abby’s staff picks!
Abby (she/her) has been a full time bookseller at Lost City Books since October 2023. She hosts the Poetry Book Club, but enjoys reading a little bit of everything and firmly believes that intense works of literary fiction must be followed by a Percy Jackson reread or the newest romantasy.
THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER by Simon Jimenez
You are an unwitting character in this story. It is told to you by your grandmother and you don’t know where reality ends and mythology begins. Two warriors, a god, and a tortoise trek across an epic landscape to bring down the reign of the tyrannical royal family. You might be the only thing between them and success. Read this book: it’s a love story, a poem, a battle cry, a magnum opus of queer joy, a folk tale, a sandstorm of everything you could want in a fantasy novel. Read this book! Bonus: it’s tangibly gay <3
GATHERING MOSS by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Although Braiding Sweetgrass is more well known, I think Gathering Moss is the perfect introduction to Kimmerer’s voice as a naturalist. I’ll try to convince you to read this book with one sentence from it: If mosses dream, I suspect they dream of rain. It’s science, it’s poetry, it’s a love letter to a little facet of nature that we rarely think of as magnificent, but I can’t think of moss as anything else after reading this
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR by Morgan Parker
I love when poets write other stuff because you can feel the care tucked into every single line. We don’t often think of essay collections as “beautiful”– especially not ones as hard-hitting and poignant as this– but Parker is not capable of writing a single sentence that is anything short of striking. This collection will have you reeling with laughter, tears, and an uncanny sense of being an entirely different person from the version of you before you picked it up.
BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA by Gloria Anzaldúa
This queer must-read defies genres in the way Gloria Anzaldua herself defies the expectations assigned to her as a mestiza Chicana. Through prose and poetry, history and hope, Anzaldúa’s voice rings loud and clear for inclusion and celebration of queer and Chicana joy.
En esta obra, no existen las fronteras ni los límites– solo la esperanza, el conocimiento, y la maravilla. Anzaldúa sigue siendo una fuerza esencial en la literatura Chicana.
SEX WITH A BRAIN INJURY by Annie Liontas
For fans of the genre-bending memoir (a la Carmen Maria Machado, Joan Didion), I bring you a work that will teach you history, science, math, and queer studies before you even realize you’re learning something. Liontas brings us a powerful and vulnerable glimpse into the world of brain injury. They invite readers to pause and reconsider our cultural relationship with disability, asking the striking question: Whose pain is believed and why?
CEMETERY BOYS by Aiden Thomas
Do YOU love when interesting magical systems are created out of an author’s cultural background? Do YOU want to read a book where the queer characters learn a lot about themselves AND get happy endings? Do you love lore, gay romances, sarcastic narrators, and found family? If you answered yes to any of these questions, I’ve got the book for you. CEMETERY BOYS will capture your heart no matter your age <3