Greetings from Three Lives & Company!

It’s our second holiday season since we moved back to our corner, and to be honest, it sometimes feels like we never left. (Except that there is no longer debris falling from the ceiling.) This is the busiest and, despite the pressure, most enjoyable time of the year for us. We get to talk up our favorite books, eat endless snacks (courtesy of our generous clientele), occasionally watch the snow fall in the city’s prettiest neighborhood, and reminisce about another year gone by.

We have some news to share in this edition – all of it good! First, we are excited to announce that we will now be able to order select books from the United Kingdom. So often we have been stymied by the inability to order a beloved book that one of us picked up at Daunt or John Sandoe. (We have written up a few of those in this very newsletter!) Going forward, we will be ordering from a company that distributes U.K.-exclusive books stateside. So if there’s something you read about in the Guardian or the London Times but can’t find here, stop by and ask – we might just be able to get it for you!

Another new offering: We have added two new postcards to our card shelves, featuring art by the beloved Maira Kalman. Maira has graciously granted us permission to use two images from her illustrated edition of Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and they have joined our selection. You can usually find our postcards on one of the back card racks, between the Min Jin Lee and Haruki Murakami fiction shelves.

Holiday-time regulars know that, in December, we bring in several friends of the shop to giftwrap – the volume of gift books is so great that we need the extra help. This year we asked our giftwrapping pros to tell us about their favorite books of the year. Janice has been “spending my time these days thinking about women generating wonder in the natural world,” with the highlights being Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea, Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights, Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows, and Camille T. Dungy’s Soil. She also praises Nicola Griffith’s Menewood: “immersive historical fiction set in 7th-century Britain, centered on strong women and gorgeous observations of nature.” Yuko listed Bernd Heinrich’s Life Everlasting, “one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read about nature,” and its “pristine observations on how animals deal with death and ways their deaths bring about more life,” alongside the novels The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (“heartbreaking, funny, traumatic, and poignant”) and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (“one of the rare books that I began rereading as soon as I finished”). And Flash, appropriately, enjoyed Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books, a recent novel about a bookstore and a talking cat.

And now, onward to our Three Lives end-of-the-year roundups and Troy’s traditional Cookbook Corner. This time around, we also asked our booksellers to give us their “New Year’s Resolution” books – the titles that they intend to read in 2024. Backlist titles we always meant to get to, that tough read we finally feel ready to tackle… whatever the reason, see our selections below, and please reply and let us know what you’re resolved to read in 2024!

~ Recent Staff Favorites ~

I suspect I’ll remember this year of reading by two genres, which I found myself drawn to again and again. First, and closest to my heart, are the books about art. Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon (Beacon) and Laura Cumming’s Thunderclap (Scribner) make an excellent pairing: both weave together memoir, philosophy, and appreciation for Dutch painting, with prose that’s poetic and fresh. For a more general cultural history, there’s Romantic Moderns (Thames & Hudson), Alexandra Harris’s rich review of modernist art in Britain, or even this collection of music criticism from Ian Penman: It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (Fitzcarraldo). And don’t miss All Things Move (Biblioasis), Jeannie Marshall’s meditation on the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, nor Marie Darrieussecq’s Being Here Is Everything (Semiotext(e), translated by Penny Hueston), a clever and crushing biography of the best German Expressionist you’ve never heard of.

Many of my favorite novels this year could be described as “literary” mysteries. Sound like your speed? Well, if you like them hard-boiled, try Elliott Chaze’s Black Wings Has My Angel (New York Review Books), a pitch-dark noir to rival Raymond Chandler at his meanest. And if you find a philosophical conundrum as enthralling as a bloody murder, you’ll want to read Javier Marías’s Thus Bad Begins (Vintage, translated by Margaret Jull Costa), which is like watching a Hitchcock marathon to learn about the Spanish Civil War. (For some bloody murder on the side, go with A Heart So White by the same author, publisher, and translator.) But the finest mystery I read this year was Gaito Gazdanov’s The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (Pushkin Press, translated by Bryan Karetnyk), a truly bleak tale of death and fate that just feels good to read. I don’t want to spoil a thing, but if you like Proust, Nabokov, or Poe, then you must try this ingenious novel.

