In Person

A History of Love (of Bookstores)

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I have a long string of past loves, but they’re all bookstores.
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Notable Articles Screening Room

We Cast The Goldfinch Movie so Hollywood Doesn’t Have To

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We hereby submit our ideas for the Goldfinch cast. The process reveals the bizarre extent to which I think I understand the Hollywood casting processes, which starlets we think play trashy the best, and how it might be worth it to turn the cast on its head to let Michael B. Jordan play Theo.
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In Person

The Poet and the Movie Star: An Evening with Frank Bidart and James Franco

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Bidart wanted to have dinner with Franco so that he could explain his intentions in writing “Herbert White” (which is written in the first-person character of a necrophiliac murderer), plus, he said, “Of course I wanted to have dinner with James Franco! He was brilliant in Pineapple Express!”
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Lists Notable Articles

28 Books You Should Read If You Want To

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I discovered one of my favorite books because the author called our store and charmed the living daylights out of me. I found another in a box of old books that my Russian literature professor left outside his office to give away.
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Annals of Japery Notable Articles

Read Me! Please!: Book Titles Rewritten to Get More Clicks

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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Janet Potter

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The Second Annual Janet Potter Awards for Literary Achievement...including "Cutest Couple," "Best Temper Tantrum," and "Biggest Failure."
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Reviews

Screwing Up and Falling in Love: Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park and Fangirl

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Both books are about how falling in love for the first time, particularly if you’ve never seen a love story you can relate to, can be as terrifying and confusing as it is joyful.
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In Person Reviews

Zen and the Art of Pie Making

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A great pie is a product of both skill and wisdom; as, I believe, is a great life.
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Staff Picks

Video Games Are a Metaphor for Life: Austin Grossman’s You

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I like listening to people talk about video games. Not those conversations about who scored a sick no-scope head shot, or which character's passive ability allows them to farm the most efficiently, mind you, but about why video games can be meaningful and why they matter.
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Reviews

The Museum of Unhappy Women: Z by Therese Anne Fowler

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Paradoxically, this is the reason to write and read about Zelda, because she deserved a life much more interesting than the one that she got. Interesting to her, that is, a life she could have given her energy and talents to, not just a life made interesting by famous friends and European capitals.
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Quick Hits

What Should I Read on Vacation?: A Question I Never Took Lightly Again

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This theory of vacation books, which I subscribe to so heartily, all began with a vacation I took, to London, which was one of the worst decisions I ever made, and the book I took along, Banvard’s Folly, which was one of the best.
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Reviews

Men Handling Things: On Stuart Nadler’s Wise Men

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I can’t say whether I was enjoying the book itself or just the true American, grand tradition of it all. Surely I’m reading a great book, I thought, a rich man with a diamond watch is staring at the ocean while his son looks on and doubts it all!
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Staff Picks

What We Talk about When We Talk about Crying: John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars

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When we talk about The Fault in Our Stars, we go straight to the unspeakable sadness, out of all the emotions evoked, because we want to convey the incredible emotional resonance of the book. What we’re trying to say is: this book mattered deeply to me, I think it could matter deeply to you too.
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Staff Picks

Love in the Bottom Rung: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband and He Hanged Himself

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The characters have nothing to hope for but love, the one resource that can’t be rationed. The most depressing love affairs — emotionless, unrequited, exploitative — shine with promise in these settings.
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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Janet Potter

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Some people say there are too many literary awards. I say there are not enough.
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Curiosities

Election Night in Chicago

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The Millions Interview

Addicted to Weird: An Interview with Jon Ronson

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Everybody in the book feels in some way as if they’re lost at sea, and are grasping for something to get them through. And the thing that they often grasp for is something that’s kind of irrational, makes no sense, is ridiculous. And it becomes almost a celebration of irrationality as a human character trait to be cherished.
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Essays

Elegy for a Grey Cat: On Grief, Books, and His Dark Materials

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For grief there’s A Year of Magical Thinking, for breakups there’s A Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, but what could I read when I lost my cat? Cats usually show up in books as witches or set dressing for spinsters. Then I thought of Philip Pullman.
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