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It’s that time of year for roundups — so here’s our definitive guide for the best books we’ve read (or re-read) in 2013. What follows is a list of what’s worth adding to your queue if you’ve missed these titles, and a few ideas if you’ve still got some gaps to fill under the tree.
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Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell
The best and craziest thing you will read this year is Russell’s story “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” in which the recently deceased Rutherford Hayes is reincarnated as a horse. The stable in which he finds himself is, moreover, filled with other reincarnated horse-presidents. In the midst of the other presidents’ grandstanding–few seem to think their afterlife appropriate for men of such stature — Hayes, who wants only to find his dead wife, Lucy, brings a note of real pathos and bravery to the story. There are other terrific stories in the collection as well. But this story alone should be enough to convince you that Russell deserves her 2013 MacArthur Genius Grant. —Joey McGarvey, Editor at Large
Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
If you’re at all interested in poverty, this is the nonfiction book that has been making waves all year. As America struggles with its highest wealth inequality since the Great Depression, two leading behavioral economists develop a new framework to answer: Why do the poor stay poor, despite all attempts to help? With research on payday lenders, food stamps, and an Angry Birds knockoff, they argue that scarcity — of money, of time, and even of human relationships — creates powerful feedback loops that undermine attempts to escape the trap. For instance, they explain three serious problems: why people resort to payday lenders, why lonely people stay lonely, and why people respond to emails in increasing order of importance. Scarcity, a follow-up to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, has changed the way we think by explaining how current poverty relief methods often fail — and why your inbox is still full. —Jonathan Giuffrida, Senior Editor
White Girls by Hilton Als
Hilton Als is a master of counterintuitive thoughts, and his new collection of essays takes up yet another one: the twinship of black men and white women. This idea powers highly performative essays that are largely written in fearlessly experimental forms and styles. Ambitious critics take note: this is the avant-garde of cultural criticism. Als’ essays lead up to an acute meditation on Richard Pryor, which is promptly turned on its head in the piece that follows it: an analysis by Pryor’s sister, written in her voice, of, among many other things, the work of Virginia Woolf, who is termed “Suicide Bitch.” Taken together, these two final essays are the best and weirdest performance criticism I’ve read in a while. —Alexia Nader, Senior Editor
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Nothing says “happy holidays” like sex, murder, and deranged witches, right? I’ve been on a major classics kick lately, and after seeing director Jack O’Brien’s production of Macbeth at Lincoln Center in November, I was compelled to reread Shakespeare’s original. Macbeth has all the elements of a great story: kings, queens, war, jealousy, murder, ambition, love, sex, infertility, fate, and, of course, a little black magic. It’s the classic tale of one family’s misplaced ambition and the disastrous effects when it’s manipulated and unchecked. In fact, once you’ve read or seen Macbeth, you’ll start to notice its influence in four centuries’ worth of books, television shows, and films. A great, scintillating thriller with the added bonus of beautifully written poetry! —Agatha Gilmore, Editor at Large
The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Everything about this novel, which is a beautifully composed portrait of the Columbian drug trade, is meticulous — the language, the structure, the social and political commentary it creates. Vásquez’s prose is piercing, each minimal sentence with a distinct purpose on the page. What’s perhaps most impressive is that this title, released in August in the U.S., is a translation by Anne McLean from the author’s native Spanish: that it could be any more haunting is almost inconceivable. —Meredith Turits, Blog Editor
The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems by Emily Dickinson, Jen Bervin, Marta Werner, and Susan Howe
This volume is the first-ever full-color facsimile edition of Dickinson and contains her late writings, 52 poems written on the backs of envelopes. How to “reproduce” Dickinson has been a testy subject for scholars, poets, and amateurs alike since the first collections of her poems appeared following her death. Instead of wading into the fray, Jen Bervin, with the research of Dickinson scholar Marta Werner, cuts an artist’s path through the controversy by compiling lush images of these poems as they are. By leaving the interpretation to the reader, Bervin and Werner leave us with something beautiful, the opportunity to read Dickinson’s most experimental poems all over again in a way we never could have imagined.
N.B. These gorgeous nothings were gifted to this editor for her birthday and they do not disappoint. —Jane Carr, Editor
The Riot Grrrl Collection edited by Lisa Darms with preface by Kathleen Hanna and introduction by Johanna Fateman
No matter whether you’re still hoarding your ‘zines or you’ve never heard of Bikini Kill, you’ll love this collection for its colorful images, punk sensibility, and badass voice. Edited and compiled by Lisa Darms, the mind behind the Riot Grrrl Collection at the NYU Fales Library (home to the papers, media collections and unpublished work from the likes of Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and the Julie Ruin; Molly Neumann of Bratmobile, and Sheila Heti), The Riot Grrrl Collection features reproductions of original zines, publicity posters, and printed ephemera that document the zine and music culture of the Riot Grrrl movement and illuminate new aspects of its extensive network of punk-influenced DIY activism. —Jane Carr, Editor
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Maus, the only graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer, is a must-read regardless of whether you’re into books with lots of pictures or not. While usually categorized as a graphic “novel,” the book is actually a memoir, telling the story of Art Spiegelman’s father, a Holocaust survivor who was sent to Auschwitz. Not only is it gripping because it deals with one of the most catastrophic events in human history, but because Spiegelman doesn’t shy away from touching on the controversial fact that his father is not an ideal survivor: the man is unlikable, stereotypical, and, despite his own horrendous experiences, he still manages to hold prejudiced views of other racial groups. If you’re looking for an illuminating and page-turning reading experience, pick up a copy of Maus. —Natasha Guzman, Associate Editor
Tenth of December by George Saunders
Nothing says “holiday spirit” to me like shooting puppies and sex in prison. This is a phenomenal collection of Saunders’s short stories, the first in six years, that were originally published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and others. The collection was nominated for a National Book Award and sadly robbed. The best part? It never fails to be genuinely funny. —Amanda Gutterman, Associate Editor