Read and sustain.

In the land of the giants, it’s sometimes hard to get noticed. Indeed, mammoth publishing houses dominate our well-read skyline. They command the windows and displays of what’s left of nation’s bookstores, are evident in every push communication from Amazon and other online behemoths, and monopolize the bestseller list. This isn’t to say that Random House, Penguin Group, HarperCollins, et al, are not putting out some beautiful and important titles, but feeding the profit beast can certainly divert resources from the “less likely to’s” when it comes to both publishing and promotion.

Maybe by chance, or maybe not, given large publishers’ cash-back-first approach, but of the books I’ve read this month, two of the finest standouts are from small, independent presses – Coffee House Press and Red Lemonade. This isn’t to say that Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen (both released in 2011) haven’t received critical kudos. But for those who haven’t been alerted to them due to a lack of marketing, these two very different books are great reads as well as exciting portents of what’s on the horizon for American fiction; both are their respective author’s debut novels.

Leaving the Atocha Station, by Ben Lerner

Adam Gordon is a young American poet who has earned a prestigious fellowship in Spain, where we find him negotiating expatriate life, hopelessly “other” while at the same time blending in in ways a mere tourist could never hope for. He’s working on an amorphous multiphased “project” designed to explore a link between poetry and politics and history that may or may not make sense, may or may not come to fruition and, indeed, may or may not even exist. He’s erratic, arrogant, addicted and often fraudulent; clinically, in fact, he’s a little off. Still, he has his charm, which is a good thing, because in Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House Press) we spend some quality, thoughtful, often frantic time inside Gordon’s head exploring “the absence of profundity” in favor of observations that – at the expense of what might be considered a traditional plot – explore the relationships between perception, truth, reality and communication.

Gordon’s storyline bounces back and forth from the mundane to the profound. It’s always interesting, sometimes pathetic, often morally challenging and just as often funny. Unlike some postmodern gymnasts, Lerner connects the dots between thought and prose experiments and a character’s experience in a way that leaves us entertained, at times upset and, in the end, moved. This connection represents a critical vein in modern American fiction that Lerner taps into and drives forward. His Adam Gordon is a sad, yet in some ways hopeful character for our frenetic world.

Zazen, by Vanessa Veselka

Unlike Lerner’s effort, Vaenessa Veselka’s Zazen (Red Lemonade) dives bravely into plot, with the author’s gymnastics reserved for language that soars and swirls in waves, reminiscent at times of Thomas Pynchon at his most accessible and Tom Robbins at his most fanciful. Vaselka’s book is, however, hardly derivative. Della Mylinek, a recent paleontology graduate, grinds away at life in the near-future (perhaps) in Portland, Oregon. It’s a dystopian world with America on the decline, trudging from war to war as what could be the sons and daughters of the Occupy movement have a choice to make: stick it out and fight the power, or skip country for third-world safety, away from the bombs and strip malls that equally disrupt the bleak horizon. Pick your existential poison, be it Hamlet or the Clash, and cue “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

Her degree behind her, Della is apparently damaged, given to snark, and serving up tofu in a vegan restaurant called Rise Up Singing. Tickets out of town in hand, she’s unable to make up her mind on the Big Questions as she navigates the impact of her troubled past. Veselka’s hard-driving storyline is populated by dyed-colorful characters weaving their way through a hopelessly grey landscape, marching into events ranging from mass funerals and protests to orgies to down-on-the-farm family gatherings. Everything in Zazen is radically charged: language, plot and subject matter. It is barren and beautiful, and deeply unnerving – a modern story for our modern times.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson‘s biweekly feature, InPRINT, will review and discuss books new and old, as well as examine issues in publishing.

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Main image: purdman1

10 book titles that renewed our love for reading.

It would be nice to say that the books you’ll find here are a little off the “Best of 2011″ beaten track on purpose – that, after pouring over the year’s more mainstream winners, these less-nodded-at tomes are overlooked gems that deserve more attention than they’re getting. But the fact is I have The Marriage Plot, Swamplandia! and The Tiger’s Wife sitting right here on my desk, uncracked for no other reason than different books – the following choices among them – happened to catch my interest. In any case, if you’ve found yourself surrendering to the (perhaps deserved) hype of the big players this year, consider dropping a little further down the bestseller list and giving these a spin.

1. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

A fictional A Moveable Feast as seen through the eyes of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, The Paris Wife offers a rich, compassionate and often troublesome view of life as the first wife and support system of the young Papa. Set and centered around the Paris expat life of the 1920’s Lost Generation, McClain’s story features Hemingway’s quick, simple storytelling strokes and structure that build fictional truth and emotional power in a unique way. A manifesto of sorts, the read declares and defends Hadley’s choices, emotional leaps and missteps as she seizes her story as her own, as opposed to His.

2. Cain by José Saramago

The late Nobel-prize winner’s final offering, Cain is a parable-like retelling of the early chapters of the Bible – with Cain as our hero. Goaded, punished, dissed and dismissed by a vindictive, petty and self-centered God, the less-than brother roams Old Testament scenes ranging from Isaac’s near-death experience at the hands of his frightened father, to the sudden confusion at the base of the Tower of Babel, to the Noah’s DMVish efforts to save innocent life as we know it. A treat for the less-than-pious, Cain is a lovely, yet melancholy endnote to José Saramago‘s troubled relationship with life, authority and The Lord.

3. The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo

A collection of stories from America’s postmodern master, The Angel Esmeralda – Nine Stories brings together the author’s short-form work from 1979 to 2011. Both within themselves and taken together as a collection, these snapshot tales present the often abstract and fragmented darkness that hovers over our transition from the 20th to the 21st Century. Some see Don DeLillo’s work as prescient, but a more accurate description is unflinchingly mirror-like, allowing every trick of modern hyper-light to illuminate our way forward. Each story here pokes at often mundane instances and interactions, fascinations and obsessions that are arrestingly lifelike in both chance and relevance.

4. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

The posthumous unfinished novel by the great writer presents a kind of inverse space to his epic and celebrated Infinite Jest. While the earlier work snaked deeply into our society’s addictions, obsessions and ultimate relationship with entertainment, The Pale King examines the reality of tedium and workaday, existential survival in the face of boredom. Brilliantly reconstructed from David Foster Wallace’s left-behind manuscripts by his editor, Michael Pietsch (Wallace took his own life in 2008), the novel is in many ways more accessible than Wallace’s earlier work as it lacks some of his trademark literary and intellectual gymnastics (which will delight some readers). But don’t go in lightly; you need to “show up” to read “DFW.” If you make the effort, you’ll come out enlightened and deeply touched.

5. Disaster Was My God by Bruce Duffy

A fictionalized biography of the much-romanticized Arthur Rimbaud, the poet and enigma who ushered in new forms of poetry and thought that served no-less than to predict and unleash modernism just prior to dawn of the 20th century. Well known today as the muse of the likes of rock-auteurs Patti Smith and Jim Morrison, the bratty, explosive, prodigy/savant began his legendary work during his mid-teens only to cease writing before he turned 20, disappearing from the literary world and ending up in shady and shocking African trade, never to write another syllable again. Even as Bruce Duffy (who gave philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein a similar treatment in The World as I Found It) demystifies the myth, the literary legend is as no other.

6. Absolute Monarchs by John Julius Norwich

Our one non-fiction entry is an engaging 2000-year history of the Papacy that takes us from the birth of the Church through to the controversies and challenges that plague the Lord’s reps-on-earth today. In Absolute Monarchs, John Julius Norwich (an “agnostic Protestant” who casts little, if any, what would certainly be understandable judgment) engages multiple levels of interest, from historical to spiritual, while maintaining a solid storytelling thrust to this mostly dramatic tale of power and spirit. Dig in and find yourself wondering aloud: “Oh, my God! They didn’t!”

7. Damned by Chuck Palahniuk

Yeah, yeah, Chuck Palahniuk is the “rock star” writer who’s widely cited as one of the greatest literary examples of “Becoming Your Own Cliché.” But he cracks me up, and shocks and unsettles me in a world that’s often far too serious in its shocking and unsettling nature. In Damned, the author of Fight Club and Rant seems to don a young adult lit cloak, telling the story of an overweight, snarky teenage girl who finds herself in h-e-double toothpicks. Our unique and mouthy little heroine takes on the biggies “down there” (Hitler, Idi Amin, et al.), and we get at least one great insight into the underworld’s impact on our lives “up here.” Those during-dinner survey phone calls? Yep. Nine-to-5ers manning Satan’s phone banks.

8. Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt

Fabulous old-school satire targeting the most modern of issues, Helen Dewitt’s Lightning Rods is insane raunch that skewers everything from sex and sexism, to American political and business culture. If you can handle the bizarre anonymous sex (I mean, you’re into that right?), it’s total fun. Not for the sexually inhibited, it’s about a strange dude’s masturbatory fantasy and how he turns it into big business, and then the FBI gets involved and then… wait, was this what we expected from the author of the award-winning and lovely The Last Samurai? You’ll never visit the office restroom the same way again.

9. The Buddha In the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Like a prose poem from a lost culture, The Buddha in the Attic is a beautiful and ghostly novel from the author of When the Emperor Was Devine. The short work tells the story of Japanese “picture brides” who came to join their unknown husbands working the fields and towns of West Coast America shortly after the turn of century, and how their lives progressed through the beginning of World War II to their criminal incarceration in internment camps. Employing an often-poetic voice to represent this group of women (the main “character” is a distinct, though sometimes contradictory “We”), Julie Otsuka asks the question: “Is there any tribe more savage than the Americans.”

10. Tres by Roberto Bolaño

The author of the masterworks The Savage Detectives and 2666 (and numerous other fine novels and novellas published since his untimely death in 2003), Roberto Bolaño never hid his desire to be a great poet, or that he held the form in greater regard than he did prose. His previous collection, The Romantic Dogs, established the writer a fine poet indeed, and this years release of Tres, shows the writer wonderfully weaving between poems and prose to spin the ethereal magic that inhabits his great novels. In three sequences, Bolaño explores art, love, secrecy and literature, often with his trademark noir texture that effortlessly takes us from dream to reality and back again.

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An entire book series devoted to centuries of food writing.

400 years of food writing in nine different books is enough to make any food lover go crazy. Penguin Book’s new Great Food series is a special collection exploring food writing through the ages. With works from Alexander Dumas and A.W. Chase, and cover designs that are just as much of a feast as the writing inside, it’s hard to go wrong.

This isn’t your average foodie writing packed full of cutting edge expressions and thoughts on emulsions. In these pages, printed on FSC certified paper, you will find great recipes like “Pigeon eye with spinage” (Recipes From the White Hart Inn, William Verrall, originally published 1759), and lines as good as, “Seeds must be gathered in fair weather, at the wane of the moon…” (The Well Kept Kitchen, Gervase Markham, originally published 1615).

Bon appetit!

Available from Penguin Books, $12 per title.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

What came first, the depressing women’s book clubs or the morbid books?

Remember the trances and travels afforded by pleasure reading? You couldn’t wait to lose yourself in the next chapter of that murder mystery, royal court espionage or love tryst – you were a voracious reader who deeply mourned the loss of your new character friends once the final page was devoured and downloaded into your fiber.

