Book Club
2015 –
We started reading together in a two-person book club almost as soon as we started thinking about our first project. It was a way of keeping ourselves
together mentally, as if we were talking constantly. We tried to inhabit the ideas that were inherent in our inaugural project The Closer Together Things Are as both curatorial incentive and artistic practice. It soon became an ongoing tug-of-war that simultaneously informs our curatorial direction and responds to it.
We also read on our own and not always at the same time. We are a bit like workout partners. We keep each other going and suggest new and exciting brain exercises for each other. Our reading choices also reflect the times, how we are collectively feeling, the escapes we might need or how we might like to influence or inform each other's experience or our collective practice.
It's entertainment, education and a curatorial tool.
Claire Keegan: Small Things Like These
Gwendoline Riley: First Love
Tom Perrotta: Tracy Flick Can't Win
Lauren Groff: Florida
George Saunders: Liberation Day
Claire-Louise Bennett: Checkout 19
Rabih Alameddine: The Wrong End of the Telescope
Ian McEwan: Solar
Ian McEwan: Lessons
Richard Powers: Bewilderment
Simon Rich: New Teeth
Andrew Palmer: The Bachelor
Natasha Trethewey: Memorial Drive
Sheila Heti: Pure Colour
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
Miriam Toews: Fight Night
Christie Tate: Group
Sally Rooney: Beautiful World, Where are You
Suleika Jaouad: Between Two Kingdoms
Colm Tóibin: The Magician
Maggie Nelson: The Argonauts
Harry Dodge: My Meteorite
Zülfü Livaneli: Disquiet
Ottessa Moshfegh: My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Chigozie Obioma: The Fishermen
Nella Larsen: Passing
Ralph Ellison: The Invisible Man
A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools
Patricia Highsmith: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Ben Lerner: Leaving the Atocha Station
Thomas Grattan: The Recent East
Catherine Lacey: Pew
James Baldwin: Go Tell It On The Mountain
Etaf Rum: A Woman Is No Man
Colum McCann: Let the Great World Spin
Vivek Shraya: The Subtweet
Garth Greenwell: Cleanness
William Maxwell: So Long, See You Tomorrow
Anakana Schofield: Bina
Vanessa Veselka: The Great Offshore Grounds
Fatima Bhutto: The Runaways
Colum McCann: Apeirogon, A Novel
Maaza Mengiste: The Shadow Kind
Brit Bennett: The Vanishing Half
Douglas Stuart: Shuggie Bain
Charles Yu: Interior Chinatown
Kiley Reid: Such a Fun Age
Helen Macdonald: Versper Flights
Catherine Lacey: Nobody is Ever Missing
Catherine Lacey: The Answers
Catherine Lacey: Certain American States
Ocean Vuong: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Anne Tyler: Redhead by the Side of the Road
Olga Tokarczuk: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
John Berger: Hold Everything Dear
Ben Lerner: The Topeka School
Anna Hope: expectation
Diana Evans: Ordinary People
Lauren Groff: Fates and Furies
Saeed Jones: How We Fight for our Lives
Kristen Arnett: Mostly Dead Things
Salman Rushdie: Quichotte
Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House
Bernardine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other
Anne Tyler: Vinegar Girl
Salmon Rushdie: Haroun and the Sea of Stories
David Sedaris: Calypso
Sally Rooney: Normal People
Susan Choi: Trust Exercise
Elizabeth Strout: Olive, Again
Anne Tyler: Clock Dance
Kiese Laymon: Heavy
Ian McEwan: Machines Like Me
Hanya Yanagihara: A Little Life
Pajtim Statovci: My Cat Yugoslavia
Tanya Tagaq: Split Tooth
Michael Ondaatje: Warlight
Alexander Chee: How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Tom Perotta: Little Children
Ian McEwan: Sweet Tooth
Esi Edugyan: Washington Black
Tom Perotta: The Leftovers
Tom McCarthy: Satin Island
Tom Perotta: The Abstinence Teacher
Tom McCarthy: Remainder
Ben Lerner: 10:04
Olivia Laing: Crudo, a novel
Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry
Richard Powers: The Overstory
Elena Ferrante: My Brilliant Friend
The Moth
Celeste Ng: Little Fires Everywhere
Ali Smith: Autumn
Aminatta Forna: Happiness
Jennifer Egan: Manhattan Beach
Jenny Zhang: Sour Heart
Anne Tyler: Breathing Lessons
Sally Rooney: Conversations with Friends
Paul Auster: 4 3 2 1
Tom Perotta: Mrs. Fletcher
Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler: Noah’s Compass
Anthony Doer: All the Light We Cannot See
Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
