Take a look at a few of our mother's day picks. Though these books may not be obvious choices, they explore motherhood in deeply thoughtful, evocative, and multifaceted ways.
Published: Little Brown and Company - April 10th, 2018
Filled with explicit candor and hilarious, biting wit, these essays provide a record of modern motherhood for the new generation. And while this will absolutely resonate with the women who read it, young fathers (and would-be parents) will also benefit from O’Connell’s insights into their partners’ experiences. This is the book about parenting I wish I’d had.
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Published: Graywolf Press - September 6th, 2016
A favorite of mine from the recent explosion in literary nonfiction. Boggs writes with beauty and precision about motherhood—not only personally (though yes, personally), but also culturally, historically, artistically. I didn’t think this book would be for me; boy, was I wrong.
Published: Scribner Book Company - September 5th, 2017
In rich, lyrical prose, Ward reckons with the relationship 13-year-old Jojo has with his biracial family, but most of all his mom Leonie and her relatives. She’s an inconsistent presence, but she’s the mother figure he has. Jojo learns from the past, present, and future, living and dead, humans, plants, and animals; for this text, all are necessary to tell Jojo (and the reader) the story of America from slavery to chain gangs to Jim Crow to Trayvon Martin.
Joy Williams pursues motherhood in its darkest form, and I’m so glad to see this book republished. When we meet Williams’ main character, Pearl, she’s drunkenly attempting to escape her abusive ex-husband with her new baby. As the novel unwinds, it expands into a paranoid postpartum fairy tale, full of children who aren’t Pearl’s but whom she loves, and her own kid, Sam, who takes on a haunting role entirely estranged from normal childhood.
Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation - April 24th, 2018
The Desert and Its Seed is an autobiographical novel that focuses on Mario, moments after his father has thrown acid on his mother’s face (a true story). The novel follows Mario and his stoic mother, Eligia, as she moves from a clinic in Argentina to a clinic in Milan. The descriptions of her face and the changes it undergoes are both harrowing and strangely beautiful. Mario attempts to deal with the violence upon his mother (by his own father, no less) as he navigates the provincial streets of a small Italian town, drinking with strangers and getting lost (both literally and figuratively).
This book tells of Julián’s unconventional life as he sits at the bedside of his mother who is fighting leukemia. In fiery and often hallucinogenic prose Herbert describes his struggles as a child, his desire to be a writer and the traveling circus of his youth moving from city to city. At the root of this novel is a young man troubled by the mixed feelings he has for his mother, the courage Guadalupe had to fight for herself and her son. The writing is stunning and always brutal.
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Published: Europa Editions - September 1st, 2005
Elena Ferrante is known for her Neapolitan Quartet, but this visceral book is truly unforgettable. After a woman is abandoned by her husband, she must care for two children on her own. Days of Abandonment is personal, fiercely intelligent, and self-aware.
It’s not a traditional mother-daughter relationship, but Sayuri’s relationship with the Mother of her ryokan is as formative as it is tense. Later on, Mameha is another mother-figure who helps Sayuri to grow into a mature woman. So, it’s a non-traditional look at the mother-figures in our lives and how they create a sense of family.
This book-length essay explores the realm of public health through an attempt to understand the anti-vaccine movement, Dracula, Biss’ own experience as a new mother, and herd immunity, etc. An incredible insight into a contemporary moment.
Often when reading I’ll conflate the books I’ve recently read with the ones I’m currently reading, making connections, finding similarities and resemblances that may (or may not) be there. This could be the consequence of being a voracious reader, having an active imagination or, put quite simply, sometimes the similarities are just there, undeniably present and impossible to avoid, books like distant cousins or siblings.
Spring Break is officially upon us. For those of you who are planning on taking advantage of all Houston has to offer, allow us to make a few suggestions for the perfect staycation.
