JULY NEWSLETTER

This summer is a season of change for us, friends. In June we bade goodbye to our belovedchildren's book buyer, Ianni. This month we welcome our new bookseller, Audie! Swing by and

welcome her to the neighborhood when you have a chance.

We also have big news for book club enthusiasts: Our established book club, the Lakeview#LitSyndicate, will convene for the 50th time in August, and we've permanently rescheduled tothe first Monday of each month. We're also thrilled to debut a brand new book club hosted by

our very own golden-eyed commander of wishes, Matty. Read all about it below:

"Queers, rejoice! Now at Unabridged Bookstore, Chicago’s premier go-to-bookstore for theLGBTQ community, a new reading group to explore queer voices in literature! We will hold ourfirst meeting on Monday, August 12th at 7 pm, and continue to meet the 2nd Monday of each

month to discuss the “classics” of gay fiction, queer themes in contemporary writing, andeverything in between. We’re kicking it off with a novel, and an author, remembered for causing

much controversy upon publication in 1978: Larry Kramer’s Faggots has had a significant impacton gay culture, as well as queer literature, even after heavy criticism. Join us for our inaugural

discussion of this controversial work!"

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EVENTS

EARLY WARNING: André Aciman willbe joined in conversation for FINDME'S Chicago book launch on Friday,October 8th at the Nettelhorst SchoolAuditorium! Tickets are available nowand include a copy of the book. Purchaseyours here.

"In this spellbinding exploration of thevarieties of love, the author of theworldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Namerevisits its complex and beguilingcharacters decades after their firstmeeting.

No novel in recent memory has spoken moremovingly to contemporary readers about thenature of love than André Aciman’s hauntingCall Me by Your Name. First published in2007, it was hailed as “a love letter, aninvocation . . . an exceptionally beautiful book”(Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times BookReview). Nearly three quarters of a millioncopies have been sold, and the book became amuch-loved, Academy Award–winning filmstarring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elioand Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduatestudent with whom he falls in love. In FindMe, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel,on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio,who has become a gifted classical pianist. Achance encounter on the train with a beautifulyoung woman upends Sami’s plans andchanges his life forever. Elio soon moves toParis, where he, too, has a consequential affair,while Oliver, now a New England collegeprofessor with a family, suddenly finds himselfcontemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the

intimate details and the emotional nuances thatare the substance of passion. Find Me bringsus back inside the magic circle of one of ourgreatest contemporary romances to ask if, infact, true love ever dies." - FSG

Find Me will be released on Tuesday,October 29th.

In hardcover, fiction, 27.00; Farrar, Straus,and Giroux.

BOOK CLUB SELECTIONS

The Lit Syndicate will meet to discussFlorence in Ecstasy on Monday, August5th at 7PM.

"A young woman arrives in Florence fromBoston, knowing no one and speaking littleItalian. But Hannah is isolated in a moreprofound way, estranged from her own identityafter a bout with starvation that has left her lifeand body in ruins. She is determined to recoverin Florence, a city saturated with beauty,vitality, and food―as well as a dangeroushistory of sainthood for women who starvedthemselves for God. Hannah joins a localrowing club and is drawn into Florence’svibrant present: soccer mania, eating, drinking,sex, an insatiable insistence on life. But Hannahis also rapt by the city’s past―the countlessrepresentations of beauty, the entrenchedconflicts of politics and faith, and the lore ofthe mystical saints, women whose ecstaticsearches for meaning through denial illuminatethe seduction of her own struggles. A vivid,visceral debut echoing the novels of Jean Rhys,Elena Ferrante, and Catherine Lacey, Florencein Ecstasy gives us an arresting new vision of awoman’s attempt to find meaning―and findherself―in an unstable world." - UnnamedPress

In paperback, fiction, 16.00; Unnamed Press.

Our new queer book club will meet todiscuss Faggots on Monday, August12th at 7PM.

"Graphically sexual and one of the most all-timebest-selling gay novels, Faggots is the story ofFred Lemish, who at thirty-nine has built up hisbody into a fatless state of being in Great

Shape. Lemish is ready to find Mr. Right. Butfrom the Everhard Baths to the Pines on FireIsland to that place of myth and story, TheMeat Rack, he is looking for his dream lover inall the wrong places. Faggots is a fierce satireof the gay ghetto and a touching story of oneman’s desperate search for permanence,commitment, and love." - Grove Atlantic

In paperback, fiction, 16.00; Grove Press.

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Available July 16th!

