Reading List: Pocket-size delights for spring adventures
These small, beautiful editions recommended by Upstart & Crow are just the thing to expand your mind this season
IS THAT… Could that be…? Why, yes, we do believe that’s spring, heralding the unfurling scarves from necks, the opening of windows, and the onset of long walks and park sits, beach huddles and new adventures. All of which are best shared with a companion or two, including ones that fit discreetly in a pocket or a bag.
These small-and-gorgeous editions are the perfect accompaniments to help expand your world—wherever your seasonal journeys take you.
Oh, To Be a Painter! by Virginia Woolf (David Zwirner Books)
Readers looking for a book that also looks beautiful will love the delicious, crisp cover that envelops this collection of Woolf’s writing on visual arts. This is an unusual collection—one that depicts the centrality of visual arts to Woolf’s vision, something often under-explored until now. In these collected essays and reviews, Woolf examines relationships between artists and society, and between art and writing.
Recitatif: A Story by Toni Morrison (Knopf)
The only short story that Toni Morrison is known to have written, the recently released Recitatif is lovingly produced in a small hardcover with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Examining the way race and relationships shape us throughout life, the story follows two girls whose races remain ambiguous. Morrison described it as “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” A remarkable work, perfect for an afternoon read—and another, and another.
We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown (AK Press)
Essential reading for anyone contributing to a movement—or anyone who has talked about or thought about cancel or call-out culture. Movement mediator and exceptional thinker adrienne marie brown moves beyond the common critiques of cancel culture—often made from outside of particular groups or movements—to explore the conversation from a Black, queer, feminist viewpoint. The author gives us the questions, and the path, that move us to a different place in a common, fraught, and important conversation.
Mrs Fox by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
Faber Stories is a charming series that shares short stories as individual volumes at reasonable prices. Sarah Hall’s story “harvests language from nature” to explore the life of a husband, shocked out of complacency, when his wife becomes… transformed. This is very clever, moving writing about the elemental forces of nature and love.
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (pictured at top) by Anne Carson (New Directions)
What do Marilyn Munroe and Helen of Troy have in common? Iconic good looks? A misunderstood narrative? An existence in a patriarchal culture? They’re also the subjects of Anne Carson’s Governor-General’s-winning poetry collection, Norma Jeane Baker of Troy. Told from their perspectives, the book meditates on the destabilizing power of beauty and the fascination with the female form across millennia.
A Short History of Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce (pictured at top) by Massimo Montanari (Europa Compass)
Don’t be fooled by its cover into thinking this is anything other than an intellectually rigorous work that explores centuries of history, culture, and tradition—albeit a highly readable, charming one. Montanari debunks the common myth that history begins in single moments by tracing the complex history of this iconic dish—from Asia to America, from Africa to Europe, from the beginning of agriculture to the Middle Ages and up to the 20th century. Perfect for dinner-party banter, as a witty pocket companion, or a great conversation starter on a park bench.
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