Novels by Tove Ditlevsen and F. Scott Fitzgerald, stories by Marianne Villanueva and Ágota Kristóf, and poetry by Karen Solie

~
Lise had felt an impotent rage when, six months earlier, she was informed that Vilhelm had become fat. Mille had force-fed him like a goose, stuffed and basted him and buried all his exquisite, dark thoughts under mountains of liver paté. With that, Lise's Vilhelm was dead and gone, and Mille filled her with disgust. Anger is always directed at the mistress, but once Lise annihilated the whole world, she reconciled with her too.
—From Vilhelm's Room, a novel by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026). This book was originally published in Danish in Copenhagen, Denmark, as Vilhelms værelse (Gyldendal, 1975). The English translation was first published in Great Britain (Penguin Books, 2025). This segment is from page 6 of the hardcover published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States. The audiobook's narrator, Helen Bang, is excellent, but I personally found the audiobook a little hard to follow on its own, especially at the beginning. If you listen to the audiobook, I'd recommend reading a print copy of the book along with it. 

The sponsor of the story was a white-haired woman in full evening dress, obviously a relic of the previous evening, for a tiara still clung to her head and a discouraged orchid expired from her shoulder. . . . on the other side, a young woman lay under a roof of umbrellas making out a list of things from a book open on the sand. Her bathing suit was pulled off her shoulders and her back, a ruddy, orange brown, set off by a string of creamy pearls, shone in the sun.
—From Tender Is the Night, a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934). These lines are from page 6 of a 1982 paperback published by Scribner. 

She had been married quite a long time, almost 18 years, to a man who, in the last year or two, had begun to spend most of his time watching TV. 
—From Residents of the Deep, a collection of short stories by Marianne Villanueva (Unsolicited Press, 2025). This segment is from "The Hand" (pp. 64-74), which won the Juked Fiction Prize and was published in Juked in the Winter 2007/2008 issue. My other favorite story was "Bodies" (172-173), which was first published in Vice-Versa in Summer 2021. 

There is also the old man who wanders around the park and claims that he sculpted the dog and that, one day when hugging it—since he loved the animal dearly—he was turned to stone.
          When asked how it is that he is still there, nevertheless, alive, in the flesh, he answers simply that he is waiting for the next train north.
          No one has the heart to tell him that there are no more northbound trains, or trains bound anywhere.
—From I Don't Care, a little collection of flash fiction by Ágota Kristóf, translated from the French by Chris Andrews (New Directions, 2024). The book was originally published in French as C'est égal: Nouvelles (Éditions du Seuil, 2004). My favorite stories were "A Northbound Train" (pp. 23-25), excerpted above, and "Wrong Numbers" (51-57). 

of a back bent low, hands
in the dirt, working
at the fasteners. 
—From Wellwater, a collection of poems by Karen Solie (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025). This is from "The Barrens" (80-81). One of my other favorites was "The Grasslands."

Poetry by Tove Ditlevsen and Tim Seibles, a novella by Anita Desai, and novels by Marie Aubert and Anne Tyler

~
He would
in case of divorce
lay claim to half
of everything
he said.
Half a sofa,
half a TV, . . .
—From "Divorce 1," a poem by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, The Paris Review, Issue 238 (Winter 2021). This poem will be included in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a collection of poetry by Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Smith and Russell, with a foreword by Olga Ravn), which is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 11, 2025.

I couldn't shake what Mum had said about forgiving myself, and even though I'd bought a new dress and had enjoyed so much prosecco that I was drunk by ten o'clock, I checked my phone constantly, I was on it all night long. Not one message came through to tell me how things had gone, the operation should have been over and done with hours earlier. I knew that Mum was punishing me, but still my palms felt clammy, I tried calling her but she wouldn't pick up, and I felt certain that something had gone wrong after all, that they hadn't had a chance to call me, that there was no signal wherever they were, I went outside and tried calling from there, stood on the pavement not far from my friends, who were smoking, and felt as if the ground was collapsing beneath my feet, and I stood there, drunk, sobbing, Mum not picking up, until eventually I hung up.  
—From Grown Ups, a novel by Marie Aubert, translated from the Norwegian by Rosie Hedger (Pushkin Press, 2021). This segment is from page 33 of the paperback.  

as though both trying
to hide and begging
to be seen.
—From "Something Like We Did II," one of three poems by Tim Seibles, Poetry (September 2023). 