The Nickel Boys is a potently concentrateddrama pinpointing the brutality andinsidiousness of Jim Crow racism, turning onthe story of Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner,and inspired by horrific events that transpiredat the real-life Dozier School for Boys,brutalities that went on for over 110 years. TheNickel Boys is more than a litany of horrors; itis a vehicle where a whole brotherhood ofbroken boys finally get to tell their story,through the vividly created fictional charactersof Elwood and Turner. Whitehead hassucceeded in giving us a GREAT novel thatALSO instructs, showing us the backwardwickedness that was America, but alsoshowing us the way forward—how to survivetrauma and oppression, how to maintain one’spersonhood without being broken orpermanently diminished. A powerful,devastating story, simply told, that dares toconfront the past and jog our collectivememory. ED LOVED AND HIGHLYRECOMMENDS!!

In hardcover, fiction, 24.95; Doubleday Books.

STAFF PICKS

Searching for a big, juicy novel to loseyourself in this summer? Look nofurther! The Most Fun We Ever Had is amultigenerational saga set against thebackdrop of Chicago, Evanston and OakPark. Lombardo slyly (& deliciously!)lampoons Chicago’s white suburbanculture. She's a keen observer of humannature, and the dynamics among hercharacters are fine-tuned, beautifullywrought, and impressively realistic. Thisdeeply satisfying portrait of a family isChicago's answer to Celeste Ng's LittleFires Everywhere. Katharinerecommends!

In hardcover, fiction, 28.95; DoubledayBooks.

With the American ‘justice system’ incrisis, Emily Bazelon suggests a missingpiece of the mass incarceration puzzle inCharged. With thorough reporting,Bazelon emphasizes the imbalance ofpower in the courts, how prosecutorswield nearly limitless influence insentencing outcomes, and how the“tough on crime” mentality has adverselyserved the pursuit of justice. Bazelonfollows the legal battles of Noura andKevin, both maintaining their innocencethough charged with violent crimes.Through their stories, and many others,she gives insight into mandatoryminimum sentence laws, policingpractices, District Attorney politics, etc.,illustrating the way prosecutorsmanipulate charges, bail, plea bargains,and often simply intimidate those on thestand to inflate conviction rates.Tocounter this bleak state, Bazelon shares asense of hope by highlighting the effortsof reform-minded DAs, those reinventingthe job across the country. Particularlyinteresting and helpful is the appendix“Twenty-One Principles for Twenty-First Century Prosecutors.” Thiscollaboration between the author and anumber of legal professionals,academics, and activists includespractical recommendations andnationwide examples, and reads as aguide to those with a “vision for

achieving mercy and justice. They areintertwined.” Matty recommends!

In hardcover, non-fiction, 28.00; W.W.Random House.

In 1998, Patsy leaves her five-year-olddaughter, Tru, behind in Jamaica afterobtaining a visa to emigrate to the UnitedStates, both to live a new life and toreunite with her long lost friend/lover,Cicely. Both life in the United States andCicely are not what she had hoped, andPatsy struggles with the indignities ofliving as an undocumented worker.Meanwhile, Tru is growing up inJamaica and grappling with her ownfeelings of abandonment. Alternatingbetween the two mother and daughterstories, Nicole Dennis-Benn has createda remarkably sensitive and complicatedportrait about two people scarred bothby each other and the American dreamof a better life. There are so many layersof nuance in this soaring novel; wovenwithin the emotional arcs of thecharacters are astute and compassionateexplorations of black womanhood andqueer sexualities. And though Patsy isabout how the world sets some peopleup to fail, it’s ultimately about thejourneys that people must take to surviveand live on their own terms. A story ofsacrifice, regret, self-determination, andfreedom, Patsy is rich with imagery andbursting with longing and tenderness.This is an elegant, heart-wrenching, andwise book from an extraordinary writer.

From Lewis Hyde, “one of our country'sgreatest public thinkers” (LawrenceWeschler), A Primer For Forgetting is abrilliant, original, and provocative workwhich the author sees as a “thoughtexperiment seeking to nominate placeswhere forgetting is better thanremembering,” where the goal is to live“steeped in history but not in the past,”where “forgetting is radical nonaction.”The author's collage of entries—richlydrawn from philosophy, mythology,ancient and modern literature, religion,psychology, art, history as well as hisown life—form a free association ofjuxtaposed anecdotes, stories,meditations, and aphorisms about themeaning of forgetfulness. An eclecticand insightful miscellany of playful,spirited, provocative reflections that isthought-provoking and poignant, anelegant exercise in philosophy and formcelebrating “forgetting” as a force forsocial justice, creative potency, personalgrowth and healing trauma (bothpersonal and collective.) ED LOVEDAND HIGHLY RECOMMENDS!!

In hardcover, non-fiction, 28.00; Farrar,Straus, and Giroux.

Shane loves!

In hardcover, fiction, 26.95; LiverightPublishing Corporation.

