There’s much more to Austin than SXSW. If you’re planning a trip to the music capital of Texas, or want to be transported there by literature, check out our readers’ book recommendations. Tell us what we’ve missed in the comments below

It may be the Live Music Capital of the World, but as the local writer and editor Michael Barrett showed us last week, alongside Austin’s world-renowned music festivals there is a vibrant literary culture. Check out his piece for a fascinating exploration of the running themes in the city’s literature, including politics, crime and explorations of the tech boom, hipsterism and creativity.

Guided by readers like Sanl, whose time living in Austin included “having a beer with Johnny Cash on a lazy Tuesday”, we’ve assembled some of the best books with the city at their heart. Take a look at our selection and let us know what we’ve missed. Add them in the comments below and we’ll update this reading list.

1. James Hynes’s novels



Novelist James Hynes, Michigan-born and Austin resident, has written several novels that are about Austin, even if he doesn’t always identify it as such. According to dancer123:

Austin is fully disclosed as the setting for Next (2010), which is a satiric thriller about a terrorist attack on a glass-towered Congress Street high-rise. Publish and Perish (1998) is a collection of three novellas, much of which takes place in an Austin-like academia. This one combines satire and spookiness. I haven’t read Kings of Infinite Space (2005), but it also sounds like an Austin setting about a drop-out from academia working in a soulless and mindless state government bureaucracy – sort of a civil service Office Space.

The novel Next is “a plotless, desultory novel about a commitment-phobic man walking along the hot streets of Austin as he waits for a job interview,” according to a review in the Washington Post – it “shouldn’t work at all, let alone succeed as it does.”

Austin books writer Michael Schaub also recommended it, via Twitter:

Michael Schaub (@michaelschaub) For what it's worth, my favorite book about Austin, and one of my favorite novels ever: "Next" by @jameshynes.

From Next:

No, it’s a jet, coming out from behind the tower, climbing from Austin’s airport over the city so steeply and slowly it looks as if it’s winching itself into the sky ... And though Kevin’s pulse has slowed, the still surprising and indelible conjunction of two formerly unrelated compound nouns – airplane, skyscraper – makes his stomach drop. What’s worse is that he can’t even hear the jet yet, and its silence as it crawls glittering against the bleached sky makes the sight even creepier.

2. Famous Writers I Have Known by James Magnuson (2014)

Bruce Hunt says:

Well, you’ve got to include the novel Famous Writers I Have Known. Jim is the longtime director of the Michener Center for Writers [one of the most prestigious writing programs in the US], and in “Famous Writers” he gives a wonderfully funny picture of both the Center (thinly disguised) and literary Austin (even more thinly disguised). Great stuff. His Windfall is very good, too.

From Famous Writers I Have Known:

Sometimes writing a sentence can be harder than serving one.

3. Small Steps by Louis Sachar (2006)

Small Steps is a sort-of sequel to Sachar’s much-praised novel Holes, which picks up the story after the escape from the Texas juvenile correctional facility featured on the first book. For RichardDDN:

Small Steps is a great and underrated YA novel set in Austin. It points out that there is West and East Austin divided by a railway, colour and poverty.

Writing in the Guardian, Josh Lacey praised its “funny dialogue, fast-moving story, emotive scenes, [and] interesting central character,” even if he considered it not as brilliant as the excellent book that preceded it.

From Small Steps:

There was something special about being in a strange place, all alone in a mass of people even if you had just screwed up your life, or perhaps especially if you had just screwed up your life.

I may have ruined my life, but at least I got to eat some really good Chinese food.

4. Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City by Javier Auyero (2015)

Reader Pamela Neumann recommended this study of working-class lives:

The book seeks to draw attention to the ways that racial, economic, and gender inequality affects the daily lives of ordinary people living on the margins of our city, but whose contributions are central to maintaining Austin’s image as a hip, creative city.

The book, edited by University of Texas sociology professor Javier Auyero, follows the lives of 11 Austinites in working-class and poor environments. The website for the project provides supplementary photo stories for each chapter of the book.

5. Under the Same Stars by Tim Lott (2012)

mal4mac recommended:

Under the Same Stars is a superb road novel in which two brothers go in search of their estranged father. Starting out in New Orleans, they take in Austin en route, and several other American cities.

For Alex Clark, writing in the Guardian:

[Lott’s] real talent lies in a willingness to allow emotional rawness and confusion to remain unfinessed, the loose ends to stay frayed. “I can’t find a story that fits,” says [protagonist] Sal plaintively, trying to explain his psychological frailty to his irrepressibly cheerful brother. Not everything in Under the Same Stars does fit; its characters may have nudged their lives forwards, but the past remains a painful, mysterious hinterland. It might be an uncomfortable read, but its raggedness is perhaps its greatest strength.

Extras: bookshops, literary journals and libraries

“God, we’re spoiled for choice here,” celebrated Austin reader Amy Gentry. She offered a mini-guide of great local shoutouts, which we’ve compiled below, together with those recommended by Michael Barrett:

Independent bookshops

Malvern Books: “Fills a generous-sized room with indie-only presses,” said Gentry. Barrett said: “a relatively new bookstore, has made a big splash in the poetry world and has become a favorite venue of many local writers who want to share their work to a supportive and well-read crowd.”

Bookwoman: “One of the last remaining feminist bookstores in North America,” Gentry adds, “and it boasts an expertly curated selection.”

Monkeywrench Books: radical bookstore

Farewell Books: bookshop and gallery specialising in art, comics, indie

Resistencia Bookstore: neighbourhood centre for aspiring writers, specialising in indigenous, Native American, Latino African American, queer, feminist, and children’s bilingual literature.

South Congress Books: store specialising in classic and vintage books

Local publishers (including presses, literary journals, comics, and zines)



Libraries

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Do you know of any great books set in or about Austin? Let us know in the comments and we’ll update the list

