-Enormous Changes at The Last Minute by Grace Paley. She’s unique–vivid, brutal, syntactically original, voice driven– and always restores my faith in stories.
-The Department of Speculation by Jenny Offil. This is a great book about a modern marriage. I feel you, Jenny Offil.
-The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. Tight, obsessive (in a good way!) essays.
-Elena Ferrante’s six amazing novels. I read these just as the hype began and I now believe it thoroughly. I’m left wondering why certain works of fiction feel autobiographical. There’s a completely tethered connection to the physical and meta-physical real.
-The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman. I loved to hate Nathaniel P. He’s the reason one can’t marry a male New York writer.
-Infidelities. Poems by Elise Paschen. This is her first book and it is fierce, haunting, laced with resonance and a sense of inevitability that feels close to narrative.
-Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg. I caved and finally read it. Fine, so there was a ghost writer and a researcher but the basic data needed to be revealed…by someone: Inequity between the sexes still persists and she dishes the proof.