It’s lovely if stark imagery, pointing to the struggle for clarity that informs both science and poetry. So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back. The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamedįor all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. In one of the book’s best poems, “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” Smith reflected on the Hubble’s early technical problems, glitches that were ultimately resolved: The book was also a homage to Smith’s father, a scientist who worked on the Hubble telescope. As the title suggests, 'Life on Mars' embraced an extraterrestrial theme, drawing on inspiration as varied as science fiction and the music of David Bowie to suggest that in the vast reaches of the cosmos, humanity might be the strangest creation of all. Smith achieved a breakthrough in 2011 with 'Life on Mars,' a collection that won the Pulitzer Prize. My question for everyone else is, what’s on your summer reading list? It is the story of a Black family’s migration to New Jersey from the Jim Crow South, full of colorful language that puts me in the mind of a Zora Neale Hurston novel. A panel of debut authors and their works also sounded promising, including Alice Carrière and her memoir, “Everything/Nothing/Someone” Kelsey James and her novel, “The Woman in the Castello” and Terah Shelton Harris and her novel, “One Summer in Savannah.”I will get through the books that I grabbed. And Sarah Jessica Parker praised author Kim Coleman Foote about her forthcoming novel, “Coleman Hill,” which is on Ms. If his prose and art match his lyricism, the book will be well worth the read. Public Enemy frontman Chuck D spoke about his “Naphic Grovel” titled “Stewdio,” which features original artwork and social commentary. I got some, but other titles were too popular and earlier birds with quicker hands beat me to them.Here are some of my notable finds. We have been enraptured by stories that have taken our imaginations on trips of heroic displays of bravery in the face of dystopian cruelty or wondrous fantasy, and we’ve been on crime-solving missions alongside Miss Marple and other would-be sleuths.When I stepped foot inside the book show, I wanted to shape-shift into an eight-arm octopus to grab every galley. We gather in bookstores and exchange knowing glances of which titles we will open first.We ponder over prose that confounds, teaches, inspires, and challenges us.

My fellow bibliophiles and logophiles know the excitement of looking at piles of clean, handsome books with interesting covers. Book Show in New York City.Where do I go from here? Summer doesn’t last forever, but I feel like my reading list does. I bemoan not having enough time to read every single book that I scooped up recently at Publishers Weekly’s first in-person U.S. Currently I have 99 problems and lack of time is the biggest one.

Life on mars poet smith