http://www.phinneybooks.com/phinney-by-post-gallery daily 0.75 2026-02-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432606602898-V40SIHYI12EVQU15SBRG/Gornick_Fierce.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #1: January 2015 Vivian Gornick's memoir Fierce Attachments (1987) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432606602898-V40SIHYI12EVQU15SBRG/Gornick_Fierce.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #1: January 2015 Vivian Gornick's memoir Fierce Attachments (1987) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432620058279-5DY8ZBN2LGII2I5HJH2K/Tevis_Queen.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #2: February 2015 Walter Tevis's novel The Queen's Gambit (1983) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432621109485-TU9JH9YNBGG2IS3IR80I/Weschler_Boggs.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #3: March 2015 Lawrence Weschler's profile of an artist (or con artist), Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432621207897-OVBIIK3DGT3LE6THKRKL/Ledgard_Submergence.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #4: April 2015 J.M. Ledgard's novel Submergence (2011) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432621279695-P9ROAW9G1QN1U4X2X9G3/Nordstrom_Genius.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #5: May 2015 Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, edited by Leonard Marcus (1998) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436224655399-SSMJIJN8OM7GHZ3VF6T5/image-asset.jpeg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #6: June 2015 Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Offshore (1979) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436224977315-L3AK6545EMLQ8TKV3SC5/Hull_Rock.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #7: July 2015 John M. Hull's memoir Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (1990) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1443048510474-G3BXX6N7HHQE8UG52DEU/Jones_Lost.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #8: August 2015 Edward P. Jones's collection of stories Lost in the City (1992) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1443048547282-M9ONDB98943O2CDY2DV1/Wolk_Live.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #9: September 2015 Douglas Wolk's appreciation of James's Brown's album, Live at the Apollo, part of the 33 1/3 series (2004) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1446919133970-EO8H29EUBBTBBMZID022/Kleist_Marquise.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #10: October 2015 Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas (in the collection The Marquise of O— and Other Stories) (1810) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1446919309749-YAJG5O5JF7TMJDCM7OD6/Beard_Boys.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #11: November 2015 Jo Ann Beard's collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth (1999) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455003179062-QLMMEYPMN8ANO7EAAXZE/Schwarz-Bart_Bridge.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #12: December 2015 Simone Schwarz-Bart's novel The Bridge of Beyond (1972) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455003207557-FQ88IDXUDMW8MCIF1A9S/McCarthy_Girlhood.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #13: January 2016 Mary McCarthy's memoir Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455003235513-NJ8XMZQ9OTFHQ4Q1DIW5/Household_Rogue.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #14: February 2016 Geoffrey Household's thriller Rogue Male https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367309331-2SA6XABMMMJZJH5KHD7R/Barthelme_Double.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #15: March 2016 Frederick and Steven Barthelme's memoir of gambling, writing, and family, Double Down https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367334203-IKYPKJGXEBV53EAN0J9W/Lewis_Wife.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #16: April 2016 Janet Lewis's historical novel The Wife of Martin Guerre https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367360852-GCP0BYBN3954W0KGKB8R/Frady_Wallace.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #17: May 2016 Marshall Frady's political profile Wallace (1968) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367373481-9QLP1NPJQP3XF0IFQCKI/DeWitt_Last.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #18: June 2016 Helen DeWitt's novel The Last Samurai (2000) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468016950122-IDGH3TMN3PB0LUWVCE1U/McPhee_Levels.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #19: July 2016 John McPhee's account of a 1968 U.S. Open tennis semifinal, Levels of the Game (1969) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1474313649730-2IVHOPFFT05EZZL2FGJB/Johnson_ExColored.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #20: August 2016 James Weldon Johnson's novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1474313787284-7IMTV1XAT8D3T94G8Y5P/Gill_Eating.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #21: September 2016 Charlotte Gill's memoir of tree-planting in British Columbia, Eating Dirt (2011) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1478898640429-FQH9A2Q84QVT9TE7VCCL/Katchor_Cheap.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #22: October 2016 Ben Katchor's collection of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer comic strips, Cheap Novelties (1991) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1478898655368-KCXZPZXJGR13VUDPCCEC/Moss_Ill.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #23: November 2016 W. Stanley Moss's memoir of the kidnapping of a Nazi general in World War II, Ill Met by Moonlight (1950) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481140813787-05ZL7AIDSPW5Y9STB4H0/Watch_Tower_500.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #24: December 2016 Elizabeth Harrower's novel The Watch Tower (1966) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857299519-GGUHE0GPLEHMR1PNI2JL/Buck_Flight.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #25: January 2017 Rinker Buck's memoir of his teenage flight across the United States, Flight of Passage (1997) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857134917-NOYCTD9TU0OHOHJ90X0H/Collins_Whatever.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #26: February 2017 Kathleen Collins's book of stories, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? (2016) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857363016-804BU4EO4WCJQP4BI7P4/Teffi_Memories.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #27: March 2017 Teffi's memoir of traveling through Russia during the Revolution, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea (1931) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857454473-ICB6XB014EJD2YJ63PW5/Tey_Brat.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #28: April 2017 Josephine Tey's mid-century mystery, Brat Farrar (1949) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857551703-RQ3W921JWWYL6F33EW7X/Berger_Fortunate.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #29: May 2017 John Berger and Jean Mohr's illustrated profile of an English country doctor, A Fortunate Man (1967) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857617831-57C82OU7S74B8VG5817M/Inoue_Bullfight.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #30: June 2017 Yasushi Inoue's short novel, Bullfight (1949) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857771241-G9HJ8Z4TYWMDZLF629CX/Yang_Latehomecomer.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #31: July 2017 Kao Kalia Yang's memoir of her family in Laos, Thailand, and the United States, The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (2008) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857831240-V3NWWO51KUYMGCFUDMWE/Drury_End.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #32: August 2017 Tom Drury's novel The End of Vandalism (1994) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857878199-TWHFR54ODRJIY2NXEZWQ/Lumet_Making.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #33: September 2017 Sidney Lumet's filmmaking memoir, Making Movies (1995) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857928626-92M8GZH0TLZ65G7TMKK9/Carter_Wise.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #34: October 2017 Angela Carter's show-business novel, Wise Children (1991) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857974742-754KH1Q1TSLT8WMEQN8G/Austin_Land.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #35: November 2017 Mary Austin's nature vignettes from the California desert, The Land of Little Rain (1903) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511858057391-ORQR078CQCONBY30RPXX/Simenon_Man.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #36: December 2017 Georges Simenon's crime novel The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544659432704-LBHIWF89PFDZUMU71517/Geoghegan_Which.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #37: January 2018 Thomas Geoghegan’s memoir of his life as a labor lawyer, Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back (1991) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544659601919-2MY8Z3JHCVFCY513I5VD/London_Gilgamesh.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #38: February 2018 Joan London’s novel Gilgamesh (2001) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544659990314-WT3AJVRC3EBCBBZVHGSZ/Maurer_Big.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #39: March 2018 David W. Maurer’s guide to the lore and lingo of the underworld, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man (1940) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660099656-9G0E7QMT45V7NQL7EKNY/Strugatsky_Roadside.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #40: April 2018 Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s science-fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1972) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660186252-8AI030X8686E6JHRYWTJ/Ginzburg_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #41: May 2018 Natalia Ginzburg’s book of essays, The Little Virtues (1962) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660261463-7CFFZL6KD3MK3H2H68VX/Kantner_Ordinary.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #42: June 2018 Seth Kantner’s novel Ordinary Wolves (2004) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660373197-XLUTRJ3DX1DTYXUAIMZE/Abad_Oblivion.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #43: July 2018 Hector Abad’s memoir of his father, Oblivion (2006) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660594547-EQH3RPIYQS7GJS0D2QLM/StJohn_Women.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #44: August 2018 Madeleine St. John’s novel The Women in Black (1993) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660838422-2EY8NI42WMCFVJDNGTD1/Origo_War.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #45: September 2018 Iris Origo’s War in the Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944 (1947) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660961321-7GD4F5MQDA1STJWUGC32/Bambara_Gorilla.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #46: October 2018 Toni Cade Bambara’s book of short stories Gorilla, My Love (1972) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544661082827-RGVBOM3YM62XDK7IO6S6/Winik_Glen.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #47: November 2018 Marion Winik’s collection of elegies, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (2008) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544663123873-BVQG4W58AJXRCSYNS2VL/Portis_Dog.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #48: December 2018 Charles Portis’s novel The Dog of the South (1979) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550024620918-WX067IYVZMBIRD8MOX0P/Park_Great.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #49: January 2019 Sooyong Park’s nature memoir, The Great Soul of Siberia: In Search of the Elusive Siberian Tiger https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550024648239-LNTCI6CJQP74W7GMG2XL/Lofts_Town.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #50: February 2019 Norah Lofts’s historical novel The Town House https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555804086832-SVR8W8RMH8GUBCL0CQVM/Jones_How.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #51: March 2019 Hettie Jones’s memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555804176683-W9M4HO2QL0E4JSYTZSE0/Hamilton_Slaves.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #52: April 2019 Patrick Hamilton’s novel The Slaves of Solitude https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807844113-899MRGVV49RNC1K2JHTS/Fagan_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #53: May 2019 Brian Fagan’s environmental history, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1650 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807856846-XUHPDLLNX8E9V8B4SJ4I/Gloss_Outside.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #54: June 2019 Molly Gloss’s novella, Outside the Gates https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807905643-11603ENAWWWNK2GYW5P1/Sprawson_Haunts.