5 Books to Bring You Joy

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while a reader will come into the bookstore and ask for an unusual recommendation: I need a happy book. 

And then we scramble. Think about it: Sadness, misery, conflict. These are the hallmarks of good fiction. Conventional wisdom is that happy books are boring. 

But of course, that's not always true. 

So because for the next several weeks, months, (at least four) years, we'll all need books to make us feel good, here are five I recommend.

The People We Keep, by Allison Larkin -- This is a lovely rendering of how important it is to find the people we know we can rely on, trust, and love when times are toughest. Finding those people brings you joy. Reading about a wonderful character finding those people also brings you joy. 

I'll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson -- A sad story, but told with prose as ebullient and joyful as the cover. I don't read a ton of YA, but this is still one of my go-to recommendations when anyone comes into the store just looking for a good read. 

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, by Jonathan Evison -- A very underrated but extremely important skill: Being able to roll with the punches when life presents the unexpected. That's what this funny, sweet novel is about. Here's what I wrote about this book after I read it more than a decade ago: "You should read this book because it'll make you happy. I promise." So yeah, this book fits the bill.

Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood -- Pee-your-pants funny, this memoir is. If Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors wasn't quite quirky enough for you, try this one instead.

The Financial Lives of the Poets, by Jess Walter -- Here's the first paragraph of my review for this novel waaaay back in 2010. "This is going to take some linguistic acrobatics. I'm going to spend the next 500 or so words trying to convince you that a story about bad choices, despair, near-financial ruin, and a failing marriage is one of the funniest, most charming, and downright best books you'll read in a long, long time." Holds up.

I desperately need to add to this list. Tell me your favorite joy-bringing books in the comments! 

20 Books to Help Distract You from Your Election Anxiety

The New Dork Review of Books would like to take this opportunity to officially endorse Kamala Harris for president. Because obviously. 

A couple weeks ago when I was in Berlin, I walked through Bebelplatz outside of the The Alte Bibliothek (the Old Library). On May 10, 1933, the Nazis had themselves a book barbecue on this site. Crazed by a speech from Joseph Goebells, the Nazis burned 25,000 books deemed "un-German."

Today, there's a below-ground memorial titled The Empty Library with empty shelves enough to house the same number of books the Nazis torched. Friends, I'm not ashamed to admit I got a little choked up. What an absolutely travesty. And that was just the beginning. 

Are we headed towards a place in this country where book burning is normalized? Though book bans are slightly down this year compared to the past several, according to American Library Association data, the book ban-ners have been exploring other avenues of nefariousness, like trying to make librarians criminals. It's utterly absurd! And there's little doubt that if the wrong candidate wins this election, book ban-ners will be emboldened. It's not hard to imagine Bebelplatz-like scenes all over the country.

So, like many of you, my election anxiety is absolutely through the roof, and when my anxiety maxes out, I find comfort in books. If you do too, here are 20 suggestions (I started with 10, and couldn't stop) for books to get lost in to help ease your anxiety this week. Criteria: Long, imaginative books you can read for hours without even realizing you're reading...and having nothing to do with politics. Here's my list:

20. The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo -- We love a good family saga, and this is one of the best you can find. 

19. The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss -- You want to see someone get riled up? Ask a fantasy fan which they think will come first, the third book in this series or the next Game of Thrones book. Real funny, I know. 😅 But for real, after cajoling from several Rothfuss fans, I did read this, and I unexpectedly loved it. And I think you will too. Very sink-in-able. 

18. Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee -- If historical fiction is your jam, it doesn't get much more immersive than this novel. 

17. Night Film, by Marissa Pessl -- A long, but riveting, cross-genre delight. Fully get-lost-in-able. 

16. Last Night In Twisted River, by John Irving -- Or, of course, A Prayer For Owen Meany. There isn't a better pure storyteller alive than John Irving.

15. Book Lovers, by Emily Henry -- Sometimes you just need something sweet and funny. 

14. Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins -- This book is so funny you'll forget all about your existential dread. 

