Curated by ELLY HONG
For our August round of Friday Reads, we spoke to three alums of The Common’s Literary Publishing Internship. Their recommendations delve into trauma, failure, and purposelessness, but all include notes of hope.
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
Here it is, the final Friday Reads of the decade! This month, we’re sharing the audiobooks that have entertained and challenged us this year. If you’d like even more listening material, check out The Common Online’s Poetry Recordings here.
Recommendations: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett; The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks; Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Curated by: SARAH WHELAN
Already done reading our latest Issue? Prolong the fun with these weekend reading recommendations from our Issue 18 contributors.
Recommendations: The Weil Conjectures by Karen Olsson; Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk; 7th Cousins: An Automythography by Erin Brubacher and Christine Brubaker; How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
The Common is a proud recipient of a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, and our staff are ready to celebrate! In conjunction with the Brooklyn Book Festival, you’re invited to join Whiting Prize winners The Common, Black Warrior Review, American Short Fiction, The Margins (Asian American Writers Workshop), and The Offing for an evening of literary merriment at LIC Bar in Long Island City. Event details can be found here.
If you’re already as excited as we are, please enjoy this month’s Friday Reads as a special treat – featuring reviews from editors at all the winning publications.
Recommendations: When You Learn The Alphabet by Kendra Allen; Two Lives: A Memoir by Vikram Seth; The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi; Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq by Jess Goodell; A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez.
Curated by: SARAH WHELAN
Welcome to the TC Alumni spotlight, where we highlight the achievements of our former staff members! This month, we’re checking in with Meghan Maria McCullough, a former Senior Editorial Assistant and Amherst College Class of 2015. Since graduation, Meghan has worked in publishing at organizations such as Penguin Random House and Union Literary, and has most recently been hired as an Editorial Assistant at Arthur A. Levine Books.
Congratulations on your new role at Scholastic! What drew you to join this publisher in particular?
Thank you! I’m just over three months in and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be here. I was drawn to Scholastic, and my imprint, Arthur A. Levine Books, in particular, because I love children’s books–picture books, Middle Grade, Young Adult especially. That’s what Scholastic does, and in my opinion, we do it better than anyone else out there. I am so proud to work for the publisher of, yes, Harry Potter, but also of some of the most remarkable children’s books being released today. Some of my recent favorites of ours that have been just-released or are coming down the pike include: a Middle Grade called The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty, a young adult novel coming in February called The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg, and a just-released picture book called Good Morning, Snowplow! by Deborah Bruss, illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson. I am of the mind that the books that we read growing up are the most important books we will ever read–they are the books that shape us, they are our closest friends, they are the building blocks that we stack into a worldview. I still can’t quite believe that now I get to have a hand in making them.
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
Friday Reads is like a box of chocolates: there’s something for everyone, even the weirdos who read scripts! This month, sample an autobiographical novel, a collection of love poems, and a modernist play.
Recommendations: A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz, Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
Once again, The Common and Amherst College are honored to welcome a selection of visionary authors to our third annual LitFest–a weekend long series of events celebrating literary brilliance and nuanced expression. The talks, workshops, and panels will include, among other voices, 2017 National Book Award Finalists. This month, our staff and interns have chosen their reading in anticipation of our guests, and we present here our thoughts on just a few of these dazzling works. For more information on LitFest, please visit the Amherst College website.
Recommendations: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz.
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
This month, our Issue 14 contributors are reading works that examine the seams of time, from the construction of a fleeting impression, to the scaffolding of a historical drama. Whether it be a poem read from a pulpit or a paperback fished serendipitously from a pile of freebies, these recommendations celebrate literature’s ability to break through temporal boundaries.
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
Whether you’ve already read Issue 14 twice or you’ve been stealing guilty glances at the untouched copy on your night stand, enjoy a little bonus content from our Issue 14 contributors! This month, our recommendations probe the supposed linear formation of our lives by questioning how we conceptualize our tasks, societies, and time itself. Poetic, comedic, and tragic, these reads shed light on contradictory forces often taken for granted.
Folks, it’s September. Time to stow away that summer beach read and pull out the award-winning tome that’s going to get you noticed by the cute grad student in the coffee shop. This month, read about starkly different economic and cultural worlds existing side by side. As the poor and the rich, the colonizer and the native shift uneasily along slippery fault lines, these recommendations offer brutal looks at friction between and within communities. Harrowing and insightful, you’ll be so engrossed you won’t even notice the number written on your to-go cup.
Recommendations: Tales of Two Americas edited by John Freeman, Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, and News of the World by Paulette Jiles.
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