Pick Your Passion

Actually, everyone in the book industry is talking about this novel, and rightly so. Lockwood’s debut fiction—after many published poems, essays, the memoir Priestdaddy about her Catholic upbringing, and a huge Twitter following—is as weird and fresh as her own life. Mining autobiographical material she juxtaposes virtual life on the internet with the jolt of real life—including health disasters of her family and herself. Her work manages to balance traumatic experiences with a wicked playfulness. Lockwood is fast becoming one of America’s most important humorists. Here her Midwestern childhood ambitions to become a writer are fully realized.

Illustrated by Joanna Concejo

The Nobel Prize-winning author of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead has penned a lovely tale that is particularly resonant for today’s world. As more and more readers gravitate toward poetry and self-care here is a graphic novel that brings together delicate pen-and-ink illustrations with the text about one man’s search for relief from the world’s chaos. Touching upon the value of meditation and patience, and the lessons of the natural world, Tokarczuk’s book can be enjoyed by readers of any age. Winner of the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2018 for children’s illustrated literature.

One might assume, from his philosophically and psychologically complex plays, that this brilliant playwright lives primarily in his head. But Stoppard has had a very rich exterior life as well—hundreds of friends, a few marriages, and those affairs. Fleeing Czechoslovakia in childhood, immigrating to England, the award-winning plays (Arcadia is my favorite), screenplays (Shakespeare in Love), and good gossip fill this indispensable tome. Dame Hermione Lee has successfully tackled formidable women writers—Woolf, Cather, Wharton—and here she illuminates the plays as well as the emotional life of her first male (and living) subject. Luckily for Stoppard he can enjoy the experience as well.