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #55: July 2019 Charles Sprawson memoir and cultural history of swimming, Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807932199-T982LLS34MZUE7EJ6I0M/Chesnutt_Marrow.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #56: August 2019 Charles W. Chestnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807938468-7PT31H39DNVTA56EKWMP/Kincaid_Talk.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #57: September 2019 Jamaica Kincaid’s collection of New Yorker “Talk of the Town” vignettes, Talk Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807950991-38YX5ON5B70NUKQKF8JL/Krabbe_Rider.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #58: October 2019 Tim Krabbé’s cycling novel, The Rider https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807970145-7ZX61O1UQW7IBHEX3SV0/Summerscale_Whicher.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #59: November 2019 Kate Summerscale’s Victorian true-crime history, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581897069160-LMPTA0O6ORGRSCMJKZR6/See_Golden.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #60: December 2019 Carolyn See’s novel Golden Days https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581897083916-1U21L1LTM6T88RH389NU/Bass_Oil.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #61: January 2020 Rick Bass’s geologist’s memoir, Oil Notes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581897096967-EKZ5BYW11ZCLCQ0FKDGT/Segal_Her.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #62: February 2020 Lore Segal’s novel Her First American https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068482316-LMYAIRZBBNV4U677KO5X/Faviell_Chelsea.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #63: March 2020 Frances Faviell’s memoir of the London Blitz, A Chelsea Concerto https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068506453-V2DEYDZDVZ9OPRYVCLII/Yourcenar_Hadrian.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #64: April 2020 Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Memoirs of Hadrian https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068525115-HAWXBV6CIEIKE9T4XTCU/Shepherd_Living_hc.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #65: May 2020 Nan Shepherd’s nature memoir, The Living Mountain https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068536348-9X8P1R168KI37TXVUGU4/Holleran_Grief.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #66: June 2020 Andrew Holleran’s novel Grief https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068560741-P6TZE8XSAF1SF820VQ8D/James_Jacobins.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #67: July 2020 C.L.R. James’s history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068573867-PGJWKF8NHSM9N8O67ETI/Mieville_City_pb.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #68: August 2020 China Miéville’s novel The City & the City https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068640768-9U6OS5EO34HBKA3GJQWO/Ditlevsen_Childhood_UK.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #69: September 2020 Tove Ditlevsen’s memoir Childhood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068688643-30Z7UGYYWKYOJ5TT637L/Hardwick_Sleepless.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #70: October 2020 Elizabeth Hardwick’s novel Sleepless Nights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751199409-Y9J0ZXTQTLNXFTQWDLKH/Brower_Starship.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #71: November 2020 Kenneth Brower’s profile of Freeman and George Dyson, The Starship and the Canoe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751334391-N6KNPU4Y3JUU4DSHIPFH/Vesaas_Ice.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #72: December 2020 Tarjei Vesaas’s novel The Ice Palace https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751407113-WYVHR1LPNTTLBI2M397L/Barich_Laughing.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #73: January 2021 Bill Barich’s racetrack memoir, Laughing in the Hills https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751600906-K1AW66S19NH7LWC0UIIT/Kelley_Different.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #74: February 2021 William Melvin Kelley’s novel of sudden Black migration from the South, A Different Drummer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021009291-5WBJ3ICLN0YG4KXU989E/Forna_Devil.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #75: March 2021 Aminatta Forna’s memoir of her childhood in Sierra Leone and Scotland, The Devil That Danced on the Water https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021027504-BGE0VKGIZPI177S3GXZ1/Lehmann_Dusty.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #76: April 2021 Rosamond Lehmann’s novel of youthful love and friendship, Dusty Answer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021039404-6VCB905ILJ8MZ675V9WA/DeGroot_Auberge.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #77: May 2021 Roy Andries De Groot’s book of travel and recipes, The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021048222-8WEQP6WTKRKA8OICWDDW/Dove_Thomas.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #78: June 2021 Rita Dove’s poetic imagining of the lives of her parents, Thomas and Beulah https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021061244-R7YI1B9LVL95LOFER8ZE/Momaday_Names.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #79: July 2021 N. Scott Momaday’s ancestral and personal memoir, The Names https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085875999-A1TKCEGT1UNQ1KDFP3HO/Richards_Nights.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #80: August 2021 David Adams Richards’s novel of family in small-town New Brunswick, Nights Below Station Street https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085895106-QL8Q2EHXM35GFBK2C977/Jarre_Distant.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #81: September 2021 Marina Jarre’s memoir of an outsider’s life in Latvia and Italy, Distant Fathers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085909613-HE5FJSR388OF01MKYZAD/Sherriff_Fortnight.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #82: October 2021 R.C. Sherriff’s novel of a family seaside vacation, The Fortnight in September https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085984462-DF4TE6GAA3AM0WONHNW0/Babb_Owl.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #83: November 2021 Sanora Babb’s memoir of growing up in eastern Colorado, An Owl on Every Post https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356399994-L2UF5QGETUZUWECAFYT5/Conde_Tituba.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #84: December 2021 Maryse Condé’s fictional reimagining of a lost figure from the witch trials, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356419719-UII8PX4R2NDL3Y21ZYDX/Hart_Act.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #85: January 2022 Moss Hart’s Broadway memoir, Act One https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899036956-MV2KGWL86DBEX815LH1E/OBrien_Third.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #86: February 2022 Flann O’Brien’s novel of bicycles and strange dimensions, The Third Policeman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899109697-M2E6LRW4GXW7Z0RKX3HK/Maillart_Cruel.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #87: March 2022 Ella K. Maillart’s memoir of traveling by car from Switzerland to Afghanistan, The Cruel Way https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899122432-4GOAW111CCW1TS9MH61B/Schwarzenbach_All.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #87: March 2022 Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s memoir of traveling by car from Switzerland to Afghanistan, All the Roads Are Open https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899133497-WIO8R3RF8YSISWJ4GVFQ/Dick_They.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #88: They Kay Dick’s dystopian novel, They https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899159300-XJDQM8RPY6PL7VYO225L/Levine_Canada.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #89: May 2022 Norman Levine’s memoir of travelling across Canada, Canada Made Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899230118-683QYEBB2WGDZSLR7I9J/Bandyopadhyay_Aranyak.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #90: June 2022 Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel of the Indian forest, Aranyak https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659472839917-9BCSMTBKDDIOP2WUVO5A/Murray_Proud.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #91: July 2022 Pauli Murray’s family history, Proud Shoes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659472857089-R374V2XO5XUO273L5PNJ/Holtby_South.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #92: August 2022 Winifred Holtby’s social novel of a Yorkshire community, South Riding https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157074032-30TOFXRKCYT6UV2U0V5F/Guerriero_Simple.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #93: September 2022 Leila Guerriero’s profile of an Argentinian dancer, A Simple Story https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157094282-XOYNTUSTOOI5N2M9JQJ2/Baker_Young.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #94: October 2022 Dorothy Baker’s jazz novel, Young Man with a Horn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157114971-PL9AEDJFOGXYTU4KS4RJ/Warner_Beautiful.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #95: November 2022 William W. Warner’s appreciation of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and those who pursue it, Beautiful Swimmers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157707827-P51UIFVWM64NJR38HP5G/Shum_Queen.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #96: December 2022 Michael Shou-Yung Shum’s novel of gambling and suburban Seattle, Queen of Spades https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157174362-B301CXOLCLE4PDC792DH/Rose_Love.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #97: January 2023 Gillian Rose’s memoir of love and death, Love’s Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677894770848-AOM5YOAR5AURTVJ0DU40/Mulisch_Assault.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #98: February 2023 Harry Mulisch’s novel of World War II and its aftermath in the Netherlands, The Assault https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445691764-3CNU1HP4AZY2KH6EITMS/Royko_Boss.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #99: March 2023 Mike Royko’s biography of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, Boss https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445723141-U0Y0C9KCN6KOMAZVD95S/Ammons_Sphere.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #100: April 2023 A.R. Ammons’s long poem, Sphere: The Form of a Motion https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445762440-24EK40MM9XAOXQKXSX5W/Ullman_Close.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #101: May 2023 Ellen Ullman’s memoir of software development, Close to the Machine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445893994-R0SQW2DSSR137PTEPSBJ/MacInnes_Absolute.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #102: June 2023 Colin MacInnes’s novel of teen culture in 1950s London, Absolute Beginners https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698446078659-BWJTEOON34MARL26ESOA/Gwaltney_Drylongso.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #103: July 2023 John Langston Gwaltney's oral history of African Americans, Drylongso https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698446134725-AZNI1B72DRHFPMDD71GC/Babb_Lost.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #104: August 2023 Sanora Babb’s novel of small-town Kansas, The Lost Traveler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698453166792-MNOIGAD9E7SEXQLYV8C1/Athill_Instead.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #105: September 2023 Diana Athill’s memoir of early love and artistic discovery, Instead of a Letter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698446165605-V22L1A7SPNYDALYO6JHS/Thuy_ru.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #106: October 2023 Kim Thúy’s novel of a Vietnamese refugee in Canada, Ru https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698451787310-UXA3VXKG2VILB6OSQTM0/Kent_NbyE.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #107: November 2023 Rockwell Kent’s memoir of a sailing adventure to Greenland, N by E https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1702625210476-QNJ5F7QZMM6NU5T82S7D/Brooks_Maud.jpeg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #108: December 2023 Gwendolyn Brooks’s novel of a life in Chicago, Maud Martha https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490266915-89UR2ZH2Z9Z5DJOXIN3E/Gosse_Father.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #109: January 2024 Edmund Gosse's memoir of his Victorian fundamentalist upbringing, Father and Son https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490452881-IIBXJKP1RUXKZ3TLB0I4/Earling_Perma.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #110: February 2024 Debra Magpie Earling's novel of the Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, Perma Red https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490563440-E842KRWGMCFBJ7AL5KP4/Ritter_Woman.