Summer Reading List 2017

The Village Voice's annual Summer Literary Special is filled with recommendations for the best novels, memoirs, poetry collections and other page-turners for basking on the beach or sweating on the subway.

By Village Voice

Village Voice
Roxane Gay Is The Hardest-Working Woman In Letters
Village Voice - by Jonathan Durbin
By now, the release of a new book by Roxane Gay has become a cultural event. The New York Times bestselling author is a rare mainstream crossover, …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
Jeremiah Moss Mourns the Loss of New York’s Soul
Village Voice - by Molly Fitzpatrick
On a gray, drizzly Friday in July, I joined Jeremiah Moss for a walk. We met at the Astor Place cube, as the artist Tony Rosenthal’s 1967 black …
Jul 18, 2017
Village Voice
Separating Fact From Fiction In Scott McClanahan’s Hillbilly Elegies
Village Voice - by Nate McNamara
“There is only one thing I know about life,” Scott McClanahan writes in The Sarah Book. “If you live long enough you start losing things.” McClanahan …
Jun 27, 2017
Village Voice
NYC’s Best Independent Booksellers Share Their Picks For Summer Reading – Village Voice
Village Voice - by michaelpventura
With its legendary eighteen miles of books, the Strand is a good first stop to find the summer’s ideal beach read. Leigh Altschuler, the Strand’s …
Jun 14, 2017
Village Voice
Don Winslow’s New York Is Strong With The Dark Side In “The Force”
Village Voice - by Bilge Ebiri
Don Winslow has no problem being called a “crime writer,” though his work has increasingly broken free of the genre. His meticulously researched, …
Jun 14, 2017
Village Voice
This Summer’s Best Pop Music Page-Turners
Village Voice - by Rob Sheffield
Released last month, the longtime Rolling Stone critic’s Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World (Dey Street, $25) has …
Jun 15, 2017
Village Voice
Teju Cole Explores How We See The World In “Blind Spot”
Village Voice - by Jennifer Krasinski
“I am intrigued by the continuity of places,” writes the award-winning author Teju Cole in his newest book, Blind Spot, “by the singing line that …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
Ten Books To Read This Summer
Village Voice - by Anelise Chen
At the end of his life, Einstein wrote a letter of condolence to a late friend’s family to say that in quantum physics, there is no distinction …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
Banned in Israel, Dorit Rabinyan’s Star-Crossed Romance Reaches U.S. Shores
Village Voice - by Leeron Hoory
Dorit Rabinyan’s third novel, All the Rivers, opens with FBI agents investigating the main character, Liat, for possible terrorist ties. Someone had …
Jul 15, 2017
Village Voice
In Alissa Nutting’s “Made For Love,” Technology And Romance Collide
Village Voice - by Hannah Gold
Some time ago, I went out for drinks with a group that included a fortysomething professional said to have written a novel, which my date, also a …
Jul 18, 2017
Village Voice
Going Coastal: Revisiting the Seventies SoCal of Eve Babitz’s “Sex and Rage”
Village Voice - by Melissa Anderson
Native Angeleno and besotted partisan of her hometown, the writer and polymath of pleasure Eve Babitz has often been defined by what she isn’t. She …
Jul 27, 2017
Village Voice
Chris Marker: Portrait of the Artist in Absentia
Village Voice - by Michael J. Agovino
Part of the allure of French filmmaker Chris Marker — besides his mesmerizing, unclassifiable oeuvre — is that he was a recluse. Not exactly …
Jul 11, 2017
Village Voice
Michael Robbins Reflects on Poetry, Pop Music, and Politics
Village Voice - by Sarah Aziza
Everyone you love will be extinguished, and so will you,” wrote Michael Robbins in 2015. In this essay — originally published in Poetry magazine and …
Jul 11, 2017
Village Voice
Christopher Bollen Has Written This Summer’s Book Of Bad Behavior
Village Voice - by Jonathan Durbin
Christopher Bollen’s new novel, The Destroyers, is a decadent romp through the high crimes and lowly misdemeanors of the one percent of the one …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
Five Classic Books To Get Woke By
