BOOK CLUBS

Hunger for more.

Have you ever hungered for something more? Or maybe you’ve been told you want too much: too much power, money, food, sex. Maybe you’ve been told you are too much— too fat, thin, hungry, loud, ambitious… We’re curious about appetites. What constitutes too much—or too little; who gets denied what they want, and why. This book club aims to examine the desires of those on the fringes, and what happens when we give in to or suppress those desires. No matter how… unusual these desires may be. We will draw on texts across genres, ranging from memoir to horror to literary and short fiction. Come join us, and sate your appetite for something more.

This month we'll discuss C Pam Zhang's rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world, Land of Milk and Honey.

Buy the flowers yourself.

“Literature is open to everybody” wrote Virginia Woolf, one of the 20th century’s most lauded writers. Within her lifetime, Woolf penned nine novels, dozens of stories, and countless essays that blend the aesthetic pleasures of life with the sociological and psychological phenomena of the human experience. Existential dread never sounded so beautiful than in Woolf’s words. Join us on our voyage through Woolf’s oeuvre, in chronological order, as we examine the stylistic and philosophical elements of her fiction and essays.

This month we'll move on to Woolf's Second Common Reader. 

The hottest new reads.

This month we'll discuss Torrey Peters' new collection of one novel and three stories, with a keen eye for the rough edges of community and a desire push the limits of trans writing, Stag Dance. 

Read like a writer.

Writing is an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered”, says the Pulitzer-winning poet Carl Phillips. Join us as we delve into the mysteries of the art of storytelling. In this workshop-adjacent book club, we will discuss everything from plot beats to perspective choices to sentence-level sonics of major literary works and small press gems, in an attempt to understand how specific authorial choices shape the experience and impact of a story. You do not have to be a writer to join us — just someone with a deep love for literature and endless curiosity about how a story gets told.

This month we'll discuss Katie Kitamura's exhilarating, destabilizing, Möbius strip of a novel, that asks whether we ever really know the people we love, Audition. 

Calling all crooks, con, lowlifes, outlaws.

Join us for a walk on the wiiiiild side of crime fiction. We'll tour through the hardboiled classics of Chandler, Cain and Hammett; acquaint ourselves with contemporary masters like Ellroy and Mosley; international noir in translation; the fractured psyches of Thompson and Highsmith; even genre-bending experiments in horror and science-fiction!

We've got something to satisfy any and all tastes for all you darkly depraved delinquents.

This month we'll discuss a Sherlock Holmes classic, Sir Arthor Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet. 

Everything Old is New Again.

Are you overwhelmed by the pressure to keep up with the continuous barrage of new book releases? Are you interested in reading beyond the margins of today’s contemporary literary discourse?  Do you want to inject a bit of surprise and intrigue into your reading life? Our club is centered around books that have been largely forgotten, the reissued classics and rare finds that have slipped from the mainstream and are waiting to be discovered by a new set of readers.

This month we'll discuss John Broderick's erotic nightmare of Catholic longing, guilt, and desire and a banned classic of modern Irish literature, The Pilgrimage. 

Domestic disarray, good for her.

Have you ever watched a woman blow up her life, and thought, good for her? This is a book club for those who seek to disrupt notions of domestic bliss - we want batshit plots, women who don't settle, and eleventh hour plot twists. We want all this packaged into a very literary 300 pages or less. This book club will explore should-be and to-be classics by literary hotties of centuries past. Leave the dirty dishes at home and come indulge with us.

This month we'll discuss Mariam Rahmani's brilliant debut - in which The Marriage Plot meets The Idiot - which tells the story of a young Muslim scholar stuck in the mire of adjunct professorship in Los Angeles who decides to give up her career in academia and marry rich, committing herself to 100 dates in the course of a single summer, Liquid.

Three chords + the truth.

If you grew up with your walls plastered in posters of your favorite bands, scribbled lyrics all over your notebooks, and carried around a clunky CD player, we're guessing the next time your favorite band rolls into town, you may have a growing concern about the arch support your Vans will give and whether you’ll be home by 11pm. Well, dust off those Vans and join our book club featuring music-centric pieces spanning rock n roll, punk rock, and alternative movements. Don’t mistake us for another forgotten band from 2008, instead The TBR Stacks is actually just AJ and Daniel joining forces to revel in the history and stories of the music we grew up with all while checking another book off the to be read list.

This month we'll discuss singer-songwriter Neko Case's vivid portrait of an extraordinary life—one forged through a poverty-stricken childhood, obsessive desire, bursts of comedy, and indispensable friendships—reflecting on the way art, music, and a deep connection to nature helped her  become a beloved, Grammy-nominated artist, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir.

Under-read New York writers of the 20th century.

Tired of a diluted and anonymized New York City in your books? Wish you could escape lower Manhattan/north Brooklyn continuum? Take a tour through 20th century NYC literature, poetry and nonfiction, and map out new (to you) neighborhoods and cultures, from the communists up in Harlem and out of City College during the Great Depression, to the meatheads roughhousing with one another in postwar Bay Ridge. We’ll see the city through new eyes; poets from Spain stop over, prolific writers from Austria recast the story of Job on Broome Street. If so inclined, perhaps we can hop over to Yonkers or Patterson as well. We’ll reacquaint ourselves with our city via the innumerable experiences therein!

