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The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera

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The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera
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A bilingual and elegiac collection that explores transnational sorrow with an openness to delving into the gulfs loss creates, rather than succumbing to them. Memories of family and political histories intertwine with cultural unrest and the sensorially intimate to form poems with a sketchy quality—much like the drawings in the book—with deep feeling and sense of possibility. Disarmingly beautiful.

The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera, (List Price: $17, Graywolf Press, 9781644452790, April 2024)

Reviewed by Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld

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All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld
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Rothfeld begins with the promise of un-containment. If all things are in fact too small, then this book cannot contain all that it hopes to include and isn’t there something beautiful about that? Truly, what Rothfeld deftly handles is the ways that excessiveness bleeds into all aspects of lived experience – minds, bodies, and things. At times this collection hits a wall, particularly as Rothfeld realizes the limits of her own experience. So, while I don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything Rothfeld says here, her nuanced thinking on particularly the move towards owning less, thinking less, and doing less of the last decade reveals my own thoughts in the process. Perhaps what ties these lightly disparate essays together is the promise that wanting and longing are active and pressing parts of our lives.

All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld, (List Price: $27.99, Metropolitan Books, 9781250849915, April 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib

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There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
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Hanif Abdurraqib’s newest book focuses his signature poetic lyricism and prescient cultural criticism on yes, basketball, but also on so much more. Abdurraqib asks his reader to consider what it means to “make it,” who gets to achieve that success, and if that success could be considered worth it. Perhaps most poignant, to me, is the way that Abdurraqib weaves personal history with the narrative of city, team, and people. So yes, let us sit and commiserate, and let us share what we can in these pages for the time we have.

There’s Always This YearThere’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib, (List Price: $32, Random House, 9780593448793, March 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall

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I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall
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A beautiful punch in the gut like one from the mosh pit on a Saturday night. Mariah Stovall’s full-length debut sweeps her readers into the tender yet vicious embrace of teenage friendship and meditates on putting on your own life jacket before trying to help others. Stovall reveals connections and personal history slowly, moving between past, present, and future, all woven through with the heroes of post-hardcore, punk, and emo. This novel bears a re-read to untangle the ways that music and fiction intertwine.

I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall, (List Price: $28, Soft Skull, 9781593767600, 2024-02-13)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada

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Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada
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Perfectly tailored for the reader lingering weirdly between Gen-Z and millennial in title, this book kicks butt and takes names. Deftly navigating (justified) teen angst with a humorous voice and unmatched compassion, Nerada has taken up residence on my list of authors to watch. A book that commits to the bit, Skater Boy destroys labels and points directly at systemic failings we’ve had a propensity to overlook. Nerada’s debut cheekily plays with how the intersections of those two issues create divisive and dismissive behavior. Wesley’s confinement to “punk” and “failure” parallel Tristan’s shining “poise” and “success” as the two boys fall into their predetermined roles, but Nerada’s characters compel the story forward, pushing against the oppressive, frustrating isolation of their respective archetypes and finding themselves wholly realized. Do yourself a favor, get to know the skater boy.

Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada, (List Price: $18.99, Soho Teen, 9781641295345, February 2024)

Reviewed by Shae Jordan, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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49 Days by Agnes Lee

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49 Days by Agnes Lee
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An introspective and emotional exploration of life after death, both for those who have been lost and have experienced a loss, Lee has succeeded in capturing the full spectrum of emotions in a limited range of color. From scenes of laughter to those where no one can bear to speak, her graphic novel explores the different ways in which we know one another. What a deeply human story, and what a deeply moving way to consider each other. Part slice of life, part emotional trial, this is a particularly successful emotional exploration of grief.

49 Days by Agnes Lee, (List Price: $ , Levine Querido, 9781646143740, 2024-03-05)

Reviewed by Shae Jordan, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard

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The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild by Mathias Énard
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Énard chews on more than the average author bites off, but just when all hope for focus seems to be thrown out the window, clarity comes knocking on the door (after comical foley work of scrambling footfall from window to door) wearing a different shirt (hastily buttoned off-kilter). I know I’m stalling, but there are so many wonderful centrifugal tales orbiting the titular red giant offering distraction after delightful distraction, that I struggle to pinpoint just what I loved about this book. It’s a carnival that includes gravedigging jesters, a flea circus of soul transference, an oh-so-leaky tunnel of love, tasteful dunk tanks for every religion, and that’s where my analogy sits deflated. In short: a splendid (it is!) love story (or is it?) of antiquated country life in a dying world (or is it? Oops it is).