But somehow, that pleasure has become elusive to the women’s book group, the reading less an armchair cruise than an academic grind. The inevitable prerequisite is the agreed-upon selections must be meaty enough to spark evocative feedback for eloquent sharing round the coffee table. As a result, our picks are highly wrought works of historic, political or cultural significance perpetually mired in sadness. Or, as a fellow member recently commiserated, “Can’t we move on from the holocaust and women in pain?”

“People going through misery, the good women and bad men dynamic – that was an Oprah thing,” observes Bill Dito, an employee of the popular Books Inc. shop in San Francisco, where staff specialists write their own book reviews for customers. He has a bird’s eye view of the victim trend in fiction the last decade, one that has forced us to endure an excruciating trip through a time machine or suffer female bondage of one brand or another – which only further marginalizes us as women.

Then there is the entire cottage industry one might call “victim books” from rape to exploitation to the toast of the Oprah Book Club, author Wally Lamb with big guns like Couldn’t Keep it to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution. In the collection described as both utterly depressing and a real page turner, inmates describe in their own words, tales of abuse, rejection, self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. This followed other works like She’s Come Undone and Drowning Ruth – bereft titles that speak for themselves.

When The Color Purple and Joy Luck Club came out, they were rare rather than part of a steady diet of underdog angst and could be easily digested. Now, the question remains: Are there any other stories being told?

“As someone who has written about ‘women in pain,’ women dealing with the death of a child, for example, I think that the premise of your question is problematic,” novelist Ayelet Waldman tells me. “All interesting stories are about someone in crisis – in ‘pain’ if you will. Who wants to read about happy people doing happy things? Story is conflict, conflict is story. The Corrections was about people in crisis. Does that fall into your category of ‘victim-literature?’ If it doesn’t, then I think you should take a good look at the question you’re asking, and consider whether it isn’t inherently sexist.”

When she puts it that way, I do feel I’m turning my back on the movement. Men deal in pain, too, as she aptly points out.  The Kite Runner was all about the pain.

The fact is I cherish my women’s book group and our time reviewing, catching up, sipping wine and grazing on grapes and cheese. But it is time to lighten up, or at least look around. Even read about happy things. So sue me. Can’t drama tinged with humor a la Capote, Sedaris and McInerney be book group material? We have even drifted from titillating historic fiction such as Phillipa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl series.

I’d like to shirk my duty to remember and never forget (Sarah’s Key, The Invisible Bridge, The Book Thief, Jacob’s Courage, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society). I’ve hit my saturation point for the empathy we must extend to our unfortunate, ill-fated sisters still under tutelage of warlords, meddling Indian parents or Southern patriarchs (Little Bee,  Sister of My Heart, Shanghai Girls, Secret Life of Bees, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Eat, Pray Love, Life of Venus, Cutting for Stone). 

How might it be different if men were members? I have no idea, since I have only belonged to all women book groups.

In my group, which focuses on contemporary fiction, it would appear the lists are stocked with Sophie’s choices – just as films have waves like the one witnessed in 2008 with an abundance of Third Reich themes: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, Valkyrie, Adam Resurrected. The onslaught had New York Times contributor A.O. Scott questioning the trend, as I have questioned my book group’s thematic selections:

“The near-simultaneous appearance of all these movies is to some degree a coincidence, but it throws into relief the curious fact that early 21st-century culture, in Europe and America, on screen and in books, is intensely, perhaps morbidly preoccupied with the great political trauma of the mid-20th century,” he wrote. “The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy qualification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions: Why are there so many? Why now?”

I can’t say I don’t glean knowledge, picking up more details than what I acquired or remember as a history major in college or as an impressionable kid at Communist Jewish summer camp exposed to the soul-flogging images in films like, Let My People Go, the 1965 story of Israel containing graphic footage of the remains of my ancestors being scooped up from piles at the camps after liberation. It was important to watch. Nonetheless, I wanted to run back to the arts and crafts table and make another God’s Eye. 

Sarah’s Key informed me of the French betrayal and the Vichy collaboration and the wrenching view from the eyes of a child; The Invisible Bridge eloquently told the Hungarian artisan’s story of survival. And the highly literary, exquisite novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, allowed me to visit the British Isles during occupation where defiant members of a book group take great risks to meet and eat and break German curfews.

I benefited from all of these reads, but aren’t we ready for an expanded library, a richer experience?

“My in laws came from Poland and Hungary and they ask me about the books we read, but they can never read them and have no interest in going near them,” says another member of my group. I get it. While I didn’t live it, my grandmother was the only one of seven children in her family to escape and survive the Polish slaughter.

While I identified strongly with Jonathan Saffran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated – which recounted one man’s yearnings for his ancestors’ experience of being hidden from the Nazis in a uniquely entertaining voice – I struggle with each depiction of the hiding like animals in the woods, the mashing like cattle into jam-packed train cars, the starvation, the fear, the digging of their own graves before dropping into them. No wonder we found relief in the uber-violent Inglorious Bastards.

The same frustration is suffered in the downtrodden female tales, which produced two centuries after Jane Austen, rarely offer a happy mid-18th century way out via a beneficial marriage around the maypole or sudden death of a piggish heir. Instead, we find ourselves steeped in the relentless bellicosity of the neanderthals entrapping them, classic male withholders of the basic needs we women require to thrive: love, money, property, liberty, suffrage and great sex after 50.

Why now are we spending our free time moaning vicariously in wartime hellishness or flinching through a deranged arranged marriage when we could cuddle up in bed on a Sunday with a steamy romance epic, bone-chilling murder mystery or a young professional’s playful romp working at a style magazine or publishing house or paying dues in some hick town? Now that is chick-lit I can wrap my overloaded, burned-out brain around – reads that I won’t equate with the daily drudgery of paying bills and managing schedules.

