Whether you’re going to the beach or enjoying a staycation at home this summer, complete your escape with a great book from PEN/Faulkner’s suggested reading list.
There’s something here for almost any reader—from the dystopic satire of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ coming-of-age memoir The Beautiful Struggle. If history is your passion, try Stacy Schiff’s revelatory biography Cleopatra or Tilar Mazzeo’s The Secret of Chanel No. 5, which uncovers designer Coco Chanel’s complicated relationship with her signature scent. For fans of more traditional fiction, there’s the late-in-life romance of Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand or Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector, which Publishers Weekly describes as “Jane Austen updated for the dot-com era.” If you’re short on time, don’t miss Edith Pearlman’s PEN/Malamud Award-winning short story collection Binocular Vision.
The authors included below will be reading as part of the 2011/12 PEN/Faulkner Reading Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
