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INVITATION TO A BONFIRE 🔥 is out in paperback today. Feminist rage and beauty you can hold in your hand or toss in a tote bag. (Books are magic.) Buy a copy, borrow/request one from your local library, leave a review to help others find it, live your gorgeous life.
My December & January Reads
Invitation to a Bonfire, Adrienne Celt - Damn, that was one sexy sentence was a frequent thought during this read. Inspired by Nabokov’s marriage, the writing is poetic, yet the story itself is a page-turner. Something bad is going to happen and of course it’s a man’s fault. In my college class about Nabokov (major in English, it’s fun!), we read Vera, Stacy Schiff’s biography of Nabokov’s wife. Vera drove Nabokov everywhere, typed his manuscripts, supported him in every way.....and he cheated on her constantly. Incredible! Lev, Celt’s Nabokov stand-in, made me just as furious.
Truth or Beard, Penny Reid - Just before Christmas, after a lot of encouragement from both Kerry and Jenn, I finally gave in and became a Reider. “Beards, brothers, and bikers! Oh my!” This book was so ridiculously fun (and odd! and hot!) and luckily for me, Penny Reid is an actual writing machine—I can’t wait to catch up on her entire backlist.
9 Days and 9 Nights, Katie Cotugno - Sigh. All I want in life is for Gabe Donnelly to address me by both my first and last name. This sequel to 99 Days made me extremely happy. God bless Katie Cotugno’s hot book dudes.
Evvie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes - Ahhh this book is so good, so fun, so hopeful. For fans of kind, complicated characters and small town charm. I loved it! (Seriously, I looooved this book. Put it on your TBR list!)
Another Marvelous Thing, Laurie Colwin - I wish I could read 100 Laurie Colwin books. These are eight interconnected short stories about an affair between a “somewhat sloppy woman and a more sophisticated, older man.” I notoriously hate reading about infidelity, but Laurie Colwin has a way of making it seem natural. I don’t know what to tell you, her writing is perfect, read it yourself.
A Heart in a Body in the World, Deb Caletti - This might be the first time I’ve loved a book club pick, rude but true (I’m referring only to my IRL book club, not my wonderful email book club, hello to you). I have a problem where book club picks always feel like homework assignments and I avoid reading them and get stressed out. Anyway! Wowowow, this book. It just won a Printz Award, so I’m not alone in loving it. I got choked up approximately 300 times throughout this novel, outright cried a few times, but I promise there are plenty of lighthearted scenes and it’s an angry, inspiring story. When I was in eighth grade, a boy would not leave me alone. The week he started passing me notes that included lists of classmates and graphic drawings, I visited my favorite teacher during lunch and gave the notes to her. The next day, the boy was arrested and was never at my school again. This book felt like a what if for 13-year-old me: what if I had decided to be “nice” and ignored my instincts? (Here is my second promise that this isn’t a depressing read. There’s an Italian grandpa; young love; old love; fun facts about hearts and cross-country running; wolf trees!; etc. It’s fantastic.)
We emerged into one of the library's sub-basements, a supposed research area so poorly outfitted that half of the shelves were empty...Sometimes girls snuck down here to hide books they were using for class projects and wanted to keep from being being recalled; at the end of every semester a librarian was dispatched to collect and re-catalogue them.
Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt
From memoirs to graphic novels, short stories, and autofiction, our staff and contributors recommend 16 books to read this June.
In Erika Swyler’s "Light From Other Stars," a tiny crew of space explorers tries to do humanity right
Always a pleasure to talk to @erikaswyler about the utopian possibilities of space and literature ✨
Women's rage is in the spotlight in three of 2018's most thrilling novels: Megan Abbott's Give Me Your Hand, Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, and Adrienne Celt's Invitation to a Bonfire.
This essay is sharp as a goddamn tack & I’m so grateful it considers INVITATION TO A BONFIRE in such great company.
“Part of acknowledging our own humanity is to confront the dark spots that exist in all of us: anger, violence, obsession, complicity — all the bad feelings women are supposed to squelch down, or not admit to having at all.”
“The more you leave me out,” Véra Nabokov told Brian Boyd while he was researching his two-volume biography of her husband, Vladimir Nabokov, “the closer to the truth you’ll be.” Not that biographe…
A gorgeous essay on the enduring enigma of Véra Nabokov, and a wonderful consideration of Vera Orlov, in INVITATION TO A BONFIRE 🔥in @lithub, by Miranda Popkey.
What We Were Promised Lucy Tan (fiction, Little, Brown) Set in modern Shanghai, where extreme wealth edges against poverty, a family in a luxurious housing complex employs Sunny, a woman from the p…
INVITATION TO A BONFIRE is one of the New York Post’s 6 Must Read Books of the Week! 🔥
