ryan’s staff picks
ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING by Lisa Hsiao Chen
I love books that push the boundaries of what a novel “is” and presents ideas in a more authentic way. We don’t all live our lives with neatly defined plots and satisfyingly complete character development. Chen’s exploration of passing time through tragedy and art captures this essence beautifully.
SHY by Max Porter
This book is nothing short of a fever dream only Max Porter could conjure. Best read in one sitting to fully experience the frantic, and at times disturbing, psyche of a “troubled youth” on the brink of destroying what little life he has been given.
THE ILLITERATE by Ágota Kristóf
I’m often enamored with writers who can do more with less. I think no one better captures that feeling than Kristóf. Her struggle with losing her native language as a writer forced her to create something so sparse yet so full of emotion that it’s hard to imagine needing words at all.
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A LANDSCAPE PAINTER by César Aira
This book might be everything I want from a novella: unique, bizarre, and absolutely capturing. What starts benign enough quickly devolves into the surreal after the artist is struck by lightning (twice!). The rest is an opium-fueled dream you’ll have to experience to understand!
PEOPLE FROM MY NEIGHBORHOOD by Hiromi Kawakami
Kawakami uses small snippets of life in Japan to show us a particular vision of humanity - one filled with equal parts fable and mundane. Horror and hope are skillfully intertwined to show us that life is the ultimate surreal experience.
THE CACTUS LEAGUE by Emily Nemens
The editor of the Paris Review decides to write a debut novel. Naturally, that book is about baseball. Unusual? Yes. Wonderful? Yes. You don’t need to love baseball to love the detail with which Nemens portrays the flaws of even the most seemingly superhuman among us.