If we must endure yet fresh pain, perhaps it might be framed not in 20th century Europe but, say, 21st century New Orleans, as in Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun. At least, as in The Help and Eat Pray Love, it is fresh stuff chronicling our own times. The Depression-era Water for Elephants, too, provided a historic perspective while still offering something totally new in the journey of a would-be vet who joins the circus. It certainly wasn’t free of struggling female characters, but the suffering didn’t dominate the theme and the redemption was a gift.

The same dearth of freshness clearly exists in in play writing, as well. How else can you explain the barrage of revivals in the last decade? If I see an ad for Annie Get Your Gun one more time, I’ll shoot myself and take Wild Bill with me. It’s the old Disney strategy of when in doubt, produce a remake or sequel. And novelists suffer from the same syndrome by focusing on what sells.

Perhaps one remedy would be to not rely solely on the New York Times lists and peruse book stores for the employee recommendations. Oftentimes, you will find sparkling little stories that didn’t cut the mustard with the corporate giant, but are worthwhile nonetheless.

“We pick and choose ones we want to read and then write it up if we like it and also accept customer reviews,” explains Dito. “You would be amazed how many people come in here to look at our reviews. That’s why there is a need for book stores. You can’t talk to someone from Amazon.”

Among the Books Inc. favorites: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard (author of  The River of Doubt ) which examines the the madness, medicine and murder of James A. Garfield; The Elegance of the Hedgehog a quirky French story by Muriel Barbery; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell, focusing on a war-ravaged Dutch East Indies company; and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami,  a romantic Japanese woman’s coming of age.

Another staff reviewer, Chris Lutes, adds that there are certainly a plethora of Third Reich era reads such as Laura Hiderbrand’s World War II survivor dramas including the recently acclaimed Unbroken.  But there are plenty of alternatives worth book club consideration.

“It was a pretty trying time in history so it’s easy to revisit because even though we are removed from that drama there is such humanity to those stories and it’s easy for people to get into that mindset. Still it’s staggering how many books are published each month – so there’s a lot of other stuff out there,” he says.

Images: imdb; Skinny Chronicles, shutterhacks; Squidoo

Need some new ideas for what to read this summer? Here are some top picks from our EcoSalon editors.

Summer is a time to get outdoors, spend time with friends, take vacations and catch up on your reading. Here at EcoSalon we all have stacks of books on our bedside tables (or downloaded on our Kindle apps), waiting to be read on the beach or just on the back deck. We thought it would be fun to share our choices and give you a glimpse of our interests and what we read in our spare time.

Did you know that Amy DuFault reads Dorothy Parker to help fine tune her wit or that Vanessa Barrington even reads about food for fun? Scott Adelson and Katherine Butler can’t say enough good things about the same book, so be sure to put it on your must-read list. Although many tackle weighty issues – strong reviews, glowing recommendations or exceptional writing land them on our list. Here are the titles we can’t wait to start, and some favorites we think you’ll enjoy.

Happy summer!

Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories by Jonathan Chapman and Nik Gant
Ever since I wrote Top 15 Eco-Fashion Books We Love a while back I’ve been trying to chip away at reading all of them. As a sustainable fashion writer, as much as I say first-hand knowledge and experience with the industry is important, it’s just as important to take the time to read thoughtful insights from different members of the fashion industry. [Amy DuFault]

The Portable Dorothy Parker
I LOVE Dorothy Parker and whatever I haven’t read of hers I am sure I will find in this tome and I am hoping she helps me sharpen my wit. [Amy Dufault]

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Before she killed herself, Hannah Baker made seven audio tapes with thirteen reasons why she took her own life. The tapes are making the rounds to each of the thirteen people who played a part (knowingly or unknowingly) in her decision. I’m interested to see how Asher treats this issue, especially since reviewers, teens and parents alike rave about the story.  [Andrea Newell]

The Silent Land by Graham Joyce
The summary had me at “hypnotically dark story.” A couple is caught by an avalanche skiing, and after they dig themselves out, they find that the world is empty. But is it? A friend couldn’t put it down, and I love page turners while I am at the beach listening to the waves.   [Andrea Newell]

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
This is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. Janie Crawford is a black woman in the early twentieth century South who marries three men, but only one for love. She lives her life unapologetically, even when she is judged for daring to pursue passion and happiness, and accused of murdering one of her husbands. “The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.” [Andrea Newell]

Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook
Few people know or would believe that the ubiquitous tomatoes we find on our fast food and deli sandwiches could possibly have been produced by enslaved workers in this country. Even worse, the tomatoes are so tasteless and mealy; they are not even worth eating. A waste of labor and resources, even if slavery is not part of the equation. Someone has finally written a book about what modern agriculture has done to an iconic fruit that should be delicious, juicy, and full of flavor and the workers who harvest it. It’s about time. [Vanessa Barrington]

Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo
A food memoir of an American woman who marries a Lebanese man, spends her honeymoon in Baghdad and, through her marriage learns to navigate the world of Middle Eastern food and culture. I’m dying to read it because I’ve heard that it’s exquisitely written, but more so because it shows us different aspects of a part of the world that we rarely see other than through wartime images on the news. [Vanessa Barrington]

A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
Why? Because it’s a classic about one of England’s favorite topics, class distinctions. Though this one has the distinction of taking place over an extended holiday. Plus, it’s funny (in that subtle Forster way) and biting, cutting to the frivolities of what it is to have and have not. Or perhaps better put, to want and want not. I picked this book up again last summer after Diane Rehm featured it in her NPR book club. [K. Emily Bond]

Another Country by James Baldwin
This is a story about the downfall and subsequent suicide of a black jazz musician named Rufus Scott, his relationship with Leona, a white woman from the South, his mentor Richard’s relationship with his wife Cass, his best friend Vivaldo’s relationship with his sister Ida, and his first gay lover’s relationship with Cass. Who, again, is Rufus’ mentor’s wife. Lots of sex – of the straight and gay kind – characterizes Another Country, but it’s very much a book about racial tension, denial, ambition and jealousy. It is an insanely absorbing portrait of bohemian 1960s New York vs. the rest of the world, just as relevant today as it was then. Truly, this and Giovanni’s Room are my two favorite Baldwin works. [K. Emily Bond]

