Comscore Beacon Book Recommendations, Oct. 2014 - AskMen
Book Recommendations, Oct. 2014

Book Recommendations, Oct. 2014

This Month In Books - Six Tomes You Should Be Cracking The Spine On In October

October means waking up on a Saturday morning drinking a cup of coffee in bed with a good book. Here are some good choices.

A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Marlon transparent gifJames proves that it is possible to have an ambitious sophomore novel that does everything that ambitious sophomore novels are supposed to do. It builds a world that places itself explicitly in a larger historical narrative with a complex, cast of voices spanning race and class, and doing so with a grace that can be measured in considered writing. Beginning in 1970's Jamaica, the novel examines complex political issues and the way individual lives reverberate through time.
$17.58 at Amazon.com

Lila by Marilyn Robinson
transparent gifThe third installment of Marilyn Robinson's trilogy based in a small Iowa town called Gilead, Lila is the quiet journey of a woman who has lived most of her life in a rural purgatory of poverty and homelessness and suddenly finds herself married to an older preacher. The story is told through the ebbs and flows of memory, meditating on solitude, belief, and trust. In a less capable writer's hands, this kind of thing could easily slip into the realm of the saccharin, but Robinson brings the kind of honesty and compassion that transcends any danger of cliche.
$15.60 at Amazon.com

Dan by Joanna Ruocco
transparent gifA new book from the women-centric publishing project Dorothy, Dan is the tale of Melba Zuzzo, who wakes up one day in a town crawling with men and realizes that her life had so far not been lived. The novel follows her as she explores her world in the male-heavy, titular town of Dan, a world that she's just waking up to in all its bizarre glory. This novel is funny and smart but knows how to balance both deftly enough to create a genuine world out of the completely obtuse.
$12.64 at Amazon.com

The Baltimore Atrocities by John Dermot Woods
transparent gifIf you were to flip through this book, you may be forgiven for assuming that it may be somewhat light hearted. The book is divided up by cartoonish illustrations that serve as demarcations between the short tales that comprise this collection. The Baltimore Atrocities, however, is a darkly funny romp through some collective nightmare version of Baltimore. Each short tale is an extended joke that often ends with a smirk. It's the perfect bedside read for October.  
$13.93 at Amazon.com

Duplex by Kathryn Davis
transparent gifChapter by chapter, Kathryn Davis tells the story of a seemingly tranquil neighborhood that's a little more strange than it originally lets on. The mundane of the everyday is illuminated by the surreal, and the story of each house on the block creates a dark tapestry of what are, for all intents and purposes, ordinary people. The language bounces and no sentence is left unadorned, making for a lively read.
$12 at Amazon.com

The Heart Is Strange by John Berryman
transparent gifJohn Berryman is one of the aloof titans of poetry, writing verse both accessible and stubbornly opaque. In this collection, as in many of his poems, Berryman poems are about everyday things, like trains and coffee, but with a precision of language he tears from them the spirituality the human experience bestows on the inhabited world. Berryman is called idiosyncratic, and that seems particularly true as we oscillate in a world so familiar but so unknown. 
$19.26 at Amazon.com

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