All the benches in the Jardín facing the pink spikes and spires of the Parroquia are already taken by lovers of the morning sun, but you find one set back under the meticulously trimmed and shaped trees you are told are Indian laurels, where you can sit making your way at leisure through the Spanish-language newspapers you have bought from the vendor who spreads out a variety of them on the low wall that surrounds the Jardín. . . . Then becoming aware, without wanting to, of a woman seated on a bench across from you, dressed in a flamboyant Mexican style that few Mexican women assume at any other than festive occasions: skirt upon skirt of cotton and tulle in indigo, lime, crimson and saffron, her arms spread over the back of the bench festooned with bangles.   
—From Rosarita, a slim novella by Anita Desai (Scribner, 2025). 

[My father's] watch was a Timex with a face as big as a fifty-cent piece, and whenever my mother kept him waiting he would frown down at it and give it a tap. . . . when I was a little girl, I imagined he was trying to make time move faster—to bring my mother before us instantly, already wearing her coat, like someone in a speeded-up movie. 
—From Three Days in June, a novel by Anne Tyler (Knopf, 2025). 

A story by George Saunders, two novels by Colm Tóibín, and essays by Melissa Broder and David Sedaris

~
One day, walking neer one of your Yuman houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I herd, from inside, the most amazing sound. Turns out, what that sound is, was: the Yuman voice, making werds. They sounded grate! They sounded like prety music! I listened to those music werds until the sun went down, when all of the suden I woslike: Fox 8, crazy nut, when sun goes down, werld goes dark, skedaddle home, or else there can be danjer! 
          But I was fast and nated by those music werds, and desired to understand them total lee.
—From Fox 8, a story by George Saunders, illustrated by Chelsea Cardinal (Random House, 2013).

He must be aware that she was awake. She heard him clearing his throat. In the dark, she could let this silence go on for as long as she thought fit. She might even decide not to break it at all, fall asleep beside him and put him through another day guessing what she knew or how she would respond.  
—From Long Island, a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2024). This segment is at the bottom of page 19 in the hardcover. The book is a sequel to Brooklyn, his earlier novel about Eilis Lacey. 

She drove to Cush in the old A40 one Saturday that October, leaving the boys playing with friends and telling no one where she was going. Her aim in those months, autumn leading to winter, was to manage for the boys' sake and maybe her own sake too to hold back tears. Her crying as though for no reason frightened the boys and disturbed them as they gradually became used to their father not being there. She realised now that they had come to behave as if everything were normal, as if nothing were really missing. They had learned to disguise how they felt. She, in turn, had learned to recognise danger signs, thoughts that would lead to other thoughts. She measured her success with the boys by how much she could control her feelings.  
—From Nora Webster, a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2014). This segment is from page 7. (Eilis Lacey's family members play a very small role in this book as well.)  

I have never told the story of my husband’s illness. His illness is not my illness, and so I did not think it was my story to tell. But the illness is a third party in our relationship. I have been in a relationship with the illness for eleven years. So in this way, perhaps, it is my story too.
          In the past, my husband has said that he would prefer not to be a subject of my writing. But he has also said that he would never want to censor me. He says, Do what you need to do for art.
—From So Sad Today, a collection of personal essays by Melissa Broder (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group, 2016). This is the opening of "I Told You Not to Get the Knish: Thoughts on Open Marriage and Illness." It appears on pages 155-181 of the paperback. A longer excerpt is available on LitHub.   

Bonus book to read again: 

On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. "Goddammit," I whispered. "I knew I forgot something." 
          Normally, when landing in a foreign country, I'm prepared to say, at the very least, "Hello," and "I'm sorry." This trip, though, was a two-parter, and I'd used my month of prep time to bone up on my Japanese. 
—From Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, a collection of essays by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2013). This segment is from "Easy, Tiger," which appears on pages 77-86 of the original hardcover and was originally published in The New Yorker. As always, if you have the option, I recommend listening to an audiobook of David Sedaris reading his own work and/or seeing him read live.  

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

~
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.  

Fiction by Ayşegül Savaş and Melissa Broder, a memoir by Jill Ciment, and poetry by Edgar Kunz and Diane Seuss

~
On the phone, my grandmother asked me if I had planted anything in our window boxes. She always phoned too early, when I was barely out of bed, forgetting about the time difference. She would begin each call with something she had thought of during the night. 
—From The Anthropologists, a novel by Ayşegül Savaş (Bloomsbury, 2024). This segment is from page 10 of the hardcover. 

