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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 C.   |  Christopher P.   |  Don   |  Elaine   |  Erin   |  Garrett   |  Greg   |  Ivy   |  Jared   |  Joey   |  Lawrence   |  Linda   |  Michael   |  Nancy   |  Paul   |  Peter   |  Ryan   |  Scott   |  Stacey   |  Vanessa

1 2 3 4 5 6 >>>     sort list by title | publication date The Third Hotel A Novel Laura van den Berg Laura Van Den Berg's haunting exploration of the dislocating loneliness of grief is focused and intensified by the twin lenses of horror and feminist philosophy. The result manages the delicate feat of being both unsettling and deeply moving. -- Recommended by Christopher, City Lights Booksellers How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Essays Alexander Chee's essays have a dark radiance to them, and are among the best examples of sensuality as a mode of intelligence I’ve found. Highly recommended. —Recommended by Vanessa 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 My Favorite Thing is Monsters A young girl befriends monsters, real and imagined, in this unhinged and singular coming-of-age story. —Recommended by Stacey 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 There There Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking—Tommy Orange's first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen, and it introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career. --Recommended by Paul, City Lights Booksellers The Queue A Novel Basma Abdel Aziz In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as 'the Gate' has risen to power in the aftermath of the 'Disgraceful Events,' a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens... The Woman in the Dunes A Novel Kobo Abe If you've seen the 1964 Teshigahara film you've already experienced Abe's brilliance (he wrote the screenplay as well). If you haven't, read this first. The haunting story of a vacationing entomologist trapped in a sand-pit with an enigmatic woman, while the villagers mock his predicament, stands on its own... 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 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... War by Candlelight Stories Daniel Alarcón Something is happening. Wars, both national and internal, are being waged in jungles, across borders, in the streets of Lima, in the intimacy of New York apartments. War by Candlelight is an exquisite collection of stories that carry the reader from... 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>>