Delilah Green Doesn't Care - Ashley Herring Blake

Shannon Jones DOES care about everyone reading this book. This is my ideal romcom. There are real stakes for the characters outside the primary romance. The dynamics between the characters are deep and well-developed. Delilah is a sarcastic shit and I love her for it. It's a queer love story that's NOT about coming out. Just two women whose love isn't the voice of a generation. They just are. And it's amazing.

-Shannon

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I was hooked from the first letter in this beautiful, quirky episttolary novel. Fans of snail mail, ensemble casts, post-WWII Britain, and/or beautifully realistic romances will love this book to pieces. At turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, this book is an al;-time favorite and re-read for me.

-Emily

On Lighthouses - Jazmina Barrera

On Lighthouses is true to its word--it is a book about lighthouses and you'll learn plenty about them. But it's also a book about loneliness. And isolation. But most thrillingly, it's a book about the community one makes by reading. Books matter to Jazmina Barrera--the ideas and emotions inside them give life meaning.

-Brian

Paradais – Fernanda Melchor

In this slim novel about a young gardener at a high class gated community in Mexico, Melchor captures the spiraling, claustrophobic impotence of the poor and the ways in which the impossibility of escape, unless you work for them (the drug cartels) eats away at any selfhood you might have. The large blocks of text and endless sentences create a sense of inevitability happening around, and independent of, the families with their manicured lawns driving by in their white SUVs. Paradais conveys the rage and misogyny as it builds, but only rarely suggests the deep male insecurity and terror that lies beneath it.

-Steve

The Difference is Spreading - edited by Al Filreis & Anna Strong Safford

The Difference is spreading is a collection of 50 essays on 50 poems. If you like 'close, but not too close' readings of poems then this is the book for you. And it's filled with many of my favorite poets either as essayists (Mark Novak, Eileen Myles, Elizabeth Willis) or poets (Jayne Cortez, Anne Waldman, Susan Howe, Frank O'Hara). Poetry matters, but it matters a lot to other poets. A necessay book for an understanding of contemporary poetry.

-Brian