What do I call him? My husband? Arnold? I would if the story were about how we met and married, shared meals for forty-five years, raised a puppy, endured illnesses. But if the story is about an older man preying on a teenager, shouldn’t I call him “the artist” or, better still, “the art teacher,” with all that the word teacher implies?
—From Consent, a memoir by Jill Ciment (Pantheon Books, 2024). This is essentially a sequel to Half a Life, the memoir Ciment wrote in her mid-forties. It's interesting to see how she looks at the events of her past through different lenses. (When she met her future husband, in the 1970s, he was a Casanova and she felt cool for kissing her art teacher. Today, what happened is more clearly an abuse of power. But it didn't happen now; it happened in the '70s.) What to make of the events, then, especially in light of the way their relationship ultimately played out? After dissecting and amending the earlier memoir, she picks up where it left off.   

I held him together
as long as I could, she says.
—From "Piano," a poem by Edgar Kunz, The New Yorker (November 7, 2022), p. 41.

even i am less a woman than a ball of mercury breaking
into forty pieces of silver.
—From "i lie back on my red coverlet and contemplate," a poem by Diane Seuss, Blackbird, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 2007), and reprinted with artwork by Tanja Softić in Blackbird's special section called Women Poets from the Archive, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer 2024). This specially curated collection of poems from the Founders Archive also includes poetry by Ada Limón, Claudia Emerson, and others.

It didn't matter where I lived—Mid-City, Mid-Wilshire, or Miracle Mile. It didn't matter where I worked; one Hollywood bullshit factory was equal to any other. All that mattered was what I ate, when I ate, and how I ate it.
—From Milk Fed, a novel by Melissa Broder (Scribner, 2021). I read her books out of order, starting with Death Valley (Scribner, 2023), then going back to The Pisces (Hogarth Press, 2018) and Milk Fed. All of these novels are available as audiobooks read by the author, and they are compulsively readable (and . . . listenable?). Broder does include intimate details about her characters' experiences in the bathroom and the bedroom (and everywhere else), so if that's not your cup of tea, you may want to skip these. But there's something very direct and honest about the way she talks about things. Also, it might be helpful to read a little Sappho before starting The Pisces. 

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

~
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."

Poetry by Louise Glück, memoirs by Abigail Thomas and Busy Philipps, stories by Amparo Dávila, and a novel by Anne Tyler

~
It's not easy to pluck individual poems from her books, since Glück was particularly adept at conceiving of book-length sequences—each of her collections is best encountered as a whole, like a Pink Floyd album that doesn't readily yield a hit single.
—From "Five Louise Glück Poems to Get You Started," an article by Gregory Cowles, The New York Times (October 13, 2023). Louise Glück died earlier in October at the age of eighty. My favorite of the poems Cowles singled out was "Matins," which begins with these lines: 

I see it is with you as with the birches:
I am not to speak to you
in the personal way. 

The full poem, "Matins" (meaning "Mornings" in French), is available online from the archive of the Los Angeles Times (September 20, 1992). It, along with others of the same title, is included in her collection The Wild Iris (Ecco, 1993). 

We met in 1979. I was thirty-seven; he was twenty-seven. I had been twice divorced and had four children, Chuck was happily married and had none. I was working at a publishing company as a slush reader, which meant I handled everything that came without an agent. He took over my job because I had been promoted to editorial assistant. . . . It was my job to train him, but all I wanted to do was make him laugh. He was good-looking and nervous, an interesting combination. 
—From What Comes Next and How to Like It, a memoir by Abigail Thomas (Scribner, 2015). This segment is from "When It Started" (pp. 6-7). There is also an excellent unabridged audiobook version, which is narrated by the author (Simon & Schuster Audio Editions, 2015). 

"Just as the police van pulls up we could see you coming around the corner in your diaper. And there was a woman on a bike behind you." 
—From This Will Only Hurt a Little, a memoir by Busy Philipps (hardcover, Touchstone, 2018; paperback, Gallery Books, 2019). Sometimes a good audiobook is a nice accompaniment to the print book, but in this case, if you have the option, just jump straight to the audiobook. It is narrated by Busy Philipps and is entertaining and sometimes poignant (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2018). My favorite story is in the chapter called "Your Ex Lover Is Dead - Stars." It would probably also be funny on the page, but her delivery is everything here. A sample of the audiobook is available on the website for Simon & Schuster.