I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere and Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda
These might seem a bit obscure, but this contemporary French writer is one of my favorites, and the two books are always good summer reads, because they’re smart, witty and very French. I Wish Someone Were Waiting For Me Somewhere is a collection of short stories, which is ideal for when you’re on the road or simply in need of some brain candy. [Anna Brones]

Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson
A heavy but beautiful book that takes a new friendship from the harsh winter months and into the Swedish summer. Olsson is a Swede living in New Zealand, and although she writes in English, her Swedish roots are clear in her writing, which is probably why I am a sucker for her books. [Anna Brones]

Just Kids by Patti Smith
Art, music, love and romance, all as acute and true as can be in an irrepressible late-60s and 70s New York City backdrop. Rock Shaman Goddess Patti Smith takes us with her on an escape from New Jersey to an anything-can-happen art and rock (and art rock) world as is taken form in the desperate nooks and crannies of The City where pure invention was being begged at every turn. Most of all, perhaps, Just Kids is the story of her deep personal connection with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who passed away from AIDs in 1989. Together they negotiate an extreme transition from poverty and youth to success and fame, while never surrounding their hard-driven addiction to creative authenticity. A super read that bears the texture of Smith’s magical and poetic voice. How many people do you think went to see Jim Morrison perform and walked away thinking “I can do that.” Of those, how many could? [Scott Adelson]

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise’s exploration of hard-to-like Amory Blaine’s evolution in the face of The Man is as powerful and poignant today as it must have been when it was a sensation at the birth of the Jazz Age. How relevant is it today? Check out this riff: “We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can’t. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism… Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food.” Fitzgerald’s masterpiece changes its tone and structure along with the experiences of Blaine, giving the book a modern feel a nearly a century after it was first published. [Scott Adelson]

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Chopin was exploring women’s “problem with no name” almost a century prior to the 1970s American feminist revival. Gorgeously describing the hot sultry climate of New Orleans and Grande Isle, it’s a great read for summer. [Katherine Butler]

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
What an outstanding read — Egan compiles a group of amazing characters past, present and future. And she gives us a slightly-chilling view of ourselves ten years down the line. [Katherine Butler]

Having won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, many believe Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad is a true modern masterpiece. Magnificent craftsmanship and a unique use of postmodern technique give this novel a cross-time, cross-genre sensibility, and a certain humanity that you might find lacking in the cooler works of Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and other well-known, male Postmodern masters. Egan’s book opens with a story of a kleptomaniac woman and jumps from chapter to chapter, each one bringing new characters into the spotlight without regard to chronology or consistency of style. What emerges is a sense of time, realism and emotional breadth that could not come from your usual “once-upon-a-time” experience. [Scott Adelson]

Enjoy!

image: Michela Castiglione

Lucy Norman, founder of Lula Dot, rescues cast-off materials and makes treasured objects.

UK-based designer Lucy Norman of Lula Dot upcycles London’s waste as a way of encouraging “emotional attachment” between consumers and their objects. She works with a range of materials, including the Literary Canon, which you might have abandoned in college.
When old books are sent to charity shops, they often end up being sent to landfills. Lucy rescues these would-be trashed pages and turns them into stunning ceiling art by folding each in half and creating a circular arrangement, which she then hangs around a ceiling light.

“More books are printed every year, read and discarded…[and] there is currently no infrastructure set up to recycle the paper,” she writes on her website, where you can purchase the Light Reading Chandelier for £340 in the UK.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, that’s what we call “well read.”

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

Honestly, there are times when I too feel like taking a happy pill to get away from it all but the only way to be a part of it is to be educated. So don’t stop now.

These 15 books will take you down many interesting roads on your journey. Be open to it.

1. Eco Fashion

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Eco Fashion by Sass Brown

“This book shows the range of companies making a difference in the area of sustainable design in fashion, exploding the myth that sustainable design is bad design, or at best basic design, by highlighting the range of companies producing desirable and well-designed apparel and accessories with a conscience. It not only demonstrates the range of products available around the globe, but explains the stories behind them and the communities they support, as well as showing how and where they make a difference.” – Laurence King Publishing

2. Future Fashion White Papers

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Future Fashion White Papers by Earth Pledge

“A collection of 30 compelling essays by scientists, retailers, farmers, dyers, models and others in the industry, including Diane von Furstenberg, Julie Gilhart, and Shalom Harlow. FutureFashion White Papers take an in-depth look at the fashion industry and provides a thoughtful, wide-ranging analysis of how a transition to sustainability can be achieved. Diane von Furstenberg notes: ‘FutureFashion White Papers is an exploration that signifies movement towards a more sustainable fashion industry. It is an opportunity to think about and evaluate the fashion industry as it stands today’.” – Earth Pledge

3. The Eco-chick Guide to Life

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The Eco-chick Guide To Life by Starre Vartan

“Every now and then, someone comes along who shows the rest of us how much we take for granted the freedoms of our daily lives. The eco-journalist, blogger and all-around green genie Starre Vartan is one such person. In The Eco Chick Guide to Life, her earth-first program for glamorous but environmentally conscious living, she mines new lodes of guilt, finding gems of awareness and providing detailed eco-wise shopping guides for the body, the closet, the home and the larder.” – The New York Times

4. DIY Fashion

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DIY Fashion by Selena Francis-Bryden

“DIY Fashion is a cool, quirky, and creative guide to making and customizing your own clothes, bags, and accessories. It contains more than 40 thrifty, sustainable, and stylish projects, none of which require prior skill or a sewing machine. From customized hand-me-downs to elegant evening wear, the book is packed with ideas that the reader can adapt to their own taste.” – Amazon

