The books Southern indie booksellers are recommending to readers everywhere!

Literary Collections

Mega Milk by Megan Milks

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Mega Milk by Megan Milks
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I’ve never consumed milk. If I did, my throat would close up, and I’d stare down death. Nevertheless, I drank Mega Milk straight from the udder. In a truly brilliant essay collection, Megan Milks takes a few seemingly simple things–a name, a glass of milk–and spirals them outward into a quiet, encompassing portrait of a life. Written with an intimate detail that causes forgotten memories to bubble to the surface, these essays cast a keen and penetrating eye to the small moments that make up a person. I will read and reread Mega Milk for years to come.

Mega Milk by Megan Milks, (List Price: $17.95, The Feminist Press at CUNY, 9781558613584, January 2026)

Reviewed by Charlie Marks, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia

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I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman

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I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman
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Maris is your favorite book recommender’s favorite book recommender, and I’ve been excited for her debut essay collection for months. Happy to report it’s everything I wanted – a funny, relatable, and insightful exploration of the institutions that fail us. I felt her hope and rage deep in my bones, as someone who once believed that if I was “good” enough, things would work out. This book couldn’t come at a better time, as we reckon with the impact of our collective choices and failing empires. Must read!!! <3

I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman, (List Price: $26.99, Ecco, 9780063305823, July 2025)

Reviewed by Rachel Knox, Tombolo Books in St Petersburg, Florida

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Racebook by Tochi Onyebuchi

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Racebook by Tochi Onyebuchi
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I’m SMASHING that “like” button on Racebook, Onyebuchi’s foray into essay collection, all centered around the hot button topic of the internet. Onyebuchi talks about Xbox live chats, the edgy-older-siblingness of Sonic the Hedgehog (sorry y’all; my allegiance lies with Shadow), and Facebook content moderation, all to the end of deciphering just what role the internet plays in the last thirty years of cultural history. Most striking about this collection is the refreshing way that Onyebuchi does not unilaterally dismiss the internet, instead acknowledging the good that the web has offered us. I love essay collections that don’t have easy answers, and this one sure doesn’t have one, but it left me thinking deeply about my own interfacing between my “self” and my “internet self” in a way that has shaped my fall already. If you, too, have distinct memories of choosing the perfect MCR lyric for your AIM away message, or teaching yourself HTML to code a glittery monstrosity of a Geocities, Neopets, or Myspace page, this collection will speak to your soul. And even if you don’t have those nostalgia glasses, still take a dip – I promise you’ll find something new here anyway.

Racebook by Tochi Onyebuchi, (List Price: $27, Roxane Gay Books, 9780802166258, October 2025)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Dead and Alive: Essays by Zadie Smith

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Deand and Alive: Essays by Zadie Smith
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Zadie Smith’s latest book, Deand and Alive: Essays, is illuminating, engrossing, and thought-provoking. Smith engages in a conversation with the reader — because that is what each essay is, a conversation between author and reader — by sharing her thoughts on art, politics, identity (with an emphasis on racial and gender), the algorithm, socioeconomic status, what it means to be an American versus an immigrant, and the relationship between writer and reader. The unifying theme throughout the entire collection is the author’s viewpoints on the individual and the collective, about who I am versus the Other. Many readers are aware of Ms. Smith’s fiction, but, in my humble opinion, not enough are familiar with her essays. I suspect that I am an atypical fan. The first books I read were Changing My Mind and Feel Free, two previous collections of non-fiction. The majesty of her essays, the radiance of her prose — she conveys so much in a single sentence, handpicking each word — was so intoxicating that I rushed to the nearest library to pick up whatever was available of her fiction. “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction,” “Shibboleth,” “The Realm of the Unspoken,” and “Conscience and Consciousness: A Craft Talk for the People and the Person” — each of which is included in Deand and Alive: Essays — should be required reading. In “Conscience and Consciousness,” Smith writes, “Art is one of the ways we reveal the peculiarities of consciousness.” In this latest collection, it is the author’s consciousness that is on display. Because of this aspect, I feel I understand her a little better, and I suspect many readers will appreciate this all too rare quality of the book. I learned a great deal while reading, and I found myself re-considering my own notions about a great many topics simply due to having access to the author’s vantage point. This collection requires careful reading and deliberation. Please, savor each individual work.

Deand and Alive: Essays by Zadie Smith, (List Price: $30, Penguin Press, 9780593834688, October 2025)

Reviewed by Michael Yetter, Joseph-Beth Booksellers Lexington in Lexington, Kentucky

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Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck
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Jenny Erpenbeck knows exactly where to apply pressure for maximal effect. This collection is an astounding demonstration of intellect shot through with wisdom, insights gathered over a lifetime of deep engagement with art, country, family, and the vagaries of time. Those moments of clarity that are always absconding? Erpenbeck has gathered them all here, made the impermanent permanent with her words (stunningly translated by Kurt Beals).

Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck, (List Price: $15.95, New Directions, 9780811238113, October 2025)

Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama

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Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

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Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
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A transcendent work that I’ll be thinking about forever. A book about living–applying precision to life’s formless mysteries, chiseling them out–much more than a book about grief. An act of generosity and courage, undertaken with breathtaking intelligence.

