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booknerd37

@booknerd37

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NYRB Classics owned: 713/716
CR: Orlando - Vernon Subutex 3 - Despentes
My NYRB Classics List: 👇🏼

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3 months ago

My Favorite Books

This past week I hit the 5,000 followers mark and it does honestly really surprise me. In celebration of reaching this nice round number I wanted to share some my favorite books, beginning with A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that I read in high school in 1996 to I Who Have Never Known Men that I read this year. After the first pic the books appear in roughly the order that I read them in. I’ll also pin this post and use that as a guide to people who ask me what books they should read because if you haven’t read these yet, get on it!

Not included in this post because some books might be in my storage unit:

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
Broken Glass Park - Alina Bronsky
The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
Angels - Denis Johnson
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
Appointment in Samarra - John O’Hara
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
The Collector - John Fowles
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
The Cather in the Rye - JD Salinger

Thanks to all my followers out there and those who comment and engage with me. It’s nice to connect to all my fellow booknerds out there.

#bookstagram #bookstack #bibliophile #booknerd37 #booknerd #booklife #reading #readbooks #bookish #books #bookhaul #literaryfiction #bookrecs #bookpile #literature #instabook #freshfrommyshelves #nyrbclassics #nyrb #nyrbooks #5K #henrymiller #eastofeden #favoritebooks #bukowski #stoner #portnoyscomplaint #dune #hardrainfalling #einsteinsdreams taken in Asheville, North Carolina by @booknerd37

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a year ago

Fall & Winter Reading Plans

I’m a pretty slow reader, usually averaging 25-30 books a year. So far in 2026 I’ve read 20, and I hope I get to these 6 books before it ends, and fingers crossed a couple more. These are my definites, starting with my current read Vernon Subutex 3 by Despentes. The first slide has then in the order I hope to finish out my reading year.

I read the first Vernon during the weeks following Hurricane Helene here in Asheville, NC which was wrecked by the storm. I read the second at this time last year too. Great books and an homage to Paris.

After that I want to read my fifth Toni Morrison, Tar Baby, her only book that takes place mainly outside the U.S. Next year I hope to get to Beloved.

Next up will be She Who Remains, which was Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. It’s pretty short and looks like it will be a quick read after reading two 300+ page books.

Hopefully by mid November I’m on to Sad Tiger, published by the amazing @7storiespress It will likely be a heavy read, but super good. I got my copy at Books Are Magic this summer in NYC.

Every December for the last 7 or 8 years I’ve read a science fiction book written by a woman including Ann Leckie, Martha Wells, Pip Adam, and for the second time an Ursula K. Le Guin book. The Left Hand of Darkness is my second Hainish novel, in which a visitor reports on life on a frigid planet called Winter where everyone’s gender is fluid, an ambisexual.

In what could be my final book of the year I’ll get in at least one @dorothyproject read as part of #DorothyDecember. Blue Sunset was just released this past Tuesday here in the US. It’s also a pretty short read, so I have hopes I can get another Dorothy in too, maybe The Event Factory by Renee Gladman.

Have you planned the rest of your 2026? What’s on your list?

#tbr #instabooks #bookstagram #tonimorrison taken in Asheville, North Carolina by @booknerd37

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19 hours ago

Dorothy Project Publication Day!!!

Once a year Dorothy, a publishing project, releases a pair of books “that draw upon different aesthetic traditions, because a large part of our interest in literature lies in its possibilities, its endless stylistic and formal variety.” Released today, 6 October, this year’s pair is Blue Sunset by Danish writer Denise Rose Hansen and What Remains by Spanish writer Brais Lamela (translated from Galician). This is only the second time that Dorothy Project has published a book written by a man, and the first one was written under the pseudonym Manuela Draeger.

I read What Remains over the summer and really liked it. The main character, like the author, splits their time between Spain and NYC and is writing an academic paper about the displacement of people from the mountains of Negueira de Muñiz during the Franco era. It’s about memory, what people leave and take with them when they are uprooted from everything they know. It’s about what happens when open space and community is replaced by the designs of a fascist government. It tells us that “even though it seems like nothing’s left, like you’re always saying, that there’s no one or nothing left, but it seems to me that something, at least, always remains behind.”

Blue Sunset by @deniserosehansen is written in English though Hansen is from Denmark and the loss the narrator faces took place in Copenhagen. I’m planning on reading this as part of #DorothyDecember being hosted by @valerier6671 I’ve heard nothing but good reviews, and it’s super short at just 109 pages. It’ll give me time to read two from Dorothy at the end of the year. I included a pic of just a few from my collection in the second slide that you might want to check out too.

