Anna North’s Recommended Reading List
Photograph of Anna North by Seth Pomerantz
Anna North is the author of newly released novel Bog Queen (read excerpt here). She is also the author of the novels Outlawed, America Pacifica, and The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. Published in 2021, Outlawed was a New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club and Belletrist pick. Anna is also a senior correspondent at Vox, covering American work and family life.
To celebrate the release of Bog Queen, Anna shares her recommended reading list with us below!
To learn more about Anna and her inspiring career, visit here.
Read an excerpt from Bog Queen here.
“The story of twin Buddhist monks searching for the latest incarnation of a prominent lama across a punishing Mongolian landscape is absolutely unlike anything I’ve ever read before. The writing is beautiful, and I found the book very calming, even though a lot of it is about the inner turmoil one of the monks is facing as he tries to decide whether to renounce his vows. I’m really obsessed with Quan Barry’s writing right now — she also has a new book, The Unveiling, that comes out the same day as mine!”
“This is a deftly written historical novel about a kingdom founded by freed Black Americans in the wake of emancipation. Valdez weaves in their story with that of one of their ancestors in the present, who’s been summoned home by her prickly grandmother and ends up researching her family’s story and their claim to the land. In the present timeline, part of the land has become a flower farm, and I love the descriptions of harvesting and arranging flowers; Valdez is really expert at leavening the painful history her narrator uncovers with these moments of sweetness.”
“I love this story of a graduate student in 1980s Australia trying to reconcile Virginia Woolf’s feminism with her racism. It’s also the story of a young woman trying to understand herself and her relationships to the other people in her life, especially her secret(ish) lover and his girlfriend. A novel about the formation of a mind and heart.”
“What starts out almost as a romance becomes something different as this novel crosses oceans, time periods, and genres. My favorite of the multiple perspectives is that of a female scientist who flees China during the Cultural Revolution and whose choices end up creating and then destroying her family.”
“These essays, on such diverse topics as unicorns, medicalized childbirth, and the author’s experience with a mental health condition called depersonalization-derealization disorder, combine history, memoir, and blazingly intelligent cultural criticism. Ives’s meditation on the healing properties of the word “and” will stick with me for a long time.”
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