10 Books to Read This Month #vanityfair
Here you go: here’s 10 books to read this month according Vanity Fair
FICTION
Jazz two ways, surveillance states, and more new novels and story collections.
From the star of Fresh Off the Boat and Hustlers: Making a Scene, a memoir in essays that range from finding compassion and acceptance at the Tuckahoe community theater to the strange disparity of not quite recognizing the woman portrayed in her own profiles, out from Scribner.
Created with screenwriter Stewart Stern, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man (Knopf) is part oral history—contributors include Joanne Woodward, Elia Kazan, and dozens of others—and part memoir: Relationships, perceived personal failings, and more are on display.
Madly, Deeply, out from Holt, collects more than two decades of diaries from the late British actor: anecdotes about film and theater parts, his 52-year relationship with his wife, and passing observations—that breakfast, for instance, is “always more fun in hotels.”
LING MA’S INSPIRATIONS
In Bliss Montage, Severance author Ling Ma spins surreal short stories of yeti one-night stands, strange drugs, and marital spats. She shares her creative touchstones with VF.
“I find this short story even more unnerving than Jackson’s ‘The Lottery.’ It was the inspiration for my story ‘G.’ ”
“The world of Atlanta is like ours, but sometimes there’s an invisible car or a restaurant that serves human hands. The surreal elements are so nonchalantly, seamlessly incorporated.”
“This 1998 installation is the preserved artifact of the artist’s bed after a multiple-day bender instigated by a life crisis. I thought of the book as an artifact of a brief time period, a shedding of skin. Due to physical ailments, I had to write while lying down, and many stories came from my dreams.”
“Julia Holter’s ‘Silhouette’ captures a very anxious time for me. That anxiety went into the collection.”
“HarvesTime Foods in Chicago has a lot of unusual and random items, like Greek mountain tea and Croatian cherry juice. While there, I was struck by this idea of an illicit couple accruing a big cart of groceries, as if they had more time together than they actually did. That became part of the story ‘Returning.’”
