To mark the beginning of the season, we’ve asked Barnstorm’s staff members to share their most recent reading exploits. Each selection below reflects the individual dispositions and tastes that inform the way we aspire to celebrate great writing. Learn a little bit more about us and our magazine and acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with some exceptional titles and authors in the process.
Larry Clow, nonfiction editor
Because, as always, there are so many books and not enough time, I’m reading a few things right now. I’m picking away at the short pieces in In Brief, a collection of creative nonfiction essays edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones. This is a great selection of punchy, funny, and interesting micro memoirs and short personal essays. I’m also reading Adoption Nation by Adam Pertman, for my own research into how adoption in America has changed throughout the last few decades. And because it’s Halloween season (my favorite holiday), I’m revisiting Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, an old favorite that still manages to creep me out late at night.
Alicia de los Reyes, editor-in-chief
I just stopped by the public library to pick up some nighttime reading, and I came back with Madeleine Wickham’s The Wedding Girl and Tracey Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains. I devoured Wickham in about two days because I love chick lit like a fat kid loves cake. Kidder is my favorite nonfiction writer, and Mountains Beyond Mountains is about a doctor in Haiti and, as usual, Kidder has turned him into the most fascinating person I have ever heard of. It’s an inspiring and easy read.
Marc Paltrineri, poetry editor
Lately, I’ve been carrying around the following books with me: Mark Leidner’s Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me; Today I Wrote Nothing, the Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms; Between Parenthesis: Essays, Articles, and Speeches of Roberto Bolaño; the Selected Poems of Adonis; Uninterrupted Poetry by Paul Eluard; American Music, a book of poems by Chris Martin; and perhaps my two favorites out of the stack (which I am rereading)The Trees The Trees by Heather Christle, and The Lamp With Wings, an incredible book of love sonnets by M. A. Vizsolyi.
Rose Whitmore, fiction editor
I had the pleasure of hearing Benjamin Percy read this summer at the Tin House Writer’s Conference and his voice (the voice!) is like thunder, literally. The man has the deepest voice I’ve ever heard, and he’s a fantastic writer. I just finished his short story collection Refresh Refresh. He has a way with direct, powerful sentences and expertly weaves elements of nature — from caves to crater holes and the odd desert plains of eastern Oregon — into his short stories. Refresh Refresh is tough and filled with men and women crumbling with real, fresh emotion. I highly recommend it.
Michael Thompson, fiction editor
I just finished reading Nathanael West’s A Cool Million, which I’d been saving because it was the last thing I hadn’t read that he wrote. It was… ridiculous, but also a great read. I think it should be required reading, especially for people who are in love with early 20th century literature (especially for lit analysis weenies). There is still a bruise on my back where I couldn’t stop patting myself after reading Infinite Jest this summer. That might never go away. Did I say you should read that too? You should.
Kayleigh Merritt, public relations
I’m reading two books at the moment — and by “reading” I really mean I started and dropped them once I got busy. If Ever Two Were One is the diary of poet Francis Ellingwood Abbot beginning with his entrance into Harvard and spanning his lifetime with particular focus on his relationship with his wife, Katie. The other is I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. I’m only a couple chapters in, but after falling in love Zusak’s authorial voice in The Book Thief, I’m anxious to read Messenger. It’s about a 19-year-old cab driver who stops a bank robbery, then begins to receive, via playing cards, cryptic messages that lead him on heroic missions. Awesome.
Dustin Martin, blog editor
Recently I returned the borrowed copy of My Life in Heavy Metal I carried with me this summer on my travels. The social, sexual and political sincerity Steve Almond oozes in these stories scandalized me in the best possible way. His verve is exhilarating, his tact masterful and his cajones inimitable. It’ll be a tough act to follow. Next on my list is an anthology of fiction shorter than short but longer than flash called New Sudden Fiction.