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #111: March 2024 Christiane Ritter's memoir of a year spent on an Arctic island, A Woman in the Polar Night https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490651136-QHG8XVUFL9YOCEB43J4H/Higgins_Eddie.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #112: April 2024 George V. Higgins's crime novel of 1970s Boston, The Friends of Eddie Coyle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490811283-5INKL4B3M0KWIPGPY458/Cohen_Train.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #113: May 2024 Leah Hager Cohen's book of reporting and memoir about a school for the deaf in New York City, Train Go Sorry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615439019-VOPAYSXCVBKW7R1KXAWZ/Roberts_Pavane.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #114: June 2024 Keith Roberts’s alternative history of post-Elizabeth England, Pavane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615472755-U2VJEHV52H5XATJLA1Q0/Hutto_Flatwoods.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #115: July 2024 Joe Hutto’s memoir of raising a brood of wild turkeys in the Florida panhandle, Illumination in the Flatwoods https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615492172-BGN19IBSBM8HACCY1AJB/Wilson_Swamp.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #116: August 2024 Edith Wilson’s novel of a woman making a new life for herself in the British Columbia interior, Swamp Angel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615508455-9OJFPBQLAWGLI612M63D/Morton_Nervous.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #117: September 2024 Frederic Morton’s history of a deliriously pivotal year in the politics and culture of the late Habsburg Empire, A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615584389-85MPA4Y2N4E0ISSY2HGJ/Bedford_Jigsaw.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #118: October 2024 Sybille Bedford’s autobiographical novel of a transient youth spent among irresponsible adults, Jigsaw https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615595710-YGZC0AICD5CPA7BTZ934/Oppen_Meaning.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #119: November 2024 Mary Oppen’s memoir of a shared, independent life of art, adventure, and activism, Meaning a Life https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751410937750-SYES2SR8KCE2L9NCLBW8/Cercas_Salamis.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #120: December 2024 Javier Cercas’s novel of the Spanish Civil War and memory, Soldiers of Salamis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411083955-NJ7L37U6TO82X2C54TLE/Crawford_Garlic.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #121: January 2025 Stanley Crawford’s memoir of garlic farming in New Mexico, A Garlic Testament https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411181688-XLWDAHJH25HM7C5Y7GVI/Howard_Light.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #122: February 2025 Elizabeth Jane Howard’s novel of an English family and their servants before World War II, The Light Years, the first book in her Cazalet Chronicle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411287550-40TDXQE61A4UQKLZQPW3/Mayer_They.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #123: March 2025 Milton Mayer’s post-war examination of ten small-town German men who joined the Nazis, They Thought They Were Free https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411466028-4F8SZRIH3BVUTZEZQYSC/Hines_Kestrel.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #124: April 2025 Barry Hines’s coming-of-age story of a boy training a wild kestrel in a town in England’s industrial north, A Kestrel for a Knave https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411553529-H7GNGORAD8Z2TGDMAZZA/Guillermoprieto_Samba.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #125: May 2025 Alma Guillermoprieto’s account of dance schools in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival celebrations, Samba https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411643284-YWZPTBRV3LGWR4JHP8NL/Powell_Edisto.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #126: June 2025 Padgett Powell’s coming-of-age story of a boy in Lowcountry South Carolina, Edisto https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411782434-LSVHORB9MVVK69I5C1QK/Ross_Picture.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #127: July 2025 Lillian Ross’s eyewitness account of the making of John Huston’s Civil War film, The Red Badge of Courage, Picture https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066665709-5ZY67L7G1VAI2BNAOV2K/Guibert_Friend.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #128: August 2025 Hervé Guibert’s autobiographical novel set in the early years of the AIDS crisis, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066703186-SJCHEQHCLLPJZ28OVAUS/Moody_Coming.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #129: September 2025 Anne Moody’s memoir of her childhood and her years in the Civil Rights Movement, Coming of Age in Mississippi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066713459-LQZFWK9N39PGGYMS7HHB/Emshwiller_Moon.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #130: October 2025 An anthology of fabulist stories spanning fifty years of Carol Emshwiller’s career, Moon Songs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066759199-MLJJIUZS34M97OZ5YWB4/Baker_U.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #131: November 2025 Nicholson Baker’s idiosyncratic investigation of his relationship with John Updike, his “favorite living writer,” U and I https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772047634103-9Q65Q9WBUKEX5AVSA33N/Fisher_Home_Classic.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #132: December 2025 Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s novel of an unconventional marriage in small-town America, The Home-Maker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772047680487-NG3LHAWZ0GS8NGYTB6D0/Peach_Thick.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #133: January 2026 Hilary Peach’s memoir of her career as a welder in the Boilermakers Union, Thick Skin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772048140769-VFKYYHI9SPPZ4U0CNOTW/Weesner_Car.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #134: February 2026 Theodore Weesner’s novel of a teen boy on the wrong side of the law in ‘50s Michigan, The Car Thief https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772048241728-J4Q6ABIVAH3N6YOI8BAP/Rose_Parallel.jpg Phinney by Post Gallery - Book #135: March 2026 Phyllis Rose’s profiles of the marriages of five Victorian writers, Parallel Lives http://www.phinneybooks.com/first-year-top-50 daily 0.75 2015-07-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436239072984-FDJMB6KXTCOY9GDIT0XS/Brown_Boys.jpg First Year Top 50 - 1. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436239072984-FDJMB6KXTCOY9GDIT0XS/Brown_Boys.jpg First Year Top 50 - 1. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436239207502-PX3R2A9IQ3PFB57GFJWY/Kondo_Magic.jpg First Year Top 50 - 2. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Marie Kondo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436239306860-9L2AJBPXP709MGE18Y14/Doerr_Light.jpg First Year Top 50 - 3. All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436239534168-JW03SJALNIW5W9MXF7S2/Nissley_Days.jpg First Year Top 50 - 4. A Reader's Book of Days Tom Nissley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436239649729-1RNGTSEDG4AZTVD21UQ7/Erickson_Boat.jpg First Year Top 50 - 5. 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Gift 2015 Gallery Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s edited by Sarah Weinman http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2015-gallery daily 0.75 2015-12-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250814293-9PK1U70IOZU5ERTICNA6/Boyden_Orenda.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery The Orenda by Joseph Boyden https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250814293-9PK1U70IOZU5ERTICNA6/Boyden_Orenda.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery The Orenda by Joseph Boyden https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450249902728-31AJRZCJZUHXLZ9APCAC/Cooke_Brilliant.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties by Rachel Cooke https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250126220-0N7H2Y4QJXWQJU3KP2EQ/Ekback_Wolf.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250358833-YTASAWMP8Z4LFZC8UO6G/Hawkins_Girl.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450249994144-XRJHMHY7XYPXB0KRB7ED/Isherwood_Lions.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties by Christopher Isherwood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250621364-MW2LDEGBJGK6BTL0JNX9/Marra_Tsar.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250282718-UHO8KRIXOIK13OZN7V46/Moorehead_Village.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251011994-NK0G7FU6FYLJA0Z67R0S/Nguyen_Pioneer.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250898142-2QVJN63HTNMMX3GOJ626/Sharma_Family.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery Family Life by Akhil Sharma https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450250724109-AQXGH4P3RGSMDQWBT0Y0/Tuck_Double.jpg Liz Unread 2015 Gallery The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2015-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2015-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166410780-40TJ0GBCR81D8FWL9RER/Blythe_Akenfield.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Akenfield by Ronald Blythe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166410780-40TJ0GBCR81D8FWL9RER/Blythe_Akenfield.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Akenfield by Ronald Blythe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166401593-B882PU4RQYT7NK6LQU16/Bedford_Legacy.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery A Legacy by Sybille Bedford https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166369250-31YRL14LDSBTKSVD9Y35/Coates_Between.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166545701-LC8K1S1IJ9R14XRVGJNW/Cusk_Outline.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Outline by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166454538-PB3BM7CJB0XLA1VN6JOG/Feigel_Charm.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Love-Charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War by Lara Feigel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166379835-J9YITO897YWN3WMNEREP/James_Book.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Book of Night Women by Marlon James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166421019-SYZB0T90FYGYZ3OTA04C/Helm_Ravensbruck.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166390765-FDGZJUX4BHC05HRA3HOR/Michon_Winter.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Winter Mythologies and Abbots by Pierre Michon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166091349-NVS8BI9BMUMQXR3T4S1X/Schiff_Witches.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449166466942-WIPQEKOF64AYNGOK3YUK/Moshfegh_Eileen.jpg Liz 2015 Top 10 Gallery Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2015-gallery daily 0.75 2015-12-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251454421-9CUSP2WALDY6ZXMB3F4O/Alexievich_Chernobyl.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251454421-9CUSP2WALDY6ZXMB3F4O/Alexievich_Chernobyl.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251551890-0M7RK0XZ7R5RPXHJCDRS/Beattie_State.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery The State We're In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251654664-2RUZ1EE8F0APDI2JMVUI/Bender_Refund.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Refund: Stories by Karen E. Bender https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251742717-AE9XGCOM3M4QICC29H7D/DAmbrosio_Loitering.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Loitering: New and Collected Essays by Charles D'Ambrosio https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251809374-LQ5HPJ3YNZDRPQQ7WU6O/Hallberg_City.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery City on Fire Garth Risk Hallberg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251877209-NH9E2HK1R98DWNTC6848/Leovy_Ghettoside_pb.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450251972961-LJ0MDDCH1IIQQG6D6SLL/McCann_Thirteen.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450252047389-5YYD3YKNHTDZBI65W5K9/Nelson_Argonauts.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450252109177-1LYZYJGVHOVN91PD2OFH/Norris_Between.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery Between You & Me: Confessions of Comma Queen by Mary Norris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450252187881-FGBGP9YVZTZMYP29DAA0/Williams_Visiting.jpg Kim Unread 2015 Gallery The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories by Joy Williams http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2015-gallery daily 0.75 2015-12-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166198218-7NDZXLT58SII1PMN42VV/Alexis_Fifteen.