13. The Brilliance Saga, by Marcus Sakey -- This trilogy (Brilliance, A Better World, Written in Fire) is more than 1,000 pages of pure adrenaline. These are books that read like a movie. 

12. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte -- Reader, I jest not. I love this book. It's all drama and manners and gossip and wonderful throwback to a "simpler" time. 

11. Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes -- Why not distract yourself by scaring yourself silly with this bonkers thriller about a Detroit serial killer? 

10. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski -- A long story about dog breeders in idyllic northern Wisconsin -- a novel that absolutely whisks you away. (Note: A sequel arrived earlier this year -- Familiaris -- which is 900+ pages. I'm saving it for this winter.) 

9. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami -- Weird weird and more weird. But an absolute reading delight. 

8. The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt -- This was a book I stayed up all night to finish. It's just one helluva great story. 

7. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole -- Maybe this is too on the nose. 😂 But for real, laughter is the best medicine for anxiety, and it doesn't much funnier that this. 

6. The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell -- Here's what I wrote when I finished this magisterial novel 10 years ago: "In total, The Bone Clocks is just about the bravest, smartest, most entertaining, most inventive, and most fun to read novel I've put into my brain in a very long time." 

5. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel -- What this novel doesn't have in length, it more than makes up for in impact, so I'm including it among the rest of these longer books. In tough times, I love books that remind us how important art is. No book I've read in a long time does that better than Station Eleven. 

4. A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara -- Comparatively speaking, suddenly, our lives don't seem quite so bad.

3. Version Control, by Dexter Palmer -- This time-traveling, reality-bending novel may just blow your mind enough that if flushes all the anxiety into another dimension. 

2. Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann -- Caveat here: You may read this book for hours, stop for a break, and realize you have NO idea what the hell you just read. So it's sort of perfect for this week. 

1. The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton -- When you put every ounce of your mental energy into puzzling through this novel, there's no room left for worry. 

There you have it. Definitely read a ton this week, but also talk to friends and family. Donate if you can. And GO FREAKING VOTE!

Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte: Gives DFW Vibes

When Tony Tulathimutte found out his new novel-in-stories Rejection had been longlisted for the National Book Award, he tweeted, simply and succinctly, "holy shit dude." Given his expansive, brilliant, just-on-the-right-side-of-verbose prose, that reaction was extra funny.

After reading his book, my reaction is exactly the same. Holy shit dude! 

This book is CRAZY. CRAAAAZY. Crazy good. And even crazier smart. 

Honestly, my first thought after finishing this book (well, after "holy shit dude"), was "sure gives DFW vibes." If you've been with me for any amount of time, you know I don't make that comparison lightly. But the playfulness of the prose, the mixture of low- and high-brow humor, the meta-textual commentary, and so much more reminded me of the first time I read "Consider the Lobster" and felt like my reading world had been cracked wide open. This is THAT good. 

So yes, there is A LOT going on here. It's a satiric story broadly about identity, but also about authenticity, two topics which very much go hand in hand. 

Structure-wise, the book is five individual interconnected stories about a bunch of misfits who shouldn't be misfits but see themselves as misfits because they're not normal and boring. And they've been rejected by individual people specifically and society generally. These people have it hard; they they just don't fit. This hardens their hearts -- they become bitter, depressed, cope in other strange ways. 

For instance, in our first story "The Feminist," we follow a super annoying cishet white guy who just wants to be an ally and treads so carefully around identity issues, he annoys literally everyone with whom he comes in contact. But we're not even sure his intentions are pure: Appearing to care is not the same thing as actually caring, Tulathimutte writes. When you appear to care, you get to feel good about yourself -- like no philanthropic act is purely altruistic because you get a jolt of good feeling, too. But so, this "feminist" soon alienates all his friends. It doesn't help that he can't get laid. 

And we go from there. A woman named Alison who is rejected by a friend with whom she wants to be more-than-friends turns bitter and then depressed and adopts a raven, and then has an all-time blow-out in the group chat with her soon-to-be-ex friends. 

