Bookseller's Choice

Bookseller’s Choice

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About Leigh’s Choices:

“I usually read with no end to my appetite and no

category in mind; fiction, essays, memoirs, poetry,

history… anything with writing that grabs me and

draws me in. These days, I'm listening to a lot of

audiobooks and spending time with old favorites --

it turns out there's nothing like end-of-the-world

anxiety to keep me from finishing new books (who

knew?). I’ve also been spending far more quality

time with visual arts books, at home and in the

shop. In this collection are books I’ve found

affirming, comforting and inspiring -- over my life,

but especially in the past year -- and a selection of

forthcoming books I’m excited to read in the next

six months.”

Joan Mitchell

SFMoMA & Yale University

Press

This gorgeous printed cloth-over-

board cover serves as the perfect

doorway into scholarly text, literary

essays by Paul Auster and Eileen

Myles among others, gatefolds with

detailed illustrations of Joan

Mitchell’s paintings, and much

more. It’s a masterful retrospective

that covers her career from 1950s

New York abstraction to huge

multipanel works, sketchbooks,

poem paintings, and her cultural

connections to music. Just blew me

away.

The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism

Kyle Chayka

If you’re decluttering, sparking joy, cleansing,

dieting, and finding yourself unsatisfied, I would

recommend this deep dive into the joys we can find in

minimalism in art, music, and architecture. Kyle

Chayka’s essays on the commodification of

minimalism are splendid! They offer context,

thoughts on the intention behind the movement, and

reveal some possible impacts of the consumer trend

for wanting less. He also has three (three!)

newsletters on entertainment, media and journalism,

and original essays in progress that never fail to

impress.

This 2018 monograph on the work of Luchita Hurtado

was the first ever published, in her 98th year on earth!

She’d been living, working and painting for nearly a

century before she got mainstream recognition. I find

her story and her art really inspiring. This collection

includes essays and interviews about and with her, and

a biographical timeline in the back.

Luchita Hurtado: I Live I Die I Will Be Reborn

Serpentine Galleries & Koenig Books

Bauhaus artist Anni Albers is most

well known for her masterful large

scale weavings. This monograph

features one that was commissioned

for the Hotel Camino Real in Mexico

City, not seen in public since 1989,

along with other prime examples of

Albers’ work that honors and

references traditional craftways. With

essays on Bauhaus craft and Latin

American art and culture, Camino

Real serves as a wonderful

introduction, or a great gift for a fan.

Anni Albers: Camino Real

Anni Albers

The Copenhagen Trilogy

Tove Ditlevsen

Also available as three individual paperback

editions, this is a masterwork of memoir,

following Tove from her childhood into adult

life. She captures with striking honesty the

difficulty of living up to competing roles as

woman, writer, wife and mother -- not to

mention the struggles of mental illness and

addiction -- in mid twentieth century

Denmark. She’s described by fellow Danish

writer Dorthe Nors (another favorite) as “the

Billie Holiday of poetry, accessible, complex,

and simple all at the same time. There’s a

special mournful sweetness in the earlier

poems that belongs to the girlish. Later, her

prose turned the dreams and

disappointments of life as a woman inside

out.”

Mean

Myriam Gurba

Memoir blended with true crime blended

with poetry and politic and humor.

Myram really fucking did it here, the

form is so fluid and so groundbreaking.

“Being mean isn’t for everybody. It’s best

practiced by those who understand it as

an art form. These virtuosos live closer to

the divine. They’re queers.”

I read this trilogy as it came out originally,

waiting in intense anticipation between books! I

recommend getting all three together and staying

in for however long it takes you. As in much of

Jemisin’s work, the world-building takes you

somewhere totally different without sacrificing the

relevance of the social relationships and

development of characters within. Empathy,

magic, wonder, grief, all of humanity wrapped up

in earth-shakingly powerful storytelling.

The Cost of Living

Deborah Levy

Second in a series of three short memoirs

--this one tracks Levy’s endeavor to take

herself and her writing seriously again

after divorcing her husband at fifty.

Moving into a drafty new apartment with

her daughter, with no dedicated space to

write, she pushes herself to do the

necessary work.

The Broken Earth Trilogy

N. K. Jemisin

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the

Temple

Hilma af Klint

Only the second installment in an

overwhelming seven volume complete

catalog of the works of Hilma af Klint!

Her Paintings for the Temple Series is

the most famous of her work. It

consists of almost two hundred pieces

that are colorful, abstract, biomorphic,

visual translations of her own systems

of spiritual connection.

Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray For Love

Yayoi Kusama

This is an intensely personal book,

based on the exhibition at David

Zwirner New York in 2019.

Includes tons of new paintings,

sculptures, and Infinity Mirror

Rooms, but my favorite part is how

much original WRITING is here.

Poetic remembrances paired with

photographs of the artist over time

grant us access to her unique and

magnificent creative mind.

Organized into three parts (The Cosmos,

Higher Beings, and Practitioners), this small

but mighty book covers occult and mystical

subjects in art through human history. Along

with sharply reproduced illustrations on

matte pages, it includes biographical

information on artists and their philosophical

and historical contexts. Sparks curiosity and

inspiration!

