Jami desires for New York seniors and crazy Helsinki hipsters to come together.
Her most recent book is The Melting Season. There's this woman, Catherine, in Nebraska and she takes her husband's money in a suitcase. She's then on the run to Las Vegas.
This guy I just found on GoodReads says: “This is a really outstanding book. I'm not a big fiction reader, so my thoughts may not count for much, but I was consistently riveted and entertained by Attenberg's story of journey and realization, most of all by her strong, concise prose style.”
Sounds good to me. Jami Attenberg has moved around a lot, but currently lives in New York. The Melting Season is out now from Riverhead Books. More info about Jami can be found here.
Here are the five best things Jami Attenberg has read recently.
01 Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music. Marisa Meltzer's look at women in rock in the 90s (and perhaps beyond, I haven't finished it yet) is warm and comforting to me, because I lived through that moment in time and it changed my life forever. It's tightly written and there's a real sense of humor to the book; it's just super readable. It feels important to me that people know about these women and what they accomplished. I feel like lots of people should be reading this book, but I really want teenagers to read it the most.
02 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I was surprised I hadn't read this before, especially since I love comic books so much, and certainly am a fan of Michael Chabon. It was great, of course. Passionate, impeccable, and timeless. But what equally amazed me was the response I got whenever I was carrying the book around in public, to cafes or wherever, how people who had read the book really brightened up around it and wanted to talk about how much they loved it. Three people I met in the elevator of my apartment building had read it or were in the process of reading it. Ten years later, that book has real staying power.
03 Advanced Style and Hel Looks. Dynamic New Yorker seniors in awesome clothes versus crazy Helsinki hipsters in awesome clothes with little bits of funny narrative about what makes their style. I wish there could be a mash-up of these two sites in my brain at all times with a Panda Bear soundtrack in the background.
04 The Invisible Bridge. I just cracked open Julie Orringer's latest book this morning; a very wise and literary friend gave me a galley of it and promised I would love it. It's gorgeous so far, master-craftsman-next-level kind of writing. I'm someone who writes and loves smaller, more intimate stories, and this seems like it's going to be a massive, epic tale. I'm trying to read more books out of my comfort zone lately, so that maybe I can create work that meets somewhere in the middle.
05 Two months of New Yorkers. I was on tour for my book The Melting Season for a month, living out of my car and driving across the country, and then I came back to New York and couch-surfed for a while, and now I'm finally back in my apartment and there was a huge stack of New Yorkers waiting for me, which I have been reading lazily and with great delight on my couch for the past few days. The Janet Malcolm piece, “Iphigenia in Forest Hills” is one of the most fascinating pieces of reporting I've read in a long time. It makes me want to be older and wiser so I can write with the authority she does.
