What Are You Reading? Spoonbill & Sugartown Share their October Picks
Spoonbill & Sugartown set up their roost on Bedford Avenue in 1999. Harbingers for and witness to the rapid, largescale change that Williamsburg has undergone over the past 17 years—this indie bookstore has thrived thanks in part to a friendly landlord (may we all be so blessed) and it’s eclectic, always interesting selection of new and used, rare and not-so, books that focus on art, literature, philosophy, and design. Basically: the kind of books you can lose yourself in for hours.
Jonas Kyle, co-owner
You Must Change Your Life by Peter Sloterdijk
Four-hundred-fifty pages of densely argued thought plus another 30 pages of footnotes can ward off all but the most tenacious readers. Yet the question dealt with here, employing a survey of 3,000 years of Eastern and Western practice culture, boils down to this: do you want to lead a flat life at the base of Mount Impossible, or do you want to embark on a disciplined ascent past elevations you did not think you could achieve? Here is a history of swamis and Stoics, Renaissance pedagogues, modern-day yogis, and fitness trainers.
Fred Cisterna, bookseller
Asylum Piece by Anna Kavan
This potent collection of short stories was first published in 1940. Uncanny tales that hum with troubled energy.
Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality
by Fredric Jameson
The eminent Marxist literary critic watching—well actually, reading—the detective and his world.
The Empire of Neomemory
by Heriberto Yepez
Yepez, a Mexican poet and theorist, examines the work of Charles Olson, American Empire, and much more.