Was unrequited desire the cause ofSocrates' philosophical inquiries? Shouldthe fiercely intelligent Aspasia beacknowledged as one of the founders ofour philosophical tradition? using oftenoverlooked, misinterpreted, and scatteredancient sources other than Plato andXenophon, celebrated classicist, ArmandD'Angour, paints a different picture ofSocrates: that of a young man, bravesoldier, athletic, and (oversexed)passionate lover, but also intense thinker.There's so much more: Alcibiades (ofcourse!), the Samian expedition,Aristophanes... that add to the biography.This is not written for the scholar but forthe average reader so don't be afraid topick it up. I found it an absolutelydelightful, engaging, and well researchedread. "An erudite guide to the intellectualculture of the time." Ianni recommends!

In hardcover, non-fiction, 28.00; BloomsburyPublishing.

“Are we in control of our destiny, or doinvisible forces manipulate us?” In Mac'sProblem, Enrique Vila-Matas constructshis latest metafictional funhouse, a livelyride through a writer's mind. Mac, newlyunemployed, takes up writing a diary,with one stipulation—that it NOT turninto a novel. But when Mac decides torewrite an early novel of fellowBarcelona author Andre Sanchez(narrated by a ventriloquist who has lostthe ability to speak in different voices!),Mac finds his stories have a strange wayof imitating life—or is life imitating thestories?—and as the novel progresses,Mac becomes more adrift from realityand more immersed in literature. Vila-Matas is a writer’s writer, and clearlyrelishes abandoning the traditional ideason which the novel is built (“the novel isa medium that needs to adapt itself to theessential ambiguity of reality,”) fillingMac's Problem with tips and maxims forwould-be writers, and references hisown favorite authors (Pessoa, Borges,Samantha Schweblin, Poe, Hemingway,Jean Rhys, Bernard Malamud.) It is aplayful, poignant, post-modern, part-surrealist, comical take on life imitatingart imitating life (“fiction and reality, anold married couple,”) and how certainstories appear in our own lives and howthe path they follow ends up merging

with our own. ED LOVED ANDHIGHLY RECOMMENDS!

In paperback, fiction, 16.95; New DirectionsPublishing Corporation.

A youthful Bujar runs away from homeas his family and country fall apart.Agim, his best friend, must also flee afterbeing caught in girl’s clothes. Years laterwe see an older Bujar, queer, transient,and alone. Statovci teases out the middleyears, Bujar’s journey to escape Albania,and the fate of Agim. Crossing is full oflegends and lies; the myths that Bujar’sfather tells of their ancient homeland,Agim’s beliefs about the wider world,Bujar’s attempts to create a new life.Caught between heritage, desire, andcollapse, they reject traditions: “Nobodyhas to remain the person they were born;we can put ourselves together like ajigsaw.” Bujar’s dissatisfaction forceshim to try on new personas, he swimsthrough multiple genders, nationalities,personal histories, and lovers. Thisromp, comic at times, devastating atothers, takes him all over the world. InCrossing, there is satire, an achingalienation of each character, and a barelycontained violence that erupts ashumorous, even romantic, scenes takebrutal turns. This is a story of exile –from country, from the body, fromothers. Here, human made bordersdissect geography and sex, creatingstrict categories for the people theycontain. Statovci writes of the

“Life is more than an economic venture,”says Jenny O’Dell in How To DoNothing, where she rails against “thecolonization of the self by capitalist ideasof productivity and efficiency” and the“financial incentivization of chatter,”calling instead for a radical refocusing ofour attention, an aesthetic reconceptionof the world where attention isn’tmonetized. She’s looking for an escapehatch from contemporary anxiety, a wayto fill our lives with meaning,purposefulness and real connection,encouraging the reader to pay attentionto the rich variety of the world as anantidote to the addictive products andplatforms that technology provides and acommercial social media that mines ourattention for profit. Besides her ownarguments for balancing, prioritizing andresisting the demands for our attention,O’Dell offers insights from philosophers,psychologists, artists, technocrats andnaturalists in a book that feels liberatingto read. ED LOVED AND HIGHLYRECOMMENDS!

In hardcover, non-fiction, 25.99; MelvilleHouse Publishing.

consequences for the immigrants whowould cross them. Matty recommends!

In paperback, fiction, 25.95; PantheonBooks.