He awoke in a hospital, in a small room where everything was white and spotlessly clean, among oxygen tanks and bags of intravenous fluid, unable to move or speak, no visitors allowed.
—From The Houseguest, a collection of ominous little stories by Amparo Dávila, translated from the Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson (New Directions, 2018). This excerpt is from the final story of Dávila's collection, "The Funeral."  

Bonus book to read again: 

My brother Jeremy is a thirty-eight-year-old bachelor who never did leave home. Long ago we gave up expecting very much of him, but still he is the last man in our family and you would think that in time of tragedy he might pull himself together and take over a few of the responsibilities. Well, he didn't. 
—From Celestial Navigation, a novel by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).

A novel by Paul Murray, a poem by Diane Seuss, short stories by Jess Walter, and memoirs by Stephanie Foo and Frank McCourt

~
She didn't want to devalue her mother in Elaine's eyes. At the same time, she didn't know how Elaine could think Imelda had mystique. To spend time with her mother was to get a running commentary on the contents of her mind – an incessant barrage of thoughts and sub-thoughts and random observations, each in itself insignificant but cumulatively overwhelming. I must book you in for electrolysis for that little moustache you're getting, she'd say; and then while you were still reeling, Are those tulips or begonias? There's Marie Devlin, do you know she has no sense of style, none whatsoever. Is that man an Arab? This place is filling up with Arabs. Where's this I saw they had that nice chutney? Kay Connor told me Anne Smith's lost weight but the doctor said it was the wrong kind. I thought it was supposed to be sunny today, that's not one bit sunny. Who invented chutney, was it Gorbachev? And on, and on – listening to her was like walking through a blizzard, a storm of frenzied white nothings that left you snow-blind.
—From The Bee Sting, a novel by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). This segment is from page 7 of the hardcover. 

I’d just brushed the dog, there on the dog's couch.
I was wearing a black—well, to call it a gown is a criminal
overstatement—a black rag. 
—From "Gertrude Stein," a poem by Diane Seuss, The New Yorker (August 16, 2021), p. 52.

Another time, when I went into a bar near my apartment to pick him up, he raised his glass as I approached. "Another one of these," he said. I could see he had no idea who I was. 
          "Dad? I'm not the bartender. It's Jay. Your son." 
          He stared at me. He was quiet a moment. Then: "Why don't you ever bring girlfriends home?"
          So. This was to be our Sisyphean hell—me coming out to my fading father every day for the rest of his life.
—From The Angel of Rome, a collection of short stories by Jess Walter (HarperCollins, 2022). My favorites were probably "Mr. Voice" (first published in Tin House and then in Best American Short Stories 2015) and the story excerpted above, "Town & Country," which appeared on pages 149-174 in the hardcover (from Scribd Originals, 2020).

My troop leader pulled out her guitar . . . As we sang, all the mothers became misty-eyed, stroking their daughters' hair, kissing the tops of their heads. The other girls leaned into their embraces. My mother did not touch me but stood alone and wept loudly. She cried all the time in the privacy of our home—ugly, bent-in-half sobs—but she never fell apart in public, and the sight alarmed me.
—From What My Bones Know, a memoir by Stephanie Foo (Ballantine Books, 2022). There is also an unabridged audiobook, which is narrated by the author (Random House Audio). A short excerpt from the book and a sample of the audiobook are available at the link above.

Bonus book to read again: 

My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother, Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister, Margaret, dead and gone. 
—From Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner, 1996). If you have the option, I highly recommend listening to the unabridged audiobook, which is narrated by the author. He was an excellent speaker, and the audiobook really captures that. 

Poetry by Ilya Kaminsky, Katherine Fallon, and Robert Hayden; fiction by Amy Hempel; and an essay by James Marcus

~
Inhabitant of earth for fortysomething years 
I once found myself in a peaceful country. . . .  
--From "In a Time of Peace," a poem by Ilya Kaminsky, The New Yorker (February 18 & 25, 2019), pp. 64-65.  "In a Time of Peace"was included in his 2019 collection, Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press).

Milk bones.  Cat food.  Someone else's grandmother's 
stewed tomatoes.  Chocolate covered this, that.
--From "Choke," a poem by Katherine Fallon, which appears on a downloadable broadside from Broadsided Press with artwork by Millian Giang Pham (June 15, 2020).  The link also includes a note on the timing of the publication and a Q&A with the author and artist.

