The summer holidays have finally arrived, and it’s time to pack your suitcase with a stash of excellent reading material. So why not try something different this year?
Here’s a list of our suggestions. They are mainly fiction-based, but they do take various forms of writing, such as erotica, short stories, poetry, re-workings, and artists’ books. There are even suggestions for the kids.
Beware, some are pretty hot and steamy, some are very thought-provoking, and some are just plain enjoyable stories. Take a look at the links below, you might find something that takes your fancy:
We Love Lucy: Lilith Wes – a sensual exploration of friendship, love, and how fluid pleasure is, in whatever orientation or direction.
Cracking – Charles Simmonds and Lucy R. Lippard – a pocket-sized artist’s book about a woman archaeologist who, in the process of an excavation, is drawn into the imaginary world of Simonds’ ‘Little People’, as created in his small-scale earth sculptures (also described by the artist as, Dwellings).
The Adventures of Percival – retakes a metaphor often used when one wants to evoke questions of probability: a chimpanzee randomly typing will sooner or later end up composing a sonnet by Shakespeare. It’s the first title in DisVoir’s Illustrated Fairy Tales for Adults series.
How to Train Your Virgin: Wednesday Black – a high-spirited romp through a fantastic world populated by centaurs, ghosts and something called an ‘inside-out man’. Imagine a mix of Game of Thrones and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
The Song of the Machines: Yu-Chen Wang – This quasi-fictional book features stories about the artist’s life and her practice. Reality and fiction are blurred through the display of new work, documentation, critical texts and creative writing.
Dark Habits – Nineteen contributors explore freedom and indulgence, hedonism, transgression, sex and moral conventions through short stories, poetry, essay, experimental writing and flash-fiction in this standalone alternative to a rigid exhibition catalogue and the latest in the exploratory HOME publishing stable.
Rita McBride: Westways – the fifth in Rita McBride’s continuing Ways series of collaborative novels, this time with writer and climber Matthew Licht. We follow Mae West from her childhood in 19th century Brooklyn through her adventures with W.C. Fields at the 1931 Oktoberfest to a Sapphic encounter with Leni Riefenstahl on safari in the 1970s, picking up a fighter pilot, Salvador Dalí, and Billy Wilder for the ride.
God, I Don’t Even Know Your Name: Andrea McGinty – Eva is a hot mess. When her promising art career in New York takes a plunge, she enters rehab and finds sobriety-but not peace of mind. She escapes to Europe and loses herself in one hook up after another using Bangly, the newest dating app. She meets a handsome Finnish curator, Aabel and thinks it’s love. Or is it just wanderlust?
Transactions of Desire (Volume 1) – A collection of short stories exploring the fine line between love, loss and desire….These tales of unrequited love take place in zoos and churches, in museums and galleries, and in the deepest darkest crevices of each writer’s imagination.
The Time-Travelling Circus: The Dossier concerning Pablo Fanque and the Electrolier – a story of loss and libraries told by the Ring Mistress, the Head of Special Collections and the Special Collector. The Ring Mistress is an unreliable narrator who reports on the fate of Fanque’s first wife Susannah Darby, who died tragically during a performance involving a horse, a tight-rope and a large chandelier.
My Wet Hot Drone Summer: Lex Brown – The year is 2056. Hotshot lawyer Mia Garner needs a fresh start after dumping her cheating boyfriend. So she goes on a cross-country drive with Derek, her handsome tech stepbrother, to meet Xavier Ceron, a mysterious CEO who wants to acquire the game-changing nanochip Derek invented.
Burning Blue: Cara Benedetto – Josey, an ex-model and struggling artist, leaves her loveless husband behind in New York to focus on her work upstate. Her retreat is interrupted when she meets brash and alluring Trish, who opens Josey up to a new sexual awakening. But when she gets her big break back in the city, will Josey’s ambitions pull the new lovers apart?
I Would Do Anything for Love: Al Bedell – High School freshman Cecily Nicole Scott is looking for love in all the wrong places. She finds it first with Mike A in the back of his car. Then she meets Mike B, a ‘Professional Devirginizer’. Smart, tender and depraved, I Would Do Anything for Love is Spring Breakers meets Judy Blume.
The Man Who Refused to Die: Nicolas Ancion – a tale by Nicolas Ancion that draws freely on Francois Taddéi’s research on the ageing process of bacteria and the transmission of knowledge in nature, from unicellular organisms to human beings. Halfway between science-fiction novel and thriller, this tale runs counter to the researcher’s work and revisits the figure of the mad scientist and the sorcerer’s apprentice, the stories of robots and organ traffic.
Kuntalini: Faith Berger – Twenty-five year-old Yoo-hoo experiences a sexual awakening in her yoga class. She breaks up with her boyfriend and travels to Niagara Falls where she meets a cold fish teen prostitute and an ex-Army troglodyte deep in the falls. Yoo-hoo’s unforgettable yogic journey sweeps across the realms of asana, hysteria, enlightenment.
…and for the kids:
Pidgy: Clare Rojas – a children’s story book about a baby bird which is rescued by some children. The children look after the baby bird and wonder what kind of bird it is – an eagle or a hawk perhaps – but it is a boring pigeon.
Paul Chan: The Shadow and Her Wanda – Wanda is afraid of the night until her Shadow shows her how the world is transformed in the dark. This innovative and engaging story with pictures and footnotes introduces children and parents to ideas concerning language, art and contemporary culture.
3rd Place: A Children’s Colouring Book by Richard Prince – …is just that! A selection from Prince’s Hippie Drawings series have been chosen to create a unique introduction to the artist’s work for young people.