We spend a lot of time thinking about what’s worth your attention. And that goes for books as much as any performance or art exhibit. Welcome to 1MC’s curated bookshop: five categories, thirty titles, refreshed every season, and always linked to independent booksellers.
It wants better content.
Five shelves, no filler
The Green Room covers memoirs, biographies, scripts, and performance culture from the people who actually make it. This season includes Liza Minnelli finally telling her own story, director John Doyle inside the rehearsal room, and two scripts currently on Broadway: Daniel Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing and Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Conversation Starters asks us to consider cultural moments past and present. Han Kang, fresh off her Nobel Prize, makes her English-language nonfiction debut. Judy Blume’s legacy gets a hard look. Kimberlé Crenshaw puts a life’s work into her own words. Eddie Glaude makes the case for a more honest America, Jesmyn Ward writes about grief like no one else, and Namwali Serpell brings us inside the world of Toni Morrison.
Liner Notes goes genre-spanning on purpose: Alice Coltrane to Bad Bunny, De La Soul to the Rolling Stones, Fab 5 Freddy’s front-row seat at hip-hop’s birth to country star Ty Herndon’s hard-won honesty. No skips.
Fresh Ink is our fiction shelf: Douglas Stuart and Tayari Jones lead six writers whose characters and settings make canceling plans feel like the responsible choice.
When Art Speaks anchors the shelf with two landmark New York exhibition catalogs—the Met’s first comprehensive Raphael retrospective and the 82nd Whitney Biennial—alongside Matisse, Frida Kahlo, and Lisette Model.
The 1MC Bookshop updates every season with fresh picks, accompanied by excerpts, author interviews, and first looks in our Books section. Our goal is simple: get you offline and into the real world (or someone else’s). Find a park bench, café, or cozy corner. Then break our own rule and take more than a minute.
Leave a Reply