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis I loved Alexis's first novel, Childhood, years ago, and now he's won Canada's top literary award, the Giller Prize, for an intriguing-sounding philosophical novel about gods, dogs, and humanity. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166198218-7NDZXLT58SII1PMN42VV/Alexis_Fifteen.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis I loved Alexis's first novel, Childhood, years ago, and now he's won Canada's top literary award, the Giller Prize, for an intriguing-sounding philosophical novel about gods, dogs, and humanity. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166753018-A45BC6UICE6U60ENKBJR/Caesar_Two.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon by Ed Caesar A relatively unusual sports subject, with comparisons by the British press to Hoop Dreams as well as one of my favorite essayists, John Jeremiah Sullivan. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450241824699-THJJ0WM7LNE92BACEK4R/Catling_Vorrh.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery The Vorrh by B. Catling A literary fantasy debut that's been a quiet hit on our new releases table all through the fall. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166469615-6V6NBFTQK175OYCHSBT4/Berlin_Manual.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin The posthumous collection that has won countless great reviews and accolades, including a spot on the NYT's top 10 list. The one story I happened to read, "My Jockey," was as good as the hype. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166424602-CWY37DH6K3GL6EYYAOJN/Comyns_Spoons.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyn Another of the apparently endless list of wonderful mid-century British women novelists that NYRB Classics continues to unearth. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166141603-1FH453A6AHT0YW9IM04S/Gaitskill_Mare.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery The Mare by Mary Gaitskill I'm a little embarrassed that one of my favorite writers has published her first novel in a decade or so and I haven't read it yet! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166161146-QRKQD7I7ZZ6QSY6S463S/Guralnick_Sam.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'N' Roll by Peter Guralnick Guralnick, the great biographer of Elvis, on this fantastic crossroads character? Candy! And early customer responses have been very positive. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166024470-BM5Y4SEF88EKE9TNXUF3/Harari_Sapiens.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari Great customer comments so far too on this brainy and accessible scientific history. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450165672700-M0P789I4WWOHDGB5KRI1/Kaiser_Cost.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery The Cost of Courage by Charles Kaiser A slim book, elegantly presented, on the eternally fascinating subject of the French Resistance. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166537457-AHCTXQOAKVPGCBJW0GEJ/Kurniawan_Man.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan Two new books by this young Indonesian writer were released at the same time by different publishers; this is the shorter, apparently tauter one, which might make a good sample of his style. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166129630-L5SQWH0WEK7GB524FO5I/Pamuk_Strangeness.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk I loved Pamuk's previous novel, The Museum of Innocence, and only the (similar) length of this new one, apparently another mash note to his beloved city of Istanbul, has kept me from diving in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450165755564-M33Q0YF987F9PQUJB4FO/Quinones_Dreamland.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones The praise keeps piling up for Dream Land as one of the best-reported books of the year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450165879586-SPGIHQYZAKE0XZJB6N24/Shapiro_Lear.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 by James Shapiro This one is tempting me the most right this very minute: how I'd love to steal away to 1606 to spend a year with Shakespeare in the time of his last great flourishing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166922542-GRQGBMJAJ26PC1KS6B45/Spiro_Captivity.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Captivity by György Spiró Liz is already halfway through what might be one of my own post-Christmas books, a fictional romp through the Roman Empire that seems like it could be a surprise hit. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450165549903-04HTT92W3OXJVQXR48CC/Stanford_What.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford by Frank Stanford Perhaps the one I'm kicking myself the most for not making time for this year, a landmark posthumous collection that readers talk about with a kind of giddy awe. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450166112725-L8XFI1YESXK4XB3ZFTIP/Toews_Puny.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews I've always wanted to read Toews but still never have. (This novel came out in 2014 but was so hard to get a copy of in hardcover that I think of it as a 2015 book.) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450165960119-ZRT86PUHRWLNIBOETG6B/Ulitskaya_Big.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya Oooh, a big Russian novel from one of the modern masters! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1450336552156-F0DJNIC8T8GWK211BKLT/Thomson_Carlyle.jpg Tom Unread 2015 Gallery Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson I'm not sure if anyone wants to be known as a "writer's writer," since it means you haven't sold many books, but I'm always drawn to them, and many of the writers who love this British novelist think this is one of his best. http://www.phinneybooks.com/laura-2015-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2015-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163482881-WYFB3BSR19YIKBRABIIW/Brainard_I.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery I Remember by Joe Brainard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163491027-AWXLD4789BXJGMTK3Z48/Miller_Last.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Last Days of California by Mary Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163491027-AWXLD4789BXJGMTK3Z48/Miller_Last.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Last Days of California by Mary Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163509240-FWK4JKISODIWF9MLNA2M/Johnson_Braggsville.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163759183-ML6KPCBBQ0U04DW2TAY4/Jones_Lost.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163499620-VR3QI2IUJSC3FC84G1IF/Macdonald_Hawk.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163523552-K74YK5OXET4DCF6SMNT6/Nguyen_Sympathizer.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163702592-V5SZ1XKX51NSONYZ5F7Z/Rice_Soppy.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery Soppy: A Love Story by Philippa Rice https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449164089763-JRXSD8Y6IJHHRM3IAI0T/Rothschild_Improbability.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163804839-011QYO2M40V3UCJGHY84/Sacks_Move.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449163734649-LWBRKJYIBU2R1KF3XJ2Z/Taylor_Hanging.jpg Laura 2015 Top 10 Gallery A Hanging at Cinder Bottom by Glenn Taylor http://www.phinneybooks.com/kids-2015-gallery daily 0.75 2015-12-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598250943-G75RITP0RAJKOFDEAES9/Bickford_Fox.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith Our newsletter review: I'm not really sure that this is a kids' book at all. Will little readers or big ones most appreciate its simple fable of courage and friendship and its intricate, exquisite illustrations? "Illustrations" doesn't seem sufficient to describe the beautiful, Victorian-inspired prints that fill each page with a filigree of leaves, stars, and soil, with bright splashes of color that appear like visitations from another dimension. It's an object you have to hold it in your hands to fully appreciate. (3 and up) —Tom   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598250943-G75RITP0RAJKOFDEAES9/Bickford_Fox.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith Our newsletter review: I'm not really sure that this is a kids' book at all. Will little readers or big ones most appreciate its simple fable of courage and friendship and its intricate, exquisite illustrations? "Illustrations" doesn't seem sufficient to describe the beautiful, Victorian-inspired prints that fill each page with a filigree of leaves, stars, and soil, with bright splashes of color that appear like visitations from another dimension. It's an object you have to hold it in your hands to fully appreciate. (3 and up) —Tom   https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598216497-LVFKEGM0N68W4MGYF59M/Bradley_War.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley Our newsletter review: In this heart-wrenching, pulse-pounding story of a brother and sister evacuated from London to the countryside during World War II, Bradley's storytelling is pitch-perfect: she reveals Ada's feelings, as she masters her physical disability and battles with the complex emotions she has about her abusive mother, in a way that is intense but understandable for middle readers, and her exploration of the larger war around her is serious but always suspenseful. There's also humor and uplift, but thankfully no sentimentality. It's an ideal book for any young horse lover, junior WWII buff, or budding Anglophile. And don't be scared away by the difficult topics. Kids never are. (Age 9 to 12—and up) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598228156-8UKK6K8O0XSUL4U9NWHO/Ellis_Home.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery Home by Carson Ellis Our newsletter review: You don't need to know that Carson Ellis is the hip Portland illustrator for the Wildwood series and the band the Decembrists to appreciate her delightful solo picture book debut. Beginning with the most everyday of examples, a home in the country and one in the city, her tour quickly whirls away to more fanciful locales, while always remaining grounded in the shared elements of domesticity. After all, even such bizarre creatures as a Norse god, a Slovakian duchess, a bee, and an artist need somewhere to live. (4 to 8) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598393904-3PBF8WDRHJDOSDNOZVOA/Grill_Shackleton.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery Shackleton's Journey by William Grill Our newsletter review: Well, here's a book unlike any other. Ernest Shackleton's heroic failure to cross Antarctica has drawn many chroniclers, but none like William Grill, a young illustrator who just won the Greenaway Medal (the British equivalent of the Caldecott) for this dazzlingly drawn account of the expedition. With well-chosen facts and a mastery of both large and small scales—one colored-pencil spread features a tiny rescue boat on a vast and rough sea, while another portrays and names all of the crew's 69 dogs—it's a picture book, but one that older readers and lovers of adventure will get lost in for hours and hours. (Ages 6 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598551522-4NZ2JJSWUKY51TL5SARF/Gorman_Indi.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery Indi Surfs by Chris Gorman Our newsletter review: Wow, this book just jumps off the shelf! The Day-Glo realism of surf-dad Gorman's illustrations explode his simple, boldface story of paddling, falling, and persevering into something unlike anything else in our picture-book section. It's a tribute to his intrepid daughter that will charm grownups and mesmerize little readers with its bravery, awe, and beauty. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598516109-IPJ76AYSSQZU6YXX4RBV/Hale_Underground.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery The Underground Abductor (Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales) by Nathan Hale Our newsletter review: With all their magic wonderlands and scary dystopias, I sometimes despair that my kids will ever be interested in actual History. So I'm a little obsessed with Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales, a series of graphic books in which the Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale stalls for time on the gallows by regaling his captors with stories from his encyclopedic knowledge of history. After covering the Civil War, World War I, and the Donner Party, Hale turns in this book to American slavery in the story of Harriet Tubman. As always, Hale (the author and artist, who shares his name with his hero) streamlines but never softens the facts and adds just enough goofy middle-grade humor to focus attention on, instead of distracting from, each thrilling episode. Kids learn what happened, what it meant, and why it matters ... IN REAL LIFE! (Ages 8 to 12) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598313896-RC5IP7KSX6CNX3UTIJC5/Ishida_Little.