Milo Michels, bookseller at University Book Store, offers suggestions to fill your "Suggested by an Independent Bookseller" square – and more – for Book Bingo NW 2024.
Maybe you're looking for a suggestion from an indie bookseller! Or maybe your bookseller was publicly nostalgia-weeping into a copy of Because Of Winn-Dixie the last time you visited, so instead of asking for a suggestion you decided to spread cheer by bringing your Great Pyrenees to the shop (as any upstanding member of the community would). Either way, we've got you. These summer 2024 new releases can apply to Suggested by an Independent Bookseller OR to at least one other bingo category!
Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
Suggested by an Independent Bookseller OR Read in the Sun
Left with a surprise baby by way of her scumbag English professor, the titular Margo must use unconventional means to stay afloat—including running an increasingly cinematic OnlyFans and rooming with her ex-pro wrestler dad. I laughed so loudly while reading this book that a stranger one table over at the teriyaki place (shoutout to Nasai Teriyaki in the U District!) visibly jumped.
Helga by Catherine Yu (out 8/20/24)
Suggested by an Independent Bookseller OR Y.A.
Frankenstein-style lab-grown corpse teen Helga was supposed to be her father's perfect experiment. But her rock-and-roll, boy-crazy, delicious-food-loving heart simply cannot be fulfilled by the sedate, servile life she's expected to lead! Younger readers will love Helga's devil-may-care attitude. Older readers will love how much this book hates student debt.
Experienced by Kate Young
Suggested by an Independent Bookseller OR Queer Joy
Bette, newly out in her thirties, is assigned by her first-ever serious girlfriend to try sleeping with other women before settling down. What could possibly go wrong? Experienced is a delightful and disastrous carnival of hilarity, spice, and big feelings. What says Pride Month like literary microdosing on the combined mortification and joy of interpersonal vulnerability?
Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías trans. Heather Cleary
Suggested by an Independent Bookseller OR Something That Scares You (OR In Translation!)
As a toxic algae bloom turns her coastal hometown into a wasteland, a woman's relationships are pushed to the brink alongside her environment. Pink Slime is the only horror novel I have ever had to put down for a time because I was genuinely too unsettled to continue. Even describing it to you now is giving me the willies. Not because it's a gorefest—quite the opposite. Trías depicts climate disaster with terse elegance and a terrifyingly familiar mournful-yet-banal air. This one will live in my subconscious forever, and I think it should also live in yours.
Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland
Suggested by an Independent Bookseller OR Fantastical
Yikes, things got a little intense there with that last one! Let's even things back out with a veritable layer cake of fantasy fun. Running Close to the Wind is a queer fantasy following a rambunctious former-intelligence-agent-now-internationally-wanted-thief…and the pirate captain who desperately wants to get rid of him. A friend and I read parts of this aloud and shed literal (literal!) tears of mirth.
Alright, bingo buds, that's all for now. For more recommendations, visit us at University Book Store—or ask your wonderful SPL librarian!
For more ideas for books to meet your Summer Book Bingo challenge, follow our Shelf Talk BookBingoNW2024 series or check the hashtag #BookBingoNW2024 on social media. Book Bingo is presented in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures.
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