Lucas Stoffel

One series, two books, two genres that have nothing to do with each other. Boy, Refracted hit #1 in Zen Philosophy and LGBTQ+ Science Fiction. The Third Person hit #1 in Southeast Asia Travel, a few spots above the DK guidebooks. They top those lists for the same reason: they are not really genre books. They are one story about AI and love, told from two sides.

Crying in H Mart Book Review: I knew this book was going to wreck me. You don't pick up a memoir called Crying in H Mart expecting to leave emotionally intact. But I didn't expect it to wreck me this specifically, this precisely, in ways I'm still thinking about weeks later.

Educated Book Review: Tara Westover didn't set foot in a classroom until she was seventeen. She grew up in rural Idaho with a father who was almost certainly bipolar, possibly schizophrenic, and definitely a survivalist who believed the government was coming, the Illuminati were real, and doctors were agents of the devil. Her mother was an herbalist and unlicensed midwife. Her brother was violently abusive. And nobody — nobody — thought there was anything wrong with any of th

Born a Crime Book Review: The title of Trevor Noah's memoir is not a metaphor. Under South Africa's apartheid laws, relationships between Black and white people were illegal. His mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is Xhosa. His father, Robert, is Swiss-German. Trevor's very existence was a crime punishable by prison. His mother could have been jailed for having him. When they walked down the street together, she had to pretend he wasn't hers.

Nice Girls Don't Win Book Review: If you only know Parvati Shallow from Survivor, you know maybe ten percent of this story. And honestly, the ten percent you know is probably the least interesting part. This memoir starts where most people wouldn't expect: a Florida commune run by a tyrannical female guru. Parvati grew up inside that world, and the early chapters about her childhood — the control, the manipulation, the slow understanding that the authority figure she trust

Publishers Weekly gave it 9.50 out of 10. Kirkus called it exuberant. A picaresque memoir about daring to live an unlikely life in a society that punishes those who try.

The Third Person is a memoir written entirely in third person. Yes, that sounds like a contradiction. It follows a version of me after a devastating breakup with the person I call Warboy, the end of a fifteen-year relationship that left me suspended somewhere between grief and motion. I rent out my New York apartment, lose my job, go home to Iowa for Christmas, and eventually do the thing heartbroken people do when standing still becomes unbearable: I leave. Vietnam. Thailand