Thank you to @dorothyproject for my copies. I love being able to share anything and everything from their catalog any time I can.

#dorothyproject #deniserosehansen #braislamela #instabooks taken in St. Louis, Missouri by @booknerd37

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3 days ago

The Complete Charco Press 2026 Bundle

They have now all arrived! Showcased here are all 9 (love a nice square flat lay) from this year’s Bundle, which I grabbed for myself last December. It’s the first time I have done the bundle, and definitely not the last. Besides the savings and getting them before the release date, I most wanted the bundle because some of these writers have different publishers in the U.S. Pinen, for example, is published by FSG books here in the US and so is her other book Chilco, which I really want to get from Charco. They both feature Mapuche characters, an indigenous people of Chile.

The most recent two that just arrived this week are Hudson by the Argentinian Hernán Ronsino and I’m Still Here by Brazilian writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva. I’m Still Here is the basis for the 2025 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, the first time Brazil has won the award. They will both be released in the US on 3 November. The other 7 writers here are from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Spain.

What your favorite 2026 @charcopress release?

#charcopress #booksintranslation #instabooks #SouthAmericanLiterature #LibrosLatinoamericanos by @booknerd37

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6 days ago

September New Book Haul

Yay, for me, for a low monthly book haul. These are the books I bought during September. This included my usual visits to @malapropsbookstore @bagatellebooks and @downtown_books_and_news I also got a gifted copy of The Newer World from @vikingbooks (thank you!) and the last two from the 2026 Bundle from @charcopress Alas, summer is over here in the US, but my fall reading options are looking pretty good.

This small selection of books includes writers from Argentina, Brazil, France, England, Germany, Ireland, and the U.S. writing in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Witch is on this year’s International Booker Prize Shortlist and A Green Equinox was Shortlisted for the 1973 Booker.

I’m most looking forward to reading A Green Equinox, The Newer World, and Billiards at Half-Past Nine. Which of these are on your #TBR list?

#bookhaul #bookstagram #instabooks #bookrecs taken in Asheville, North Carolina by @booknerd37

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8 days ago

Orlando by Virginia Woolf Review

A bookclub that I’m in, the Diamond Dipsomaniacs, chose Virginia Woolf’s 1928 gender bending novel Orlando as our most recent read. It was originally written as a love letter to Vita Sackville-West. The pictures in the original publication include three of her, where she is portrayed as Orlando.

Orlando was one of my reading goals for this year. I wanted to read it before reading Jacqueline Harpman’s Orlanda. I also included 5 other books published in 1928 (Schlump, Ginster, Stammering, Memoirs, and Nadja), the English translation of Bambi in 1928, and the 1928 Pulitzer winner (Bridge) in the nice squared flat lay in the first slide.

Orlando (3.75/5) was my first Woolf, and not my last, though I wasn’t overly impressed. I like the general idea of showing the change, over time, of a man into a woman over many centuries. Orlando starts out as a young Elizabethan nobleman of Norman pedigree. Having had many affairs and engagements he becomes the English ambassador in Constantinople sometime in the late 1600s where, attended by the Lady of Purity, the Lady of Chastity, and the Lady of Modesty he is changed overnight into a woman around page 135. The rest of the book follows her through time, which is ambiguous at best. No one seems concerned she is hundreds of years old, nor is she alone in this.

I don’t want to get into the plot too much. The whole novel appears to live in a dream-like state where the normal rules of reality don’t really apply. It was a bit of a slog for me really, and had to force myself through the last 100 pages. I found the Victorian pastiche near the end at times hard to understand. What works best is the way Orlando’s view of womanhood changes and becomes more progressive. Ahead of its time for 1928 for sure.

It’s not one I’d recommend, but I’m glad I read it in the end. Surely Orlanda is worth reading Orlando..

Which Woolf should I read next?

#orlando #bookreview #virginiawoolf #instabooks #marinerbooks by @booknerd37

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10 days ago

Hispanic Heritage Month

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from 15 September to 15 October each year. Today, fresh from my shelves, are these 25 Hispanic writers from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. I grabbed every country I had and would love some recommendations for books from countries I’m missing.

I’ve only read four of these and I highly recommend two of them: The House of the Spirits and The Maniac. They are both two of my favorite books of all time. If you haven’t any Labatut yet, please do so soon. The Maniac is all about the smartest person to live in the 20th century, John von Neumann. He was a Hungarian polymath whose intelligence far out stripped his contemporaries including Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman, and Godl. The last part on AI winning at Go is also super topical to all the doomsday predictions making the rounds in the press over the last few weeks.

