Loved itMy best book of the month was Dixon Descending. This got the highest rating. This is about a man and his brother trying to become the first black American men to summit Everest and it was really good.
Review 1 of 2
Dixon, Descending (2024)
Others: Positive A powerful, heartrending debut novel about ambition, survival, and our responsibilities to one another Dixon was once an Olympic-level runner, but he missed the team by two-tenths of a second. Ever since that disappointment decades ago, he hasn’t allowed a goal to consume him. But when his charming older brother, Nate, suggests they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, Dixon can’t refuse. The brothers are determined to prove something—to themselves and to each other. Dixon, Descending is a captivating, shattering portrait of the ways we’re reshaped by our decisions—and what it takes to angle ourselves, once again, toward hope.
- ISBN:
- 9780593473474
- Length:
- 336 pages
Genres: literary fiction
Lists: …
Similar books
1 of 6
Rejection
Tony Tulathimutte
2024 · 271 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveFrom the Whiting and O. Henry–winning author of Private Citizens (“the first great millennial novel,” New York Magazine), an electrifying novel-in-stories that follows a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos. Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet. In “The Feminist,” a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid. A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics” spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,” a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection. These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction73%On the same reading list15%BooksandLala loved bothPersonalize your recommendations12%Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid
2019 · 320 pages · 8 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveA striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction77%BooksandLala loved both13%On the same reading listPersonalize your recommendations10%On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
2019 · 256 pages · 10 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveOn Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction80%BooksandLala loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations7%We the Animals
Justin Torres
2011 · 144 pages · 3 reviews
Others: PositiveIn this award-winning, groundbreaking debut, Justin Torres plunges us into the chaotic heart of one family, the intense bonds of three brothers, and the mythic effects of this fierce love on the people we must become. Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction80%BooksandLala loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations7%And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
Fredrik Backman
2016 · 96 pages · 13 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveAn exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction81%BooksandLala loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations6%Pew
Catherine Lacey
2020 · 224 pages · 2 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positive"In a small unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives to a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew's presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew's story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature - as a devil or an angel or something else entirely - is dwarfed by even larger truths."--Publisher description.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction81%BooksandLala loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations6%
Loved it