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li, (List Price: $26, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374617318, May 2025)

Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama

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I’ve Tried Being Nice: Essay by Ann Leary

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I've Tried Being Nice: Essay by Ann Leary
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Breezy and funny but thought-provoking too. An essay collection may not seem like the most obvious beach read, but this delightful little book is the perfect thing for the beach, or the plane, or the car this summer. Anne Leary brings her unique humor to topics we will all find familiar. She opens herself and her family up just enough to remind us that we are all facing the same daily joys and absurdities and challenges. She’s like a friend over coffee or a college roommate on the phone decades later—you’re never sure where the conversation will go next, but you’re glad to be along for the ride.

I’ve Tried Being Nice: Essay by Ann Leary, (List Price: $28.99, Marysue Rucci Books, 9781982120344, June 2024)

Reviewed by Amanda Grell, Pearl’s Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas

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Reading the Room by Paul Yamazaki

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Reading the Room by Paul Yamazaki
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This pocket-size book takes just an hour or two to read, structurally spans a day and a night, but holds half a century’s wisdom about bookselling. Paul Yamazaki has been the principal book buyer at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s iconic City Lights bookstore in San Francisco for 50 years. This brief but complex and consequential collection of interviews with a venerable bookseller of color who’s experienced so much is a gift to all who love bookstores.

Reading the Room by Paul Yamazaki, (List Price: $13.95, Ode Books, 9781958846698, May 2024)

Reviewed by Megan Bell, Underground Books in Carrollton , Georgia

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All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld

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All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld
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Rothfeld begins with the promise of un-containment. If all things are in fact too small, then this book cannot contain all that it hopes to include and isn’t there something beautiful about that? Truly, what Rothfeld deftly handles is the ways that excessiveness bleeds into all aspects of lived experience – minds, bodies, and things. At times this collection hits a wall, particularly as Rothfeld realizes the limits of her own experience. So, while I don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything Rothfeld says here, her nuanced thinking on particularly the move towards owning less, thinking less, and doing less of the last decade reveals my own thoughts in the process. Perhaps what ties these lightly disparate essays together is the promise that wanting and longing are active and pressing parts of our lives.

All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld, (List Price: $27.99, Metropolitan Books, 9781250849915, April 2024)

Reviewed by Mikey LaFave, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

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Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
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Samantha Irby is a writer like no other. She has the ability to draw out all the hilarious moments of everyday life with charming self-deprecation and laugh-out-loud prose. The humor in her writing often disguises her brilliance — don’t be fooled — Samantha Irby is a genius.

Quietly HostileQuietly Hostile by Samantha Irby, (List Price: $17, Vintage, 9780593315699, May 2023)

Reviewed by Jamie Southern, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera

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Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera
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A delicate coming-of-age story that is both elegiac and an ode to craftwork, womanhood, and friendship. Much like the characters in Cross-Stitch, Barrera and translator MacSweeny have yet again come together to craft another gift to treasure. One of my favorite reads of the year.

Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera, (List Price: $24, Two Lines Press, 9781949641530, November 2023)

Reviewed by Luis Correa, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay

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The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay
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Ross Gay is an ambassador of pure joy—not the sugar-coated, roll-your-eyes kind of happiness, but the subversive, wink-and-nod kind of delectation. Whether he is comparing clusters of harvested sweet potatoes to snuggled bunnies or finding beauty at his aunt’s funeral, Gay’s eye for the oft-overlooked wonders of life is unrivaled, and his conversational, familiar delivery is perfection. Each tiny essay in this beautiful book digresses again and again, which, no surprise, makes it all the more delightful. Do we need a book of more delights? Yes, yes, yes. This book is a ray of sunshine, a juicy peach, a warm hug, a sunflower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.

The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay, (List Price: $28, Algonquin Books, 9781643753096, September 2023)

Reviewed by Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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The World As We Knew It by Amy Brady

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The World As We Knew It by Amy Brady
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A phenomenal collection of essays from fiction writers reflecting on the existential crisis that is climate change. It’s all excellent writing and full of the attention to the human condition you might expect from these literary powerhouses, but what really strikes me is how in every one of these essays I felt a deep sense of love, curiosity, and excitement about the natural world. These writers do not let their profession stop them from being interested in the natural sciences, and the inspiration they draw from them, even in the face of inevitable doom, is a gift to read.

The World As We Knew It by Amy Brady, (List Price: $16.95, Catapult, 9781646220304, June 2022)

Reviewed by Akil Guruparan, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia

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The Unwritten Book by Samantha Hunt

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The Unwritten Book by Samantha Hunt
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With a heavy heart and a recently missing cat (wringing out the old year, hearing the ringing of the new through my poorly insulated walls), I started a book that followed me home from work. For years, Samantha Hunt novels, on glancing and flipping, have always looked to be in the “Alley (up my)” or “Wheelhouse (in my)” genres, but this is my first and, by golly, I can’t stop rambling, deleting, rambling, deleting this review. She lets grief, family, empathy, childhood, alcohol, a boy band, authority, loss, parenthood, faith (and much much more) drop, all at once, into the top of the Plinko board, amazingly not jamming the derned thing up. What settles at the bottom is a nice, orderly, call for all to relish the unknown, hold tight to loss, and madlib the half-assed answers to life’s half-asked questions. I, for one, am retooling “rut” and giving a new shine to “stuck in a.” However, as newly-formed fanboy insecurities blossom, the Samantha Hunt in my mind says “well, YOU sure missed the point on the head.” But surely the fact that I got what I wanted out of [the book, which I forgot to mention is a work of nonfiction] was surely the point of it exactly. Or at least that’s what I got out of it. Surely.

The Unwritten Book by Samantha Hunt, (List Price: $28, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374604912,  April 2022)

Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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