the bookplate

talking about books by women about women. also sometimes food.

[the-bookplate]

Snacking on last night’s late-night on-the-house Old-Fashioned doughnut from the LES Pies ‘N’ Thighs with snickerdoodle coffee, ready to start my @bklynlibrary copy of Moira Weigel’s Labor of Love, which:

“...offers a fresh feminist perspective on how we came to date the ways we do. This isn't a guide to “getting the guy.” There are no ridiculous “rules” to follow. Instead, Weigel helps us understand how looking for love shapes who we are—and hopefully leads us closer to the happy ending that dating promises.“

[the-bookplate]

The female writers, for whatever reason (men?), don’t much believe in heroes, which makes their kind of storytelling perhaps a better fit for these cynical times. Their books are light on gunplay, heavy on emotional violence. Murder is de rigueur in the genre, so people die at the hands of others—lovers, neighbors, obsessive strangers—but the body counts tend to be on the low side. “I write about murder,” Tana French once said, “because it’s one of the great mysteries of the human heart: How can one human being deliberately take another one’s life away?” Sometimes, in the work of French and others, the lethal blow comes so quietly that it seems almost inadvertent, a thing that in the course of daily life just happens. Death, in these women’s books, is often chillingly casual, and unnervingly intimate. As a character in Alex Marwood’s brilliant new novel, The Darkest Secret, muses: “They’re not always creeping around with knives in dark alleyways. Most of them kill you from the inside out.”

"Women Are Writing the Best Crime Novels” // Terrence Raftery // The Atlantic

I actually got chills reading this article, because this is someone who gets it. I mean, “The female writers, for whatever reason (men?), don’t much believe in heroes.”

“Most of them kill you from the inside out.”

[the-bookplate]

The last two weeks have been totally amazing for readings of books that I’m obsessed with. New to me in this round is debut author Stephanie Danler, who I saw in conversation with Prune chef Gabrielle Hamilton (who called this the next great food book after Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, if that says anything to you). The other three I’ve been fans of for a few years, and seeing them again at their readings was as delightful as always.

Rufi Thorpe’s DEAR FANG, WITH LOVE is the story of Vera and her essentially estranged father, Lucas, who takes her to his family homeland of Vilnius, Lithuania, after she suffers a breakdown at her high school boarding school. A wise, skillful second novel that ponders the meaning of family and the stark reality of mental illness.

Stephanie Danler’s SWEETBITTER is a novel that feels like a memoir, in that it parallels Danler’s own experiences in many ways. Tess moves to New York and finds work in a Union Square restaurant, revealing the dirty, gritty life of the service industry in the city as well as the relationships that develop between those who live their lives in this lane.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s JUNE, her fourth novel, splits the timeline between depressed twenty-something Cassie Danvers and the teenage years of her grandmother June. The stories become entwined after Cassie inherits a fortune from a golden age movie star, and his family comes to visit her in her recently-deceased grandmother’s house to find out exactly what she knows and how she got involved, which she would like to know, too.

Emma Straub’s MODERN LOVERS follows two families in Brooklyn neighborhood Ditmas. The parents have all known each other since college, and are now discovering what adulthood and growing up means as they parent their teenage children and remember their own passions.

Please check out all of these books, out in the world within the last month. Support these amazing women and their amazing books!

[the-bookplate]

Julie Murphy’s DUMPLIN’ is a $1.99 Kindle daily deal today only, 4/25/16 (not for Nook or iBooks, sorry!).

Dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom, Willowdean has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American-beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked . . .   until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.  

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.

There’s so much to love about this book, and one thing I think about a lot is how perfect the setting is. Murphy really knows Texas and it’s clear here (mums!). This is a smart and funny and emotional story of loving yourself and stepping outside your comfort zone when there’s nothing you’d rather do less.

I loved Dumplin’ with all my heart, and I hope you will, too.

[the-bookplate]

On sale 4/19/16

Some books I have LOVED reading that are on sale TODAY, 4/19.

Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld: This update to Pride and Prejudice nails every beat by smashing up the story and putting it back together. Set in Cincinnati, the book includes a Bachelor-style TV show, Crossfit, family barbecues, and more, all with the wit and love of the original.

