A poem by Lauren Aliza Green, novels by Georgi Gospodinov and Kevin Barry, a short story by Matthew Klam, and a memoir by Abigail Thomas

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I refused to throw out 
a single one— 
eggs, milk, Wonder Bread— 
the tiny blue checks 
like a secret code, . . . 
—From "My Mother's Handwritten Grocery Lists," a poem by Lauren Aliza Green, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Fall 2024).  

Years later, when many of his memories had already scattered like frightened pigeons, he could still go back to that morning when he was wandering aimlessly through the streets of Vienna, and a vagrant with a mustache like García Márquez's was selling newspapers on the sidewalk in the early March sun. A wind blew up and several of the newspapers swirled into the air. He tried to help, chasing down two or three and returning them. You can keep one, said Márquez.
          Gaustine, that's what we'll call him, even though he himself used the name like an invisibility cloak, took the newspaper and handed the man a banknote, a rather large one for the occasion.
—From Time Shelter, a novel by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel (Liveright Publishing Corporation/W. W. Norton & Company, 2022). It was originally published as Времеубежище (Janet 45, 2020).

It is night in the old Spanish port of Algeciras. . . . Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond sit on a bench just a few yards west of the hatch. They are in their low fifties. . . . Maurice Hearne's jaunty, crooked smile will appear with frequency. His left eye is smeared and dead, the other oddly bewitched, as though with an excess of life, for balance. He wears a shabby suit, an open-necked black shirt, white runners and a derby hat perched high on the back of his head. Dudeish, at one time, certainly, but past it now. 
—From Night Boat to Tangier, a novel by Kevin Barry (Doubleday, 2019). The paperback was released by Vintage in 2020. 

My daughter walked into the house with a boy named Brendan. She came into the kitchen limping a little, her mascara smeared, and lay down on the floor in front of the stove. I was dipping a cookie in icing, checking the color to see if it needed more green. Every year, in December, our block had a Christmas-cookie swap, a ritual that had become one of the less disgusting parts of the holiday season. 
—From "The Other Party," a short story by Matthew Klam, The New Yorker (December 19, 2022), pp. 50-59.

Sitting with the dogs, drinking coffee, listening to the weather. Snow out there. "Wind chill warnings for today and tomorrow," says the reporter, "Most at risk, children and the elderly." At first the word "elderly" conjures up someone thin, frail, someone I might help across a busy street. Someone else. A moment passes before I realize, with a jolt, that I'm elderly. I don't feel elderly. I feel like myself, only more so. 
—From Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Golden Notebook Press, 2023). It appears that Scribner just released (re-released?) this essay collection in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats on November 19, 2024.  

Short stories by Kevin Barry, poetry by Judith Harris, a novel by Colm Tóibín, and essays by David Sedaris

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Living alone in his dead uncle's cottage, and with the burden lately of wandering thoughts in the night, Seamus Ferris had fallen hard for a Polish girl who worked at a café down in Carrick.  He had himself almost convinced that the situation had the dimensions of a love affair, though in fact he'd exchanged no more than a few dozen words with her, whenever she named the price for his flat white and scone, and he shyly paid it, offering a line or two himself on the busyness of the town or the fineness of the weather.
—From "The Coast of Leitrim," the opening story of That Old Country Music, a collection of short stories by Kevin Barry (Doubleday, 2020). I first read this story in print in 2019, and I really liked it. Now, though, in 2024, I listened to it as part of the audiobook for That Old Country Music, and this added a whole different dimension. If you have the option, I highly recommend reading the text in addition to listening to it in an audio format read by the author. "The Coast of Leitrim" first appeared in print in The New Yorker (October 15, 2018), pp. 70-75, and is available online with the option to read and/or listen to the story. 

Then a flash of a cardinal
like a struck match, 
—From "Cardinal and Pine Through an Open Window," one of two poems by Judith Harris, Terrain.org (September 14, 2023).  

Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work. She watched Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clerys in Dublin in the sale. 
—From Brooklyn, a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2009). The sequel to this book, Long Island, is forthcoming from Scribner on May 7, 2024.   

Bonus books to read again: 

"Oh, for God's sake," my mother said, tossing her wooden spoon into a cauldron of chipped-beef gravy. "Leave that goddamned cat alone before I claw you myself. It's bad enough that you've got her tarted up like some two-dollar whore. Take that costume off her and turn her loose before she runs away just like the last one." 
—From Naked, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1997).

My performing career effectively ended the day my drug dealer moved to Georgia to enter a treatment center. Since the museum I'd done a piece at a gallery and had another scheduled for the state university. "How can you do this to me?" I asked her. "You can't move away, not now. Think of all the money I've spent on you. Don't I deserve more than a week's notice? And what do you need with a treatment center? People like you the way you are; what makes you think you need to change? Just cut back a little, and you'll be fine. Please, you can't do this to me. I have a piece to finish, goddamnit. I'm an artist and I need to know where my drugs are coming from."
          Nothing I said would change her mind.  
—From Me Talk Pretty One Day, a memoir/collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2000). This section is from "Twelve Moments in the Life of an Artist," Eleven, pp. 39-59 in the paperback. A version of this piece first appeared on This American Life (August 22, 1997) in an episode called "Blame It on Art."

