Leslie Jamison's Reading List

The author, whose new essay collection is “Make It Scream, Make It Burn,” says that a boyfriend once gave her a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel with a secret message inside. “I don’t think I fully appreciated this gesture at the time; now I do!”

Open in WellRead Daily app →

By the Book: Leslie Jamison (2019)

NYT By the Book column (2019-09-19).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Fire Sermon

Jamie Quatro · Buy on Amazon

"glorious"

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

Saidiya Hartman · Buy on Amazon

"I was inspired, surprised and deeply moved by Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments."

Cassandra at the Wedding

Dorothy Baker · Buy on Amazon

"It's a sharp, funny, unapologetic novel about sisterhood and possessive love... narrated by a prickly, virtuosic and increasingly unhinged antiheroine; her voice is brutally hilarious until you're hit with the deep ache of her impossible desires."

Blueschild Baby

George Cain · Buy on Amazon

Under the Bridge

Rebecca Godfrey · Buy on Amazon

"I admire Godfrey's refusal to flatten her teenage characters... She steers clear of easy moralizing but stays honest about the swirl of rage and fear that hovers over adolescence like a terrible weather system."

Blame

Michelle Huneven · Buy on Amazon

"I'll gladly say that everyone should read Michelle Huneven's Blame as soon as possible and then read it again when they turn 40."

Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Kaveh Akbar · Buy on Amazon

"Kaveh Akbar's poems in Calling a Wolf a Wolf are about drinking and stopping drinking, and darkness... and also ultimately about delight -- and they are so weird and wry about it all."

Hard to Love

Briallen Hopper · Buy on Amazon

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace · Buy on Amazon

"Reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was hugely important to me in early sobriety -- it was funny and skeptical and tender about recovery all at once."

The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster · Buy on Amazon

"The book was my tollbooth. It gave me what I craved from all books: transportation, immersion, faith in imagination as grace."

Suggest an update?