The Darkest Corners - Kara Thomas: A YA novel with a true-crime feeling about a teenage girl missing in a small town where a serial killer roamed ten years ago - and may be back now. The problem with this is that someone was jailed for this last time it happened, and Tessa Lowell's childhood account was part of the crucial testimony to put him behind bars. More than a "lost girl" thriller, this is about the aftermath of a serial killer on a small town, the story of what life looks like ten years later, and the dark suspicion that maybe not everything was wrapped up as neatly as hoped for a decade ago.

Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here - Anna Breslaw: Independent and caustic Scarlett is a staple in the fandom of her favorite TV show, and when it gets canceled, the Internet - and Scarlett - goes into a tailspin of what-to-do-next. This nails contemporary fandom without being condescending or unrealistic. If you liked Fangirl, you’ll love this.

New in paperback:

Spinster - Kate Bolick: Bolick’s memoir-cum-deep dive into historical spinsterdom covers her own life as an unmarried woman and weaves into the narrative the lives of women writers considered “spinsters”. A real examination of the word and its history, as well as why we focus on marriage instead of what women can accomplish alone.

Re Jane - Patricia Park: Inspired by Jane Eyre, this contemporary Korean-American novel set in NYC tells the story of Jane, whose story is loosely based on the classic. Breaking the mold works here, too, as Park examines the story through a contemporary lens.

[the-flying-salmon]

Young Woman Reading, Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Italy

[the-bookplate]

The argument against gender parity in authorship is probably the same argument that is made when, year after year, there are no female filmmakers nominated for film awards: There just aren’t as many films, much less quality ones, made by women. And there are fewer books by female authors published by literary presses, so there are fewer books by female authors that can be covered in literary journals, so there is less female talent covered in literary publications from which publishers, granting organizations, and universities can draw talent. Maybe women are just inherently less literary, their output less worthy of serious critical attention? But male writers don’t receive critical attention because they are good; they get coverage in the New York Review of Books because they are men. And women’s books should be talked about not because they are literary geniuses and men are witless scribes, but because they are creating art from the point of view of fifty percent of the citizens of our planet. My argument, in other words, isn’t that books by women are superior to those by men—they sometimes aren’t!—but that when I’m criticizing the work of a female writer, I’m rarely arguing against anyone. Whether I have something positive or negative to say, I’m usually the only one saying anything at all because literary people just don’t view books by women as being as important as those by men.

“No More Books By Men” // Eva Jurczyk, The Awl

Over at The Awl, Eva Jurczyk sums up pretty well why I do what I do here.

[the-bookplate]

As I make my way through the shortlist for next month’s Tournament of Books, I picked up Fran Ross’s OREO, knowing only that it was first published in 1974, almost immediately forgotten, and republished in 2015 by @newdirectionspublishing.

On its surface a retelling of the myth of Theseus starring bi-racial Christine Clark - the titular nicknamed Oreo - as she makes her way to New York City to meet her long-distant father. For the uninitiated, Ross has written a slap-dash version of the myth in the back of the book, naming the corresponding characters here.

Going deeper than surface level, though, OREO is a witty, nuanced, and at times hilarious satire of culture in the 1970s. It dives into the Theseus myth, and even forty years later, the narrative of the myth transposed into a twentieth-century setting feel not just tangible but relevant.

In an adaptation of his 2015 introduction in the New Yorker, Danny Senza writes,

As in the best satire, nobody in “Oreo” is safe; nobody is spared. The humor is low at times, scatological and plain silly, and the humor is high, sophisticated wordplay and clichés flipped on their heads. Ross is a hard sell for February, Black History Month, and a hard sell for March, Women’s History Month. Hers is a postmodern text; it is a queer text; it is a work of black satire; it is a work of high feminist comedy; it is a post-soul text. Her novel is multifaceted and multilingual, making it an awkward presence on the landscape of American fiction, where “ethnic” literature can be put in kiosks like dishes at a food fair, and consumed just as easily.

I don’t think I would have picked up OREO if it hadn’t been for the 2016 Tournament of Books; in fact, I don’t know that it would have crossed my sight. This is a perfect time for this book to have come back into print, not just for reasons listed above but for how the cultural narrative in the US has continued to shift, even in the last year since this introduction was written.

