11 Books We Can’t Stop Thinking About This Month

An intimate memoir from Joan Didion’s assistant, a dive into the uncanny valley, a poetry primer, and more recommendations from the staff of Vanity Fair.
Madison Reid, Vanity Fair, June 13, 2024
Fittingly, I discovered this book on Instagram. American Glitch by Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein drops into an altered reality where the digital world and all its aberrations have somehow oozed into the “real” world. Images of septuple rainbows, sinkholes, mirages, unidentified flying objects, and US military training exercises in a book about the size and color of a MacBook Pro evoke a paranoid hive mind informed by endless hours on the internet. Of course, there is humor in these visual “glitches” as well. Imagine jpegs of clouds in the shape of angels and scans of FBI documents discussing “Spying by mind-reading!” An essay by David Campany and shorter texts by 36 contributors add to this wildly inventive set of images that asks all of the questions that we may not want answered. (Gnomic Book, 2024) —Madison Reid