Houston has so many great dining options featuring such diverse cuisines and culinary flavors that you could eat until you explode. While you’re nursing that post-brunch food coma, why not pick up a copy of THE POTLIKKER PAPERS, a food history of the Modern South. This book explores the impact that slavery and race relations has shaped American culinary identities for generations, and Houston is featured prominently.
Houston’s vibrant rap scene features local talent like Slim Thug and Bun B, kings of rap in the South. Slab cars, chopped-and-screwed beats as pioneered by DJ Screw (R.I.P.), and sippin’ syrup: these are the emblematic elements of H-Town’s music. The repertoire of artists is deep, and there are plenty of options for a great show. The day after, when your ears are still ringing, expand your consciousness with RAW: MY JOURNEY INTO THE WU-TANG by U-God to learn about more rap royalty from a different scene. A founding member, he details the birth and rise of the Clan from the streets of NYC in his signature no-holds-barred voice. (Also, thanks to U-God's recent visit, we've got a few signed copies).
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Published: Picador USA - March 6th, 2018
4. Take a day trip down to NASA!
Head just south to the Johnson Space Center to check out NASA’s Mission Control, a massive Saturn V rocket, and touch a moon rock in the adjoining museum. Afterward, be sure to pick up a copy of VIEW FROM ABOVE by Commander Terry Virts. This gorgeous book features photos taken by Virts as he spent 200 days on the International Space Station orbiting the planet, along with diagrams and corresponding stories. We can’t all go to space, but this book makes it possible to imagine that you’ve been.
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Published: National Geographic Society - October 3rd, 2017
5. Cruise the coast with your favorite tunes!
The sun is out and the weather is perfect for a windows-down, radio-up drive to Galveston. No trip to the beach is complete without sand, volleyball, or, of course, Kenny Loggins. Be sure to crank the yacht rock and sing yourself hoarse, and once you’re lounging in the sand wondering, just what the hell is yacht rock?, just break out your fresh copy of THE YACHT ROCK BOOK to find your answers. An oral history of the genre from Greg Prato, this book features interviews from artists like John Oates, Don Felder, and the captain himself, Kenny Loggins. Beach reading at its finest.
And if you need help picking a destination, just flip open SPECTACULAR WEEKEND GETAWAYS OF TEXAS by Jolie Berry. Broken up by region, this book features amazing resorts, rentals, inns, and B & B’s that all make for an unforgettable getaway. Gorgeous pictures and brief write-ups will get your imagination firing on all cylinders as you load up the car for a quick trip. Also, plenty of time in the car for more yacht rock!
Weird, wondrous, and walking the border between genres: here are a few books that defy categorization and push the status quo on how we think about literature. Whether it’s a beautifully-written book that blends poetry and prose or a title that blurs the line between fact and fiction, each of the below is sure to offer a unique reading experience unlike anything you’ve encountered before. Is it a novel? Is it poetry? By the time you get to the back cover you still won’t know what to call it, but you won’t care because it’s just that good.
First published in 1970, THE COLLECTED WORKS OF BILLY THE KID marks the beginning of Ondaatje’s forays into fiction. This novel-in-verse collects period photos, poems, and short journal-like prose entries to create a version of the legendary gunslinger that goes beyond rote historical account or a romanticized nostalgia. Every page is dreamlike and rooted in memory, blurring the line between fact and fiction and opening the consciousness of the story from one man to that of an entire landscape. (Psst, have you heard we’re hosting Michael Ondaatje on May 23rd to celebrate his new novel, WARLIGHT? Find the details here.)
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Published: Coffee House Press - October 11th, 2016
UNBEARABLE SPLENDOR is a wonderful, weird, uncategorized collection of sparse poems that sprawl across the page, charts and graphs, and story-essays that interrogate our most intimate dichotomies like host/guest, child/orphan, and light/dark. The book is full of black holes, singularities, and cyborgs, but at its heart of the subject matter is Shin’s identity as a Korean American immigrant that fled a military dictatorship. The book moves through concepts and ideas as easily as it moves through genres, coalescing into a reading experience with its own gravitational pull. As stated in one of the opening epigraphs, “a black hole is anything but empty space,” and this is one singularity you’ll enjoy getting sucked into.