Who are your favorite Hispanic writers? What should my next read be?

#hispanicheritagemonth #hispanicbooks #instabooks #hispanicheritage #UnidosSomosMás by @booknerd37

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12 days ago

Herpetology on the Shelf

Posts like this are my favorite. Several months ago I thought I would do a post with animals in the title. I looked through what I have on my shelves (lots of my books are in storage) and found way more than I ever thought would be there. I found so many I had to divide them up into several posts. So far I’ve done posts on mammals, birds, and bugs. In my last post on this theme: amphibians and reptiles.

This is the smallest of all these posts, but who would think there are even this many? I’ve got frogs, crocs, turtles, and snakes to read through. I haven’t read any of these yet, but I am the most eager to get to The Murder of the Frogs because I’m a big Don Carpenter fan. He also wrote Hard Rain Falling, A Couple of Comedians, and The True Story of Jody Keegan. I’ve also heard great things about Turtle Diary and Harry Crews in general. Notes of a Crocodile is only one of the @nyrbooks Classics by Miaojin, who tragically killed herself at the age of 26.

This collection includes writers from Switzerland, Taiwan, and the U.S. writing in English, German, and Mandarin Chinese.

Do you know any books I can add to this list?

#nyrbclassics #doncarpenter #reptiles #herpetology #instabooks by @booknerd37

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13 days ago

Sebastian Barry and The Newer World

So much of Sebastian Barry’s writing is about the Irish experience in Ireland and America, the New World. I have only read two of his books so far: Days Without End and A Thousand Moons. Both of these chronicle the lives of two young Irish immigrants across the mid-1800s US. They work as cross-dressing entertainers, join the Army, are appalled by the treatment of Native Americans, and see action during the Civil War. Days is one of my all time favorite books. I love its lyrical and poetic prose and can’t recommend it enough.

Barry’s newest novel, just released in the US last week, is The Newer World. Entering this same world and featuring some of the same characters, we are introduced to a new protagonist. Tennyson Bouguereau begins the world enslaved in Tennessee. He is eventually forced to leave it after protecting the recently emancipated people on the farm he was raised on. He then comes into a newer world, surviving across the hostile world of 19th America. I am definitely going to read this one, and several more of his too. Thank you to @vikingbooks for this copy!

Barry has been Longlisted 5 times for the Booker Prize, two of which were Shortlisted. Featured here is A Long Long Way, from the 2005 Shortlist, and is second of the Dunne family trilogy. The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is the first of the McNulty family trilogy, the second of which, The Secret Scripture, was the second time he was Shortlisted. He lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Have you read any Barry? Which ones did you like?

#sebastianbarry #thenewerworld #vikingbooks #irishliterature #irishbooks by @booknerd37

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16 days ago

Booker Prize Shortlist Announcement

When I started to try and read good and serious books back in my early 20s I used the Booker Prize as one of my main resources. Ever since then I’ve tried to buy and read what I can from a prize that started back in 1969. Over the years I’ve read 14 winners and 16 from the Shortlists. Clearly, I’ve racked up quite the Booker TBR pile here too.

The 2026 Shortlist will be announced tomorrow, bringing a Longlist of 13 down to 6. That means it’s time for my annual post on all the Shortlisters I have on my shelves at the moment, which is now up to 32. I couldn’t get a good flat lay of them all, so I kept it at a nice square flat lay for the first slide. I added the missing 7 in the other slides. My newest Shortlister is A Green Equinox from 1973 that I just got this week from @bagatellebooks and published by @mcnallyeditions

So far I have read A Month in the Country, Good Behaviour, A Handmaid’s Tale, Cloud Atlas, On Beauty, The Sisters Brothers, In the Country of Men, The Lowland, Exit West, Small Things Like These, The Trees, and James.

High on my tbr list from these titles are Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, A Long Long Way, The Stone Diaries, A Green Equinox, and Hav.

Which of these are your favorites?

#thebookerprize #bookerprize #bookershortlist #bookstagram #thebooker by @booknerd37

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18 days ago

Insects, Arachnids, and Larvae, Oh My!

Last week it was birds in titles, this week it is all types of bugs. Not a huge selection of titles, but I love fun little niche-themed posts like this. If you scroll back a couple of months worth of posts ago I’ve got a post all about mammals in titles too. Next up are books with reptiles in the title and I’ve got 5 on my shelves so far.

Fresh from my shelves, this buggy selection includes writers from England, Germany, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland, and the U.S. writing in English, German, and Italian.

#nyrbclassics #bookstagram #bookflatlay #entomology #literaryfiction by @booknerd37

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20 days ago