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 Weekly Words about New Books in
Independent Bookstores

May 20, 2018

New Releases from Pulitzer Winners, Past and Present
 
Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces by Michael Chabon. New work from any Pulitzer winner is always exciting, and Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, 2001 Fiction prize) is a particular indie bookseller favorite. His latest work is an affecting and literary collection of seven essays  - by turns heartfelt, humorous, insightful, and wise - on the meaning of fatherhood. The centerpiece is a story he wrote for GQ magazine in the Fall of 2016, a chronicle of accompanying his 13-year-old son to Paris Men's Fashion Week. For son Abe, it was a dream come true, a chance indulge his passion for fashion. For Dad, who admits his interest in clothing stops at "thrift-shopping for vintage western shirts or Hermès neckties," the trip began as little more than a massive waste of time. Despite his own indifference, however, what gradually emerged as Chabon ferried his son to and from fashion shows was a deep respect for Abe's obvious zeal. Pops is a slim volume, but it packs a large emotional punch, thanks to Chabon's honesty and his brilliant way with words. It's also no coincidence that the book has been released a month before Father's Day - it's a great gift choice.


Less by Andrew Sean Greer. The 2018 Pulitizer Prize for Fiction is just arriving in paperback this week, a month after it won the award. Some anticipated that titles like Sing, Unburied, Sing and Lincoln in the Bardo, both of which have already won prestigious awards, might vie for Pulitzer honor. It went instead to this charming novel from a San Francisco author of five books, the best known of which had been The Confessions of Max Tivoli. In recognizing Less, the Pulitzer committee called it a "generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love."

Here's a plot summary: Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: his boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. Swell. Fortunately, he also has a series of invitations to literary events around the world, all of them providing the perfect opportunity to skip town. Which Arthur does, and we're off and running. He will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face.  
May's #1 Indie Next Pick Is A Stunning Debut  
   
A Lucky Man: Stories by Jamel Brinkley. This month's favorite new book, as chosen by independent booksellers across the country, is a debut collection of short stories from a young New York writer who graduated from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The nine stories are set in Brooklyn and the South Bronx, where  Brinkley grew up, and feature black men and boys struggling to salvage relationships, escape past mistakes, and define their own lives in a world shaped by race, gender, and class and permeated by the promise of luck - or its absence.   

Here's the review chosen by the Indie Next editors to represent the bookseller enthusiasm for the book: "A Lucky Man marks the arrival of a brilliant new voice in contemporary fiction. In quiet, elegant prose, debut author Jamel Brinkley renders characters who are universally relatable yet entirely unique, with all the complexities and subtleties of living, breathing people. As I read their stories, I was swept up into the lives of these characters, so much so that at times I forgot I was reading fiction and felt instead that I was reading letters from old friends. This is an important and powerful collection. Its slice-of-life stories glow with a soft light, revealing rich detail and vibrant beauty in the dark corners of human experience. Every moment held me in silent awe."
- Jason Foose, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
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WHY THE COLUMN?
Hi, I'm Hut Landon, and I work as a bookseller in an independent bookstore in BerkeIey, California.

My goal with this newsletter is to keep readers up to date about new books hitting the shelves, share what indie booksellers are recommending in their stores, and pass on occasional news about the book world.

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