Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America’s Indie Bookstores

Coffee House Press

Assuming you can catch the attention of the overworked owner of an understaffed independent American bookstore and wonder vaguely what their favorite books might be, this is what they’d say. I’ve managed bookshops; hard to imagine how one would find the time to craft one of these High-Fidelity-style lists.

These are often a wasted exercise for me. I like the lists which conform to my own hardened tastes and dismiss out of hand the ones from which I might actually learn something. Some of the listmakers are so old-world canonical it’s off-putting (Joseph DeSalvo of Faulkner House Books in New Orleans, touting classics from Virgil to Austen to Robert Penn Warren, doesn’t go further afield than John Kennedy Toole, and comes off as awfully patronizing in the “More About” page which all the contributors get so they can explain a few of their choices. On the other hand, Emily Pullen of Skylight Books has a consciously quirky list that includes children’s books, graphic novels, and Siddharta Mukherjee.

Read Read This! too long, and you’re likely to want to read something else. Which is kind of its point. As an advertisement for independent bookstores, it only goes so far. As an incitement to read more broadly, it’s a great browse.