Published: Little Island Press - September 21st, 2017
Persson’s debut novel blends historical account, personal narrative, and poetic prose into a story that reads almost like an incantation to the past. Based on a real, historical event, the Narváez Expedition, a failed attempt to establish Spanish colonies along the Gulf Coast, the narrator of THE WAY OF FLORIDA describes the minutiae of the journey in language that is intensely lyric and visceral. The novel is broken into chapters that are broken into half-page chunks, and each entry swirls with an almost-mystic sense of place and the creatures that occupy it. Fans of Cormac McCarthy’s earlier novels will find themselves right at home in these pages.
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Published: Vintage - July 27th, 1999
There is perhaps no one writing today that is more intellectual, intense, and committed to her own conceits as Anne Carson, and AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED is one of her greatest achievements. At once a poem and a novel, a myth and a contemporary coming-of-age story, the book follows Geryon, at once a young boy and a monstrous mythical creature, chronicling the events of his life. As he escapes a household of abuse and falls for a drifter named Herakles, Geryon begins to find himself as an artist and photography. Geryon faces devastation when Herakles leaves him, and when the drifter resurfaces years later Geryon is forced to confront his own griefs, pains, and desires. A moving love story that is steeped in literary craft and deconstruction.
One of two books published by Roberto Harrison in 2017, BRIDGE OF THE WORLD is a collection of poems and prose poetry interrupted by an essay on poetics in the middle of the text. However, describing Harrison’s work as two genres put together in the same book is an oversimplification. The essay, titled “snake vision,” is as much an exploration of psychology, mental illness, and human interaction as it is a statement of poetic philosophy. The poems are lyric and experiment with form, with a focus on light, color, and sound. Throughout the book language is being interrogated, and the way that we make meaning, or if meaning is possible at all, the bridge of the world both a geographic phenomenon and a linguistic conceit.
Continuing in the style of DON’T LET ME BE LONELY, Claudia Rankine turns her attention toward race in America. Prose poems and micro-essays share pages with visual art and photographs, and subject matter ranges from daily micro-aggressions to Serena Williams to police brutality to Zinedine Zidane’s infamous headbutt. In turns critical, analytical, heartbreaking, and hopeful, CITIZEN is a collection reflective of a country in a moment of crisis, a book that is as necessary as it is timely, unfortunately. As Rankine writes, “because white men can’t / police their imagination / black people are dying.” Read this book. If you already have, read it again, and then gift it to a friend.
The chapbook is to the poetry collection what the EP is to the LP, a shorter, more digestible book with a shorter page count that, at the same time, allows for a clearer focus. To me a good chapbook feels like a great poetry snack, something I can sit down with and tuck in all at once. It’s more cohesive than your typical collection of selected poems, since there’s usually a theme or conceit that all of the poems are arranged around, and the poems all talk to each other.
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Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation - August 15th, 2017
Will Alexander’s writing is not easy to label categorically, as his poetry is often sweeping, surreal, and encyclopedic. ACROSS THE VAPOUR GULF—which can be seen as either one long poem or a 50-page collection of aphorisms—reconstructs his words in the sequence he first wrote them, and is deeply tied to his reading of Cioran. You could say it’s a trademark of Alexander’s poetry to be constantly reaching for language that is at once specialized and electric, a sort of jargon that’s made musical when it’s removed from its natural environment. For example, “I’m speaking of transmuted kinetics evolved from interior nutation, from growth as subtle ambuletic.” Here the energy of the words is what drives the poetry, and whatever meaning falls into place afterward is just a bonus. This chapbook is a great introduction to Will Alexander, especially since he typically publishes with smaller, independent presses.