After working on The Faggots and TheirFriends for years and not finding anagreeable publisher, Larry Mitchell finallystarted his own press, Calamus books,and published this book in 1977. Longout of print, Nightboat books has finallyreissued this cult classic which issimultaneously a time-capsule literaryartifact and a timeless work of art. Botha fable and a queer declaration, this textperfectly straddles whimsy and beauty,humor and insight, escapism andrevolutionary manifesto. Embodyingmany of the beliefs and secularspirituality of the later Radical Faeriemovement, the anti- heteropatriarchaland anti- assimilationist politics of TheFaggots and Their Friends is shockinglyrelevant today, and its explorations ofchosen families, queer communities, andliving and loving with complete freedomis inspiring. This book celebrates queeroutlaws and outcasts, not despite of theirmarginalized status, but preciselybecause of it. Shane recommends thismoving and magical little gem.

In paperback, fiction, 16.95; NightboatBooks.

Now in paperback!

It's September in New York City at thedawn of the new millennium, and theunnamed protagonist of this pitch-blackcomedy is fatigued. This beautiful,recently orphaned twentysomething hasfallen into a depressive spiral, and to hermind the path to reinvention is pavedwith narcotics. With the help of aprescription-happy, totally unhingedpsychiatrist, she sets out to drug herselfto sleep for the next year. Unburdenedfrom the need to work by her lateparents' fortune, the next months of herlife are characterized by an uncheckeddrug binge, fueling her freewheelingnihilism and general disdain forhumanity. This is a bleak book, butfortunately Moshfegh is an ablehumorist, and the story's cynicism istempered by enough LOL-worthymoments to keep you chucklingthroughout. A searing send-up of theconspicuous consumption of the late1990s, MYOR&R encapsulates therampant consumerism and internalizedmisogyny that plague American societyto this day. Katharine recommends this drilyhilarious, mesmerizing novel.

In paperback, fiction, 16.00; Penguin Books.

Now in paperback!

Frances Price, a sixty-five-year-oldsocialite (think Lucille Bluth in ArrestedDevelopment) gained infamy among theManhattan élite twenty years ago fordiscovering the body of her husband intheir bedroom and then going skiing forthe weekend. Having burned through avast fortune and to escape furtherscandal and insolvency, she flees to Pariswith her adult son (“a lugubrious toddlerof a man”.) Soon, a coterie of oddballsarrive to enliven the story and move theaction along, often in comic, evenridiculous ways. While some readers willthink that nothing much really happens(until the end), all will stay throughoutfor De Witt’s caustic socialcommentary, his magnificent wit, andcrackling wordplay that skewers theaffectations and hypocrisy of the upperclasses. This DELICIOUS “Tragedy ofManners” sparkles with some of thevilest, most unlikeable, and patheticcharacters. Sure, we wouldn’t want tohang out with them but we’d want toknow how they end up anyway and mayeven, perversely, find ourselves rootingfor them. IANNI RECOMMENDS

In paperback, fiction, 16.99; Ecco Press.

Now in paperback!

Deborah Eisenberg's first new collectionof short stories since 2006 addresses thedepth and variety of human experiencewith clarity, tenderness, and humor.Eisenberg nimbly negotiates between hercharacters' shifting identities (private andpublic, personal and political, emotionaland psychological), pinpointing sites ofoverlap and contradiction and plumbingthem for all they're worth. I wasconsistently astonished by the wit andacuity permeating each of these stories.Katharine loves this book!

In paperback, fiction, 16.99; Ecco Press.

Now in paperback!

Admittedly, this is not the kind of novel Iusually read. But I was intrigued by theauthor’s biography (he wrote the book inprison, where he is serving 11 years forbank robbery) and the hype surroundingit proved irresistible. Semi-autobiographical, it chronicles thejourney of a college kid in love turnedheroic army vet with severe PTSD, whodescends into a spiral of drugs andcrime. Despite the criticism that there areno real character arcs or that the womenare never fully realized, the rapid-fire andpropulsive prose drew me right in. Morethan just a “junkie novel”, I found this tobe a raw and devastating portrait ofmisplaced idealism, the senselessness ofwar and the horrors of untreated traumaand opioid addiction. Fans of DenisJohnson ought to read this astonishingdebut! IANNI RECOMMENDS

In paperback, fiction, 16.95; Vintage.

***Featured Backlist***Find copies of Signs Preceding the Endof the World on our Staff Picks shelf

Signs Preceding the End of the World isa slim but complex novel, a powerful andarresting feat of storytelling. Thisevocative Book concerns a youngwoman, Makina, and her border crossingfrom Mexico into the U.S. More thanjust a geographical transition, the storydeals with many journeys and crossings,both literal and figurative, exploring thebonds of families, xenophobia, and theintersections of borders and cultures.Herrera's casual tone and seeminglysimple, stark prose is bursting withpoetry, rich and visceral, at oncegrounded yet surreal, beautiful andnightmarish. A soaring, multi-layeredepic. Shane loves!

In paperback, fiction, 13.95; And OtherStories.