Smashbomb

"Kathy Acker was a punk-rock, post-modern writer-artist and she wrote this piece after her mother died. The title says all there is to know about her feelings towards her mother. Acker’s writing coalesces to its most epic as she reinvents, bends, and destroys language, to build a world that is a complete psychological immersion and creative experience. Her books are a gift to humanity."

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Uzo Aduba recommended A Tale of Two Cities in Books (curated)

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens | 1859 | Fiction & Poetry

7.3

(22 Ratings)

Book Favorite

"Whoa! From the very beginning, it is the original soap opera, and I loved every second of the drama! To watch a writer like Dickens yet again (I had already read “Great Expectations,”) weave so many characters’ storylines together with one another… This book required you to pay attention to every character and every word and served to remind this: no person or thing is insignificant."

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Curtis Sittenfield recommended The Progress of Love in Books (curated)

The Progress of Love

Alice Munro | 2014 | Contemporary

(0 Ratings)

Book Favorite

"Munro is a touchstone for me, and she’s been my favorite writer for more than 25 years. This is the first book I read by her, when I was a junior in high school. Right away, I found in her work something that was recognizable to me—and, at the same time, I found some fictional alchemy that even now remains beautiful and inspiringly elusive."

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George Saunders recommended Words Without Music in Books (curated)

Words Without Music

Philip Glass | 2016 | Biography

(0 Ratings)

Book Favorite

"Read this memoir for a glimpse of a vanished country (ours, circa 1940s/1950s/1960s) that had an entirely different notion of education and the arts, i.e., a country that valued them and honored them and supported them with money and muscular institutions, which institutions, in turn, produced courageous and original national artists like Glass – who is also, turns out, a wonderfully gifted, honest, and amiable writer."

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Richard Dawkins recommended Sword of Honor in Books (curated)

Sword of Honor

Evelyn Waugh | 2021 | Fiction & Poetry

(0 Ratings)

Book Favorite

"How could so profoundly sensitive a writer of beautiful English have been such an apparently shallow, even unpleasant, man? Whatever the answer, I re-read Waugh’s books again and again, mesmerized by the chiseled craftsmanship of every sentence. I could have chosen any of his books, but the Sword of Honor trilogy, an affectionately comic portrayal of the bungling chaos of military life, is perhaps my favorite."

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Jo Nesbo recommended Max, Mischa & Tetoffensiven in Books (curated)

"Beside Knausgård, Harstad is perhaps the best Norwegian writer right now. It’s about a young boy moving with his family from Norway to the USA, growing up there in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and so it’s an outsider’s look at American society, written with clinical precision and desperate humor. If you like thick, epic books like DeLillos' “Underworld,” this is probably up your alley."

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