If you really love books, or you want to love them more, I have five recommendations. None of these are traditional literary criticism; they’re not dry or academic. They take all kinds of forms (essay, novel, memoir) and focus on the many connections we can form with what we read. Those relationships might be passionate, obsessive, even borderline inappropriate—and this is what makes the books so lovable. Read more
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My first personal encounter with the rarest book in American literature was memorable, even moving, for many reasons, but its physical appearance wasn’t one of them. If ever a book ought not to be judged by its cover, Edgar Allan Poe’s debut collection, Tamerlane and Other Poems, is that book. Known as the Black Tulip, only twelve copies appear to have survived since its publication in July 1827. That one of the last two in private hands is coming to auction this month, not quite two centuries later, marks an historic bibliophilic event. Read more
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June is Audiobook Appreciation Month, a time to celebrate the great art of audiobook narration in this, the Golden Age of Audiobooks — as it will be remembered once AI takes over. Read more
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The six books below all delve into deception. Some tell tales of elaborate confidence schemes; others interrogate why people are frequently defenseless against cons that, from the outside, seem obvious. Several books also dig into how we’re liable to deceive ourselves, often to our detriment. Each is a fascinating read that will stick with you and, perhaps, make you a bit more likely to realize when you’re not seeing the truth. Read more
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Bibliophiles will find plenty of centuries-old tomes, graphic novels, modern works and more in this French city, which also happens to be this year’s UNESCO World Book Capital. Read more
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Morgan Talty, award-winning author of ‘Night of the Living Rez’ and ‘Fire Exit,’ recommends his favorites. Read more
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New Orleans is a thriving hub for festivals, music and Creole cuisine. Here, the novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin shares books that capture its many cultural influences. Read more
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In the 1950s and 60s, his songs stunned and delighted listeners with their irreverence, wit and nihilism. Then he gave it all up to teach mathematics. Lehrer is still alive at 96 – so I went in search of answers. Read more
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Can a sentence swing and a paragraph bop? Is it possible for prose to be as stripped down and cool as a Miles Davis trumpet solo, or a poem to be as incantatory as John Coltrane’s saxophone? Despite all of the musical genres which the United States contributed to contemporary culture, most of them born from the specifically African American experience it should be added, jazz remains in many ways the lodestar of our melodic and rhythmic firmament, the “Classical Music” of America (as complicated as that assertion might be). Read more
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Looking for some murder and mayhem (fictional, of course)? Read more
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