Thomas Bernhard’s The Loser (Vintage, translated by Jack Dawson) doesn’t quite fit into these or any other genres; maybe that’s what makes it great. It’s a breathless monologue, a dour and scathing series of repetitions; it’s also maniacally funny and one of very few books to make me laugh out loud repeatedly. It’s brutal, half-deranged, and surprisingly sad, this story of two lives unmade by their encounter with greatness – a sheer pleasure. And it’s inspired me to tackle another major Austrian novel: Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, which is my New Year’s resolution book for 2024. Only 1,152 pages… who’s with me? – Lucas

Each one of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories (Knopf, translated by the author and Todd Portnowitz) left a lump in my throat and some made me cry – so quiet, elegant, and intimate, as if we were sitting together with glasses of wine and she was telling stories that pierce the heart of modern Roman life. Small stories of desire, dislocation, invisibility, memory, betrayal, folly. I totally loved them and read them slowly – twice. What a pleasure!

Earlier in the year I was completely caught up with Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo (Knopf, translated by Charlotte Whittle). Here are stories of scribes and spies, illuminators and librarians, booksellers and thieves, the obscure, famous, and infamous all carrying the written word to our world of today. It’s mesmerizing reading!

Margaret Kennedy’s The Feast (McNally Editions) was wicked fun and left me gasping! And Michael Frank’s One Hundred Saturdays (Avid Reader) beautifully preserved the lost world of the Jews of Rhodes and the journey of Stella Levi from Rhodes to Auschwitz to Greenwich Village. Michael Frank did a wonderful thing in his retelling of Ms. Levi’s stories. 

My New Year’s resolution book: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow has been sitting on my coffee table for, well, a long time now. Here are the words on the back cover that sucked me in: “[I]magine new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society.” And “the course of human history may be less set in stone and more open to playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.” I think I need to read this. I really do. – Joyce

In anticipation of our signing event for Michael Cunningham’s newest novel, Day, I decided to finally pick up The Hours (Picador). I have been recommended this book countless times by booksellers and customers, and it is a book that has long been considered a Three Lives darling. I am happy at last to join the chorus of praise. This novel follows three women: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, and Laura Brown – women from three different decades who share the same pain and misunderstood longings. One scene that sticks with me is Woolf, days before her suicide, walking to the train station, buying a ticket to London, and, at the last minute, deciding not to board. Throughout the book, all three women have these flashes of potential escape. They circle the cage, come up to the door, but are unsure of how to open it or if they even want to. It is a novel that is both claustrophobic and beautiful and one I haven’t stopped thinking about since I finished. 

This fall I also read a new memoir, Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière (Spiegel & Grau). Carrière’s story of her upbringing weaves together many threads: memory and its fragility; the complex fault lines of her mother and father’s love; the coexistence of pain and forgiveness when cautiously handling her parents’ hearts as well as her own. This vulnerable dissection of her past was no doubt a terrifying and wholly liberating process. Everything/Nothing/Someone reminds me how much I love, and how rare it is to find, brazen honesty from an author.

My top reads of the year: Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds (Vintage), Death Valley by Melissa Broder (Scribner), I’m Very Into You by Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark (Semiotext(e)), Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper), Crudo by Olivia Laing (W.W. Norton), and Because Sex Is a Story & Sex Is a Song by Helen Betya Rubenstein (Economy). My New Year’s resolution book: Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector. – Sarah

Another reading year has come and gone (well, not quite gone – I hope to sneak in a few more memorable reads), but it’s been a respectable twelve months of books for me. In terms of novels released this year, the standouts were Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Knopf Canada), The Girls by John Bowen (McNally Editions), Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Archipelago), Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Atlantic Monthly), Absolution by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broome (Astra House). Older works made a good showing too, and I have thought often of: Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette (Picador), After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell (Vintage), Compass Error by Sybille Bedford (New York Review Books), The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside (New Directions), and Ordinary Love & Good Will by Jane Smiley (Anchor). Next year, I swear I will get to The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. If The English Understand Wool is any indication, I am guaranteed to love it. I wish us all a strong finish to our 2023 in books! – Miriam

I’m wrapping up my year feeling excited to be here for my first holiday season at Three Lives and eager to read more terrific books!

