The Written Nerd

Shop Indie Bookstores Home by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) (Bonus: favorite serious reading) This novel is big like an empty church, and intimate like the moment you and your sibling look at each other behind your parent's back. It tells the other side of the story of Robinson's luminous novel Gilead , and lays bare the limitations of good-hearted religious men and the inarguable illogic of despair, through a pair of oddball siblings trying so hard to be kind to each other that they break their own hearts. It's also about racism and alcoholism and America, from way inside. Robinson has a deep, compassionate understanding of those who will never be normal, and her beautiful, sad book is also infused with a kind of hope. I loved Gilead fervently, and found Home a much sadder take on Robinson's themes -- redemption seems like more of a longshot here, when perceived from the perspective of the lonely, odd, and badly behaved, rather than the earnest ...

Shop Indie Bookstores Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody by Mike Dawson (Bloomsbury) (bonus: up-and-coming author/artist) When Mike Dawson spoke at our store , he opined that, in an era of CGI special effects, superheroes are better on the big screen -- which leaves memoir as the form best suited to comics. Bechdel and Spiegelman prove his point, and Dawson adds a doozy to the ranks of graphic memoir with his dreamy, episodic, gently self-deprecating story of a British kid in America obsessed with the band Queen. It's really a meditation on what we remember from our lives and why. It's also lovely and funny for anyone who was ever a self-dramatizing adolescent (Dawson confessed that much of the dialogue and narration was taken from his own terribly moody teenage diaries), or for anyone who loved a band so much they found it told the narrative of their lives. A great gift for fans of comics, music, or memoir.

Shop Indie Bookstores The End of the Jews by Adam Mansbach (Spiegel & Grau) (Bonus: great book design!) This book made me antisocial, keeping me breathless at home in my pajamas for days. I don’t know if it was the energy of a Jewish kid from the Bronx in the 1930s; the master-class descriptions of hip hop, photography and Harlem jazz; the drama and suspense of 1990s Eastern Europe; the compassionate depiction of an overshadowed female artist as well as her Great Man husband; or the best party scene I’ve ever read (start on page 19). Adam Mansbach is a whirlwind, epic talent, not perfect, but full of a cross-pollinated American energy that is well-nigh irresistible. And the cover Spiegel & Grau decided on is even better than the one on the galley I originally read. Great for those with a taste for the epic, the energetic, the cross cultural, the ambitious, the pure story. Buy it, already!

Shop Indie Bookstores Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Allison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin) (Bonus: mad hipster queer indie cred!) Before she became a literary hero with her memoir Fun Home , Allison Bechdel spent a couple of decades writing a comic strip. But in the hands of someone so talented, a comic strip became a combination of an astute weekly political column and an endless Victorian novel. I spent weeks obsessed with the fates of the hilarious, smart-mouthed queer women and men of all stripes in the world of The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For -- it's a juicy soap opera, smart social commentary, and insight into the mind of a writer. Worth spending some time with, whatever you're watching out for.

Shop Indie Bookstores Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day In the Life of Your Body by Jennifer Ackerman (Mariner) (Bonus: killer at cocktail parties!) Did you know that you probably have a single neuron in your brain that corresponds to the face of your grandmother, and one for Jennifer Anniston? Did you know that you're slightly taller when you wake up, or that your alcohol tolerance is highest during happy hour? Ackerman's accessible, irresistible book is chock-full of such fun facts to know and tell, as she outlines human biology and psychology over the course of a single day, and the effect that daily circadian rhythms have on almost everything we do. I don't read a lot of informational nonfiction, so it takes something truly special to pull me in -- this one did it so effectively I was peppering my conversation with tidbits of science for weeks. Read it for sure-fire cocktail party chatter, or if you want to know how to get the biggest kick out of your morning coffee...

Shop Indie Bookstores I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley (Riverhead/Penguin) (Bonus: Cake! Er, I mean another author who's a really decent human being!) In observation of my birthday, I'm highlighting fellow befuddled but well-meaning white girl Sloane Crosley; I feel she would understand both the bittersweet moment of growing up (I'm 30 today), and my ravenous need for cake. Ms. Crosley, a publicist at Vintage (whom I've had the pleasure of working with as publicist and as author), has inspired a certain amount of backlash for the crime of having it all: a professional career, a writing career, A-listers like Jonathan Lethem in her Rolodex, and she's cute, too. Strangely enough, she seems to have these things because she actually deserves them: she's talented, professional, and a really nice person. And her essays even deserve the Lethem blurb they bear. From the story of locking herself out of two different apartments in the same day while movi...

Shop Indie Bookstores The Size of the World by Joan Silber (W. W. Norton) (Bonus: most under-rated writer in America!) I'll say it again: Joan Silber is one of our truly great writers, and deserves wider recognition. I fell in love with her work in Ideas of Heaven (which was shortlisted for the National Book Award), and her new work takes the novel-in-short-stories to yet another level. The Size of the World is a masterpiece both epic and intimate, quietly straightforward and ambitiously interconnected. Her characters are heartbreakingly human, and her sentences will floor you. This is a great book to read on a trip, or while contemplating the vastness of it all right at home. And check out my lengthier rave about the book from earlier this year. This is one of my must-reads: highly recommended for any reader. And as yet another bonus, Joan is a local author and shops at McNally Jackson; it's always a thrill to see one's heroes in the flesh (and shopping indie to boot).