Books and beats to give texture to these long, hot days.
“Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth” by Maggie Nelson
Publication Date: April 1, 2025
Why I Picked It: “Pathemata” arrives as a companion to “Bluets” (2009), an astonishing work of prose poetry of which I’ve memorized whole passages (speaking more to the way Nelson writes — with stunning precision; straight to the heart — than to my memory). In “Bluets,” Nelson lifts up the color blue as a lens, muse, mirror. In a similar fashion, “Pathemata” makes chronic pain its precious subject.
Recommended For: Anyone who is familiar with pain, especially pain that doesn’t go away, that demands an answer. Anyone who still visits early memories of the COVID-19 pandemic with a feeling of grief and fascination.
Lingering Lines: “All this time, and I was still alive.”
In Three Words: Patient, aching, surrender
“Chilean Poet” by Alejandro Zambra
Publication Date: March 1, 2020
Why I Picked It: A local presentation on Chilean-Palestinian solidarity piqued my curiosity about Chilean politics and authors who came of age under authoritarianism. The writer Alejandro Zambra, born and raised in the Pinochet dictatorship, caught my eye with his unbalanced presence on the shelf: One book, “Bonsai,” is slimmer than a pad of sticky notes, while “Chilean Poet” is more of a doorstop. I picked the one with a cat on the cover.
Recommended For: Seekers of deeply funny, soulful writing. Travelers. Readers who like a little romance but prefer that art be the life of any love story.
Lingering Lines: “It would have been easier to be disillusioned by poetry, to forget about poetry, than to accept, as Gonzalo did, that he’d failed. It would have been better to blame poetry, but it would have been a lie, because there are those poems he has just read, poems that prove poetry is good for something, that words can wound, throb, cure, console, resonate, remain.”
In Three Words: Charming, deft, hopeful
“To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf
Publication Date: May 5, 1927
Why I Picked It: Daniel Mason cited this book as an influence on “North Woods,” this year’s One Read, which I ultimately loved for its reverent treatment of time and memory. I also loved “Practice” by Rosalind Brown — another Woolfian read — for its deep sea dive into streams of consciousness. The qualities that made these books sing in my heart seemed to originate, at least in part, from Woolf’s influence. Why not go straight to the source?
Recommended For: Devoted reading. People who look for the poetry in everything.
Lingering Lines: “They only mumbled at each other on staircases; they looked up at the sky and said it will be fine or it won’t be fine. But this was one way of knowing people, she thought: to know the outline, not the detail, to sit in one’s garden and look at the slopes of a hill running purple down into the distant heather.”
In Three Words: Swirling, haunting, seaside
“Ego Death” by The Internet
Release Date: June 26, 2015
Why I Picked It: An old Odd Future T-shirt found in the closet sent me on a mission of nostalgia. Odd Future was nearing the end of an era when “Ego Death” was released by The Internet, a subgroup of the storied music collective, in 2015. This record is honest, exciting, and original; it is everything I want in an album, 10 years ago and today.
Recommended For: The house party, the palace, the backpack speaker. Listeners of Tyler the Creator, Steve Lacy, Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean, Anderson .Paak, Thundercat, and other music of an irresistibly sun-drenched West Coast quality.
Lingering Lines: “A tennis court if you wanna play / A couple ramps if you wanna skate / Wings on my back if you wanna fly away” (“Palace/Curse”)
In Three Words: Summer, skating, paradise
☀️
-Karena
