A Year of Favorites: Sari Botton

A Year of Favorites

The Best Books I Read in 2013 My fellow passengers on a flight to LA last month must have thought I was insane. Reading Meaty, Samantha Irby’s TMI-filled collection of essays (a recent Emily Books selection), I found myself one minute crying over a young Irby being smacked by her alcoholic dad because she’d washed a cast iron pan with soap; the next I was laughing out loud at her mediations on the indignities of sex between real, flawed humans […]

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The Reading Life: Her Dark Materials

Over dinner after drinks, my friend and I eavesdrop and happen to hear two women talking about books. One of them summarizes The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. as “all set in Brooklyn.” My friend and I make faces at each other and keep listening. Other books are brought up, but none of their selling points seem to us as crushing as the first. “All set in Brooklyn.” “I have to read that” was the response, in case you didn’t […]

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