Culture
December 2022’s Best New Books
Dear Love by Sarah Bahbah - December 1
Sarah Bahbah has pioneered a style of art that includes subtitles to express the innermost thoughts of the artist. Bahbah generously shares the psychological underpinnings of her already-personal work. Now, she presents a decade of her work, presented in more than 600 bespoke photographs that seek to reveal her psychological underpinnings.
Sarah Bahbah
Bimboland by Erin Taylor - Simon & Schuster, December 6
Erin Taylor’s stunning debut poetry collection contends with their life as a sex worker and socialist politics — with poems full of desire, vulnerability, and slippery feelings as Taylor writes about feeling “powerful yet somehow / nothing.”
Simon & Schuster
No One Left to Come Looking For You by Sam Lipsyte - Simon & Schuster, December 6
A dark comedy murder mystery set in the East Village in 1993, Sam Lipsyte’s novel follows a young New Jersey rocker who searches for his missing friend and uncovers a real estate crime ring trying to gentrify a punk New York City. Sordid tale of art and crime set in dive bars and DIY music venues? Yes, please!
Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir - Pushkin Press, December 6
The latest from acclaimed Icelandic author Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Animal Life is set in wintry Reykjavik, following a midwife who in the days leading up to Christmas, delivers her 1,922nd baby. She comes from a long line of midwives known for their unconventional methods and as a winter storm races towards the city she discovers decades worth of letters from her grandmother, stumbling into her strange reflections on life, birth, and death.
Pushkin Press
Grocery Shopping With My Mother by Kevin Powell - Soft Skull, December 6
Kevin Powell’s new poetry collection started as social media posts about grocery shopping trips with his elderly, ailing mother and evolved into a collection of 32 poems. Crafted like tracks in an album, Powell’s collection honors the likes of V (formerly Eve Ensler), bell hooks, and Sidney Poitier, and is heavily influenced by Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.
Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau - Astra House, December 13
In this black comedy thriller by first-time novelist Jamie Marina Lau, a rebellion brews among a group of employees at a sprawling indoor shopping mall — as the low-wage workers subject store managers to increasingly brutal attacks. It’s chock full of Millennial and middle-class ennui.
Astra House
cokemachineglow: Writing Around Music 2005-2015 - Simon & Schuster, December 13
Founded by a Canadian music writer in 2002, cokemachineglow was a webzine with a cult following that produced some of the most daring and smart music criticism of the century, during a time when people still discovered music somewhere other than the Spotify algorithm. Now, some of the best writing of the era is being published in an anthology, with a new introduction by editor Clayton Purdom.