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery Little Kunoichi: The Ninja Girl by Sanae Ishida Our newsletter review: Our Phinney neighbor Sanae Ishida's debut picture book stars a little ninja so adorable she might almost be a Teletubby. But that doesn't mean she can't wield a throwing star or nunchucks once she learns the power of shugyo, or "training like crazy." With lovely, wittily detailed watercolors and a goofy but powerful story, Little Kunoichi shows that oddball imagination and a warrior's discipline can fit together perfectly. (Age 3 to 7) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598279535-PG85Y8VIGKG2AINZR5GY/Kaufman_Illuminae.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery Illuminae (The Illuminae Files_01) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff Our newsletter review: This is not your typical YA dystopian sci-fi romance novel. (I should know, I read enough of them.) This is the first book of any type to grab me and not let go in way too long a time. Told in hacked documents, it reads faster than I wanted it to, and wayfaster than a 599-page book should. It can take a bit of getting used to the jumping from one character to the next, but it's well worth the effort. That it's unlike anything I've ever read is a bonus. Don't plan on getting anything else done once you pick it up. Just pick it up soon. (12 and up) —Steph https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598443473-ZAGAOWOS64OA79OCAN8J/McCloskey_Worms.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery We Dig Worms! by Kevin McCloskey Our newsletter review: There's no shortage of fact books on animals for kids—especially yucky and/or scary animals—but there's something about We Dig Worms! that stands out. Maybe it's the kids'-eye view, asking the things a curious young investigator wants to know ("Mister Worm? Why do you come out after the rain?") and then answering them in simple, memorable ways that will make sense to little readers and might surprise older ones. Maybe it's the clear and charming illustrations, painted on recycled grocery bags in tribute to one of nature's great recyclers. Or maybe it's just that an earthworm, going about its humble daily business, makes for a very appealing hero. (Ages 3 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598484476-X6STC6ULXJTPS8L5O1Z2/Merrill_Elephant.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars by Jean Merrill and Ronni Solbert Our newsletter review: The title of this 1964 picture book (just brought back into print by—of course—NYRB Classics) may be the greatest in the history of publishing—how could you not want to read about its hero's oddly specific compulsion?—and the story inside is just as straightforward and action-filled as you could hope. Merrill was best known for The Pushcart War, but this little fable of hers, written and illustrated with a simple, deadpan pleasure that matches the elephant's destructive glee, deserves to live forever, or at least as long as there are elephants and small cars—and big cars too (not to spoil the story). —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598164142-UKJ9FIH4U3GAGMTGVCE8/Schlitz_Hired.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz Our newsletter review: As a former bookish girl who loved to read about other bookish girls, I hereby nominate Joan Skraggs a worthy successor to literary heroines Anne Shirley and Francie Nolan. In her newly acquired diary, Joan relates her escape from her father's farm to Baltimore, where she is taken in by the wealthy Rosenbach family as a "hired girl." As her horizons open, the "refined" writing style learned from her old schoolmarm begins to crackle and nap with Joan's natural sensitivity, fierceness, and humor—as well as all the emotional highs and lows of 14-year-old girls throughout the ages. Newbery Award winner Schlitz addresses issues of class and religion and art to provide some meaty fare for thoughtful young readers, and all of her characters are fully embraceable creations. The book ends with a rousing twist on the Cinderella story that will have you misting up before you shout, "Hooray!" (Ages 12 to 16) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449598337163-564EQKH83J9EHOWV5I7U/Stead_Goodbye.jpg Kids 2015 Gallery Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead Our newsletter review: The first rule of Bridge, Tab, and Em's club: no fighting. But as they enter seventh grade, Em has developed curvy new curves, Tab has a newfound interest in social justice, and Bridge has a pair of fuzzy cat ears she can't seem not to wear. Their story of friendship and forgiveness is hardly earth-shattering, but it's told with the kind of funny subtlety and sensitivity that few writers possess. As warm, finely observed, and intricately orchestrated as Stead's award-sweeping When You Reach Me, Goodbye Stranger is the kind of novel that parents might elbow their middle-schoolers aside to read. (10 and up) —Tom http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2015-top-10 daily 0.75 2015-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161951295-PHY1PHJ0CX8CAO8H0JLK/Daum_Unspeakable.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161951295-PHY1PHJ0CX8CAO8H0JLK/Daum_Unspeakable.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161968924-JFE6AZI08PEIR4DU1JRR/Gawande_Being.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery Being Mortal by Atul Gawande https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161959918-CCE89MGONC93EIY2M0LN/Gornick_Odd.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Odd Woman in the City: A Memoir by Vivian Gornick https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161897650-O5CSQU0XJNZ0GVOYKN2B/Hazzard_Transit.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161846302-23GD0247O3J3NYQEY8M6/King_Euphoria.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery Euphoria by Lily King https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161925282-PNKH2GFT5EGXIP4KBLLA/Macdonald_Hawk.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161881018-LRQMX1SE6HKQDG4HFXQZ/Mann_Hold.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery Hold Still by Sally Mann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161868199-LIZ0G4IETEBE3PPAXAUD/McMurtry_Lonesome.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161907174-2CX7RGO45E6ARZFRVWD6/Pearlman_Honeydew.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery Honeydew by Edith Pearlman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1449161890788-I5L3DHNWGR1VB80KR8MO/Smith_M.jpg Kim 2015 Top 10 Gallery M Train by Patti Smith http://www.phinneybooks.com/new-gallery daily 0.75 2016-02-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005024913-IL6E4P7BGYPAV83R1TP9/Walls_Glass.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005024913-IL6E4P7BGYPAV83R1TP9/Walls_Glass.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005074539-FRN1J4KCD24BC9MQ0F87/Edin_200.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery $2.00 a Day by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Schaefer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005133131-D75SLZ79XZ017029V64V/Ehrenreich_Nickel.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005177950-N4IA5J0B57SNQ9QHRFHC/Saul_Stop.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement by Nick Saul and Andrea Curtis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005218831-AVPB7U97DGP3GST2664D/Rennebohm_Souls.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets by Craig Rennebohm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005262771-7JIKA675KWK33VPB5G1R/Patel_Stuffed.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005295118-MCW3NO2OR04K8AF6PB00/Leal_Harper.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery Also Known as Harper by Ann Haywood Leal https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005320127-DNH7SSLVBK0EEFAOVYPY/OConnor_How.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005358803-Q0PRQXLM62MSA4DGI3WI/Bunting_Fly.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting and Ronald Himler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005395136-FALHE8I0ISCRT9QMV3GG/Carlson_Family.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005424323-2TCGOGKB6158SG7H2IV7/Voigt_Homecoming.jpg All Together Seattle Gallery Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt http://www.phinneybooks.com/bookstore-day-cover-quiz daily 0.75 2016-05-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1462342897670-DSS91TZ78ET8XFDF0UTA/IBD_Cover_Quiz_2016.jpg Bookstore Day Cover Quiz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1462342897670-DSS91TZ78ET8XFDF0UTA/IBD_Cover_Quiz_2016.jpg Bookstore Day Cover Quiz http://www.phinneybooks.com/unsold-gallery daily 0.75 2016-07-20 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898698118-4U2H2HWHQZG5010LMGV9/Amis_Money.jpg Unsold Gallery - Money by Martin Amis Amis at his most gleefully scabrous. In other words, his best. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898698118-4U2H2HWHQZG5010LMGV9/Amis_Money.jpg Unsold Gallery - Money by Martin Amis Amis at his most gleefully scabrous. In other words, his best. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898756533-3WD7KQDLZP46E5VVKO5D/Cheever_Journals.jpg Unsold Gallery - The Journals of John Cheever Anguished, sad, funny, and as finely observed as his classic stories. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898635883-B9AEGY9U6BRWF5U22HAL/Cramer_What.jpg Unsold Gallery - What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer The 1988 campaign (Bush-Dukakis!) might seem an unlikely subject for a 1,000-page book that many consider the finest on modern politics. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898804786-HSN9Z7IDP8HUREICRWK4/Gaitskill_Bad.jpg Unsold Gallery - Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill Gaitskill's first collection of stories holds up as well as ever, for its frankness, its style, its willingness to wade into the depths of human behavior—bad and otherwise. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898652701-NWKEZDFQADMRX1IWELN0/Goncourt_Journals.jpg Unsold Gallery - Pages from the Goncourt Journals by Edmond & Jules de Goncourt I chose this as an Old Book of the Week and have quoted from it in our diary slot a couple of times, but no one yet has taken home this biting, snobby, observant, and compulsively readable record of decades of Paris artistic life. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468899060537-18YGOJ8AFB19R8F2XZS4/Halberstam_Breaks.jpg Unsold Gallery - The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam The Portland Trailblazers' '79-'80 season was a dud, as the team that won the title three years before slowly drifted apart, except that it became the subject of one of the best books on professional sports (in which the money and fame at stake seem almost quaint by now). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898841299-6QRCX1DOGBKU1Z8KRO9N/Jones_Aunt.jpg Unsold Gallery - All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones We made Jones's first story collection, Lost in the City, a Phinney by Post pick last year, but his second collection is every bit as good as a complex and human portrait of Washington, D.C. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898545259-ZSI7M02VR79P9Q3BL077/LeBlanc_Random.jpg Unsold Gallery - Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Quite a few folks spotted LeBlanc's acclaimed portrait of poverty in the Bronx when we made it one of our first cover quiz subjects, but perhaps everyone has a copy at home already. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898934543-DPKE45NI3VSV9F50GX1E/Pym_Excellent.jpg Unsold Gallery - Excellent Women by Barbara Pym A great, quiet novel by the perennially rediscovered British master. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898515964-UBPSBLIL7KUSWONTJZ5R/Robinson_Mother.jpg Unsold Gallery - Mother Country by Marilynne Robinson Choosing this as an Old Book of the Week wasn't enough to get any of Robinson's many fans to try her nearly forgotten nonfiction book on nuclear power and the welfare state in Britain. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898981974-N9ZBBO1FI7GWHVL30XGO/Roth_Counterlife.jpg Unsold Gallery - The Counterlife by Philip Roth It took us most of a year after we opened to sell any Philip Roth. A few copies (mostly of my favorite, The Ghost Writer) have found homes since, but not yet this one, one of his most inventive, funny, and challenging. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468898592153-34JRUA3FRUVOCM3KU4BD/Seuss_Mulberry.jpg Unsold Gallery - And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss We have a whole shelf of Seuss, where we try to keep almost all his books in stock, but this inventive item, his very first book for kids, has yet to be adopted. http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2016-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2016-11-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401903104-EJQZVFQYHMYPG2KDJLBY/Arudpragasam_Story.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401903104-EJQZVFQYHMYPG2KDJLBY/Arudpragasam_Story.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401942838-WNWIKNO443Q9UNYBOIEG/Bell_Souls.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery All Souls' Rising (Haitian Trilogy #1) by Madison Smartt Bell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480402016990-REM15IYCUCZD5G909F4Z/Bell_Master.