Village Voice - by Jeremy McCarter
As Lin-Manuel Miranda’s co-author on last year’s bestselling Hamilton: The Revolution, Jeremy McCarter is well versed in the political DNA of the …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
“The Bachelor” Meets “The Handmaid’s Tale” in Catherine Lacey’s New Novel
Village Voice - by Sarah Edwards
Several years ago, Catherine Lacey found herself seeking out alternative treatments to untangle the scoliosis wrenching her body. A Southerner living …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
The Presidential Impeachment Primer
Village Voice - by John A. Farrell
In his disconcertingly timely new biography, Richard Nixon: The Life (Doubleday, $35), John A. Farrell catalogs the litany of ways in which a …
Jun 13, 2017
Village Voice
Classic Big Apple Books To Revisit This Summer
Village Voice - by Colin Harrison
An immigration lawyer by day, the protagonist of Colin Harrison’s ripping new thriller, You Belong to Me (Sarah Crichton, $27), has a peculiar …
Jun 14, 2017
Village Voice
Jill Eisenstadt Returns To A Haunted Rockaway
Village Voice - by Casey Barrett
An unlikely savior on 9-11: The surf was up. The remnants of Hurricane Erin had left the Eastern Seaboard with a surging swell that prompted a …
Jun 7, 2017
Village Voice
Shining A Spotlight On Blackness, Shantrelle Lewis Celebrates Style
Village Voice - by Siddhartha Mitter
When Shantrelle P. Lewis, curator and author of the new book Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style, was growing up in New Orleans, she had …
Jun 7, 2017
Village Voice
China Miéville’s History Of The Russian Revolution Offers Stark Lessons For Today
Village Voice - by Ross Barkan
How do we remember the Russian Revolution? Infused with the noblest of intentions and ideas, it ultimately begat disaster. “We know where this is …
May 30, 2017
Village Voice
Songs Of Crime And Punishment…And Punk Rock: An Interview With David Swinson
Village Voice - by Casey Barrett
Great crime writers have a way of coming on late. Raymond Chandler didn’t publish The Big Sleep until he was 50. James Lee Burke was also 50 when his …
May 26, 2017
Village Voice
Seventies New York Comes Alive in John Freeman Gill’s “The Gargoyle Hunters”
Village Voice - by Casey Barrett
When your back-cover blurbs include multiple comparisons to J.D. Salinger, you’ve got to be feeling pretty good about your first novel. When those …
May 10, 2017
Village Voice
A New Book Explores the Fatal Friendship Between Norman Mailer and Jack Abbott
Village Voice - by Allen Barra
Once upon a time, our culture treated famous writers like rock stars, and for decades, none rocked harder than Norman Mailer. He rocked political …
May 9, 2017
Village Voice
In Durga Chew-Bose’s Debut Collection of Essays, the Delight Is in the Details
Village Voice - by Alexandria Neason
She entered quietly, without fanfare, the soles of her black boots tapping the ground. The writer Durga Chew-Bose had been invited to the packed …
May 3, 2017
Village Voice
Rob Sheffield Explores How Beatles Live on Inside Our Heads
Village Voice - by Robert Christgau
There are a ton of Beatles books in the world, and I know too few — I’ve read more John Lennons, to make a meaningful distinction. So before I began …
May 2, 2017
Village Voice
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison Explores the Line Between Genius and Mental Illness
Village Voice - by Mac McClelland
Kay Redfield Jamison has written three books about bipolar disorder: one, a memoir about her own experience with the illness; another exploring the …
Apr 19, 2017
Village Voice
Author David Grann Follows Up “The Lost City of Z” With Another Ripping Yarn
Village Voice - by Josh Dean
Unlike The Lost City of Z — David Grann’s last bestseller, and now a major motion picture — the author’s new book, Killers of the Flower Moon, didn’t …
Apr 18, 2017
Village Voice
In Her Wry Debut Novel, Darcie Wilder Views the World Through Millennial-Pink Tinted Glasses
Village Voice - by Alana Mohamed
“I always wanted that Disney Channel Californian skateboarding childhood,” says Darcie Wilder, “but I never got it.” I’m sitting with the writer and …
Apr 18, 2017