5. Eco-Chic, The Fashion Paradox

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Eco-Chic, The Fashion Paradox by Sandy Black

“Sandy Black has divided the book into four chapters: The Greening of the Fashion Industry, Re-Designing Fashion, Fibre to Fabric and Fabric to Fashion. In the first chapter she has profiled six of the most influential players in the UK ethical fashion industry: the inimitable Lynda Grose, the pioneering Fair Trade label People Tree, the mainstream advocates Marks and Spencer, the long-term campaigner Katharine Hamnett and the style leader Sarah Ratty of Ciel. By choosing these six profiles to feature at the beginning of the book Sandy Black has very quickly laid out the complex territory on which the battle for ethical fashion must be fought.” – Treehugger

6. Green Is The New Black

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Green Is The New Black-How To Change The World With Style by Tamsin Blanchard

“Tamsin Blanchard is a journalist and writer. Since 2005, she has been the Telegraph Magazine’s style director. Before that she wrote about fashion and interiors for The Observer, and spent three years as The Independent‘s fashion editor. She is contributing fashion editor to the V&A Magazine, and a sometime contributing editor to 10 Magazine. She has also written for Vogue, Marie Claire, US Harper’s Bazaar, and The Daily Rubbish. In the late Nineties, she co-founded “˜it’ a luxury boxed magazine for fashion, art and design. She has taught fashion journalism at Central Saint Martins and University of Westminster and is currently an external assessor at London College of Fashion.”

With a foreword by Lily Cole, and lots of contributions from designers and eco experts, it is an entertaining, inspiring guide on how to be fashionably green. – www.tamsin blanchard.com

7. Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys

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Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys by Kate Fletcher

“Kate Fletcher is a practitioner and academic who has been working in the field of sustainable fashion for the last 15 years: she has recently become Reader in Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion. Her consultancy within the fashion industry, coupled with her educational experience, makes her uniquely well qualified to write this much-needed text. Fletcher, who has helped to develop the concept of “˜slow fashion’, is at the center of research in this area and calls upon both established texts such as McDonough and Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle and recent research from a wide variety of sources, including her own, to support her writing. The quality of research is high.” – Oxford Art Journal

8. Eco Chic: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion

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Eco Chic: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion by Matilda Lee

“The hottest trend on the catwalk is ethical clothing. Top fashion designers and spokes models including Katharine Hamnett, Stella McCartney and Bono’s wife Ali Hewson are all voicing the benefits of eco chic. But what is this new fad, and what difference can it make to the world? “Eco Chic” gives you the full story on this fashion phenomenon, from which fabrics are harmful to the environment, to how you can create your own eco-friendly fashions through recycling and savvy shopping. You will discover how to spot and avoid garments produced in sweatshops and why supermarket ‘fast clothes’ make both you and the planet sick. This book will allow you to look great but also feel good about your impact on other people and the planet as a whole.” – Amazon

9. Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays

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Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays by Jonathan Chapman and Nick Gant

“Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories boldly presents alternative understandings of sustainable design, to curate a challenging, sometimes uncomfortable and always provocative, collection of essays by some of the world’s leading sustainable design thinkers. The result is an authoritative anthology that reinvigorates the culture of critique that in previous years has empowered design with the qualities of social, environmental and economic revolution.” – Earthscan

10. The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

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The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli

-¦a readable and evenhanded treatment of the complexities of world trade”¦ As Rivoli repeatedly makes clear, there is absolutely nothing free about free trade except the slogan.” – San Francisco Chronicle

11. Threads of Labour

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Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Worker’s Perspective by Angela Hale and Jane Wills

“This book gives valuable insights for decision-makers in international clothing brands. Read it and learn how garment workers worldwide are affected by the sub-contracted manufacturing that characterizes this industry.” – Dan Rees, Director of the Ethical Trading Initiative

12. Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles

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Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles by India Flint

“The essence of plants bursts forth in magnificent hues and surprising palettes. Using dyes of the leaves, roots, and flowers to color your cloth and yarn can be an amazing journey into botanical alchemy. In Eco Colour, artistic dyer and colorist India Flint teaches you how to cull and use this gentle and ecologically sustainable alternative to synthetic dyes.

India explores the fascinating and infinitely variable world of plant color using a wide variety of techniques and recipes. From whole-dyed cloth and applied color to prints and layered dye techniques, India describes only ecologically sustainable plant-dye methods. She uses renewable resources and shows how to do the least possible harm to the dyer, the end user of the object, and the environment. Recipes include a number of entirely new processes developed by India, as well as guidelines for plant collection, directions for the distillation of nontoxic mordants, and methodologies for applying plant dyes.” – Amazon

13. Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style

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Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style by Christie Matheson

“Matheson slyly steers us toward consumer goods and services that minimize our earth-stomping human footprint. She’s brave enough to say ‘buy less of everything,’ and even the politically fraught ‘buy nothing.’ Matheson’s genius is to make this seem not only doable, but fun.” – Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land and Bottlemania

14. Sustainable Fashion: Why Now?

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Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? A Conversation Exploring Issues, Practices and Possibilities by Janet Hethorn and Connie Ulasewicz

“Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? is a critical read for anyone with ties to the fashion industry: designers, marketers, product developers, retailers, teachers, students, and consumers that want to become involved with balancing the fashion desires of the individual with the need to be a steward of our environment.” – Fashion Practice

15. Fugitive Denim

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Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade by Rachel Louise Snyder

“Smart and ambitious, cosmopolite journalist Snyder maps the global garment industry, beginning in a New York loft where designers plot a line of ultra-pricey, socially responsible jeans that would ensure a fair wage for workers and not cause excessive environmental degradation. From there she visits cotton growers in Azerbaijan, denim specialists in Italy and factories in Cambodia and China. An excellent reporter, Snyder talks comfortably to both sophisticated designers and factory workers, conveying their very different motives as she paints a picture of an industry far more tangled than most consumers imagine. She notes that economic and employment shifts are felt globally, describing Italy mourning the loss of manufacturing to cheaper factories in Asia, where low-paying jobs represent unprecedented opportunity to many workers. If the prose occasionally verges on cuteness, it’s preferable to the jargon of quotas and NGOs ubiquitous in most discussions of global trade. Snyder’s investigation is an essential read for those curious about fashion or the globe-spanning business that produces their clothes.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Photo credit: Book pages by Horia Varlan on Flickr, licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons.

