To see picks from individual staff members, choose from the drop down menu at the top!
Chosen by: Michelle
This shape-shifter of a tale begins with an apocalyptic (and frighteningly plausible) fever and quickly morphs into a dark satire of latter-day capitalism crossed with a moving examination of loss. Severance twists the mundane world of office work and consumerism and wrings from it elegant and searing observations on identity, immigration, displacement and motherhood.
Difficult to find
Chosen by: Heidi
This book is my ideal non-fiction read: one third true crime, one third fascinating history and one third literary biography. The result is completely addictive!
Chosen by: Summer
For the sad and angry and hopeful: I recommend Diving Into The Wreck by Adrienne Rich. A beautiful and tough voice that was adept at weaving the private and personal with the social and political, Rich has the capacity to both nail you to your seat and inspire thoughtful action.
Difficult to find
Recommended by: Heidi
A work of 17th century historical fiction (that's based on a true story), it's got everything: a corrupt upper class, a misbehaving bishop, a badass Lady Viceroy implementing reform, and whole bunch of crazy capers.
An engaging and wonderfully written memoir of poverty and single motherhood. I sat down to read a few pages and was glued to my chair for the next few hours. Perfect for fans of Educated and Evicted.
Chosen by: Summer
If Virginia Woolf and Lewis Carroll had a lovechild, this is the book she would write. Taking place in a world that is both familiar and peculiar, Duplex is a story where a Wizard haunts the streets of childhood, robots fall from the sky, and young women grapple with the changing landscape of their lives. A literary hall of mirrors/coming of age story, Duplex is unlike anything you will ever read--and you won't be able to put it down.
Chosen by : Heidi
This one cracks my heart open every time. "October" is an all time favorite.
Chosen by: Heidi
It's a catchy title but this book is less about how to do nothing and more about how to redirect your attention to the things you care about. Odell makes a compelling case to take control of the information we consume at a time when our attention is a valued resource. She argues that each individual little click--on a news story or a funny tweet--is an act devoid of context and what's losing out is everything else, including productive political action. The author is an artist, critic and amateur birder, and her lens makes for a delightful journey, through the Garden School of Epicurus in the fourth century BC, art movements from cubism to pop art, the Rose Garden in Oakland and so much more. As a call to reconnect with ourselves and those around us, it's one of those reads that feels both important and completely enjoyable.
A lovely graphic novel about the aftermath of large events--both personal and public. Sturm's writing calls to mind the sad and funny landscapes of Lorrie Moore, with the animal characters of Art Spiegelman. Even if you've never read a graphic novel, this book stands out as a gorgeous example of how comics continue to be a perfect mode for telling intimate and literary stories.
Is this a poem? A memoir? A list? Yes! The artist Joe Brainard took the simple idea to list a series of memories and made it into an evocative experience of shared memory between the writer and the reader. A perfect book for that writer or artist in your life who has read it all or for that beginning writer who doesn't know where to start.
Chosen by: Michael
British nature writer Robert Macfarlane’s new book is a fascinating look at the worlds beneath our feet. His subjects include cave networks and mining tunnels, deep vertical shafts in glaciers, a subterranean city beneath Paris, and the communication networks of trees below forests. His writing is rich and enveloping, and by the end of the book you will feel like you have adventured to the depths of the earth with him.
Chosen by: Michelle
Little known fact: the artist Louise Bourgeois created countless sculptures and drawings of spiders as a way to memorialize her beloved mother. If you've seen Bourgeois' spiders -- there's one at Dia:Beacon -- you'll know that the image conjures up a myriad of emotions and conditions. Likewise, this gossamer novel, Now, Now, Louison, is a portrait of the passions and preoccupations of the artist herself rather than a straight biographical account. A tale spun for the spider-maker
Chosen by: michelle
While waiting for Ali Smith’s next installment in her Four Season Quartet, think of How to Be Both as an amuse-bouche. Inventive, witty and deeply felt. The ground this novel covers—from a quattrocento painter to a modern-day London teen mourning her 60s wild-child mother—will leave you wanting to shuffle the book’s sections and read it again for new possibilities.
The author of the excellent White Rage is back with a timely, important book about voter suppression. From Voter ID laws to gerrymandering to voter roll purges, Anderson shows how, while poll taxes may be dead, there are always ways to stop the most vulnerable from making their voices at the polls. Ending on a much-needed note of hope, this book is a quick, essential read, and a reminder that voting is a right, not a privilege.
Difficult to find
Chosen by: Summer
am squeamish about novelizations of famous people, especially literary giants like Virginia Woolf, but the writer Sigrid Nunez is never an author that disappoints. Mitz is the story of the tiny, but mighty marmoset monkey that belonged to Leonard and Virginia Woolf, just before the onset of World War II. It is by turns a tender portrait of a good and unconventional marriage, and an unflinching view into a time and place of both cruelty and fear. A delightful and offbeat read from last year's National Book Award for Fiction winner--I can't recommend it enough!
Difficult to find
Chosen by: Michelle
By turns wacky, bracing, sardonic and poignant, these brief but satisfying short stories come to us in the voice of a friend who tells it like it is. Sometimes the world of these stories is full of setbacks and missed connections, often it's loopy and outrageous, and always it's painfully, hopefully human.
Chosen by: Michelle
"Transporting the reader out of the dispiriting news cycle of the present instant, Kathleen Jamie instead reels us back to a perspective on time and human presence that is vast and compassionate. For those who fear our world is disappearing, Jamie ponders how lost cultures from past ages come around again in the spiral of time."
Difficult to find
Staff pick by Heidi: I couldn’t put it down and I ignored everything else I had to do to finish it in two days. It has echoes of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and will definitely be a hit with fans of Shirley Jackson (which is me, I am the target audience). Johnson strings you along, revealing just enough to keep you tantalized while plunging you ever deeper into the psyches of sisters July and September.
Staff pick by Heidi: Ferrante at her best. Long time fans and new readers alike will delight in this novel that is adolescence incarnate - doubt, self-reflection, trying to find yourself, discovering your parents are fallible, wanting to fall in love, and all with the backdrop of Naples and talent of Elena Ferrante. Don't miss this one.