Reading with... Alice Bolin

photo: Justin Davis

Alice Bolin is the author of Dead Girls (Morrow, June 26, 2018), a collection of essays about crime, gender, and the American West. Her criticism, personal essays and journalism have appeared in publications including Elle, Salon, Racked and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is assistant professor of creative nonfiction at the University of Memphis.

 

 

Since I've been in book tour mode the past few weeks, I have been missing my books and the nightstand I put them on, and my reading has been all over the place. I've been mostly reading from the random books I have on my e-reader, including My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Was reading Michelle Tea's great collection of essays Against Memoir before I left home, so it might still be on my nightstand or coffee table.

 

 

Any series about plucky historical girls (Dear America, American Girl) or plucky contemporary girls (the Baby-sitters Club and any of its imitators).

 

 

This question is insane! I'm going to ignore my favorite poets for time's sake (John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Richard Hugo, Sylvia Plath...). I guess I choose Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Muriel Spark, Joy Williams and Rachel Kushner. Does anyone ever just choose five?

 

 

Basically every book assigned to complete my history major at the University of Nebraska.

 

 

Caca Dolce by Chelsea Martin, which I have taught in my nonfiction workshop, bought as a gift for many friends and for my mom, and which I myself own three copies of. It is one of the funniest, most effective and most original memoirs I've ever read, and I love it with my whole heart.

 

 

The Skies Belong to Us by Brendan Koerner, about the skyjacking epidemic, which turned out to play a big part in my book!

 

 

I kept Teen Witch, Silver RavenWolf's book of spells for young Pagans, under my bed when I was nine, but I don't think my parents would have cared.

 

 

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm changed the way I think about every aspect of crime, from the way it is reported to criminal psychology to notions of guilt, innocence and evidence.

 

 

"The voice of the hot dog merchant split the dusk like an axe." --from Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep

 

 

Miss Lonely Hearts and The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, published in one convenient volume by New Directions, are books I could read an unlimited amount of times. Joan Didion's collected nonfiction, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, was my primer as I was learning to write nonfiction. It is massive and I used to carry it around with me everywhere. I thought I lost my copy of White Girls by Hilton Als and nearly had an aneurysm. The Professor by Terry Castle is a book I keep on my e-reader and my phone at all times to read when I'm bored. My Body Is a Book of Rules by Elissa Washuta is one of the most essential and unusual memoirs I've ever read, and I love to assign it to my nonfiction students.

 

When I first read Beloved by Toni Morrison, I immediately flipped back to the first page and read it again.

 

 

Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang, Delicious Foods by James Hannaham, The Possessed by Elif Batuman and Made for Love by Alissa Nutting.