One of the 2011 shelter trends is the evolution of accessories and objectification of books. As technology takes over and electronic devices contain our libraries of words, there’s a growing nostalgia around the bound beauties we call books.

Bookshelves were an absolute obsession last year, and books will be objectified further in 2011 via wallpaper, classic novels with cleverly decorated covers, porcelain books, and even the classic decorative coffee table book.

Here are five items using the book motif to add to your space:

1. Stacked Paperback Wallpaper – Anthropologie, $198
2. Hardcover Classics – Penguin, $20
3. Distressed Books – My Sparrow, $12
4. Porcelain Book Set – Klein Reid, $198
5. Heart of Darkness – Spineless Classics, £24.99 (The entire book is printed on one page, image below).

Another bound inclination of the upcoming year is the coffee table book. Electronic readers may contain the latest bestselling fiction, but the tangible perusal and visual entertainment of coffee table books cannot be contained in a Kindle. Jump start your coffee table collection with this list of fifteen irresistible reads.

Speaking of irresistible, another of my favorite accessories trends is nature photography. Last year we saw over-sized horses and ostriches grace the pages of Lonny and Vogue. The love of ostriches will carry into this year, where you’ll also see plenty of elephants – prints, sculptures and ephemera.

If objectified books or photographic animal prints aren’t your passion, scroll through the rest of the 2011 shelter trends to find design inspiration and ideas.

EcoSalon recently published the hit article, “20 Must Read Books for Women,” in which you probably noticed a few books you’ve read and a few others that you’d like to read, as well. What you might have also noticed was that the list included no books written by men.

Might there be must-reads for women written by male authors? We’re not talking about tomes that you’d file under the “how to better understand the blue side of the species” (read: self-help for guys, porn, or maybe bios on Messrs. Churchill or Jordan). Just solid works, by men, that might be of such great value to a female audience that someone might place them in the “don’t miss” bin.

Continuing the series of must read books, we’re offering an addendum our previous list and presenting five books written by men that we think would be great for women readers. And as a yin to our yang, noting that the guys ought to be reading more essentials by women, we’re also offering five books written by women that would do well on any man’s bookshelf.

Five books for women, written by men:

1. The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway – Bravado and bulls have had Papa pegged as guy’s writer going back to “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) and Jake Barnes’ classic last line to Lady Brett Ashley: “Isn’t it pretty to think so.” But Ernest Hemingway remains a quintessential American master, whose crisp, quick sentences act as simple brush stokes to create unflinchingly real and complex images, relationships and storylines. In “The Garden of Eden” (published posthumously in 1986) he shows a depth and tenderness that’s unburdened by Great War or greater fish. Here, Hemingway tells the tale of a love triangle, androgyny and gender reversal, putting down his gloves and allowing access to a wide(r?) range of readers into his inimitable world and style.

2. The World According to Garp, John Irving – In his 1978 classic “The World According to Garp,” John Irving’s  male hero navigates an obstacle course of a life chock full of tricky sexual relations, male vulnerability and ignorance, and sometimes extreme feminism. The book features bold, loving and dangerous female characters (as well as a fantastic cross-dressing nurse), who surround Garp as he struggles to find his place in life and tell his story. Irving handles characters of both sexes extraordinarily well, displaying an ambidexterity that’s not easy to come by and speaks to the difficultly of making book suggestions like these difficult in the first place.

3. True Grit, Charles Portis – A classic western with uncharacteristic depth, Charles Portis’ “True Grit” (1968) lacks none of gun-slinging, foul language and, yes, grit of the greatest American entries in this genre. Its character sensitivities and ambiguities, however, are seldom seen in such novels, save perhaps in that of the work of the great Cormac McCarthy (“All the Pretty Horses,” “Blood Meridian,” “No Country for Old Men”). Unlike McCarthy, Portis’ bleak landscape offers up a sad humor regarding the human condition, as heroine Mattie Ross recalls the great adventure of her childhood in which she seeks to avenge the death of her father with the help renegade lawmen. Read the book before seeing the Coen brothers’ super remake of the John Wayne classic.

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4. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace – There’s been a lot of talk lately about the current generation of male authors’ inability to deal with sex and sexual issues. Some, like NYU’s Katie Roiphe, point to a reactive, “wimping out” of the sensitive male, a “new purity” of “self-conscious paralysis.” David Foster Wallace, however, had a knack for staring down our culture on many issues, including sexual relations. In this 1998 collection of short stories (a number of which bear the book’s title), Wallace explores many modern themes, including sexual alienation. Never an easy read, Wallace is always worth the effort. His short stories and essays are an excellent way access to his work and an alternative for those who are reticent to scale his dense masterpiece, “Infinite Jest.”

5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth – Up there with Norman Mailer as the male writer most consistently pummeled for unrepentant misogyny, big bad Philip Roth’s primal scream of “Portnoy’s Complaint” (his celebrated 1969 novel that so prevalently featured its main character’s penis) has softened into an older, wiser, sadder sigh in this masterwork. It’s not so much that Roth seems to have rethought his view of the relationship between men and women, per se, but more like the evidence is in that, as his characters have aged, infatuation with that issue is somehow beside the point – and was perhaps a red herring all along. Here, a man’s traditional middle class experience is upended by the historical elements and trace madness that weaved their way through the American landscape in second half of 20th century.

