Reading Round-Up: Peculiar Findings

By Maggie Hellwig in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 7, 2012 4:30PM

The books of March 2012 are shaping up to be quite the eccentric picks. We're always impressed with a good twist, turn, or side-winding odd-ball of a character. Here are some titles to make your winter a bit more lively, if not more interesting to say the least.

Arcadia
Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff's follow up to The Monster's of Templeton looks to be an experimental and intriguing read. Lots of things can be suggested by simply glancing at the psychedelic cover. The novel is set in the 1960s, following the evolution of a hippie commune in New York--from its beginnings to its ultimate dissemination. The reader is witness to these unraveling events through the eyes of the first child to be born into the commune, a boy named "Bit." Groff not only piques our interest in her daring glimpse into the delicate workings of societal trial and error, but also in her scrutiny on how such experiments affect the generation born into them.

Hot Pink
Adam Levin

Chicago author Adam Levin will be releasing his second novel in March. Hot Pink is a collection of ten short stories. It appears at first glance to be a much more tame book compared to his last novel, The Instructions, which was a brilliant hurricane of over 1,000 pages. However, the manifestation of this book still delivers Levin's signature quirky, messy, and always twisted storytelling. Recently Betsy Mikel sang its praises in Chicago Magazine: "Hot Pink leaves readers wondering what might be lurking nearby, on the verge of uprooting their own lives." Both Adam Levin and Tim Kinsella will be reading at Quimby's Bookstore on March 13th, which promises to be an interesting meet and greet.

Carry The One
Carol Anshaw

Another Chicago resident, Carol Anshaw, will be releasing her fourth novel. Carry the One is a compelling story about the aftermath of a traumatic event. Friends and family, leaving a wedding together in one car, accidentally kill a female pedestrian. Anshaw wields her quick wit and depth of human observation, as each character's life is forever altered and continuously intertwined. Carry the One has been selected for the March 2012 Indie Next List, and is definitely an emerging author that we will continue to keep an eye on.