Ghosts Of Booksellers Past
While these booksellers themselves aren't necessarily ghosts, their recommendations still stand even after they've left our stores.
What a treat to find an author whose research just so happens to overlap with my own nerdy areas of niche interest! Luhrmann is a psychological anthropologist, and here she takes on the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis themselves. It will be of interest to anyone who's ever been in therapy. And if you like this, don't miss her book on evangelicalism, When God Talks Back!
--Caitlin
At turns chilling and very funny, this is a great boarding school novel (and I'm a sucker for boarding school novels!)
--Caitlin
I love this little comic novel, in which a former ballet dancer turned NYU Performance Studies postdoc becomes drawn into a wonderfully absurd mystery involving YouTube and the deaths of various dance world luminaries. If any part of that summary piqued your interest, then yes, you should definitely read this book.
--Caitlin
In 1949, twelve men died fighting a forest fire in Monatana. Today few people remember the Mann Gulch tragedy, but Norman MacLean never forgot about it, and forty years later he wrote this amazing book about it. Part memorial to lives lost and forgotten, part inquiry into memory itself; one of my very favorite books.
--Caitlin
Muriel Spark is the master of the novella. Leave it to her to deliver a book so unexpected, so devastatingly shocking, in under 100 pages. Just read it!
--Caitlin
Full disclosure: I've only read this book once, which any serious fan will tell you is not enough to really "get it," but here goes. This book, the fictional memoir of Alden Weer, written by scifi master Gene Wolfe, can almost be read as straight-up literary fiction. A hundred pages in, I thought I had it figured out: the house that Weer is living in is a metaphorical house of memories, and as he wanders from room to room, he travels back to different periods in his life and narrates his story.
When I reached the end, though, I realized how much more was going on; under the surface of this lyrical memoir is a very creepy, and entirely different, story.
Recommended for people who like literary puzzles!
--Caitlin
Fink's story of a New Orleans hopsital during Katrina should be required reading for anyone who works in--or has any interest in--our healthcare system. It deals with profound questions of medical ethics and the ability of our current system to function in an emergency. This book made me so angry I cried every day on my way to work, and it's stayed with me ever since.
--Caitlin
What a strange little book! If you're looking for something to curl up with and read all in one sitting, this one's for you. A young boy coaxes a story out of an older, unrelated woman who seems to be on her deathbed. What's going on? How do these two know eachother? It's not always clear, but the sense of urgency and mystery are unforgettable.
--Caitlin
My favorite novel of 2016. This semi-autobiographical work upends the all the conventions of the "recovery memoir," delivering something uniquely visceral and weird.
--Caitlin
Janet Malcolm could make any topic interesting--not that it's especially challenging in this case, given the dramatic subject matter (a murder trial in Queens). This is a great meditation on truth, justice, and the trial-by-jury system. You really can't go wrong with Malcolm, but this is a great place to start.
--Caitlin
The mountain of the title is Yucca Mountain in Nevada, at one time a proposed nuclear waste storage site. D'Agata explores the problems inherent with trying to store nuclear waste from several different angles, including some personal ones. The chapter about the panel tasked with figuring out how to keep our curious descendents from meddling with the deadly site for tens of thousands of years is worth the price of admission alone.
--Caitlin
The most fun you'll ever have reading about a (fictional) African dictatorship. Ngugi tackles greed, corruption, magic, and post-colonial politics with humor and imagination in this satire. His funniest book.
-- Caitlin
I read this book years ago and have never stopped thinking about it. This story of a young teacher's affair with her teenage student, narrated by her equally deluded friend, is merciless with its characters, sly in its humor, and totally unforgettable.
-- Caitlin
Enrigue defies almost all of the conventions of the novel here to give us something delightfully different. Objects and ideas bounce back and forth across continents, empires, and eras like the tennis ball in the game between Caravaggio and Quevedo that frames the story. The cast of characters is truly impressive -- I never thought I would read a book that starred both Galileo and Cuauhtémoc, but here it is!
--Caitlin
It's almost hard to think of this graceful and empathetic book as a novel, since not much happens. That said, it's been a while since I've loved a book in this way, for its poetry and insight about the small moments that make a life. Our narrator's family runs a home for the mentally challenged, and as he goes back to close the house after his mother's death, he takes us through his childhood--his closeness to a mute girl, his sister's tragic death, the struggles of his parents' relationship. It is an ode to memory, to family, to the beauty of patience and love. It is a kind and simple book, and one I hope you will treasure.
-- Cari
This is an ambitious debut that delivers. In a multi-generational saga of beauty and heartbreak, Halan Alyan deftly shows us the love and sorrows of one Palestinian family as they attempt to find their place in the world as exiles. As each character searches for a sense of home in an increasingly stressful world, family bonds are forged and broken, relationships developed, and the very idea of nationality questioned. Written with lyricism and sympathy, this side of the conflict is rarely shown but impacts us all.
-- Cari
Every now and again, you find a novel that fills you with wanderlust, that so thoroughly places you in a time and place that you feel the need to stay there for longer, to learn more about the people who inhabited it. This is such a book--a Lebanese adventure novel full of politics and intrigue, outrageous situations, charming characters, and even a brief appearance from T.E. Lawrence. It's a meditation on history and how we write it from a distance, of how the stories we tell others can grow in the passing from mouth to mouth. Let this book be your personal oasis as the summer months get hotter and the travel bug starts to get under your skin.
-- Cari
In The Visitors, Simon Sylvester writes about the lure of folktales, of being an outsider, and of growing up, and then weaves it all seamlessly into a classic whodunit murder mystery. Perfect for those who typically shy away from the genre, this is a lyrical and moving mystery about a high school girl on a Scottish island and her reclusive new neighbors who or may not be killing the other islanders. The Visitors is a suspenseful coming of age story with a dash of selkies and plenty to teach you about the mysteries of home and the heart.
-- Cari
When Driver Wang starts receiving mysterious letters about his former lives, he starts doubting everything happening in his current one. Who is sending them, and to what aim? Switching between the current day and the stories the letters tell, this is a book for those who crave the unreliable narrator in a new and fresh way. Susan Barker is a master at twisting history and folktales, creating a China that is at once modern and mythical. Nothing in this novel is quite as it seems and the ending is just as spooky as the beginning.
-- Cari
In the middle of a hurricane, Maria Sirena tells a room full of sheltering women the story of her life. Spanning three revolutions and multiple generations, it is a story full of love and loss set in the beautiful and exotic Cuban landscape. The Distant Marvels is a marvel itself, full of poetry and lyricism, love, and reflections on life and storytelling. This is the best summer read you could imagine for the person who doesn’t actually like summer reads--and who isn’t afraid to finish it in privacy as it breaks the heart three different ways.
-- Cari