I’d describe quite a few favorite novels from this year as winding narratives centered around love and grief: sometimes incredibly bleak, sometimes surprisingly hopeful. I was especially moved by Lazy City by Rachel Connolly (Liveright) and Death Valley by Melissa Broder (Scribner). The Answers by Catherine Lacey (Picador) and The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Scribner) were stunning reads, too, lightly futuristic and bizarre, leaping across multiple perspectives and storylines. 

The chilling dystopian novel Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, the recent Booker Prize winner, floored me with its relentless pace as it follows a family trying to survive Ireland’s descent into totalitarianism. Another disturbing dystopian favorite of the year: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon). Helen Garner’s This House of Grief, recently reissued by Pantheon, was fascinating too, a true-crime story that examines the controversial trial of an Australian man charged with murdering his three young sons. 

My reading New Year’s resolution is the Country Girls trilogy by Edna O’Brien, three novels spanning the childhood, coming of age, and married life of two girls growing up in Ireland in the 1950s. – Elaine

Any reflection on my year of reading begins with a perusal of my Book of Books, the small notebook in which I jot down every book I read, dating back to 1993. But this year, the takeaway isn’t so much what was listed but what didn’t get noted. This was a year in which I abandoned more books than I think I ever have before. After 20 pages, 50 pages, 200 pages!, books were dropped. I left so many novels by the wayside as I searched for something that struck the note, the tone, the tale, to capture me and keep me engaged till the end. Whatever my general mood was this year, it seemed to need something I wasn’t finding in many of the books I picked up.  

Not all was lost, by any means, as I did have some spectacular experiences that will stay with me for years, notably The Wall by the late Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer, a story I continue to reflect on months after I finished it, and the dazzling artistry of Shirley Hazzard’s prose in The Transit of Venus (Penguin Classics), a book I am sure I will return to in order to glory in her singular writing style. Further highlights from my Book of Books include Paul Harding’s Booker finalist This Other Eden (W.W. Norton), the short story collection Cocktail from Lisa Alward (Biblioasis), and The Bridge of Beyond (New York Review Books, translated by Barbara Bray), a novel by Simone Schwarz-Bart.  

Ever onward, with the reader’s eternal optimism of discovering a great book, I look forward to 2024 and the surprises that await from the new, as well as books that have been on my list for years (see: Transit of Venus). Maybe this is the year I finally pick up Georges Perec’s Life, a User’s Manual? Or The Man Who Loved Children by Christine Stead? Or… so many! – Toby

My most recent read and a favorite of the year is Blackouts by Justin Torres (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). 2023 has been a year of experimental fiction for me, and I would describe this novel as a collage of redacted historical documents, photographs, illustrations, and extended conversations between two queer men. It’s a book that simultaneously demands to be read in one sitting – I was immediately drawn into the stories our unnamed narrator tells about his life and the stories he is rewarded in turn – and spaced out to take in all the information being shown or obfuscated alongside those stories. There is a dreamlike quality to its setting, in the way that being half awake in the middle of the night can feel displacing, yet the people contained within the novel feel tangible, heightened by the way Torres plays with autofiction. I have not stopped thinking about this book from the moment I started reading it, and I’m likely still thinking about it as you’re reading this!

Another book I loved, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Vintage), is a good double feature. Part historical novel, part ghost story, its shape and tone are very different, but I’m awed by the way Saunders interweaves quotes from newspapers, biographies, and letters – each version confirming or contradicting the one before it – to create a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. In the same vein as Blackouts, the strength of Lincoln in the Bardo is in characters and dialogue. I felt echoes of the characters in Blackouts as ghosts in the Bardo, who create stories about their past and the world around them.

Books about grief, memory, and the weight of history might seem like heavy subjects to take on going into the New Year, but I find myself feeling excited for what’s to come.

My New Year’s resolutions for 2024 are getting to the Iliad (the new translation by Emily Wilson) and finishing the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel! – Marlowe

Barbra Streisand is a supreme storyteller (duh!). In the prologue of My Name Is Barbra (Viking), Streisand makes it clear why she finally said yes to writing this book: “I feel an obligation to the people who are truly interested in my work, and the process behind the work, and perhaps the person behind the process.” I think her fans will be utterly gobsmacked by the stories that Streisand tells, and the level of intimacy, detail, openness, self-awareness, and humor at which they are told. She shares with us Barbra Streisand the person, and the life that surrounds and informs the work. It turns out that she is brilliant at explaining her creative process and her many collaborations, and deconstructing her career-long reputation for being controlling. Streisand has turned on the lights, and her work is enriched and illuminated. A friend recommended that I listen to the audiobook, so now I’m doing both – to hear Streisand’s voice tell her story (and ad lib, and sing!) is not to be missed, but know that right there on the written page you will also hear that unmistakable voice. In 1967, on a hot summer night in Central Park in front of over 150,000 people, she closed a concert with “People” and walked off the stage, but the applause wouldn’t stop, so Streisand returned to the stage and in the middle of June sang “Silent Night.” This book, like that song, is an unexpected and extraordinary gift to all her many, many fans.

