Aimee Bender's Reading List

“‘Trust Exercise,’ by Susan Choi, was many remarkable things, including really funny,” says Bender, whose new novel is “The Butterfly Lampshade.” “Especially the most amazingly weird and right sentence with ‘lasagna’ in it.”

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By the Book: Aimee Bender (2020)

NYT By the Book column (2020-07-23).

Source: www.nytimes.com

The Story of a Brief Marriage

Anuk Arudpragasam · Buy on Amazon

"He inhabits the writing so deeply on a sensory level, taking his time, bringing us right there into tremendous pain and yearning for connection, and I think ultimately captures something profound about trauma."

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy · Buy on Amazon

"How did Tolstoy do it? He seemed to be able to hold breadth and subtle internal shifts so comfortably in his own mind all at once. Internal and external so balanced. Like reading an entire brain on the page, unfettered."

How to Set a Fire and Why

Jesse Ball · Buy on Amazon

"the voice Jesse Ball creates in this book is unbelievable — so intense and alive, of an incredibly smart, honest, anarchic teenage girl. There's something fearless in here."

The Old Child

Jenny Erpenbeck · Buy on Amazon

"All I do is underline this book. Who on earth is this odd and riveting child?"

Trust Exercise

Susan Choi · Buy on Amazon

""Trust Exercise," by Susan Choi, was many remarkable things, including really funny, especially the most amazingly weird and right sentence with "lasagna" in it."

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Anthony Marra · Buy on Amazon

Time's Arrow

Martin Amis · Buy on Amazon

"the novel is told backward, as in all the characters actually move backward, as if they are on rewind, which flips the meaning of many things, and in my view, this change allowed for the emotional force and surprise of the book."

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