no bookmark, or with many. Local artist Rabih Alameddine has given us a book that deploys a deep and rarified appreciation of the storyteller's art to create the illusion of containing the entire world. His gateway is the eponymous hakawati, grandfather of the narrator, a bard who travels from Urfa to Lebanon... An Unnecessary Woman A Novel Rabih Alameddine One of the Middle East's most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller, The Hakawati, with an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, seventy-two-year-old "unnecessary" woman. Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced... Lost City Radio A Novel Daniel Alarcón Recommended by Paul, City Lights Books For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios—a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio... Flight A Novel Sherman Alexie A harrowing time-travel adventure starring an unforgettable young Native American who finds himself center stage at seminal historic moments. A darkly observant, funny, and moving tale. —Recommended by Nancy, City Lights Publishers 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>>