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery Master of the Crossroads (Haitian Trilogy #2) by Madison Smartt Bell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480402102409-ELSTCPS277SZRTRWF85M/Bell_Stone.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Stone That the Builder Refused (Haitian Trilogy #3) by Madison Smartt Bell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480402138998-ER48QZT4PIUK7K4HKXVT/Dutton_Margaret.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480402203092-55C4Q7OUKPMEQ198YQ95/Feigel_Bitter.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Bitter Taste of Victory: Life, Love, and Art in the Ruins of the Reich by Lara Feigel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480402351230-3K3IVYNASPSK8OSL8ZMM/Isherwood_Lions.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties by Christopher Isherwood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480402318132-D3RLKBYC3MMV2ISUL3ZB/Lewis_Wife.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480484948680-USCOIXVN28GOTN05UIO1/Nelson_Argonauts_pb.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480484840898-ZDKTB18VMUMOOJYQ3KUN/Oz_Tale.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480484805615-C7Z5DJ6RFVQWKRES4PWP/Sittenfeld_Eligible.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480484762230-FCUTAQ0M7XS4IBPK7MSW/Szalay_Spring.jpg Liz 2016 Top 10 Gallery Spring by David Szalay http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2016-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2016-11-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399972982-5HC7K44GIN5C3PL8RW2X/Cooper_Know.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery Know the Mother: Stories by Desiree Cooper https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399972982-5HC7K44GIN5C3PL8RW2X/Cooper_Know.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery Know the Mother: Stories by Desiree Cooper https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400007345-EJYCQNRXHWBK2HPL24JF/Dutton_Margaret.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400042055-WBR6KVTWCJ1TRD6X55GI/London_Golden.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Golden Age by Joan London https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400069455-TS7ENOZNE47CML7QB2YI/Marra_Tsar_pb.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories by Anthony Marra https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400105350-65XWIPGW4KCL9BTNTAP6/Patchett_Commonwealth.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery Commonwealth by Ann Patchett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400143147-TS0F82J5WGE5MH374AG0/Sharma_Problems.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery Problems by Jade Sharma https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400172321-D2K12KFTJNQGXL6D55ZC/Smith_Glaciers.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400206545-QXN6E4R3VE5S0HL24W1W/Strout_Lucy_pb.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400230743-UA6HL1KMV783NMFDPG62/Towles_Gentleman.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480400261953-41LSEWY0SW00MYV34AR8/Williams_Visiting_pb.jpg Kim 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories by Joy Williams http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2016-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2016-11-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401066364-84NG1QDFWYL5K61TI8RD/Beaty_Ada.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401066364-84NG1QDFWYL5K61TI8RD/Beaty_Ada.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401113869-QQWDYV1Q0H8X4XF7DKPR/Bechdel_Essential.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401148916-GTDDUGT50SYE3EPTPWYI/Branch_Marthas.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Martha's Vineyard, Isle of Dreams by Susan Branch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401184091-AFTW6W2LVSU4IIILZ6FN/Brown_Wild.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Wild Robot by Peter Brown https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401210081-QIZVRIY0QUIQAISC63MP/Foer_Atlas.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401242118-KWNKI4WID99W693QE0K4/Ingelman_Little.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401282988-OB8H7L0ZM0K8WFX5QDDW/Kibuishi_Firelight.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Firelight (Amulet #7) by Kazu Kibuishi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401314562-0U6APITVUVANTJ8RVTXF/Miranda_Hamilton.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401372925-52UA8EN6QYCHKHAN5NUV/Rothman_Ladies.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Ladies Drawing Night: Make Art, Get Inspired, Join the Party by Julia Rothman, Leah Goren, and Rachael Cole https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480401445236-RKRCKNQOOKJ7YCW7O7QP/West_Shrill.jpg Haley 2016 Top 10 Gallery Shrill: Women Are Funny, It's Okay to Be Fat, and Feminists Don't Have to Be Nice by Lindy West http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2016-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2016-11-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399131493-XI55KH8CAZ4HSL1VYGIE/Dayen_Chain.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud by David Dayen Want to get angry? Dayen's character-driven expose takes up where Michael Lewis's Big Short left off, in the chaotic, greedy aftermath of the real estate collapse. Among the millions—millions!—of homeowners herded into foreclosure as home values collapsed and sketchy mortgages came due, three Floridians followed the paper trail of their own foreclosures into a swamp of fraud and corruption, in which banks, mortgage servicers, and complicit judges swept aside law and centuries of legal precedent to hustle families out of their homes. You'll shake your head at the brazen deceit and at the rarity of the small but significant victories Dayen's three whistleblowers earned. And then you might pour yourself a stiff drink. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399131493-XI55KH8CAZ4HSL1VYGIE/Dayen_Chain.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud by David Dayen Want to get angry? Dayen's character-driven expose takes up where Michael Lewis's Big Short left off, in the chaotic, greedy aftermath of the real estate collapse. Among the millions—millions!—of homeowners herded into foreclosure as home values collapsed and sketchy mortgages came due, three Floridians followed the paper trail of their own foreclosures into a swamp of fraud and corruption, in which banks, mortgage servicers, and complicit judges swept aside law and centuries of legal precedent to hustle families out of their homes. You'll shake your head at the brazen deceit and at the rarity of the small but significant victories Dayen's three whistleblowers earned. And then you might pour yourself a stiff drink. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399161869-NU332BWLPNTCORC3VTRW/DeWitt_Last.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt How wonderful to have DeWitt's debut novel (which has nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie) back in print! The story of a brilliant (too brilliant?) mother trying to educate her brilliant (too brilliant?) son as he looks for a father figure (both of them using Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai as a model) is funny, moving, thrilling, and enlightening. And of course brilliant, but not in a merely show-offy way. Brilliance—its burdens, its excitement, its hungry necessity, its self-destructive impatience—is what gives the story its poignancy and its power. It's one of my favorite books of the century so far, and I expect it will remain so no matter how much of this century I see. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399193262-9MT16NQ57S44UBDN79MA/Greenwell_What.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell Garth Greenwell first came on my radar when he wrote an almost-convincing defense of Hanya Yanigahara's A Little Life. Now his own novel has come out, and I don't need anyone to convince me: it's fantastic. The story of a young American's—well, "affair" isn't the right word for a relationship whose terms, financial and otherwise, are always being negotiated—desire for a Bulgarian man he meets in a public bathroom in Sofia, What Belongs to You is written in thrillingly exact and observant language, equally knowing about human tenderness and cruelty. It's my first favorite book of the year, and we're only just getting started. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399209184-9HHQRG0FLCTD0HEL10IT/Jahren_Lab.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery Lab Girl by Hope Jahren Oh, this is a good one, the sort of book you feel has been welling up inside its author, waiting to burst out. An unlikely but wonderful amalgam of plant science (Jahren's specialty and passion) and memoir, Lab Girl is both finely crafted and raw: Jahren is a star scientist with a gift for explaining the miraculous poetry of plants, but she is equally eloquent about the desperate, single-minded passion that has driven her career and that sometimes seems like the only thing that's holding the lives of her and her lifelong work partner, Bill, together. The comparison to Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk (and to Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones, and Butter) is obvious, but that doesn't mean I won't make it when I push this book into your hands for the rest of the year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399259321-CDFC27ZMAZJKRWC1QYV3/London_Golden.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Golden Age by Joan London A polio hospital for children in Western Australia in the 1950s might not seem the most promising territory for a story of heart-catching beauty, but that's exactly what London's third novel is. I hate to crib from a publisher's blurb, but I can't improve on what Helen Garner calls it: "deeply benevolent." It's a story as sad as it is sweet, but there is a rare goodness to so many of the people within the hospital's walls, not least the two twelve-year-olds, the elders in this isolated society, who fall believably in love. With its wondrously exact language and its awareness of the bitterness of life alongside its beauty, The Golden Age reads like a minor-key companion to Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399282058-CBW5IRH6VT9HCAU9E25V/Morgan_Sport.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan "Is all this too purple, too florid?" C.E. Morgan suddenly, cheekily asks two-thirds of the way through her proudly purple and florid novel. "Do you prefer your tales lean, muscular, and dry?" If you do, you're in the wrong place if you open up The Sport of Kings, but I was hungry for a big and big-hearted novel to settle into, and boy did I get one. It's an epic story of Kentucky breeding, both human and equine, and Morgan takes to it with giant gulps of language, drama, and emotion. The next book I read is likely to feel small and timid by comparison with this thrilling, messy, brilliant yawp of a tale. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399303381-EIKTG2VZRGS2OAW2Z868/Scurr_Aubrey_US.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery John Aubrey, My Own Life by Ruth Scurr One of the most acclaimed books in the UK last year (Mary Beard called it a "game-changer") turns out to be as good as advertised. John Aubrey, one of the first modern biographers, was nearly lost to history himself, but Scurr has reclaimed his life, piecing together a biography as if it were his diary. And what a diary! Aubrey is a charming, fully human companion, funny, observant, anxious, and frank, equally sure of the truth of witchcraft and the new modern science. He knew everyone in Britain's tumultuous 17th century—Newton, Hobbes, Hooke, Milton, William Penn, Christopher Wren—and tirelessly gathered evidence of Britain's past while avoiding his creditors and the political dangers of his revolutionary time. He would have loved this book. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399321077-WSALU2TXP4E1A91VIN6Z/Tosches_Dino.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams by Nick Tosches You wouldn't think that the easy-going life of Dean Martin, who skated through a haze of booze, broads, and untold millions with a wink and a shrug, would provide such depths, but for Tosches, drawn to his broody loneliness and his effortless, Old World masculinity, he's the dream subject. His research was tireless—he got everybody to talk and found out how much Dino was paid for every gig, from small-time Ohio roadhouses to his soused, self-mocking headlining at the Sands—and those concrete details ground his lyrical descents into the abyss of Dino's nihilism and make them as devastating as his fantastic subtitle promises. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399345565-PX47CD6LHRAZEDKI05PY/Watson_Jane.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery Miss Jane by Brad Watson Do you want to read a book about good people in a hard but beautiful world? On a small southern farm in 1915, Jane Chisholm is born with an affliction that sets her apart, and is likely to continue to do so. How will she make a life? It's a question she proves more capable of answering than many others around her (who all carry their own human afflictions), and in Watson's graceful, compassionate hands, the story of her development is lonely and melancholy and so radiant with wonder and resolve that you might be forgiven if you think you've found a tiny utopia on the rough ground of east-central Mississippi. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1480399365123-585AP44WKGBER0GRIWJ9/Whitehead_Underground.jpg Tom 2016 Top 10 Gallery The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead The escape from slavery is one of the most powerful of American stories, but it usually leads in a single direction: north. Whitehead's railroad, as you might guess from the cover image, doesn't run in such a straight line. An escape might lead to a greater hell, or to an oddly unsettling heaven. Whitehead doesn't shy from the worst of slavery's horrors, but he nudges the history we know slightly off track (his underground railroad, for one thing, really isa railroad), opening up a space of strange uncertainty that he fills with a vividly human cast of characters, especially his hero, Cora. It's a colossally ambitious story, but Whitehead tells it with a light step, a heavy heart, and a breathtaking clarity. http://www.phinneybooks.com/new-gallery-1 daily 0.75 2016-11-29 http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2016-gallery daily 0.75 2016-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667818148-9X0JZV3OECLK6WF7SVRX/Bennett_Pond.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667818148-9X0JZV3OECLK6WF7SVRX/Bennett_Pond.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667829107-LJBEWUKYMDOFRRN3AW8V/Desmond_Evicted.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667842562-IB8WCH1OHEMNBAWFLY71/Erdrich_LaRose.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery LaRose: A Novel by Louise Erdrich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667858204-RWUI4GL0NVXXTU81UDM4/Faludi_Darkroom.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667910533-5B7PW1W0QDKM5VROT1DT/Hammer_Badass.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667924227-MOHK6MX7V9Y6UE8G584P/Jahren_Lab.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery Lab Girl by Hope Jahren https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667948836-R975P5SYBZPXMCMNFDGX/Jiles_News.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery News of the World: A Novel by Paulette Jiles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481667961682-SBBIW9H4EIKCYH5X1BWJ/Nelson_Red.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial by Maggie Nelson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481668033712-N5KQRL9C1RFTDKZT48VF/Palm_Riverine.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here by Angela Palm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481668068060-B3YCKR57VEY9M3H6Y11S/Proulx_Barkskins.jpg Kim Unread 2016 Gallery Barkskins: A Novel by Annie Proulx http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2016-gallery daily 0.75 2016-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481663996726-ESTOGW0UZRTC1ZLQAF3Q/Foenkinos_Charlotte.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery Charlotte: A Novel by David Foenkinos https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481663996726-ESTOGW0UZRTC1ZLQAF3Q/Foenkinos_Charlotte.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery Charlotte: A Novel by David Foenkinos https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481664060988-JC1F0QCTKS7DD4DIVGJ5/Fritzsche_Iron.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler by Peter Fritzsche https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481664072729-4NQ4AAPAH9J8K4RLF2IP/Harding_House.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481663945327-EUMA9THL9IEPR6QZKVKX/Hertmans_War.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery War & Turpentine: A Novel by Stefan Hertmans https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481664106552-Z8NCUSBELNNHGK9H76IO/Isherwood_Kathleen.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery Kathleen and Frank: The Autobiography of a Family by Christopher Isherwood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481664028782-U15I9LO49C7QMPG6WYWT/Lewis_March_Box.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery March (Trilogy box set) by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481664047922-EF6VHO4A10QO9HCO70IE/Sands_East.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity" by Philippe Sands https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481664019345-2C5SOGVSTBKVKU1E0EO8/Szalay_All.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery All That Man Is by David Szalay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481663962143-OQI6958KT9PVQ4UQ8P8C/Winters_Underground.jpg Liz Unread 2016 Gallery Underground Airlines: A Novel by Ben Winters http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2016-gallery daily 0.75 2016-12-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695449526-QFPEKBHS9KK8OA80EINF/Bascomb_Winter.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Superbomb by Neal Bascomb The book I've recommended without having read it—a great, true story that readers have loved—most enthusiastically this year. Perhaps I should read it myself! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695449526-QFPEKBHS9KK8OA80EINF/Bascomb_Winter.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Superbomb by Neal Bascomb The book I've recommended without having read it—a great, true story that readers have loved—most enthusiastically this year. Perhaps I should read it myself! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695520506-LNU9UBUKZTH83S0VQCAS/Borzutzky_Daniel.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky It took a National Book Award to get me to take a look, but I'm already drawn in by the inviting, existential opening pages. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695366887-CGTY3N62YK1PGTJXB14H/Collins_Whatever.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories by Kathleen Collins A collection of rediscovered stories from a pioneering filmmaker who died too young. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695354370-KDWPW1NAR7CK72Y0S90I/Desmond_Evicted.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Often Laura reads a book and then I feel like I don't have to, but when she likes it as much as she did this one, it follows me around until I do. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695529884-7PGK9VTXQK98PVMCLJQV/Dickinson_Traitor.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson Oh, the title of this recent SF/fantasy release alone is enough to draw me in, along with an excellent and convincing recommendation from a customer. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695567784-N9FW1W2BYM8IFDM1FQPX/Faludi_Darkroom.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi Despite fantastic reviews, despite Ann Patchett telling a packed house at Benaroya Hall that it's a masterpiece, and despite being named one of the New York Times's 10 Best of 2016, almost no one (in our store at least) has picked up Faludi's memoir of her discovery that her tyrannical, estranged father had sex-reassignment surgery in his 70s. And neither have I—yet! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695400603-P2TR9XEWFDXYFDYGOCLU/France_How.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France France's acclaimed, epic account updates, and may even replace, Randy Shilts's classic And the Band Played On as the definitive account of the AIDS crisis. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695550137-BU27WN9KA2IJHUMZCXQT/Godfrey_Other.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith An intriguing complement, a little heavier on the science, to the very popular Soul of an Octopus. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695433980-2U6IF7P6GAKWPXBDULQG/Green_Caught.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Caught by Henry Green Another wave in the perpetual rediscovery of the ambitious and innovative British novelist has arrived. I've loved the only one of his books I read (Living), and I've set this story of wartime Britain aside to be the next. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695485298-6I4AN1F6AYPUXK9H3114/Miscolta_Hola.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Hola and Goodbye: Una Familia in Stories by Donna Miscolta Hearing Donna read at our Dock Street Salon earlier this year made me eager for the release of her story collection, which just arrived in November. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695539299-UEBPE4DE080G3Z4JPT89/Murray_Music.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues edited by Paul Devlin One of the all-time great talkers, on his greatest subject. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695614496-IFX6ZE6E5E4JGKSWEY1F/Palmer_Version.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Version Control by Dexter Palmer I've been intrigued by this "near-future" tale ever since it came out, perhaps because it sounds William Gibson-ish to me, although reviewers compare it to all kinds of other writers, from Franzen to Rowling to Pynchon. Out soon in paperback! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695603838-25LWAV4RGYO84QPS4UF6/Phillips_+Blood.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips Phillips, a National Book Award-nominated poet, looks back at the violent removal, a hundred years ago, of the entire black population from Forsyth County, Georgia, which continued to be enforced for decades after, up to his own childhood there. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695588777-B60L73EILD0FCKMJCXS3/Quinones_Dreamland_pb.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones My only holdover from last year's list: my desire to read it has only grown stronger, especially after hearing Quinones's riveting interview on Marc Maron's WFT podcast. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695416133-M45DEQODCF7KD9K78NZI/Herriman_Krazy.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White by Michael Tisserand Oh, boy. Herriman's cryptic, elemental, hilarious comic Krazy Kat is one of the great achievements of American culture, but Herriman himself has largely been a cipher, so I'm hungry to read this first major biography, just out this month. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695378878-O7Y060YBJM1LFVJQXR3R/Ullrich_Hitler.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich Well, maybe it's finally time for me to read about how a modern democracy put an authoritarian madman in power. Ugh. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695464753-QD50F8T3SIQXOCLM2C0Y/Wiley_Bob.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery Bob Stevenson by Richard WIley Honestly, it's really that I love the cover so much, and the intriguing first page. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481695559575-LO3GCZY0JE5QX7ZYH8GK/Yong_Contain.jpg Tom Unread 2016 Gallery I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong My mind continues to be blown by the recently gained understanding of just how central our microbial symbiosis is to human biology and identity, and Yong's account is said to be marvelous. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-unread-2016-gallery daily 0.75 2016-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666924435-TNFB95CW2U3N877X5ENM/Blake_Three.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666924435-TNFB95CW2U3N877X5ENM/Blake_Three.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666892221-GTNC03JMT7HGRF44BXGX/Greenwood_Playing.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666819072-CMGCF5HABUWPVLFW21SG/Johnson_Wonderland.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666934968-6GNUVMKFP74FZ11TDOZR/Moore_Last.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666952118-IL1PVX5VVDTHM0CT650X/Pennypacker_Pax.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Pax by Sara Pennypacker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666883016-951KALRMSFF6Z7TH9C73/Shetterly_Hidden.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666873957-VSZXZVOFPQAAZ95H5BMW/Smith_Swing.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Swing Time by Zadie Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666854090-AXV0JLEI8VYEFGABT8FH/Stewart_Lady.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Lady Cop Makes Trouble: A Kopp Sisters Novel by Amy Stewart https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666844318-8SNBOTI8SUNWIQEXPZL5/Vyleta_Smoke.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery Smoke: A Novel by Dan Vyleta https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666834636-3PKTGN1WSJGS8VVATKI7/Whitehead_Underground.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481666915887-2P4SGYUFUNTJA23DMTA0/Wohlleben_Trees.jpg Haley Unread 2016 Gallery The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben http://www.phinneybooks.com/picture-books-2017-gallery daily 0.75 2017-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151532790-B5SESMKL6UQXAF5624VE/Alemagna_Magical.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery On a Magical Do-Nothing Day by Beatrice Alemagna https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151532790-B5SESMKL6UQXAF5624VE/Alemagna_Magical.