Staff Picks

Katie Crouch paints an upper-crust history of growing up in the south that’s both tender and take-no-prisoners. Her heroine, Sarah Walters, comes of age in a society of Cotillions and etiquette before eschewing her down-home roots for a Bright Lights, Big City life (and all that implies and entails). When tragedy necessitates a return to her roots, Sarah discovers that the glossed, sweaty, and sun-stroked southern life was never without a cracked façade, and instantly her childhood is humanized and contextualized. Told in a short-story format, the interlocked memories are utterly human and hilarious--if you love the total realness and truth from storytellers like David Sedaris, you’ll love Katie Crouch. Do it: fall in love with this book.

April is National Poetry Month, and as such I virtually had to select the best poetry collection I’ve read in the past year. Weise's writing is disarming, beautiful, and goes straight-for-the-heart, but not in an overly sympathetic way. Rather, the poems in this collection are all so incredibly esoteric, so immersed in Weise's life and loves, that it’s almost as though you’re learning another language. That, then, is the beauty of every single poem in this book - seeing something that’s totally unfamiliar.

This is Elisa Albert’s first novel, but it bites with a dark undercurrent of morbid humor that you’d expect from Annie Proulx. The Book of Dahlia is the story of Dahlia Finger, and her attempts/refusal to deal with the realization that she has a malignant cancer that will, eventually, claim her life. Saying that spoils nothing, as the true meat of The Book Of Dahlia comes in the way Albert writes about mortality from the perspective of a young woman who simply refuses to slow down. It’s hilarious and snarky (and probably the only “cancer book” to be such things), and emotional in the right places.

This is the sort of book that's instantly a classic, both intellectually and emotionally, from the first word. Collins, a 49-year-old first novelist, writes the sort of inspiring, "love conquers all" story that parts the clouds on stormy days and reinvigorates the English language. This story, of executive-of-something (even he's unsure what he does) Peter Russell as he fumbles through his life and loves, chasing the realization that the girl in his head and heart isn't the girl he's married to, unfolds with the most jaw-dropping, breath-stopping prose you've read in ages. Everyone in Beginner's Greek is in love with someone else, and everyone's someone else is, also. A massive, glorious literary update of the black-and-white film romance, Beginner's Greek fills sloppy hearts with love of language, love of reading, love of celebration, love of love. Sheer brilliance.

If you're addicted to music, the 33 1/3 series of books, each dissecting a particular, critically acclaimed album, are requisite. It's because of that that Carl Wilson's entry is such a welcome, wonderful surprise. Choosing to take the detestable cheesefest that is Canadian pop icon (and much-hated) Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love album as a touchpoint to jump off into a discussion about the place of cheesy pop music's place in the cultural landscape, Wilson's book is an audiophile's dream. Dissecting the place of "guilty pleasure listening," Carl Wilson immerses himself head-first in the music and fan culture of Celine Dion, and what he finds is shocking and hilarious. This is as good of a time as any for me to admit that, yes, I, too have a Celine Dion playlist on my iPod, and Carl Wilson tells me that's ok.

There are myriad books written on the music industry. This is one of them. This one, however, doesn’t stink -- in fact, as the title explains, it does, indeed, rock. What causes the aforementioned and proclaimed “rocking,” you ask? Former major music label marketing exec Dan Kennedy’s hilarious, self-effacing, and ALWAYS tongue-in-cheek observations on the crumbling insanity that is a 9-5 in the music biz. “Biz,” see, that’s an industry-type term. You learn those from perusing these pages. You also learn, for instance, that Fat Joe doesn’t consider crudités “food” when filming a video, that The Darkness should never be called a “joke” (to their faces, at least), and that Phil Collins, while overblown, isn’t a bad guy. All of these observations, and more, can be assimilated by you, the reader, and thusly you, too, can Rock On.

This is a wry, biting collection of stories from an A-list group of authors with lovelorn grudges and grievances to air. Stephen Colbert’s self-edited and self-aware note to a former flame is hilarious, and Andy Richter’s "Girls Don’t Make Passes…” is the perfect retelling of being overweight and lonely in school. Even Nick Hornby gets into the bleeding-heart spirit in the book’s telling introduction. If you’ve ever had your heart broken, stepped on, ripped out, torn, trampled, or just been made fun of for being the dorky dude, this book exacts sweet literary revenge...ok but not really, though, because it’s just a bunch of guys telling stories. Amazingly funny, intelligent stories about heartbreak, but there’s no real “revenge extraction” here, is there? Buy it anyway.

A masterful punch-in-the-throat of a debut novel, The Delivery Man finds Joe McGinniss, Jr. shining a light on the darker, but more truthful, facets of what goes on in Las Vegas behind closed doors. I could say the whole book is a heart-rendering (and, at times, heart-stopping) working metaphor for the secrets that stay hidden in boxes on high shelves inside closets, those skeletons big and small -- but it is and it isn’t. The danger, the terror, the “but this is someone’s reality” feeling that comes every few pages could be held up in a college modern lit class, but it’s also grippingly, compellingly present.

Obviously (and thankfully) having absorbed the modern literary canon of “adolescence-into-adulthood fears” tomes, Thomas’ masterful first novel concerns itself with the heart of the matter digging at so many-how to be an adult, have, raise and care for a family (and, as Thomas’ protagonist would point out, they are very definitely three separate facets to parenting), uphold responsibilities to others and oneself, all while feeling the vaguely lost near-ennui that accompanies existence in the 21st century. A true, honest-to-god male coming of age tale with heart and soul that’s sorely missing from Thomas’ contemporaries (and, yes, Updike gets to count as a contemporary here, particularly when Thomas paints his story with such resonant masterstrokes), Man Gone Down also concerns itself with enough race and place to find a shelving next to Invisible Man. This is a modern classic that’s going to change your life if you let it; and, if you don’t, it’ll force itself in.

A fantastic parody of the flourishing fiction/autobiography half-breed genre known as “memoir”, Clarke’s Arsonist’s Guide is a touching-to-the-point-of-tears, hilarious-also-to-the-point-of-tears look at the lengths we’ll go to for love and family. It also includes several priceless, pitch-perfect scenes parodying the current cult of elevating our favorite authors to rock star status. If you love books and also, at times, laugh at a line of 300+ people, all rabid to Michael Chabon’s hand, you MUST read this book. Heck, if you love the cult of literature at all, YOU. MUST. READ. THIS. BOOK.

Tao Linn’s first novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, if listed by plot points, would include: Elijah Wood, dolphins, pizza delivery, sadness, more pizza delivery. At times painfully mundane, at times razor-sharp with emotional truth, Linn’s novel is the sound of ennui on an iPod being listened to on the morning train to somewhere. Is this the result of the 20-something overeducated hipster putting pen to paper? Yes. Does his voice sound like anyone else’s ever could, or would? No.