Halloween has concluded. Hopefully, you picked up plenty of candy and four-dollar-Chipotle burritos, and avoided all the creepy killer clown pranks that must have taken place (Joker and IT Chapter 2 were very popular after all).
Now it’s time to sit in bed with all your candy/dentist’s nightmares and pick a new book to sink your teeth into.
Check out Bookstr’s Three to Read, the three books we’ve picked for you to read this week!
Our Hot Pick
The Art of Game of Thrones
Synopsis:
Filled with gorgeous illustrations and artwork from HBO’s hit series, The Art of Game of Thrones is the definitive Game of Thrones art collection.
The official collection of behind the scenes concept art and production design from HBO’s landmark TV show Game of Thrones. Learn how BAFTA and Emmy award-winning production designer Deborah Riley and her team brought to life the iconic locations of Westeros and beyond.
One of 4 comprehensive and officially licensed Game of Thrones retrospective books from Insight Editions.
• UNMATCHED DEPTH – 432 pages of concept art, sketches, and production design images covering Game of Thrones seasons 1-8.
• DETAILED REVELATIONS – Comprehensive behind the scenes details covering the design of iconic locations such as King’s Landing, Winterfell, Dragonstone, and Castle Black.
• CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE CREATORS – Authored by production designer Deborah Riley and including an exclusive foreword from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and preface from Emmy Award-winning production designer Gemma Jackson.
• A PRESTIGE COFFEE TABLE BOOK – Deluxe 9.75 × 13 inch format.
• A SOUGHT AFTER GIFT FOR FANS – Released in time for the holiday season, this is the perfect Game of Thrones gift for fans and collectors.
Why?
Whether you dressed up as your favorite character for Halloween or Comic con, you’ll want to continue celebrating your love of GoT with this epic art book. Production designer Deborah Riley provides an in-depth, eight-season-spanning retrospective and walk down memory lane with this visual compilation. Riley proves that the world building of GoT was without equal, and this book is filled with more imagination and scenic vistas than any touristy trip you might be planning. Your next social media vacation post can wait while you delve into Westeros once again.
Our Coffee Shop Read
A Tall History of Sugar
Synopsis:
A Tall History of Sugar tells the story of Moshe Fisher, a man who was “born without skin,” so that no one is able to tell what race he belongs to; and Arrienne Christie, his quixotic soul mate who makes it her duty in life to protect Moshe from the social and emotional consequences of his strange appearance.
The narrative begins with Moshe’s birth in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica’s independence from colonial rule, and ends in the era of what Forbes calls “the fall of empire,” the era of Brexit and Donald Trump. The historical trajectory layers but never overwhelms the scintillating love story as the pair fight to establish their own view of loving, against the moral force of the colonial “plantation” and its legacies that continue to affect their lives and the lives of those around them.
Written in lyrical, luminous prose that spans the range of Jamaican Englishes, this remarkable story follows the couple’s mysterious love affair from childhood to adulthood, from the haunted environs of rural Jamaica to the city of Kingston, and then to England–another haunted locale in Forbes’s rendition.
Following on the footsteps of Marlon James’s debut novel, John Crow’s Devil, which Akashic Books published in 2005, we are delighted to introduce another lion of Jamaican literature with the publication of A Tall History of Sugar.
Why?
A love story that spans eras and decades. There’s a sugar and coffee/sugar and Halloween joke here somewhere, but I will take the highroad, given how heartfelt the subject matter is. The New York Times reviews Curdella Forbes’s romantic epic as “a gift for grown-up fans of fairy tales and those who love fiction that metes out hard and surprising truths. Forbes’s writing combines the gale-force imagination of Margaret Atwood with the lyrical pointillism of Toni Morrison.” The emotional journey you’ll embark on from your local coffee spot will be quite bittersweet.
Our Dark Horse
A Year Without a Name
Synopsis:
From “an extraordinary new voice,” a “passionate and clear-eyed and unputdownable” meditation on queerness, family, and desire. (Mary Karr)
For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations–lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman–until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable.
Moving between Grace and Cyrus, Dunham brings us inside the chrysalis of gender transition, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we are constituted. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely theirs, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved queer coming of age story.
Named one of Fall 2019’s Most Anticipated Books by:
Time
NYLON
Vogue
ELLE
Buzzfeed
Bustle
O Magazine
Harper’s Bazaar
Why?
One of Fall 2019’s most widely anticipated releases has finally arrived. Growing up is already complex enough without having to deal with the kind of emotional self-discovery that few will really understand. Dunham’s timely memoir captures the struggle of growing into your identity when the answers aren’t at all easy to find, and shares her story with strength and vulnerability. According to REWIRE, “Dunham navigates how confusing gender is: how useless it can be while also existing as an essential facet of identity. Dunham stays true to their unfinished story by packing a lot of meaning into just 176 pages but never reaching concrete conclusions. But the concrete would be antithetical to the story; Dunham lives in the truth that all of us are unfinished, forever growing and learning. This in itself is a very queer frame of thought.”
All In-text Images Via Amazon.