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Recent discourse has begged the question: Why aren’t men reading fiction? Are they reading anything at all? In this monthly series, we’re talking to men about the books they think other guys should check out right now. Whether it’s revisiting a classic, getting engrossed in a memoir or devouring something fast paced and action packed, there’s bound to be something here for any reader to enjoy.
This month’s installment brings another riveting selection of books, this time recommended by authors, editors and, of course, the men of this very publication. Their picks include a recent Pulitzer Prize winner, a memoir set in Jamaica and a gripping coming-of-age fantasy novel. If you’ve found yourself in a reading rut, you truly can’t go wrong picking up any of these titles.
If you’re interested in a bonus recommendation from a woman, I’d suggest Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa. The novel explores family and relationship dynamics through 25-year-old Takako, her uncle Satoru and the secondhand bookstore that’s been in their family for three generations. While there’s much to learn about the characters, so much of what intrigued me came from moments in the bookstore.
It’s a good reminder that you can always bring this story to your local bookseller and ask them, “Do you have this one in stock?” If not, try another one of these nine great picks.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
“I haven’t been a regular gamer since the N64 days of my childhood, but that hasn’t stopped me from staying up way too late every night in recent memory in the company of the best friends and video-game creators at the heart of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. That would be Sam, a wayward undergrad at Harvard who hobbles around on a foot that’s been reassembled again and again after an incident in childhood, and Sadie, a gifted programmer studying at MIT, who rekindle their friendship after having a falling out as kids. They initially mend ties in glorious fashion, by building a blockbuster video game that anoints them as young visionaries, but the pitfalls of success are many, as they’ll soon find out. You don’t need to be into video games to tear through this convention-breaking novel, because at its core it’s about the creative process, the push and pull of work versus life, and the lifelong friendships that defy easy definition.” — Alex Lauer, InsideHook Features Editor
Bottom Shelf: How a Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life by Fred Minnick
“Fred Minnick, a whiskey tastemaker, YouTube creator and esteemed spirits writer and historian, had a more complicated history than I ever knew. After serving in the armed forces, Minnick’s reintroduction into civilian life was challenging. I won’t spoil too much of this deeply personal and engrossing autobiography, but it works both for whiskey enthusiasts who want to learn about a forgotten bottle and a really effective book on the power of family, therapy and mindfulness. You can read my Q&A with Minnick here.” — Kirk Miller, InsideHook Senior Lifestyle Editor
The 11 Books You Should Be Reading This March
Fittingly, a lot of them involve baseball
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
“I love books that have the pacing of a page-turner but the philosophical and political depth of a slower novel — very few authors can pull that off, but Orhan Pamuk is one of them. His novel Snow follows a poet who returns to a small city in eastern Turkey and finds himself caught between radical Islamists and radical secularists, both willing to kill for their vision of the country. What’s usually reported as a two-dimensional conflict becomes something far more complicated in Pamuk’s hands — he shows you how ordinary people, people who just want to wear their headscarves and go to school and live quietly, get crushed between ideologues on both sides. But he also does something unexpected: he makes you understand the appeal of certainty, even dangerous certainty, and the loneliness of the people who refuse it. It’s the kind of novel that makes you smarter about the world without ever boring you.” — Steven Reese, creator and author of Read Your Color
Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin
“It’s an extremely funny, incredibly dark novel about Philadelphia, experimental eye surgery, terrible roommates and widespread sexual abuse. There’s also a chapter-length parody/rewrite of a Shusaku Endo novel set at the Jersey Shore and a bravura section that omits the letter ‘E.’ ‘Polyamory is only pragmatic if what you want isn’t good’ is one such e-less sentence, and also maybe the novel’s motto. Beilen is a genius.” — Andrew Martin, author of Down Time
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
“My fiancee is a deeply expressive reader — she laughs, groans and cries at both pivotal and prosaic moments in her books. Over time, I’ve learned to stop asking her: What is it?! After all, if a story has you so by its pincers that you’re reacting out loud, that’s a less than ideal time to be beamed back into the real world. For once, while I was reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead, the shoe was on the other foot. I lay in bed, laughing at the irreverent narration of the titular character, itching all over whenever Kingsolver sent him to his latest rock bottom (then promptly started drilling into the Earth’s crust to send him even lower). This is a story about childhood, coal, pills, football, cartoon strips, ill-fated loves, America’s dark heart, America’s wisecrack humor and the courage of hope. This book brought all sorts of noises out of me, while leaving firm footprints on my heart.” — Tanner Garrity, InsideHook Wellness Editor
The Possibility of Tenderness by Jason Allen-Paisant
“Recently I’ve been struck by the words of Jason Allen-Paisant. He won the U.K.’s two most prestigious poetry awards in the same year — the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize — a rare feat. But it’s his debut memoir, The Possibility of Tenderness, that has gripped me. He gave a revelatory interview recently with Alexis Pauline Gumbs (in the Los Angeles Review of Books) that transported me back to the stories my dad would tell me about the summers he spent in Jamaica’s countryside as a young boy with his grandmother, and the inadvisable and wholly unsupervised escapades he would get into with his three brothers. But the book also beautifully explores our collective relationship to land, and really, to each other. It’s an invitation to situate yourself within the more-than-human world and it grapples with the complexities of that invitation, masterfully.” — Sean Beckford, Associate Editor at Milkweed Editions
Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex by Sophia Giovannitti
“As both a reader and a writer, I am drawn to learn more about how different things come together. In the case of the art world, that can involve reading about the way different artists put their inspiration into practice or discovering what the inner workings of museums and galleries are like. Those are among the reasons I haven’t been able to get Sophia Giovannitti’s Working Girl off my mind since reading it. In under 200 pages, she deals with some of the biggest themes out there, including the commodification of both art and sex and the thin line between patronage and exploitation. Working Girl is a book that’s alive with ideas and sharp edges, and seems tailor-made to challenge preconceived notions about, well, almost everything.” — Tobias Carroll, novelist, journalist and InsideHook contributor
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden
“To the average committed spouse, the synopsis of Strangers — the perfect couple with the perfect life suddenly implodes for seemingly no reason, leaving the author to pick up the pieces — might sound more like a grotesquely engrossing thriller than a heartfelt memoir, made all the more horrifying by its firm grounding in reality. And yet, despite grappling with partnership, love and how well you actually know someone in intimate, gory detail, Belle Burden’s profoundly introspective writings were more thought-provoking than depressing, enough for me to hand the hardcover over to my own partner upon completion. It’s an impressive debut by the first-time author, who adapted the memoir from a viral New York Times essay she wrote a few years back.” — Paolo Sandoval, InsideHook Style Editor
The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter
“Nonstop action from the first page to the last. An epic coming-of-age story with an unmatched character arc. Think Gladiator, but with black characters!” —Edrick Scarvers, BookToker
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