From a Houston poet! Conor Bracken’s debut chapbook reimagines Kissinger as the posterboy for the white patriarchy and toxic masculinity, and also in love with his boy-toy, the speaker of the poems. The poems throughout the chapbook turn from hilarious to heartbreaking to horrifying, exploring such topics as modern colonialism’s continuing reach through funding terrorism. One of my favorite elements of this chapbook is the way in which language is implicated as a power structure that ends up reinforcing the status quo. Take, for instance, “Henry Talks About the Hyenas,” in which “their mouths open like a book / in which terrible things are written.” At once entertaining and thought-provoking, HENRY KISSINGER, MON AMOUR makes for a fun read to keep turning back to.
Dunagan takes the title of this chapbook from a concept coined by Walter Benjamin that—and I’m simplifying wildly here—can be described as the moment at which a work of art and the artist’s concept of that artwork become one in the act of creation. In this case, that means writing about music through opposing concepts like light and dark. Throughout DAS GEDICHTETE conceptual philosophical language is combined with poetic rhythm to the point where it is actualized in the ear and, in a way, made concrete. Quotes from Sun Ra, allusions to Schumann and Handel, and other musical obsessions abound. For all the loftiness of the concept, the poems themselves are minimalist and easily digestible, making for a collection that you can continue to vibe out on.
CATCALL is a hilarious, subversive chapbook presented as several women catcalling all the men they pass on the street. Across every page we’re given a running commentary from the speakers, wooing the men with sweet nicknames like “little bud” and “baby butt.” While we never hear any of the men’s responses, we can imagine their reactions, as the women’s tone quickly changes from aggressive flirtation to open anger as their quarry quickly retreats each time. Each conversation plays out as overall absurd, and the flip in gender does a lot to demonstrate just how ridiculous a behavior catcalling is in real life as well. If you’ve ever been harassed on the street, you’ll be able to appreciate this chapbook gem (an awful criterion for recommending a book, I know).
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Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation - August 15th, 2017
George Oppen is my favorite poet, so I’ll just go ahead and admit bias right out of the gate. This collection was written by Oppen shortly after the publication of his first book, DISCRETE SERIES, and eventually ended up in Ezra Pound’s collection as an unbound sheaf of typewritten poems. There they sat for decades until being recently rediscovered in Pound’s archives, and they’re now available in chapbook form, complete with facsimiles of the original typewritten submissions! The poems explore Oppen’s love of sailing and his love for his wife Mary, and foreshadow his singular style that he would develop throughout his career.
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Published: Harper Perennial - October 17th, 2017
Though IT DEVOURS is derived from a popular podcast, knowledge of the series isn't necessary to enjoy this book.
Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town's top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and to Darryl, one of its most committed members. Caught between her beliefs in the ultimate power of science and her growing attraction to Darryl, she begins to suspect the Congregation is planning a ritual that could threaten the lives of everyone in town. Nilanjana and Darryl must search for common ground between their very different world views as they are faced with the Congregation's darkest and most terrible secret.
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Published: Pantheon Books - June 13th, 2017
This fascinating tale of a writer's emotional collapse was a favorite with Ben, Brazos' General Manager.
"It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air."
This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany--a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. He is eager to finish a screenplay for a sequel to the movie that launched his career, but something he cannot explain is undermining his convictions and confidence, a process he is recording in this account of the uncanny events that unfold as he tries to understand what, exactly, is happening around him--and within him.
This one is brand new! After its debut just last week, JOB OF THE WASP is already on Operating Manager Mark and Marketing Director Sara's bookshelves.
A coming-of-age tale, a Gothic ghost story, and a murder mystery all in one, The Job of the Wasp is a bloodcurdling and brilliantly subversive novel about paranoia, love, and the nightmare of adolescence.
A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that's when the corpses start turning up.
This book made its way into multiple Brazos Staff Top Ten Lists at the end of 2017! In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism.
A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.
Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment.
Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel. It's been a staff favorite since its release.
We are lucky to have the author, Samanta Schweblin, visit Houston on March 26 with the Inprint Reading Series. Take a look!