Novels by Jhumpa Lahiri and Francesca Ekwuyasi, short stories by Polly Rosenwaike, and memoir by Abigail Thomas

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East of the Tolly Club, after Deshapran Sashmal Road splits in two, there is a small mosque. A turn leads to a quiet enclave. A warren of narrow lanes and modest middle-class homes.  
—From The Lowland, a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013; paperback Vintage, 2014). 

She came back down a few hours later to buy gum from the 7-Eleven down the street. As she was heading out the door, Jasmine waved her notebook. "I guess I could share the field notes I wrote about you today."
          Leah was suddenly nervous about what this undersized investigator might have to say about her disheveled appearance. But she believed in empirical evidence. "Sure, if you want." 
          Jasmine read from the notebook. "She is wearing a blue-and-green-striped shirt. I want a shirt like that. She is wearing jeans with a hole in one knee. She is wearing muddy shoes. It's raining so why didn't she wear boots? Maybe she is sick today because she looks white. I mean whiter than normal. I hope she feels better." Jasmine closed the notebook. "I might do a sketch later."  
—From Look How Happy I'm Making You, a collection of short stories about pregnancy and new motherhood by Polly Rosenwaike (Doubleday, 2019). This section is from "Field Notes," which appears on pages 16-30 in the hardcover and which was first published as "Laboratory on the Moon" in WomenArts Quarterly Journal (Summer 2013). 

Later he built her a special platform so she could knead her bread more comfortably, with no strain on her back. She loved to bake, and he loved her anadama bread. His eyes would close when he put a piece in his mouth and stay closed while he ate. They had a big window installed in the kitchen that looked into the woods. In the fall afternoons she used to watch them empty of their light like a glass of bourbon slowly being filled to the brim. 
—From Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, a book by Abigail Thomas (hardcover Alfred A. Knopf, 2000; paperback Anchor Books, 2001). This segment is from "Chaos," pages 62-63 in the paperback. (Anne Lamott's blurb referred to this book as "Not so much memoir as a stained-glass window of scenes garnered from a life," which I think is an excellent description of it.) 

I live in a cozy house with pretty furniture. Time passes here. There is a fireplace and two acres and the dogs run around and dig big holes and I don't care. . . . Rich is lodged in a single moment and it never tips into the next. Last week I lay on his bed in the nursing home and watched him. I was out of his field of vision and I think he forgot I was there.
—From A Three Dog Life, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Harcourt, 2006). This is from the beginning of the opening essay, "What Stays the Same."

By the time Taiye had rubbed oil into her skin and pulled on a longsleeved linen kaftan, the cakes were done, and her mother was awake. Taiye found Kambirinachi sitting on the kitchen counter, with a vacant smile on her face as she stirred milk into a white mug filled with hot cocoa. Coca-Cola was on the floor, batting at her swinging legs.
          “Mami, good morning.” Taiye smiled and kissed her mother’s warm forehead.
—From Butter Honey Pig Bread, a debut novel by Francesca Ekwuyasi (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). I did not read this book; I listened to an audiobook version narrated by Amaka Umeh (Bespeak Audio Editions, 2021). 

Four poems and two short stories

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The daughter wakes to a world
encased in ice--
the pine trees stiff with it.
--From "Still," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, from her collection Once (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), pp. 85-87.

It is a green landscape, houses stalwart
as circus ponies, American houses, wet
kids moving through them in Spandex bathing suits; 
inside, sandwiches with crusts cut off, 
windows flung open and striped awnings rolled out; 
family portraits on the walls and generic
medicines in the cabinet: the middle classes.
--From "Twenty-first Century Fireworks," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in The Kenyon Review and reprinted in her collection Once (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), pp. 17-18.

Who will remember us
when the light breaks
over the western valley 

and the trash stirs, 
the flood having come
with its red waters

and washed our graves away?
I was a person, 

once, I believe. . . .
--From "Churchyard," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in Tin House (Issue number 49, Fall 2011) and reprinted in her collection Once (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), pp. 45-46.

There was once a young wife, the apple of her husband's eye.  She was beautiful and charming and intelligent, and had been to college as well, a rare achievement for women in those days.
--From "The Maid Servant's Story," a short story by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, from her collection Arranged Marriage (Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1995), pp. 109-168.

Did you folks have a quarrel, asked the policeman, looking up from his notepad with a frown, and the husband looked directly back into his eyes and said, No, of course we didn't.  
--From "The Disappearance," a short story by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, from her collection Arranged Marriage (Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1995), pp. 169-181.

I am staying at a house with a screened-in back porch.  
--From "This Is Classy Because I Say So," a poem by Meg Johnson, published in Bear Review (Volume 2, Issue 1), p. 10.

Willful Creatures (stories) by Aimee Bender

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Willful Creatures was published in 2005 by Doubleday. My favorite stories in here were "Dearth," "Off," "Fruit and Words," "The Leading Man," "I Will Pick Out Your Ribs (from My Teeth)," and "Ironhead," which was peculiarly sad and satisfying at the same time.

Now I want to go back and reread The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (stories) and An Invisible Sign of My Own (novel).