It’s a daunting task to recommend books to someone. What’s their taste, what mood are they in, how do they feel about certain genres, and countless other questions run through my head. So, instead of asking writers to give me recommendations on the spot, I’ve asked them to share books they love. No other qualifications. Just hit Debutiful readers with a book (or a few) they love and think readers will love as well. And, boy, did they deliver!
Here are February’s writer recommendations that Debutiful’s favorite writers guarantee you’ll fall in love with.
August Thompson, author of Anyone’s Ghost
I didn’t read as much as I’d have liked in 2024 due to the existential angst that is debuting and perverse readerly arrogance—why, God, did I think it was the right time to start War and Peace?—but I was lucky to read a few books that are now imprinted on me. Debuts by friends really moved me—Victim by Andrew Boryga, the forthcoming Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin, to name a couple. But my recommendation would have to be JUICE by Tim Winton. It’s one of the greatest literary sci-fi novels ever written, I’m convinced. A vicious, furious combination of The Road and Mad Max. Winton has built an intricate and intuitive myth system that is focused on the ramifications of life under the world-killers ruining our planet this very moment. It’s bleak, to be sure, but invigorating, filled with spycraft, brute survival, surprising earnestness and fluid writing that make its 500-some pages move quickly.
Olufunke Grace Bankole, author of The Edge of Water
I was first drawn to Ugandan writer Tramaine Suubi’s debut poetry collection, Phases, because of its arresting cover that is tender, wiry, and slightly unsettling. Craving more works by African poets, I was compelled to read this book, and I’m so happy I did! Structured by the various phases and effects of the moon from “waning gibbous” to “full moon,” the poems in this deeply sensorial collection span the wholeness and emptiness of love, remembering, desire, joy, anxiety, and questioning. Some, like “sweet nothings,” are contemplative and sweetly resigned, while others like “instincts” and “asphyxiation” feel urgent and vulnerable. The “wisest man” is distinctly ferocious and interrogative. A few still, like “phrases” which is written as a prepositional word-play, are skillfully woven and light. Throughout, it is evident that like the phases of the moon, the author, too, is evolving. I wanted to go slowly with this collection, in order to savor each poem, but I couldn’t stop reading. I encourage anyone who wants to read more poetry, especially by talented Black authors, to pick this book up–it’s beautiful!
Ilana Masad, author of Beings
Last month I had a lull in my reading-for-work obligations, and was able to do my favorite non-work thing which is (yes, really) reading for fun, so I finally got to pick up Jennine Capó Crucet’s new novel, Say Hello to My Little Friend. I’m a big fan of Jennine’s–I was lucky enough to take her classes in grad school–but I went into the book feeling bemused at its premise: Scarface meets Moby Dick somehow? I’ve never seen the former (I know, I know) but I adore the latter (it’s so weird!) and I trust Jennine’s prose, so I just let myself sink into it. It was the right move–I tore through it. It’s funny, acerbic, clever, strange, and constantly upending reader expectations in the best way possible. Briefly, it’s about a rather lost young man in Miami who decides that he wants to be the next Scarface, just without all the drugs and stuff. It’s also about Lolita, the very real whale who spent decades trapped in a too-small tank in the Miami Seaquarium. It’s also about stereotypes, expectations, grief, loneliness, connection–and the deadliness and violence to be found in all of these. I wish I could read Say Hello to My Little Friend for the first time all over again.
Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat
Sarah Ghazal Ali’s Theophanies was one of my very first reads of 2024, and it cast a glow of brilliance across everything I read afterward. An absolutely stunning collection of poems, full of depth, wisdom, and surprise, Theophanies joins the ranks of other jaw-dropping poetry debuts that stand the test of time for me: Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Ghost Of, Aria Aber’s Hard Damage, Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage, Richard Siken’s Crush, Luther Hughes’ A Shiver in the Leaves, to name just a few.
Mike Fu, author of Masquerade
Among the books that I have thoroughly enjoyed in recent years is Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Other Stories, originally published in 1949. Though the eponymous story is perhaps her most well-known, each tale in the collection is deliciously unsettling and a master class in creating atmospheric tension. Jackson’s precise diction and impeccable plotting present a singular vision of postwar America that is anodyne at first glance, but positively brimming with the spooky and the sinister. “The Tooth” and “Pillar of Salt” are must-reads. She’s the foremother to what we now think of as Lynchian vibes, hands down.
Colette Shade, author of Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was)
Historical events shape the course of our lives, whether we’re fully aware of them or not. My favorite novels try to make sense of that interplay between the historical and the personal. Sarah Thankam Matthews’s 2022 novel All This Could Be Different has a deep understanding of history, but it’s not didactic. It’s set in Milwaukee in the wake of the Great Recession, and it follows Sneha and her friends after they graduate from the University of Wisconsin into the worst economy in decades. The book asks big questions about ambition, fairness, what it means to live a meaningful life, and what it might take to build an alternative to our screwed up society. My favorite part is that the characters — much like all of us — are not fully aware of the significance of their historical moment. The details from the late 2000s and early 2010s era — fish tacos, Stila lip stain — make the book fun to read. I finished it in 3 days.