#augustus rose

[whilereadingandwalking]

Signed Saturday

One of my best friends picked up this signed copy for me at Volumes Bookcafé when she was visiting from Maryland in 2018. She had heard about the book through a professor and was excited for me to dig in. I loved it when I read it later that spring: an intellectual thriller about a pregnant kleptomaniac teenager named Lee who is determined to escape the clutches of a cult exploring mysteries left to them by the artist Duchamp. It’s an exciting book, and I’m glad to have a copy, especially with its inscription from my friend.

Signed Saturdays is a weekly series at While Reading and Walking. I’m an avid book collector, and each Saturday, I’ll tell the story of one of my signed books. Feel free to join in at #SignedSaturdays.

[freckles-and-books]

Lunchtime reading

[netlex]

Augustus Rose

@rrosedelay

“Lee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run.   Betrayed by her family after taking the fall for a friend, Lee finds refuge in a cooperative of runaways holed up in an abandoned building they call the Crystal Castle. But the façade of the Castle conceals a far more sinister agenda, one hatched by a society of fanatical men set on decoding a series of powerful secrets hidden in plain sight. And they believe Lee holds the key to it all.  source

Lee has always felt invisible, taking advantage of this by shoplifting and dealing drugs to her high school classmates. When her friend Edie turns her in, Lee is sent to juvenile detention and then the psych ward, from which she manages to escape. Homeless, friendless, and directionless, Lee stumbles upon a group of other lost teens who live in the Crystal Castle under the control of a mysterious figure known as the Station Master. When she steals a strange object that turns out to be a work of art by Marcel Duchamp, Lee has no idea that she has attracted the obsessive interest of a shadowy and dangerous society that effectively worships Duchamp. They believe he left clues in his art that reveal the key to immortality, and they are willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone to decipher them. Together with her friend Tomi, an art fanatic who likes to creep around abandoned buildings, Lee fights to stay one step ahead of the Société Anonyme, which seems to have spies everywhere and which has determined that Lee herself is central to their dastardly plans.A young woman must outthink and outplay a group of men trying to uncover the deepest secrets of the universe (with the help of clues left by Marcel Duchamp) in Rose’s debut novel.Lee has always felt invisible, taking advantage of this by shoplifting and dealing drugs to her high school classmates. When her friend Edie turns her in, Lee is sent to juvenile detention and then the psych ward, from which she manages to escape. Homeless, friendless, and directionless, Lee stumbles upon a group of other lost teens who live in the Crystal Castle under the control of a mysterious figure known as the Station Master. When she steals a strange object that turns out to be a work of art by Marcel Duchamp, Lee has no idea that she has attracted the obsessive interest of a shadowy and dangerous society that effectively worships Duchamp. They believe he left clues in his art that reveal the key to immortality, and they are willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone to decipher them. Together with her friend Tomi, an art fanatic who likes to creep around abandoned buildings, Lee fights to stay one step ahead of the Société Anonyme, which seems to have spies everywhere and which has determined that Lee herself is central to their dastardly plans.

Kirkus review

1927. Marcel Duchamp.  La porte de l’appartement du 11, rue Larrey à Paris, dans le 5e arrondissement.

[whilereadingandwalking]

The Ready-Made Thief is an intellectual thriller that will haunt you in all the right ways. Are you ready to watch a pregnant kleptomaniac teenager kick the asses of a cult? You should be. I enjoyed this book despite starting it at slightly the wrong time—perhaps don’t start a thriller when you’re already struggling to fall asleep. 

Augustus Rose has woven a wild tale of a cult that wades into brain-changing drugs and prostitution in order to fund their exploration of a deep mystery left to them by artist Marcel Duchamp. Lee is a normal teenager who likes to steal and likes to sell, who raises enough money to send herself to college, but a friend’s betrayal will send her life careening off its path. The baseline of this tale is Lee’s story of reaching, grasping for success, of wanting to go to college and regain normalcy, and the overlay is a cult that for some reason is desperate to have her. The twists never stop coming, and Rose gives Lee a veracity that comes from both her ability to survive anything and her ongoing panic attacks. The characterization is brilliant, tough but complex. Meanwhile, the novel never gives up, despite the grisly and cruel acts of the cult, on the kindness of the human race, demonstrating itself in the people who take Lee under their wings. It’s a fascinating story about so many things, from gaslighting to feeling like you can’t trust a soul in the world, to the staunch determination of a young woman that she will escape, will survive, and will somehow make it through to the end. A really excellent novel, and I’m so glad my friend gave it to me.

[freckles-and-books]

I finished The Tsar of Love and Techno last night, and it was pretty damn close to perfection. And I don’t know about you guys, but when I read a book I absolutely love, choosing what to read next is almost impossible. It’s not an easy job to follow a really great book.

I actually had my boyfriend choose my next read for me since I was at such a loss last night and I knew he would choose something completely different than Tsar. I’m only a couple pages into this one, but I’m pretty excited for it. 

[hypable]

Weekend reading: 'The Readymade Thief' author Augustus Rose talks hidden worlds

Need a great end-of-summer read? Pick up Augustus Rose’s The Readymade Thief for a thrilling adventure! Check out our interview with the author here.

[siriuslygrimm]

The Pilfered Prize

#BOOKREVIEW - The Pilfered Prize - #TheReadymadeThief #blog

Artists can be some strange people, but in Augustus Rose’s The Readymade Thief, Marcel Duchamp is portrayed as an incredibly enigmatic artist, leaving a legacy and body of work eagerly embraced and replicated by an odd group of men in the current day whose actions greatly impact the life of a teenage girl.

Lee is a seventeen year old girl with a knack for stealing things. After taking the fall…

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[annekyoder]

LIES!

Looking forward to this reading. That’s the truth. See you tomorrow night?

St. Valentine's Day is a lie, but we all knew that.

featuring readings by Anne Yoder Gus Rose Andrew Battershill Emily Sipiora

Cafe Moustache, 8 PM

https://www.facebook.com/events/979709438788601/

Anne K. Yoder’s fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have appeared in Fence, Bomb, Tin House, and BlackBook, among other publications. Her story “The Art of Forgetting,” originally published in Fence, was listed as a notable story in the Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. Anne is a staff writer for The Millions, and co-editrix of Projecttile, a journal of nontraditional writing with a feminist bent. She received an MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a Trustee Scholar and Writing Fellow. She currently lives in the tundra, better known as the city of Chicago.

A native of San Francisco, Augustus Rose's fiction and non-fiction have been published in The Berkeley Fiction Review, Readymade Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and F Magazine, where he won the Novel-in-Progress Award. He has received fellowships from the Squaw Valley Writers' Conference and the Eastern Frontier Society Foundation. He earned his MA in creative writing at UC Davis and currently teaches fiction writing at University of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago.

Andrew Battershill is a writer and teacher currently living in Columbus, Ohio. A graduate of the University of Toronto's MA in creative writing program, he was the fiction editor and co-founder of Dragnet Magazine. The Globe and Mail calls his first novel, Pillow, "A fresh, incredibly smart take on literary crime."

Emily Sipiora is a freelance journalist, creative writer, and poet in Chicago, Illinois. Emily previously lived in Rockford, Illinois, where she wrote for the local newspaper, The Rock River Times. Her creative work has been on Medium, HTMLGIANT, Thought Catalog, Electric Cereal, and other various websites. Emily has published three chapbooks and one novel (Derelicts, Pink Finger Press). Emily is currently publishing the good stuff with Mac Popetz at Moloko House.