This month we'll discuss Andrew Holleran's hymn to gay liberation in the city, and to male beauty, Dancer From the Dance.

Less is more.

Are you intimidated by the great (and by great, we mean looooooong) novels of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Ulitskaya and Tokarczuk? Novels over 500 pages may not be a crime to read, but they can, at times, feel like a punishment to finish. That’s why we're is introducing SHORT(ER) SLAVIC NOVELS, a book club dedicated to Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian, Czech, etc. novels under 300 pages. All titles will be read in English, so previous knowledge of Slavic languages is NOT required. (Uk)Rain(e) or shine, czech out our Downtown Brooklyn location every month for classic and contemporary Slavic fiction. За встречу!

This month we'll discuss a new selection of Isaac Babel's 26 most vital and beautiful stories, in acclaimed translations by Boris Dralyuk, Of Sunshine and Bedbugs: Essential Stories. 

The Long and Short of New Directions

Join the New Directions crew on an odyssey, no caper, called: THE LIFE OF THE MIND (to borrow a beloved expression by Helen DeWitt). We'll read staff favorites and New Directions staples with an emphasis on writerly genius and comic relief; and for each doorstopping magnum opus there's a jewel of a book so slight we could barely get a spine on it. Do you have to have read HERSCHT 07768 to understand HERSCHT 07769? If you know you know. If you don't know, come and find out. There will be wine.

This month we'll discuss Clarice Lispector's sensational first book, which tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, Near to the Wild Heart, translated by Alison Entrekin.  

Steamy, Steamier, Steamiest.

The world's on fire but love is still...all around. HEAs and bell hooks for everyone!

This month we'll discuss Yulin Kuang's brilliant debut, a sexy and emotional enemies-to-lovers romance guaranteed to pull on your heartstrings and give you a book hangover, How to End a Love Story.

Buy the flowers yourself.

“Literature is open to everybody” wrote Virginia Woolf, one of the 20th century’s most lauded writers. Within her lifetime, Woolf penned nine novels, dozens of stories, and countless essays that blend the aesthetic pleasures of life with the sociological and psychological phenomena of the human experience. Existential dread never sounded so beautiful than in Woolf’s words. Join us on our voyage through Woolf’s oeuvre, in chronological order, as we examine the stylistic and philosophical elements of her fiction and essays.

This month we'll move on to Woolf's only play, Freshwater, A Comedy. 

Read like a writer.

Writing is an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered”, says the Pulitzer-winning poet Carl Phillips. Join us as we delve into the mysteries of the art of storytelling. In this workshop-adjacent book club, we will discuss everything from plot beats to perspective choices to sentence-level sonics of major literary works and small press gems, in an attempt to understand how specific authorial choices shape the experience and impact of a story. You do not have to be a writer to join us — just someone with a deep love for literature and endless curiosity about how a story gets told.

This month we'll discuss Toni Morrison's passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life, Jazz. 

Decadent, Debased, Degenerate.

Are you too hardcore for the current state of American letters? The tragic truth is that most new books seem afraid to shock, experiment, offend, get weird. Is there still a place in this world for the freaky girlies? The answer is yes. Morgan and Enzo are two booksellers at McNally Jackson Seaport who delight in the decadent, the debased, and the degenerate. Now, they open their private reading circle to the last libertines in New York. This won’t be a cozy time by the fireplace. We don’t talk to Reese Witherspoon. We don’t know Oprah. This is Batshit Book Club, and baby, there will be no seatbelts.

This month we'll discuss Cormac McCarthy's lesser-known taut and chilling tale, Child of God. 

Everything Old is New Again.

Are you overwhelmed by the pressure to keep up with the continuous barrage of new book releases? Are you interested in reading beyond the margins of today’s contemporary literary discourse?  Do you want to inject a bit of surprise and intrigue into your reading life? Our club is centered around books that have been largely forgotten, the reissued classics and rare finds that have slipped from the mainstream and are waiting to be discovered by a new set of readers.

This month we'll discuss Lion Feuchtwanger's novel, written in real time, capturing the fall of Weimar Germany through the eyes of one bourgeois Jewish family, shocked and paralyzed by an ideology they cannot comprehend, The Oppermanns. 

Domestic disarray, good for her.

Have you ever watched a woman blow up her life, and thought, good for her? This is a book club for those who seek to disrupt notions of domestic bliss - we want batshit plots, women who don't settle, and eleventh hour plot twists. We want all this packaged into a very literary 300 pages or less. This book club will explore should-be and to-be classics by literary hotties of centuries past. Leave the dirty dishes at home and come indulge with us.

This month we'll discuss Patricia Highsmith's sinister story of madness, dread, and murder, set in 1950s suburban America, Edith's Diary.