book recs for word nerds
Brilliantly crafted storytelling for writers who appreciate that sort of thing
I want to tell you about a few of my favorite recent reads without telling you what happens in the stories. Not everyone loves spoilers (I know I don’t), and some people prefer to go into a story knowing as little as possible.
So, instead of giving you the same summary everyone gives you, I am going to share the big questions the following books ask. Maybe one is tinkering with the same question that keeps you up at night. And like any good literature, perhaps the answers you find in these stories will feed your hope and imagination. Or warn about what not to do.
Happy reading.
Tender Is the Flesh
by Agustina Bazterrica
What happens to morality when cruelty becomes normal?
If you are a word nerd, you will love (or be horrified by) the brilliant way Bazterrica’s characters weaponize language to show us what happens when we are forced to deal with an atrocity by choosing cruelty and comfort over dignity and humanity. The characters grapple with how they choose to (re)define evil, and it leaves us, the readers, asking deeply uncomfortable questions about morality.
Heads up: if you don’t do gore, then this is probably a hard pass. Tender Is the Flesh is described as splatter punk horror. And…whew...it surely is.
Madonna in a Fur Coat
by Sabahattin Ali
Can one experience of love define an entire life?
As an introvert and a generally quiet person, this story struck me as a lovely and haunting tale about the transformative power of being truly seen by another person. But what happens when someone who has felt seen and understood turns a single experience of love into both refuge and exile and quietly cuts themselves off from ever risking that kind of connection again?
The Stranger
by Albert Camus
What if life has no meaning, and you refuse to pretend it does?
To keep the peace, a society runs on the engine of invisible agreements. Think etiquette and manners, which give us the rules about how to behave, what to feel, and when it’s appropriate to perform those feelings for the sake of others’ comfort. These rules color the static background of our lives and are part of what gives each of us meaning.
But what happens when a person questions whether meaning is something we invent to feel safe? As in, maybe it doesn’t exist. Or, even more extreme, maybe our demand for meaning is absurd. And then what happens when they refuse to perform the emotions the world around them expects?
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
by Ottessa Moshfegh
Can you heal yourself by disappearing from your own life?
Have you ever fantasized about disappearing from your own life? Just for a little while? And have you wondered if self-erasure can be the same thing as restorative or healing? This fever dream of a story braids together sharp questions about alienation, privilege, and the seductive idea of escaping emotional and existential pain through extreme withdrawal.
I recommend this to anyone who has ever said, fuck it, I’m moving into the woods and becoming a bog witch.
The Employees
by Olga Ravn
What makes someone human in a world that treats people like tools?
It goes like this: you clock into your job and work like a robot until your shift is over, and then you clock back out and sometimes wonder privately what the hell is all of this even for?
This novel pits a sterile world built for extreme efficiency against the deeply human longing to feel things like desire, grief, and love. Some find those human reactions a nuisance or a sign of a flawed system. But others will read it as proof of being alive.
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman
Who are we without other people to tell us who we are?
Speaking of the what makes me human, anyway theme, this is a story that Camus and Ravn would love. It asks the next logical question in this line of storytelling: what happens if you strip a life of every inch of social context and shared history? If you have no horizon line—no reference point for being—then how do you know you have humanity? Is it something we inherit or something we build?
This book will haunt you.
A Short Stay in Hell
by Steven L. Peck
How do you hold onto meaning in the face of infinity?
This is the book that keeps me awake at night. I had never encountered true existential horror before, but damn. Peck nailed it. In this short book, which will never leave you, you are asked to confront deeply terrifying questions about time, insignificance, and loss. But most profoundly, at least for me, are the questions about how fragile and ephemeral hope and purpose can be.
This book will double haunt you.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
by Stephen Graham Jones
What does violence turn a person into?
I have a soft spot for this story. On the one hand, this is the kind of storytelling that happens around a late-night campfire when everyone else is asleep, but you’re too transfixed to stop listening.
And on the other hand, this is a story that asks some profoundly complicated questions about identity and survival in the shadow of historical and personal brutality. Is monstrosity a choice? Or do we inherit it? And how do love, loyalty, and the very human desire for revenge warp and bend the lines between who is the protector and who is the predator?
Between Two Fires
by Christopher Buehlman
Can goodness still matter in a world that feels abandoned by God?
You could say that this is a 14th-century take on current events. Sheer, overwhelming evil comes at you from every direction, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Except hope. But in the face of relentless peril, how are we supposed to keep fighting while also holding our fragile faith intact?
What makes this story register so deeply is that it doesn’t treat goodness as grand or triumphant. Instead, it asks whether small, irrationally stubborn acts of mercy (the kind no one may ever see, which says a lot about these characters) can still carry meaning in a world drowning in suffering.
Flashback to when I was 16 and bought the French version of The Stranger ('L'Etranger') because I thought it made me look cool.
Didn't work unfortunately.