First line: “It is the hiss and crackle of the old recording that first reaches the ear.“
I’d like to start by saying I am not an expert in classical music at all and don’t play or read music. What got me hooked on this book was the way history is told and explained by Jeremy Eichler through the stories of individual lives and the music written by the four composers highlighted: Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britton. All four men created moving works of music to express emotions and attempt to understand atrocities of WWII.
The writer is meticulous in telling these stories through archival research and traveling to such places as Goethe’s Oak, the home of Strauss in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Walchensee lake (and many others).
I wondered as I was reading: “how is it possible to have man’s most horrific actions and most creative on display at virtually the same intersection of time?” This book is disturbing, beautiful, horrific, and deeply moving all at once.
“One of the only works of fiction to event make me cry from something other than overwhelming happiness or sadness, but from an overwhelming pure depiction of the character of honor and the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of total abject hopelessness. Sanderson tells the most epic story in the most grounded way possible that takes no shortcuts and will often leave you breathless.” – Joey (staff)
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, Book One of the Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.
Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.
It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.
One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.
Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.
Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.
The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.
“Do you love weird animal facts? Do you love academia? Do you love sticking it to the patriarchy? This book boasts all three with panache and grace.” – Riona (Staff)
A “playful, enlightening,” and “effervescent exposé” (Scientific American) on the queens of the animal kingdom
Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser.
Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted.
In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun.
“This Southern noir crime novel creeps right over the line into horror as the sheriff of a small Southern town hunts for a serial killer who is targeting adolescent black children. Titus, the Sheriff, has his hands full while trying to identify the murderer and deal with the secrets and sins of his hometown. As the mystery deepens, and the murders become more horrific, it’s a wild, wild ride!”
“Both of Bechdel’s memoirs, this and Are You My Mother? are darkly funny and ultimately touching stories of trying to love and understand your parents to love and understand yourself.” – Robin (staff)
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Winner of the Stonewall Book Award • Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award • Nominated for the GLAAD Media Award Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.
Wellness by Nathan Hill, (Knopf, out 9/19), picked by store co-founder, Judy Blume
If you loved Nathan Hill’s first novel, The Nix, as much as I did and you’ve been waiting seven long years for his next, as I have, rejoice! You won’t be disappointed. This brilliant storyteller has done it again.
At its core Wellness is “a bittersweet, poignant, witty novel about marriage and the pursuit of health and happiness. Expansive, tender, a reflection of life in America in the 21st Century. Yet it’s also a sendup of gentrification, toxic internet culture, modern parenting.” It even explores, briefly, polyamory and what a scene that is!
The story had me laughing while cringing when Jack and Elizabeth put their money down on a Forever home. It reminded me of my early marriage when friends asked one another, Is this your first house or your final house? If only we’d known then what was ahead of us.
We come to know Jack and Elizabeth intimately, from being young and madly in love to being married lovers, to twenty years down the road when they have an eight year old son. We are on this journey with them, getting to know the families they left behind to the family they become.
Wellness is compelling and quirky and yes, funny, because this is Nathan Hill writing, but it sometimes broke my heart. It goes deep but never tries too hard, never shouts look at me! There are a few tricky diversions along the way. Don’t let them stop you. If they do, skip them and come back later. But don’t skip anything having to do with Jack or Elizabeth. They are unforgettable characters.
There’s a lot to think about, a lot to remind us of who we were and how we became who we are. If I belonged to a book club I’d want us to read this book, to talk about this book.
Ultimately “this stunning novel of ideas never loses sight of its humanity.” I’m quoting Publishers Weekly here because there’s no way I can say it better. Except to tell you I’m going to read it again. Starting now.
“The story of a plot of land deep in the woods of Western Massachusetts and its human, animal, and supernatural inhabitants over the course of 400 years. A beautiful meditation on the rhythms of nature in which past is always present. This book is magic.” – Gael (Staff)
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave—only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we’re gone?
Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee (Ballantine Books), picked by bookseller, Riona Jean
Do you want to fight climate change, battle a dragon, reminisce about lost friends, fight the patriarchy, and more!? Try this new Arthurian Legend on for size.
Bookseller Riona Jean picked Perilous Times as the August featured staff pick because it mixed her favorite genres, fantasy and dystopias.
“It remixes the Arthurian Legend in a new and dynamic way,” she writes.
“Mariam is an ecowarrior with FETA, fighting to save the planet from extreme climate change and rising sea levels. Kay is one of King Arthur’s knights, bound to a resurrection tree by Merlin, called to action whenever Britain is in trouble. With great swaths of the UK under water and major cities falling into ruin, Mariam and Kay stumble their way through trying to do the right thing. Watch out for Lancelot, corporate greed, and a nefarious plot to resurrect Arthur getting in the way!”
“Witty, insightful, and poignant, Perilous Times perfectly marries fantastical legend and dystopian new world order.”
Ed note: Riona read Perilous Times on her Kobo Clara 2E, it’s waterproof, made with recycled plastic, and we have them at the bookstore!
“After growing up watching Jennette McCurdy, this was an insane read! Exposes a lot of filth in the TV/film industry, and sheds light on the complexity of family relationships. Easy to read, hard to swallow.” – Alexander (staff)
* #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER * MORE THAN 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD!
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.
In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.
Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.
Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen (Algonquin Books), picked by store manager, Emily
Maeve Murray has complicated feelings on just about everything: her family, her friends, her English boss, Protestant co-workers and most of all preparing to leave her small town in Northern Ireland.
In the Summer of 1994 as they wait for their school test results Maeve and her two best friends, Caroline and Aoife, take the only jobs available to them. Working in a shirt factory is hard but made all the more difficult with The Troubles brewing inside and outside of the factory walls.
I found this book to be in turns funny and somber. Gallen captures the time and place but with characters so relatable everyone can enjoy their story.