Charlie Porter has written such a vital and magical book about six figures from the Bloomsbury group and the ways in which their fashion and clothes tell a much broader story. “Together, they explored modes of living that liberated sexuality. They embraced feminism, queerness and pacifism. They believed in creativity as a way of being. They pushed against the gender binary…These changes amounted to a fresh philosophy of living.” Bring No Clothes (Particular) stirred me to the core. It is a book that will help set people free. 

And the book I am most excited to read in 2024 is Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time (on sale in June). “I wanted to explore both types of garden stories,” Olivia says, “to count the cost of building paradise, but also to peer into the past and see if I could find versions of Eden that weren’t founded on exclusion and exploitation, that might harbour ideas that could be vital in the difficult years ahead. Both of these questions felt very urgent to me.” – Troy

Four late-breaking books ended up making my reading year. Three of them I have mentioned in previous newsletters: Benjamín Labatut’s The MANIAC (Penguin Press) and Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome (Liveright), two October books, joined James McBride’s Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (Riverhead) from late summer on my Best of 2023 list.

The fourth, Ed Park’s time- and genre-jumping novel Same Bed Different Dreams (Random House), came out of nowhere to become my book of the year. I’ve seen comparisons to Thomas Pynchon’s work, but I found Same Bed much closer in spirit to David Mitchell – it’s a seemingly freewheeling story that is actually tightly controlled, with a complex plot tempered by an effortless and accessible style. It’s a sort of Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas for Korea in the twentieth century, about a shadow Korean government (which really existed, to a point) during the peninsula’s occupation by Japan, whose flame is kept burning up to the present by an eclectic sequence of people, from politicians to sci-fi writers to Marilyn Monroe. (It all makes sense when you read it.) Park spins pop culture, history, Buffalo Sabres hockey, M*A*S*H, and a bunch of cut-off fingers into something riveting, strange and – a rare quality in my reading life of late – exciting.

I’m going to lean in to the idea that New Year’s resolutions should be big and maybe a little painful, and nominate Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon as my 2024 selection. I’ve done a couple of Pynchon novels in the past – Inherent Vice, great, and Gravity’s Rainbow, incredible – and though I’ve loved them, they’re not quick and they’re not easy, and the siren call of new releases always makes me feel a little guilty about reading in the past. But with thousands of years of literature to pick from, how can one not? – Ryan

~ Troy’s Cookbook Corner ~

This might be my only opportunity to incorporate Barbra Streisand into our Cookbook Corner, and I’m not going to miss it! 

Barbra writes about food throughout My Name Is Barbra, and she does it with no less passion, originality, and attention to detail than when she’s writing about Marlon Brando or Funny Girl. In one description of a scoop of ice cream you get much more: you get a mini portrait of the person. From the audiobook: “There’s nothing like a big, fresh scoop of McConnell’s Brazilian Coffee, packed into a crisp cone and handed to you at their store in Santa Barbara. Maybe it’s the intensity of the flavor, made with real coffee beans, the smooth, rich texture… And they’re very generous. Each scoop must be three and a half inches in diameter. By the way, you can’t get McConnell’s ice cream just at any supermarket, and this particular flavor is even harder to find. So you can imagine all the reasons I suddenly invent to go to Santa Barbara.”

The cookbook season ends with the arrival of many new cookbooks, just in time for the holidays and for cooking our way through the winter months (come on down and see for yourself!). But there are three outstanding cookbooks, by three original voices, that I’d like to highlight: new titles by Erin French, Bee Wilson, and Jeremy Lee. All three celebrate home cooking, where the cook and the guest are as important as the food itself. These are cookbooks that will help you find the joy in cooking. 

