Monday, February 02, 2009

Andrew's Book Club: February Picks

Andrew Scott has revealed his Andrew's Book Club story collection choices for February. The mainstream publisher pick is Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson. I'm especially excited about this one, because she's one of my favorites. I expect this will be quite good, and I can also recommend (as additional reading) her excellent collection, Female Trouble, and her novel, Nobody's Girl. I admit I prefer her stories to her novels, but they're all worth picking up. And while I'm at it, I'm just going to go ahead and mention her husband's (Robert Boswell) fine novel, Crooked Hearts. Read that one too, if you can find a copy. It seems to be out of print!

The indie pick is Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's Swimming with Strangers. And--oh!--apparently Chronicle Books, the publisher, also published Don Kurtz's South of The Big Four, which apparently Andrew loves as much as I do. This makes me trust his selections all the more. Ms. Lunstrum is the author of another collection, This Life She's Chosen, and her stories have appeared in One Story, The American Scholar, and Willow Springs. Click here to read an excerpt of and author interview about her story, "Familial Kindness," published in One Story.

*images from amazon.com