In mid-2017, I sat down with our Marketing Director Sara to brainstorm. We wanted to create a place where people could take a moment, write about their favorite books, and start conversations with someone that they never met; to provide an opportunity to unplug and have something tangible to look back on weeks, months, or even years later.
These .7mm felt tip markers are more than just for coloring. I use these wonderful markers for all things writing, whether I am sending out notes or planning in my bullet journal. One of the best features, besides how fine they are, is that they have a triangle-shaped barrel so your markers won’t roll away!
This has quickly become one of my favorite fountain pens. Designed in Japan, the Pilot Metropolitan is a great mid-range starter fountain pen, as well as a wonderful writing tool for someone who already has a pen collection. Each pen comes with with one Pilot black ink cartridge for ease of use and one Pilot Press Plate Converter, so you can use any ink you'd like. More styles and colors are available in the store.
This beautifully formed writing set gives you the option to write just a few words or a longer letter without having to use separate sheets of paper. Each kit features 90 accordion-style sheets perforated along each fold, so they can be cut to any length. The kit also comes with 10 envelopes.
These postal notebooks from Moleskine are a combination of a notebook, notecard, and mini sketchbook. Each Postal Notebook has 8 blank pages of ivory-colored paper, which allows for you to write your letter, add a sketch or drawing, or even collage some of your favorite items. Once you are done just fold the outside envelope, seal, address and stamp; your notebook is ready for the mail!
These beautifully accented and ruled pages are large enough for longer letters. Each pad has 60 gold foiled tear-off sheets; natural white paper with a floral design at the top and bottom of each sheet. Plus, we also offer coordinating envelopes for the Monarch Writing Pad, which makes a wonderful set for sharing letters and personal notes.
This set is perfect for people who want to have everything at their fingertips when writing letters. Each set is designed in a luxe box that can be reused. Each box contains 40 writing sheets with four different designs, 40 matching envelopes, and 50 assorted stickers and labels. All you need to do to is grab your favorite pen and start writing.
Flat notes are great for writing a quick friendly message or a thank you note. These have just enough room to jot everything down, but not too much that you feel you need to fill the entire page. With 50 cards and envelopes, you are set to start writing.
The great thing about letter writing is that it can start at almost any age. Ooly creates the one-stop shop for all stationery needs for little ones. This kit includes: 8 letter sheets, 4 envelopes, 4 postcards, a notebook, mechanical pencil, a four-color click pen, a sheet of animal stickers, and an eraser. Everything comes in a reusable carrying bag to help keep the kit together.
The year is finally at an end! We have survived a complicated but wonderful 2017. Thank you for helping us weather everything from a hurricane to a World Series win, and much, much more. We couldn't have done any of this without you (yes you! Reading this article!). Thank you again, Houston, for making us proud.
We can't wait for the new releases 2018 will bring. This is what our booksellers are looking forward to reading (and selling) in the new year:
Published: New Directions Publishing Corporation - April 24th, 2018
After a mysterious disaster, Japan has cut itself off from the world. This GORGEOUS speculative short novel explores temporality, family, and community. My favorite read this year, and something I just can't wait to share in 2018.
A little boy is sent to live with his grandmother in a small coastal town. He is unable to live fully in the present due to his abusive past, which the reader peers into regularly through the boy's flashbacks. But LION CROSS POINT is as much an argument for hope and the ability to live beyond childhood PTSD as it is a tale of sadness. I can't wait to host Masatsugu Ono in April; I think our customers will be wowed by this deftly-written novella!
Published: New York Review of Books - April 17th, 2018
NYRB is at it again with this splendid book! Shirley Kaszenbowski's search for her elusive lover (who communicates through cryptic messages in magazines, of course) brings her back to her hometown of Toronto. This has been one of my favorite winter reads.