Big Heart Little Stove by Erin French (Celadon)

“I can tell you with time-tested certainty that when you care so deeply about what you’re doing and about the joy and well-being of your guests, that love can be tasted. People can feel it. And it’s the best ingredient there is. When you prepare meals with love, when you put your entire self into that beautiful effort, you don’t need a big fancy stove. You don’t need all those kitchen tools. You don’t need complicated recipes or expensive ingredients. You just need a handful of back-pocket dishes, the resources around you, and a big heart.” 

Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many by Jeremy Lee (4th Estate) 

“As the world keeps spinning, evolving and moving forever onwards, the seasons ever changing, perhaps one thing lockdown has done for us is underline that time spent in the kitchen is something to cherish and celebrate, a vital part of daily life, making us healthier and happier. As T.S. Eliot wrote in ‘Little Gidding,’ in Four Quartets, ‘We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time – the kitchen at home.’”

The Secret of Cooking by Bee Wilson (W.W. Norton) 

“[T]he secret we all need the most is how to get the spark of cooking back into our lives so that the kitchen becomes a place we actually want to be. Delicious is not just about the way food tastes; it is a mindset. More than anything, the secret ingredient that makes the difference in the kitchen is enjoyment.” 

~ Signed Editions ~

Fiction

Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (Simon & Schuster)

One Woman Show by Christine Coulson (Avid Reader)

Day by Michael Cunningham (Random House)

A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (Picador)

The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Picador)

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz (Coffee House)

Trust by Hernan Diaz (Penguin)

The Book of Words by Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions, translated by Susan Bernofsky)

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions, translated by Susan Bernofsky)

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions, translated by Susan Bernofsky)

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions, translated by Susan Bernofsky)

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday)

Wellness by Nathan Hill (Knopf)

Crudo by Olivia Laing (W.W. Norton)

Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem (Ecco)

Innards by Magogodi oaMphela Makhene (W.W. Norton)

Absolution by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott (Picador)

Someone by Alice McDermott (Picador)

That Time of Year by Marie NDaiye (Two Lines, translated by Jordan Stump)

The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead)

Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park (Random House)

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (Harper)

NW by Zadie Smith (Penguin)

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Penguin)

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (Penguin)

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (Penguin)

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)

Family Meal by Bryan Washington (Riverhead)

Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon (Simon & Schuster)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Knopf)

Nonfiction

None of the Above by Travis Alabanza (Feminist Press)

Eve by Cat Bohannon (Knopf)

Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière (Spiegel & Grau)

Land’s End by Michael Cunningham (Picador)

Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly (Knopf)

Walk with Me: New York by Susan Kaufman (Abrams)

Funny Weather by Olivia Laing (W.W. Norton)

A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove)

Modern New York by Lukas Novotny (Rizzoli)

Sweet Enough by Alison Roman (Clarkson Potter)

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Penguin Press)

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith (Penguin)

Via Carota by Jody Williams, Rita Sodi and Anna Kovel (Knopf)

~ The Three Lives & Company Bestseller List ~

1. Day by Michael Cunningham (Random House)

2. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead)

3. An Almanac of New York City for the Year 2024 edited by Susan Gail Johnson (Abbeville)

4. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Grove)

5. My Name Is Barbra by Barbra Streisand (Viking)

6. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf, translated by the author and Todd Portnowitz)

7. The Girls by John Bowen (McNally Editions)

8. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower)

9. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Atlantic Monthly)

10. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (Vintage)

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SPECIAL ORDERS:

A reminder that we specialize in special orders. In our small shop it’s always a challenge to find room for all the new, notable, and exciting books; if you’d like a book that we don’t have on hand, we are always happy to order it for you. We place orders almost daily and the usual turnaround time for a special order is two business days. For some books it may take longer, but we’ll be sure to discuss the particulars with you before we place an order. Additionally, we can ship books to you anywhere within the United States. Give us a call, send us an email, or stop in any time.

PREORDERS:

We are happy to take preorders for forthcoming titles, and we will let you know as soon as the book arrives. We are all too familiar with the fervid desire to possess a new book at the first possible moment, and we will do everything in our power to make sure the book lands in your hands hot off the presses.

GIFT CERTIFICATES:

We offer gift certificates, which you may purchase in any amount.  

Three Lives & Company, Booksellers

154 W. 10th St.

New York  NY 10014

212.741.2069

threelives.com

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