Susan Orlean was the fourth speaker in our Portland Arts & Lectures 2019/20 season, on February 20, 2020. We try to ask every visiting author their top three book recommendations. Here are Orlean’s and what she said on-stage about each.
In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado
“A nonfiction book that is absolutely gorgeously written about a love affair gone very, very wrong. I read it in almost one sitting.”
The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell
“This is a multi-generational family saga, that is some of the most beautiful writing I think I have ever read (and I’m fussy).”
Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood
“This [memoir] is both brilliant and very funny and just so extraordinarily strange.”
Thank you to Powell’s Books for being our featured bookseller of the evening.