Two of the books I'm most excited about in 2018 are from the same author, Andres Barba. Last year Transit Books published SUCH SMALL HANDS, an immediate staff favorite and our collective discovery of an amazing contemporary Spanish writer. I went backward then and read an older novel, AUGUST, OCTOBER which left me even more impressed. In February Hispabooks will be publishing DEATH OF A HORSE a story about the nervous courstship between a professor and student during a single weekend.
In March Transit Books is publishing THE RIGHT INTENTION a book of four linked novellas. Even better news, perhaps, all of Barba's books are translated by the masterful Lisa Dillman, the 2016 winner of the Best Translated Book Award.
Published: St. Martin's Press - January 16th, 2018
I am excited to share Patrisse Khan-Cullors' memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist. Khan-Cullors' describes how their tumultuous youth which sometimes meant hunger, poverty, and fear was not so challenging, but a reality they overcame through empathy and faith. Shattered by the incarceration of their brother and absurd disparity, a maven for activism and equality joins forces with co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi to ignite the movement known as Black Lives Matter. An incredible history and backstory to the mission of BLM as well as the important role that feminism plays into activism.
Published: Little Brown and Company - April 3rd, 2018
Jamison's memoir of her own alcoholism, yes –– but also a sprawling, myth-busting look at the history of literary drunkenness. Openhearted and academically rigorous.
Vollmann, America's reigning literary maniac, turns his attention to climate change. Whatever his subject, Vollmann finds the strangest and most dangerous aspects, and here he continues his career-long battle with armageddon.
A young girl comes of age in a trailer park, tended to by a series of damaged mother figures, while everyone around her seems to own –– and be gaga for –– guns.
One of the books that I am looking forward to Jamie Quarto's FIRE SERMON; it is an absolutely beautiful and moving that will leave you looking at the many ways we can long for something.
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Published: Duke University Press - December 8th, 2017
Moten has a poet's ear and a critic's mind. This trilogy of critical work spans a breadth of topics surrounding literature, history, music, and race in America. If you were a fan of Kevin Young's BUNK then you have to check out these books. BLACK AND BLUR is currently available, while STOLEN LIFE and THE UNIVERSAL MACHINE will be released in March. Duke University Press, 2018
If you can't tell, I read all kinds of books. Sometimes I become interested in a topic and I devour everything related that I can get my hands on.
This list consists of the first ten things that popped in my head. I don't consider myself literary, just someone who loves to read. If you tried, I guess you could see a recurring theme, but it's random!
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Published: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books - September 5th, 2017
It’s time for young Joyce to learn something new, and that something new is how-to make dumplings! She rolls, she kneads, she burns, ten, twenty, one-hundred, and eventually Joyce SUCCEEDS! Her hard work pays off and cook acknowledges what a great job she’s done. Her heart is filled with pride. As Joyce becomes older, her passion for cooking helps her overcome great obstacles and serves as a reminder of love and happiness in all places.
As an aunt to two rambunctious and curious boys, four and seven, I am always interested in what they’re reading. I love stories with humor, morals, cultural references, history, fun characters, and colorful illustrations. There is even a dumpling recipe at the end that parents and kids can do together. DUMPLING DREAMS is an all-you-can-eat buffet for everyone!
Published: Roaring Brook Press - September 19th, 2017
Vivian Carter is fed up! She is fed up with sexism, misogyny, and indifference. It turns out she is not alone. What started out as an anonymous zine transforms into a feminist movement at her high school in her small Texas hometown.
MOXIE is as fun as it is a platform for dialogue among all ages about feminism, activism, and equality.
When I started it, #METOO became viral, and I thought this book could not have come at a better time. This book is essential for young people who want to have this conversation, but need a place to start.
The wait is over and National Book Award-winner Ta-Nehisi Coates is back for another. I don’t care if you heard that BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME was better. Get this book now! This collection of essays includes his famous Coates’ iconic essays including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration” as well as eight new essays which examine the Obama Administration. Ta-Nehisi Coates despises being the loudest voice and messenger for the black person’s struggle. I think that’s tough, but it’s reality. Get this book now because you need to know!