A shy Asian man named Kant comes out of the closet only to realize he can't find a partner to match his his sexual proclivities. So he tries to hire a porn star to make him a video. And the 20-page script he sends the porn star are 20 of the wildest pages I have literally ever read.

There's a tech bro who starts dating Alison, but has different expectations for the relationship that she does. And then the longest story in the book is about Bee, Kant's sister and a friend of The Feminist from from the first story. This story is where it all comes together in terms of the discussion of identity, but also the push and pull against authenticity of identity in an increasingly online world. And further, how rejection can stem from something so simple as identity, which shouldn't be the case, but is. You just have to read this story. It's bonkers. 

In total, this is one of the best, funniest, smartest, and most irreverent books I've read in a very long time. A definite favorite of 2024 for me.

Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam: What Do We Actually Deserve?

Advertisers love to tell us how much we "deserve" things: A break, to treat ourselves, to own their product! But do we really "deserve" these things? What are we truly entitled to, if anything? 

Rumaan Alam's new novel Entitlement is a nuanced, subtle, and brilliantly considered examination of how easy it is to talk ourselves into feeling like we DO deserve fancy clothes, a new apartment, a life free of financial worries. With so much wealth floating around the ether, it's only fair that we all get ours, right? 

That's how our protagonist Brooke starts to think (even if she never explicitly admits this to herself) as she becomes a confidante of a billionaire philanthropist named Asher Jaffee. It's the early 2010s in New York City and Brooke, a former teacher, has lucked into a job with the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation -- an organization set up to give away all the billionaire's money. Brooke impresses the old man with her candor and he soon begins to rely on her -- both for her company and her ideas. 

Brooke is a little like Andrea in The Devil Wears Prada -- she's skeptical of this whole world, at first. And skeptical of Asher's intentions. But as she slowly sips the Kool Aid, she falls further and further into the thrall of the monied life. 

When just a few have so much, but everyone is hustling just to get by, isn't it moral and just to take it upon yourself to make small steps toward balancing the equation? After all, a thousand-dollar pair of shoes is nothing but a rounding error to a billionaire.

I loved one of the points Alam subtly makes early in the novel, and a signal that maybe we shouldn't trust Asher's intentions at all. Alam writes that billionaires spend their lives amassing fortunes based on nothing more than a head start and a willing work force. And along the way, they bend rules, destroy the environment, and do all they can to widen the wealth gap. Therefore, if billionaires didn't exist in the first place, they wouldn't have to give back their fortunes to solve all the problems to which they're contributing. It's like an arson bringing a fire hose to the fire he started.

But so the central questions of this novel become how deep Brooke will get in with this billionaire? What truly are his intentions, both with his money, and with her? Will Brooke sell her soul for a taste of the good life she feels she's entitled to?

You read this novel with a deep sense of unease throughout, even as you're enjoying it immensely. If you like basically good characters who make bad decisions, this is a perfect read for you. 

The Rich People Have Gone Away, by Regina Porter: Escape Is a Privilege

Please note: What follows is the first two paragraphs of a review I wrote of Regina Porter's new novel The Rich People Have Gone Away for the Chicago Review of Books. Because, as always, I want CHIRB to get all the clicks they deserve for being nice enough to let me publish with them, please click on this link to read the full review (don't worry, it's free, there's no paywall or anything).

Regina Porter’s new novel, The Rich People Have Gone Away, joins a cadre of terrific Covid-19-pandemic focused novels published this summer. Like Porochista Khakpour’s Tehrangeles, Teddy Wayne’s The Winner, and Hari Kunzru’s Blue Ruin, Porter’s novel delves specifically into how the early days of the pandemic lockdown affected people of different privilege in vastly different ways. There are many definitions of privilege, but we all learned a new one then: privilege is the opportunity to improve your chances of surviving a deadly virus.

Porter leaves little doubt about how we should frame the discussion in our minds before we open the novel: it’s right there in the title! When you’re rich (and in many cases, white), you have the luxury of simply running away from problems, as many New Yorkers did in March and April 2020.

Read the full post at the Chicago Review of Books.