What is Anna North reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Anna North, author of America Pacifica.

Her entry begins:

I’m usually reading several different books at a time, which I dip into depending on my mood. Here’s what’s in my stack right now:

Season to Taste, by Molly Birnbaum

Birnbaum lost her sense of smell after a head injury and then regained it bit by bit over the course of many months. Her memoir of this time in her life is movingly personal, but also analytical – she talks to neuroscientists, perfumers, and chefs about the nature of smell and what happens when it’s lost. This book makes me notice things like the smell of own hand while I hold it – it also makes me want to...[read on]

Among the early praise for America Pacifica:

"Anna North has crafted a dangerous, wise, and deeply affecting vision of the future that is also a dark mirror held to our present. At once thrilling and heartbreaking, America Pacifica suggests how we shape ourselves by shaping the world."
--Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection

"Anna North's fluid prose moves this story along with considerable force and velocity. The language in America Pacifica seeps into you, word by word, drop by drop, until you are saturated in the details of this vivid and frightening world."
--Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"In her dark, page-turning debut, North tells the story of Darcy, an 18-year-old girl in a dystopian future whose mother goes missing. For as long as she can remember, Darcy has lived on America Pacifica, an isolated island nation, home to refugees from a mainland ravaged by drastic climate change. Their government is run by a Big Brother like autocrat named Tyson whose strict social hierarchy allows the richest residents to live in luxury while most citizens live in hovels and can barely afford food. Despite these circumstances, Darcy and her mother, Sarah, are otherwise happy until one day when Sarah doesn't return from work. With no resources or leads, Darcy vows to find her mother.... [T]he story—and the wealth of detail in a vividly imagined world—is memorable."
--Publishers Weekly

Learn more about the book and author at Anna North's website.

North is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. America Pacifica, her first novel, is published by Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown. She is also a staff writer at Jezebel.

Writers Read: Anna North.

--Marshal Zeringue