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Published: Algonquin Books - November 7th, 2017
MY FAVORITE BOOK OF 2017!!
Beloved native Houstonian and legendary journalist Dan Rather delivers more than six decades of wisdom in the form of essays defining patriotism. Rather’s experience is invaluable and honest. What does patriotism look like? What vehicles make American democracy possible? What can we do to cultivate diversity of thought and expression in our country? Everyone knows someone that would love this book! America NEEDS this book!
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Published: Back Bay Books - September 1st, 2010
Author Jonathan Safran Foer shares the beautiful moment of holding his child for the first time. In awe, he crosses paths with the realization of all the important decisions he must make which will set and influence his son’s life. “Should his son be raised a vegetarian,” is one on the list of endless subjects. Insert EATING ANIMALS.
I read this book as a part of a reading binge for a time I was obsessed with all things “urban farming,” “off the grid,” and “locally sourced.” Initially, I thought it would be a case for vegetarianism, but it isn’t. Why are meals socially significant? Why do we feel comfortable eating some animals, but not others? Where does our food come from? What lengths have we gone to make food so accessible? How do we justify all of this, and should we have to? EATING ANIMALS offers something for people that love reading about nature, culture, and food.
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Published: Tor Books - October 17th, 2017
Isn’t this everyone’s favorite book? I read it as a kid, I read it again in January, and when Keaton asked me whether I had chosen books I read this year, I could have dreamt this, but he might have had a raised eyebrow, I read it again that night and thought, “YES!” It is so good!
Ender Wiggin is a lab rat, he’s got issues, and he commands a fleet in space against insect aliens set to destroy Earth. Did I mention he’s six?
If you’re like me and you’ve already read ENDER’S GAME, but unlike me, you say you've read it one too many times... I’d scoff, re-buff, flash a toothy smile and recommend Austin-based author Ernest Clines’ READY PLAYER ONE or ARMADA.
Matthew Desmond weaves a story about the cycle of eviction through a sample of eight perspectives in Milwaukee. If you’ve ever wondered how or why books earn Pulitzer Prizes, read this now! It’s a social and political commentary. It’s psychological. It is heartbreaking and infuriating. It is first-class journalism. EVICTED discards sympathy masked as empathy, and serves voice and dignity to the individuals in this book.
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Published: Picador USA - August 2nd, 2011
Barbara Ehrenreich’s work has revived and paved the way for hardline investigative journalism like EVICTED and HILLBILLY ELEGY. NICKEL AND DIMED chronicles Ehrenreich’s three-month experience working a variety of minimum wage jobs like waiting tables, house cleaning, and Wal-Mart, and how this is a reality for many Americans. She examines the life of minimum wage Americans, discusses the consequences of a widening inequality gap, and frankly shows us all why we should give a –– I mean, show a little concern.
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Published: Vintage - February 12th, 2013
Atsuko Chiba is a scientist that uses dream monitoring and intervention to treat mental illnesses. In the dream state, she is alter ego Paprika. When her colleagues begin to demonstrate strange behavior, she must navigate a labyrinth of dreams to solve this mystery before she’s stuck in the subconscious realm and everyone becomes catatonic.
PAPRIKA is suspenseful mental exercise. Perfect for you and perfect for anyone that loves mystery, sci-fi, and weird Murakami-esque human behaviors. That’s a fact and proven by book scientists/sellers named Thu!
Availability: Not On Our Shelves. Usually arrives in 1-5 Days
Published: Vintage - August 11th, 2009
Imma let you finish, but Haruki Murakami is my favorite writer of all time! How does a person become an author of a billion mind-blowing fantastical books? Some might say, open a jazz club in Hawaii. I’ve heard running ultra-marathons helps too. After reading this memoir, I don’t believe anyone can stretch their imagination so far and commit it to print without living a meditative and colorful life like Haruki Murakami.