That reminds me of when I knew a romance was over.  I had not seen this fellow in a while, but he suggested we meet up at the train station and take the Acela somewhere, so I thought we'd have several hours to catch up.  And then at the station, we boarded and he led me to our seats in the Quiet Car.  
--From Sing to It, a collection of short fiction by Amy Hempel (Scribner, 2019).  This segment is from "The Quiet Car" (pp. 77-80 in the trade paperback version of the book, which I would recommend over the hardcover purely for the cover art).

Increasingly unsteady even with the walker, he would fall, sometimes knocking over pieces of furniture, creating great crashing sounds that were hard to attribute to such a small, smiling man.  Every time, he got up off the floor--with assistance--and declared that he was fine.  He didn't break an ankle, a hip, a leg, the injuries that so often lead to a death spiral in the elderly.  "You can knock me down, but you can't kill me," he liked to say, dusting himself off. 
--From "Blood Relations," an essay by James Marcus, The New Yorker (March 11, 2019), pp. 34-39.  The piece appeared online with the title "Family Medicine."

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. . . .  
--From "Those Winter Sundays," a poem by Robert Hayden which has been widely anthologized.  (I first read it in 2007 after it was included in the Favorite Poem Project.)  It has also appeared in an earlier form in A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), as well as in its current form in Angle of Ascent: New and Collected Poems (W. W. Norton, 1975) and Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013).

Two reports on true crime, and then some less-serious short stories

~
Vincent Smothers thought that it would be a job like any other.  In the summer of 2007, he told me, his friend Marzell Black asked him for a gun for his mother's boyfriend.  Smothers didn't sell guns, and he told him so.  A few months later, Marzell amended his request, saying, "That dude who was looking for a gun?  He asked me how much he would have to pay to kill somebody."  A murder Smothers could handle.  "Marzell wasn't the killing type," he said.  "I told him, 'That's not something for you to do.  I'll talk to him and see what this is all about.'"
--From "The Hit Man's Tale," nonfiction by Nadya Labi, The New Yorker (October 15, 2012), pp. 58-67.

Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, sat down at the conference table just moments before the faculty meeting began.  It was three o'clock on February 12, 2010, and thirteen professors and staff members in the biology department had crowded into a windowless conference room on the third floor of the Shelby Center for Science and Technology.
--From "A Loaded Gun," nonfiction by Patrick Radden Keefe, The New Yorker (February 11 & 18, 2013), pp. 70-87.

Boog is very good at making words.  For example, last week he showed off his new picture at the Main Cave.  Everyone was expecting it to be a horse or a bear (all his pictures so far have been horses, bears, or a mix of horses and bears).  But this picture was not of any animal.  It was just a bunch of red streaks.  People were angry.  
          "I wanted animals," the Old Person said.  "Where are the animals?"
          It was bad situation.  I thought that Boog would lose his job or maybe be killed by stones.  But then Boog stood on a rock and spoke.
--From "I Love Girl," a story by Simon Rich from the Shouts & Murmurs column, The New Yorker (December 17, 2012), pp. 43-45.

The summer school assignment, the fucking fucking summer school third paper of ten, and if you didn't get at least a C on the first nine, you had to write eleven papers, the fucking teacher wadding up her big fat lips so they looked like a carnation, her lips that she'd use to pout at your inadequacy . . . this paper, to hold their interest, was supposed to be about Magical Realism, and although you didn't have to read all of the Márquez book the teacher sooooooo loved, she had distributed several paragraphs from the book in which weird things happened, and your paper was supposed to go on forever, like the writer, then have the clouds howl, or something.  

--From "What Magical Realism Would Be," the first story in The State We're In: Maine Stories, a collection by Ann Beattie (Scribner, 2015).

A novel by Per Petterson, stories by Alice Munro and Amy Hempel, and a memoir by Mary Karr

~
Early November.  It's nine o'clock.  The titmice are banging against the window.  Sometimes they fly dizzily off after the impact, other times they fall and lie struggling in the new snow until they can take off again.  I don't know what they want that I have.  
--From Out Stealing Horses, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Picador, 2008; Copyright 2003/English translation 2005; first published in the United States by Graywolf Press).

Muriel Snow had not been Millicent's first choice for best friend.  In the early days of her marriage she had set her sights high.  Mrs. Lawyer Nesbitt.  Mrs. Dr. Finnegan.  Mrs. Doud.  They let her take on a donkey's load of work in the Women's Auxiliary at the church, but they never asked her to their tea parties.  She was never inside their houses, unless it was to a meeting.  Porter was a farmer.  No matter how many farms he owned, a farmer.  She should have known.  
--From "A Real Life," a short story by Alice Munro, first published as "A Form of Marriage" in The New Yorker and reprinted in Open Secrets (Knopf, 1994), pp. 52-80.

