The comedy of the New York girl abroad, exemplified in Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado, is high among my favorite genres, followed closely by the tragedy of the New York girl abroad—Daisy Miller is one among many Jamesian examples. Eve Babitz’s Black Swans, originally published in 1993, is both the comedy and the tragedy of the Los Angeles girl on her home coast, and it elevates one of my less-favored genres, the personal essay. These autobiographical “stories” are peopled with sad, handsome men (thus the comedy). The tragedy is the denouement of the preceding decades, which is more readily on display in her interactions with women. Babitz lunches in the L.A. heat, dressed comfortably and mindful of her newly middle-aged metabolism, watching her companion, an effortlessly svelte woman her age, fully made-up and dressed in a fine white pantsuit, devour a hamburger, a bourbon, then a custard, a rare holdout of refined excess. The blinding twilight of a bygone era in Los Angeles is Babitz’s lived experience, distilled here into stories with sweet bite, like sour fruit only just past the point of ripe. —Lauren Kane

Porochista Khakpour’s memoir Sick doesn’t need much more hype, but I have focused on almost nothing else the last two weeks, deliberately stretching it into as many days of reading as possible. That a book chronicling year after year of physical agony, misdiagnosis, and serial dating never becomes narcissistic or self-involved is a miracle; instead, reading Khakpour’s memoir is more like a chance meeting with someone you’ve always dreamed of commiserating with. It could easily have been a polemic against the health care industry; you’ll quickly lose count of how many providers fail Khakpour. It took her years to get a Lyme disease diagnosis, which, detected in the late stage, signifies a lifetime of health problems and relapses. Polemic typically necessitates ego, but Khakpour’s is absent in Sick. My favorite part of the book is its structure, each chapter set in a new city at a new gig. She is writer adept at snagging grants and fellowships, and her story as a sick person spreads from her hometown of Tehran, to L.A., to Sarah Lawrence College, to Johns Hopkins, to New Mexico, to Pennsylvania, to Germany, and always back to New York. The constant change in geography, in lovers, and in health are immensely pleasurable to read on every page, despite the author’s uncertain future through it all. The very worst moments—hiding in the bathroom with scissors to her arm in Leipzig while her boyfriend has a psychotic episode—are gravid with her joy at being able to write it. In the end, it’s this joy of writing, however grim the content, that is really the subject of Sick. I love this book. —Ben Shields  Read More