And five books for men, written by women:

6. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood – Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece (which made our previous must-read list) presents a futuristic nightmare for all women, where a male-dominated extremist faction has taken over the nation and created a world where women are forbidden to read, work, or have their own name; their roles, from servant to child bearer, are determined by the men who control their lives. The chilling effect of the story is made more severe by the tone of Atwood’s prose that offers emotions and imagery of true fear in a world whose potential “realness” (think a Western version of Taliban Afghanistan) will make any reader shudder.

7. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan – Magnificent craftsmanship and a unique use of postmodern technique give Jennifer Egan’s recent novel (2010) a cross-time, cross-genre sensibility, and a certain humanity that one might find lacking in the cooler works of Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and other well-known, male postmodern masters. Egan’s book opens with story of a kleptomaniac woman and jumps from chapter to chapter, with each one bringing a seemingly ancillary character into the spotlight without regard to chronology or consistency of style. What emerges is a sense of realism and emotional breadth that could not come from a simple “once-upon-a-time” experience.

8. The Young Romantics, Daisy Hay – Our lists’ only non-fiction entry is a biographical work that not only reexamines the lives of some history’s most famous men, but does so in the context of the women who shared their lives, offering up a new, more accurate approach to the entire genre. Daisy Hay looks at Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and the other Romantic Era authors, examining  their lives as unified matrix, rather than as purely individual stories, showing how their interpersonal relationships affected both their creative and personal selves. Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein” (a certain contender for this half of our list) is in fact the epicenter of the story, lending a more feminist (and in this case accurate) approach to exploring the period. Most important, though, is that the book is just a great read, with the feel of excellent historical fiction. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

9. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather – Willa Cather’s evokes the emerging American West by eliciting depth and complexity from basic character archetypes to capture a sense of the nation in a uniquely powerful manner. “Death Comes for the Archbishop” (1927) tells the story of two men, Bishop Jean Marie Latour (an intellectual “tower”) and his friend Father Joseph Vaillant (a valiant defender of the faith) who are charged with taking over a Spanish diocese in New Mexico after the territory is acquired by the United States. The works taps into the relationship between ideas and the frontier landscape and as such rings true as an authentic American tale without swollen bravado and fanfare.

10. A Spy in the House of Love, Anais Nin – Anais Nin’s 1954 novel emerges from the mind of Sabina, a married women involved in a number of adulterous affairs, who sees herself a spy or witness to her own experiences. Nin’s dreamy, yet unflinching  style (that also lends itself so well her erotic writings) creates a intense psychological atmosphere, where the reader crawls inside the thought processes and sensitivities of a woman as she betrays the man she loves in order to explore her own personal nuances. Inside info, guys? Maybe. An ethereal, semi-autobiographical tale that offers an intimate view into a woman’s complicated life.

Main Image: Valerie Everett

We may have mentioned that we’re a fan of the men. Give us a guy who can quote Gloria Steinem or Michael Pollan (or Gloria Steinem quoting Michael Pollan) and we will show you a guy we’re dancing around like vegan Bacchante. For December, we brought you the greatness that is Ryan Gosling. Now for the new year? We’re agreeing with Time and Oprah on this one: author Jonathan Franzen is our January Man We love.

Why is he of the well-written word so cool? As our editor-in-chief Sara notes, “I love how he notices textures, his sense of humor, and that great big brain. It’ll be fun to see if he lets out his mean streak in future books. And, he’s adorable, tall, and watches birds. What’s not to like?”

Further, his list of accomplishments as a writer is the stuff of dreams for this one. There’s his National Book Award in 2001 for The Corrections, a New York Times best seller. He’s a Pulitzer Prize nominee. He’s been called “The Great American Novelist” by Time Magazine and he’s tangoed with Oprah Winfrey, only to come out on top as her final book club selection ever with his latest tome, Freedom.

So yes, there’s a wee bit of fawning of the Franzen. But a recent interview got us thinking about what this man is doing for the environmental movement with Freedom. Freedom tells the story of Walter Berglund, a “greener than Greenpeace” environmentalist who takes on the task of negotiating strip mining for a bird sanctuary.

Walter wants to save a warbler species that Grist, in an interview with Franzen, points out leads his to make “a Faustian deal with a mountaintop-mining coal company.” Franzen works with the American Bird Conservancy, which is dedicated to helping wild birds of North America. But when asked if Freedom is an activist book, Franzen makes the point that modern day environmentalism includes many shades of gray. As he mentions,

There is a place for radical stances – Greenpeace with the whales, some of the anti-mountaintop-removal stuff going on in Appalachia. And you can actually sometimes succeed by taking the really hard-line position. But much more often, if you talk to the people doing the work and getting things done, it’s a gut-wrenching compromise every day. You have to cultivate extremely wealthy people. You have to cut very imperfect deals with industry. People have said to me, about Freedom, “Oh, you must be satirizing this poor Walter Berglund who gets corrupted when he sets out to do good.” In fact, what I was after was a purely realistic portrayal of contemporary conservation work in Appalachia.

Franzen further points out that his way of turning people’s attention to certain interests is to hook them on the human story first. He concludes that “engaging people on the environment is really, really hard” and cautions that people should not lose sight of that.

Franzen’s subtle exposure of the modern-day environmentalist in his latest work is fantastic. But he also knows how to motivate his acolytes. He recently told The Guardian, “It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” Point taken, Mr. Franzen. (She writes, as she sits on her hands to avoid clicking on the latest headlines.)

Photo courtesy of Chris Buck for The Guardian