You don’t really see this kind of work being published broadly in this decade, for a variety of reasons, so here’s hoping OREO can carve out a niche in 2016 that it wasn’t able to in 1974. I highly recommend picking this up - it’s a quick read, but one that will make you think and make you laugh.

[nprbooks]

Here’s a trend in new books: Publishers commonly promote them by comparing them to other books — and when the books are crime fiction or thrillers, and written by women, they get compared to the same books again and again and again. Those books would be Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train.

Crime novelist Megan Abbott tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep, “I have talked to other crime writers that have been urged by various professional people in their life to put the word ‘girl’ in their title. It’s not necessarily an issue with the content of the book itself, but there’s this sort of shorthand that if it has ‘girl’ in the title, then I know what to expect.”

The 'Girl’ In The Title: More Than A Marketing Trend

[the-bookplate]

The thought of moving next Thursday has me like

[the-bookplate]

Speaking of Elizabeth Strout, her next book My Name is Lucy Barton is out 1/5/16 from Random House.

[the-bookplate]

Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of related stories, Olive Kitteridge, is now a multiple-Emmy-winning miniseries from HBO/Playtone, as of the 2015 Emmy Awards.

From Variety:

The production was a passion project of McDormand’s, who had optioned Elizabeth Strout’s book of the same name, bringing in writer Jane Anderson (another winner that night) to adapt the script and hounding HBO to get it made.

HBO’s Olive Kitteridge’s eight total Emmy wins* were:

Lisa Cholodenko / Outstanding Directing

Jane Anderson / Outstanding Writing

Laura Rosenthal and Carolyn Pickman / Outstanding Casting

Bill Murray / Outstanding Supporting Actor

Jeffrey M. Werner / Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing

Richard Jenkins / Outstanding Lead Actor

Frances McDormand / Outstanding Lead Actress

Outstanding Limited Series

To see all nominations for Olive Kitteridge, please click here.

*All are “for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special“, not repeated each instance above.

[yeahwrite]

I was signing books in Decatur and I overheard a girl asking her mom if she could buy my book. And her mom was saying, ‘I dunno, I don’t think you’ll be able to relate to this book.’ And she said, ‘Mom. I can’t relate to hobbits either.’ …and they bought the book!

Renee Watson, when asked to talk about feeling marginalized by her gender and/or race at the High School Confidential panel at the 2015 Brooklyn Book Festival (via yeahwrite)

[the-bookplate]

This morning I had brunch with one of my best friends ellewcee as well as thefrenemy at Prune, restaurant of Blood, Bones and Butter author Gabrielle Hamilton. We talked about television (a lot about last week’s MasterChef finale), adult relationships, friends, books, and of course, how good our brunch was.

The Frenemy, also known as Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse author Alida Nugent, has a new book out this fall: You Don’t Have to Like Me: Essays on Growing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding Feminism. She’s a stellar person as well as a rad writer, and you should read her first book and then preorder this one, out Oct. 20th from Plume.

Pictured above with her book is the classic eggs benedict from Prune and the Southwest bloody maria, with their standard Red Stripe chaser. I can’t resist a benny, and believe me, no one does eggs better than Prune at brunch.

[electricliterature]

“The Humble Simple Thing” is a skeleton of a Sheila Heti story, a “cut-up” by the artist Sara Lautman, who also illustrated the text. I had never heard of a cut-up before, but I love the concept. The opposite of a supercut, which tries to capture everything of a kind, a cut-up winnows a story to its essence.”

- Halimah Marcus, Editor-in-Chief of Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading

Read “The Humble Simple Thing” for free in Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading.

[rachelfershleiser]

NEW ILLUSTRATED SHEILA HETI STORY, RIGHT ON TUMBLR!

[the-bookplate]

You don't have to choose between BECOMING SOMEONE IMPORTANT and NEVER AMOUNTING TO MUCH. That's a bullshit way of looking at yourself.

Ask Polly: Why Is Everyone Succeeding Except Me?

[the-bookplate]

Be easy on yourself. Have fun. Only hang around people that are positive and make you feel good. Anybody who doesn't make you feel good, kick them to the curb, and the earlier you start in your life, the better. The minute anybody makes you feel weird and non-included or not supported, you know, either beat it or tell them to beat it.

Amy Poehler