Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus.

Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow is a marvel, deftly examining the connections between art and everyday life. Andy Sturdevant's lively, unique inquiries into trust fund kids, co-opted flags, gubernatorial portraits, art in second-tier cities, and Upper Midwestern esoterica, brim with both wit and humor.

Maybe that's why people have friends at all. Not because they like them so much but because they don't make them feel so much worse.

In novels you're able to occupy character's internal thoughts and it's really hard to do in a film or a TV show. When you're reading a character's thoughts or when it's in first person, you're reading kind of their own story, so you have the opportunity to see what makes that character complex or complicated. And to me that's what the whole point of fiction is.

[Sex] is really awkward. You know you have expectations and then it's this great moment of connection and it's a surprise. But that's what so exciting about it is that sense of surprise.

Sex scenes in books are always like first person, from this male perspective and just about how awesome he is. It feels like such a fantasy.

Beneath all of her thoughts and worries, beneath the complication of conflicting identities and needs, maybe it's as simple as loving the way some other person looks when they're sleeping.