The Art of the Occult: A Visual

Sourcebook for the Modern Mystic

S. Elizabeth

Truly GRAND rooms. There is nothing

like this kind of luxury decoration,

sometimes flamboyant, sometimes

understated, to make me stare longingly

at my own familiar walls and reimagine

what my space could be. None of this is

really achievable or easy to scale down

for a Bay Area apartment. It’s pure,

delicious, fantasy.

The Lives of Others: Sublime

Interiors of Extraordinary People

Simon Watson

Catherine Lacey is one of my absolute favorite

writers. She translates loneliness onto the page

in magical ways, and cuts up culture mercilessly.

Despite its seriousness, PEW is a joy to read, and

as usual with Lacey, prescient.

Absurd comedy, devastating sadness, and

raunchiness beyond compare are what you get

from the stories of Megg, Mogg, Owl and their

crowd, dealing with real-world problems of

addiction, depression, and witch/familiar power

dynamics in relationships. Seeds & Stems is a

collection of fragments previously only available

in zines, on promotional material, and in weird

corners of the internet. My fave so far is a one-

color spread of Megg & Werewolf Jones’ band

practice, which includes a true banger called

"Winter Trauma."

Confessions of the Fox

Jordy Rosenberg

Pew

By Catherine Lacey

Lydia Millet's every sentence is a perfect little

razor. This novel hit me hard when I first read it,

and upon second read, settled right in to my

heart. Hilarious, visionary, and unsettling to the

max, with its priorities in all the right places.

Shortlisted for the National Book Award for

Fiction in 2020. Someday she’ll win.

A Children’s Bible

Lydia Millet

A gift of a novel! love, sex, transness,

queerness, piracy, and anti-colonialists

fighting corporate overseers and cops. Radical

energy on every page. It’s so smart, and so

sexy, and such a fun read.

Seeds and Stems

Simon Hanselmann

The Renunciations

Donika Kelly

As a big fan of Kelly’s 2016 collection,

Bestiary, I YELPED out loud when I

saw a new one on its way. Not to be

missed.

(Graywolf Press, May 4)

Euripides’ Trojan Women: A Comic

Anne Carson, Rosanna Bruno

A collaborative project from classicist and poet Carson

with the art of Bruno -- I’ve been growing tired of

“graphic adaptations” recently, but this one caught

my eye. Human characters are rendered as animals

(reminiscent of Maus) and the stark, textured black

and white seems a suitably solemn illustrative style

for a classic drama of war’s effects on humanity.

(New Directions, May 4)

Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey

Greece and Cyprus

Yasmin Khan

Another beautiful cookbook from the woman

behind Zaitun! The stories and recipes here show

the connections between foodways of the

Mediterranean and Middle East, tracing shared

routes of commerce and migration.

(W. W. Norton, May 4)

Women in Abstraction

Christine Macel

Based on an exhibit at the Centre

Pompidou in Paris, this is an incredible

overview of the often overlooked roles of

women in 20th Century Abstract art,

covering painting, dance, performance,

photography, film… all kinds of media.

I’ve only seen a few interiors, but I’m

really looking forward to getting my

hands on this one.

(Thames & Hudson, May 11)

available to pre-order now!

Love the voice of this young character, her skill

and strength, her fierce unwillingness to cede her

true self despite immense pressure & abuse. Her

internal world so starkly mismatches her

surroundings. I also love to see a frank,

understated approach to sexual abuse that neither

re-victimizes nor objectifies its survivor.

(Scout Press, February 16)

No One is Talking About This

Patricia Lockwood

(Riverhead, February 16)

Own It: The Secret of Life

Diane Von Furstenberg

fragments on words of action, support,

inspiration from one of my favorite designers.

perfect small gift. from her intro “The secret of

life is one thing: own it. Own your imperfections.

Own your vulnerability; it becomes your

strength. Whatever your challenge is, own it.

Owning it is the first step to everything.'

(Phaidon Press, March 8)

Night Rooms: Essays

Gina Nutt

(Two Dollar Radio, March 23)

Dark Horses

Susan Mihalic

Stone Fruit

Lee Lai

(Fantagraphics, May 11)

With Teeth

Kristen Arnett

Arnett’s stories and novels (and twitter presence?) are

charming, funny, sometimes scary, always meaningfully

entertaining. Her newest is the story of two mothers dealing

with their frighteningly difficult young son. Moving and

tender, at the same time as it chills & thrills

(Riverhead, June 1)

A sure-to-be beautiful study of the homes and lives

of a collection of creative women. Twenty

philosophers, rebels, and artists from across the

globe share the spaces they’ve made for themselves.

Images rom Robyn Lea, an Australian

photographer, author, and director.

(Thames & Hudson, June 8))

A Room of Her Own

Robyn Lea

available to pre-order now!

Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night

Morgan Parker

(Tin House, July 13)

Nightbitch

Rachel Yoder

(Doubleday, July 20)

Seek You

Kristen Radtke

(Pantheon, July 6)

Intimacies

Katie Kitamura

(Riverhead, July 20)

What Strange Paradise

Omar El Akkad

(Knopf, July 20)

available to pre-order now!

Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists

Antwaun Sargent

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa

Marilyn Chase