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard, (List Price: $18.95, New Directions, 9780811231299, December 2023)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark

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Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark
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In Happily, Mark spins magically surreal sketches of motherhood, art, and life. Woven from fairy tales refracted into reality, each essay shimmers with wit, candor, and whimsy. As sharp as a spindle, as ethereal as an eggshell—this gemlike collection of memoir-fables will leave you enchanted.

Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark, (List Price: $27, Random House, 9780593242476, March 2023)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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L.C. by Susan Daitch

L.C.by Susan Daitch
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I’m still jauntin’ along on my Daitch jaunt! L.C. toys with how even a well-translated work can muck up the original author’s tale with the translator’s personal story. SD books are like a completely white jigsaw puzzle where each character gets their own handful of random pieces to paint or stomp on. In the end, it all fits, but oh what a journey getting that sucker together. I’d say this is my least favorite of her books, but I also had some ice cream last night that had a least favorite bite, so. Yeah. All gold stars from me.

L.C. by Susan Daitch, (List Price: $14.95, Dalkey Archive Press, 9781564783158, March 2002)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in , Georgia

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Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera

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Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera
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A delicate coming-of-age story that is both elegiac and an ode to craftwork, womanhood, and friendship. Much like the characters in Cross-Stitch, Barrera and translator MacSweeny have yet again come together to craft another gift to treasure. One of my favorite reads of the year.

Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera, (List Price: $24, Two Lines Press, 9781949641530, November 2023)

Reviewed by Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

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The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
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The Berry Pickers is the debut novel from indigenous author Amanda Peters. When four-year-old Ruthie goes missing, the youngest of five in a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia, her older brother Joe is despondent and the loss of Ruthie haunts the family for fifty years. Meanwhile, a white family in Maine is raising a child named Norma with overbearing and almost suffocating familial love. Norma’s faint memories and dreams of her missing life are confusing until they almost vanish. The Berry Pickers considers lost lives, second chances, and the power of forgiveness.

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters, (List Price: $27.99, Catapult, 9781646221950, October 2023)

Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The North Wind and the Sun by Philip C. Stead

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The North Wind and the Sun by Philip C. Stead
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This beautifully retold fable is a celebration of endurance and compassion and a reminder that gentleness and love (and patience) are more powerful than cruelty and hate (and haste). Stead’s innovative style of illustration evokes a classic with bold lines and quiet colors, and his thoughtful tale-telling is unparalleled. A story both timeless and perfect for these times.

The North Wind and the Sun by Philip C. Stead, (List Price: $18.99, Neal Porter Books, 9780823455836, October 2023)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Good Books for Bad Children by Beth Kephart

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Good Books for Bad Children by Beth Kephart
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Most of our beloved classic children’s authors (think Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, E. B. White, John Steptoe, and so many more!) have books in the world thanks to efforts of one formidable woman—Ursula Nordstrom. This brilliant biography displays her awesomely unorthodox approach to children’s literature and her wily sense of humor, all while celebrating the unique books she ushered into the world.

Good Books for Bad Children by Beth Kephart, (List Price: $18.99, Anne Schwartz Books, 9780593379578, September 2023)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Bookseller, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

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The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
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The story of two black teenage siblings, one wrongfully over-sentenced to indefinite time in the titular Reformatory (based on the infamous Dozier School for Boys), the other working from the outside (if you could call Jim Crow-era Florida “outside”) to get her brother out. With a father MIA, having narrowly escaped a lynch mob for trying to unionize, and a mother recently deceased (but not 100% out of the picture), every choice and action made by the teens give the book a one-step-forward-one-landslide-back momentum right up to the last page. Due brilliantly plates an equal parts jailbreak and ghost story, both playing by history’s rulebook, pulling no punches along the way, with neither element hindering the other, which is a feat on its own, but to make it edge-of-seat-worthy with an epic showdown-at-high-noon finish is just extra icing on the icing.

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, (List Price: $28.99, Saga Press, 9781982188344, October 2023)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Our Strangers by Lydia Davis

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Our Strangers by Lydia Davis
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Picking up the same one-to-three-page story by Lydia Davis ten times gives the reader ten different experiences, like taking a plate of gourmet food from a fussy child with her right hand, passing it behind her back to the left hand and returning it to the child saying “fine, eat your magic boopie beans” to the child’s ravenous delight. And the beauty of a book full of one-to-three-page, multidimensional gems is that you’ve got a book jam-packed with multidimensional gems.

Our Strangers by Lydia Davis, (List Price: 26, Bookshop Editions, 9798987717103, October 2023)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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