On the last night of the marriage, my husband and I went to the ballet.  We sat behind a blind man; his guide dog, in harness, lay beside him in the aisle of the theater.  I could not keep my attention on the performance; instead, I watched the guide dog watch the performance.  Throughout the evening, the dog's head moved, following the dancers across the stage.  Every so often the dog would whimper slightly.  "Because he can hear high notes we can't?" my husband said.  "No," I said, "because he was disappointed in the choreography."
--From "The Dog of the Marriage," a short story in four parts by Amy Hempel, from her collection The Dog of the Marriage: Stories (Scribner, 2005), pp. 59-83.  Part 1 was published as "Now I Can See the Moon" in Elle, and Part 4 was first published in The Mississippi Review.   

I knew that neither of my parents was coming.  Daddy was working the graveyard shift, and the sheriff said that his deputy had driven out to the plant to try and track him down.  Mother had been taken Away--he further told us--for being Nervous.   
--From The Liars' Club, a memoir by Mary Karr (Penguin, 1995).

Miranda July and Raymond Carver

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I drove to the doctor's office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching--windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel.  When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward.  Who is she? people might have been wondering.  Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda?  I strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing 12 with a casual, fun-loving finger.  The kind of finger that was up for anything.  
--from The First Bad Man, a novel by Miranda July (Scribner, 2015).  The book is also for sale in The First Bad Man Store, where items mentioned in the novel were auctioned off, with proceeds going to The National Partnership for Women and Families.

THE ESSENCE OF RED

$159.48

SOLD!

“Dr. Broyard rattled open a drawer full of tiny glass bottles and picked one labeled red. I squinted at the perfectly clear liquid. It reminded me a lot of water.

'It’s the essence of red,' he said brusquely. He could sense my skepticism." 

—The First Bad Man, page 3 

Packaged with excerpt; authenticity verified with Miranda July’s signature. 

~

Earl Ober was between jobs as a salesman.  But Doreen, his wife, had gone to work nights as a waitress at a twenty-four-hour coffee shop at the edge of town.  One night, when he was drinking, Earl decided to stop by the coffee shop and have something to eat.  He wanted to see where Doreen worked, and he wanted to see if he could order something on the house. 
--From "They're Not Your Husband," a short story by Raymond Carver, first published in the Chicago Review, Volume 24, Number 4 (Spring 1973) and reprinted in his collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (McGraw-Hill, 1976).  The story appears on pages 22-30 in the Vintage edition from 1992.

Maile Meloy, Half in Love

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Half in Love, a collection of short stories by Maile Meloy (Scribner, 2002).

A few highlights:

"Tome" (from Best New American Voices 2000) For eight months, I had been telling my client he had no tort claim. . . . Sawyer had worked active, outside jobs all his life, and suddenly he could do nothing. It seemed to be the idleness, more than the brain damage, that made him crazy. He couldn't read, because the words came out scrambled, and he could barely sit still to try. He phoned me three times a day. My secretary stopped putting his calls through, so he came to the office, on foot because they wouldn't let him drive. He was a big, graying, blond-bearded man, my father's age, muscular but getting fat without his work. He treated me like a daughter, scolding and cajoling me. He wanted to sue, demanded to sue.

"Aqua Boulevard" (from The Paris Review, winner of the 2001 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction) Tati gave me the leash, a long orange strap, and the children kissed Oliver good-bye and went out the door. . . . I had not wanted a dog, but the children loved him. It was true they did not fight so much now. The day my wife brought him home, my daughter held the dog in her arms and said, "This is the happiest day of my life." Children are whores. They will say anything. But I thought it could be true.

"Kite Whistler Aquamarine" (from Witness) Then the temperature dropped overnight to twenty below, and a Thoroughbred filly was born at our house, early, before we expected her.

"Last of the White Slaves" In the house in Saudi Arabia they employed two Arab servants, Eugénie said: a cook and a butler, both discreet and understanding about the sleeping arrangements. It was an embassy house, marble-floored against the heat, with a wing for the servants. The cook, a widow, kept to herself. An older man named Ahmed was butler and valet; he had worked for the old ambassador, and Miles considered him a friend. But Christopher disliked the old man, and finally threw a fit about the way the laundry was done.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

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Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner: New York, 1996).

Wrenching, but also funny and poignant and, at times, quite beautiful.