staff picks
Bread and Circus
by Airea D Matthews - Associate Professor and Co-Chair of Creative Writing
Author's website: www.aireadee.com
This is the 2023 hardcover edition of this collection. Click here to go to the 2024 paperback.
Drawing upon economics, theology, and psychology, Bread and Circus explores the lived experiences of those impacted by poverty and racial injustice. This poetry collection is innovative not only in its dissection of established ideals but also in its experimentation with poetic form, with a highlight being blackout poems made by subverting key words in economic texts. The final section of the collection is an especially moving series on collective grief and hope.
-Alyssa S., GSSWSR '24
"A sharp memoir in verse." --LitHub This powerful and timely collection of autobiographical poems from Yale Young Poets Award Winner and Philadelphia's former Poet Laureate Airea D. Matthews about the economics of class is a brilliant intellectual and artistic contribution to the ongoing conversation about American inequality. As a former student of economics, Airea D. Matthews was fascinated and disturbed by 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith's magnum opus The Wealth of Nations. Now, she presents a direct challenge to Smith's theory of the invisible hand, which claims self-interest is the key to optimal economic outcomes. By juxtaposing redacted texts by Smith and the French Marxist Guy Debord with autobiographical prose and poems, Bread and Circus personally offers how self-interest fails when it reduces people to commodity and spectacle. A layered collection to be read and reread, with poems that range from tragic to humorous, in forms as varied and nuanced as the ideas the book considers, Bread and Circus asks what it is to have survived, indeed to have flourished, and at what cost. "Full of humane wisdom, this powerful volume forces readers to acknowledge systemic inequity" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and is ideal for fans of Elizabeth Alexander, Natalie Diaz, Eve Ewing, and Gregory Pardlo.
Deaf Republic
by Ilya Kaminsky
At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?
Deaf Republic is an intimate confrontation of violence towards the vulnerable, balancing sign language and deaf culture with lyrical reckoning. Kaminsky's attention to moments of tenderness and power in times of oppression is a galvanizing call to care for others. A must-read.
- Alyssa S., GSSWSR '24
Finalist for the National Book Award - Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award - Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award - Winner of the National Jewish Book Award - Finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award - Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize - Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
Ilya Kaminsky's astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?
House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves is an incredible experimental horror novel that accomplishes something that many readers crave when they pick up a horror story: utter immersion. With storylines that nest within one another and a wonderfully disorienting mystery at the center of the plot, this book takes your attention and keeps it in a death grip. As one delves deeper into the story, the author's writing style and structure begin to replicate the serpentine descent into dread, madness, and paranoia that befall his characters. This is one of my favorite books, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a story that defies horror norms.
-Alyssa S., GSSWSR '24
''Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent--it renders most other fiction meaningless." --Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho "This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore." --Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth--musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies--the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices, the story remains unchanged. Similarly, the cultural fascination with House of Leaves remains as fervent and as imaginative as ever. The novel has gone on to inspire doctorate-level courses and masters theses, cultural phenomena like the online urban legend of "the backrooms," and incredible works of art in entirely unrealted mediums from music to video games. Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story--of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet is a fresh and uplifting approach to the sci-fi genre. By following the diverse crew of the Wayfarer, we are introduced to a thoughtful and character driven story where you can’t help but fall in love with the created found family. After putting it down, I remember looking up at the stars and rethinking my place in the universe.
-- Grace R, BMC '25
National Bestseller!
The acclaimed modern science fiction masterpiece, Hugo Award winner for Best Series!
Follow a motley crew on an exciting journey through space--and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe--in this light-hearted debut space opera from a rising sci-fi star.
Rosemary Harper doesn't expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she's never met anyone remotely like the ship's diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.
Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy--exactly what Rosemary wants. It's also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn't part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary's got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs--an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn't necessarily the worst thing in the universe.
Pachinko
Pachinko is so soapy! I went through it so quickly and cried my eyes out toward the end. It is the book I recommend to anyone and everyone!
- Angelica C., Book Associate
Thus Was Adonis Murdered
Not, strictly speaking, a campus crime novel, but it's hard to imagine a more academic investigation: the principle narrator is an Oxford don who is explict about applying the tools of scholarship to crime solving. This is the first of four thoroughly delightful mysteries by Sarah Caudwell featuring "a decorative little group" of lawyers in London. Mawrters will find the series irresistable.
- Jim Huang, Bookshop Director
THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED - THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES - THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER - THE SIBYL IN HER GRAVE
Murder Is Academic
P.M. Carlson's campus crime novels are populated by lively, intelligent, good-humored students and grown-ups, just like the people whom we find on real campuses. Carlson also gets how colleges work. Her mysteries feel real, but they're also the best version of real: we wish we could be on Carlson's campuses, hanging out with her people. Murder Is Academic is Carlson's second Maggie Ryan mystery -- a more conventional whodunit than the series opener, Audition for Murder, and a litlte darker. Set in the late '60s and early '70s, they are terrific mysteries and engaging explorations of recent history. Highly recommend, so highly that when the original publishers Avon and Bantam let them go, I brought all eight books back into print so that readers could get them all.
- Jim Huang, Bookshop Director