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery On a Magical Do-Nothing Day by Beatrice Alemagna https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151036262-O65AEPK3M7545W10IQ5T/Ashman_Rain.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery Rain! story by Linda Ashman, pictures by Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151243353-UEZKWF3JIZBYD27QB4A9/Barnett_Wolf.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151110789-LSJAMEVZIH9X0SG3GZ0K/Jenkins_Greyhound.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery A Greyhound, a Groundhog written by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Chris Appelhans https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151210337-AJLKUUJSY1GMMU5U3510/Kim_Halmoni.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery Where's Halmoni? by Julie Kim https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151280124-WMFOI7TJHR9SNNL4CL8G/Lamothe_This.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151185020-8DBWGNXZQNPPBSZBA4X2/Luyken_Mistakes.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151151673-EX4PU45TM3FIBVA4RADL/Schwartz_Town.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery Town Is by the Sea written by Jeanne Schwartz, illustrated by Sydney Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513151070193-FPVOK4L0T9GKGH0JWF10/Stosuy_Music.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery Music Is... written by Brandon Stosuy, illustrated by Amy Martin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513192802685-A5BAIK2EL7NF7FZPZM94/Sullivan_Sasquatch.jpg Picture Books 2017 Gallery Get Dressed, Sasquatch! by Derek and Kyle Sullivan http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2017-gallery daily 0.75 2017-12-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058268401-8BHDBGRNDEUH8ZSPA2XU/Lahens_Moonbath.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Moonbath by Yanick Lahens Back to Haiti https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058268401-8BHDBGRNDEUH8ZSPA2XU/Lahens_Moonbath.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Moonbath by Yanick Lahens Back to Haiti https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058328771-0QOTECFUY9O15450R8WL/Depestre_Adriana.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058357438-L7FN8CL2ES1OVJI30K7Y/Fermor_Violins.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery The Violins of Saint-Jacques by Patrick Leigh Fermor His only novel, set on a fictional island that seems like Haiti https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058422641-73C95IXNYZSDYVG5EZPT/Minato_Penance.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Penance by Kanae Minato Japanese crime https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058460407-6BMXM4KPBLUEW2CPOBYY/Yokoyama_Six.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058487915-V7K8E4OEM1CE4CUZBSWP/Maupassant_Like.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Like Death by Guy de Maupassant My TBR shelf is now stocked with old Russians but I also want to read more 19th C. Lit from everywhere, starting with this. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058550473-E1CJCG8MNV2FNKLUNJFK/Nagle_Kill.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right by Angela Nagle More reading to find out how we got here. George Saunders called it a "headbutt" of a book. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058618879-D56TLQU3PSDB1PY7MOL9/Akkad_American.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery American War by Omar El Akkad First batch of 2017 books going into paperback... https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058661670-0PYTFH7PWR6MVFQWYU0T/Robinson_2140.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513058686270-WGQ23MYHMBW1Z1Y8ZD98/Whipple_Someone.jpg Liz Unread 2017 Gallery Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple Hmmm—after two dystopian novels set in the near-future US, let's end on an upbeat note: the only title available in the US by the most delightful author I read in 2017! http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2017-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2017-11-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852016621-4R9IJMBVBLIRY3M6FX6L/Alexievich_Womanly.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852016621-4R9IJMBVBLIRY3M6FX6L/Alexievich_Womanly.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852084676-3IC9S16UHWV2VVQGTCX8/Cusk_Transit.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery Transit by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511997569762-PQ0C7VEIP88DFRC86BCU/Hughes_Lonely.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511997515289-NBRMVNUV1124A726S8EM/Khvoshchinskaya_City.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852302589-WZQUOYUKF753MMCPWY5Z/Louis_Eddy.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852106904-P41QFH6PY5PRZWN2B34Z/McGregor_Reservoir.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852276318-16DDAZOHKFOBUTACWBJF/Perry_Essex.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852235076-ZPN4IGE3O95ODP3IW8V6/Pomerantsev_Nothing.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852195407-XDNOVIEUU1GKD2YDIRQ3/Snyder_Tyranny.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511851883251-AMOT1GH7S1OLXOR1LTZ8/Turgenev_Home.jpg Liz 2017 Top 10 Gallery Home of the Gentry by Ivan Turgenev http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2017-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2017-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854273655-P22E27CGCMSNUOA2QZF7/Alexie_You.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854273655-P22E27CGCMSNUOA2QZF7/Alexie_You.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854411432-570QSYHYGINXDS14J8BJ/Collins_Whatever.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories by Kathleen Collins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854235566-VHTPWCAM17XM6E6AWNZN/Dederer_Love.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning by Claire Dederer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854319115-U352YUSYPH75E7PZ63I9/Desmond_Evicted_pb.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853900796-4CH95G4QA3AAIQXVAM04/Fuller_Swimming.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854351263-QX42SZO613CMAX5J2FYR/Gaitskill_Bad.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Bad Behavior: Stories by Mary Gaitskill https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854558034-F8MBUVJ0V002WOLSHMMH/Gay_Difficult.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Difficult Women by Roxane Gay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854374585-5905XD6DF5BV19H2VT66/Hadley_Bad.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854474337-JCX5XH04QI1W9JRYPPCE/Machado_Her.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854119920-BY9JXA8W8YDWO6SYDCHC/McClanahan_Sarah.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854188289-DHILCY97Q32F7SY8YRTU/Mohr_Sirens.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery Sirens: A Memoir by Joshua Mohr https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854154404-71DEJY1BUFOT8MDO7QUA/Spark_Prime.jpg Kim 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark http://www.phinneybooks.com/lauren-2017-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2017-11-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511938781069-BOF53LF459RXHEQWDRHY/Barnes_Nightwood.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery Nightwood by Djuna Barnes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511938781069-BOF53LF459RXHEQWDRHY/Barnes_Nightwood.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery Nightwood by Djuna Barnes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856710278-5JU85WFGUYWMIFXEWJV4/Bellamy_Looking.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856596925-NLBQF5A58H0JN8CELWG3/Ferrante_Brilliant.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856751302-XPE47MQ8TLNTG7YAZ4HX/Lewis_Tarr.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery Tarr by Wyndham Lewis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856451599-9W5VT4AMKN6AU01YDZQS/Lispector_Hour.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856673564-9VZENMRT0XBWYKRSEL44/Nabokov_Insomniac.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856787302-ANDRDHZKGJLIXARAGRTV/Nelson_Argonauts_pb.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856622501-JQRW3C45RVRAZR33HNZ3/Saunders_Tenth.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery Tenth of December by George Saunders https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856524427-5LHM22R39VJ7AENCK55S/Sepulveda_Garden.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Garden of Peculiarities by Jesús Sepúlveda https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856812373-4WXUXS1RVEKR1Y7JQ2QJ/Solnit_Field.jpg Lauren 2017 Top 10 Gallery A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2017-gallery daily 0.75 2017-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147654526-YH85CWU62FREI8UZ5R14/Lee_Pachinko_pb.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery Pachinko by Min Jin Lee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147654526-YH85CWU62FREI8UZ5R14/Lee_Pachinko_pb.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery Pachinko by Min Jin Lee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147676440-3O3DF4SWQUENH94WUJRF/Lockwood_Priestdaddy.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147715399-LSYLOZN2YN8O6M5G6NHO/Grann_Killers.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147742492-FFNLMAAE6IGJJIHS5DI1/Weaver_Pencil.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery The Pencil Perfect by Caroline Weaver https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147766437-1JGNHG26QE11TN8IT7ZV/Barry_Days_pb.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery Days Without End by Sebastian Barry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147792044-PMVI44CVAP4XKBSGDMQ0/Perry_Essex.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147822917-JXQDT9A0F4K2NF661EG2/Hammer_Bad_pb.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147851766-64LHMAMQ53EPB7QQCOZ0/Ng_Little.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147915518-Q3460WY1Z5BR03WNAJ3X/Ferris_Monsters.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513147875949-H2QZ183A040DZFNZX1EA/Boyne_Heart.jpg Kim Unread 2017 Gallery The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne http://www.phinneybooks.com/phinney-by-post-kids-gallery daily 0.75 2025-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547400864-8MPW1MN33DU8G9MZSOLS/Imai_Brown.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #1: January 2016 Mr. Brown's Fantastic Hat by Ayano Imai https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547400864-8MPW1MN33DU8G9MZSOLS/Imai_Brown.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #1: January 2016 Mr. Brown's Fantastic Hat by Ayano Imai https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547526375-XYRA0SNE6NO62U4OC9ZC/Higgins_Bruce.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #2: February 2016 Mother Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547618418-XQGH1GSYW5T6KAJ6GTIS/Teckentrup_Tree.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #3: March 2016 Tree by Britta Teckentrup https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547671448-XAOZMP2D44UJLVPVUI7U/Kaplan_Betty.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #4: April 2016 Betty Bunny Loves Chocolate Cake written by Michael B. Kaplan, illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547800499-SY5C2J5OAZP14JQX0RX8/Tallec_Olivier.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #5: May 2016 Who Done It? by Olivier Tallec https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547853460-GUQDMA80B2OSDKDNXFMC/Alexie_Thunder.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #6: June 2016 Thunder Boy Jr. written by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Yuyi Morales https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547940087-RFCTYDFUDG28C8DBPC12/Dotlich_One.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #7: July 2016 One Day, the End written by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, illustrated by Fred Koehler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548019469-V1SJI9KO37N4YN152H7H/McClure_Waiting.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #8: August 2016 Waiting for High Tide by Nikki McClure https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548106354-C4S4H36O7V4S02V6Y1XL/Bryan_Girl.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #9: September 2016 A Girl and Her Gator written by Sean Bryan, illustrated by Tom Murphy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548168000-35LGPY0PUHI18WR5YQLY/Escoffier_Trumpet.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #10: October 2016 Have You Seen My Trumpet? written by Michael Escoffier, illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548252647-A3ABLKVU7LWM5D1YYN6N/Ellis_Du.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #11: November 2016 Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548312489-6J7WD1CF1D8JU1WR6F6A/Beaty_Ada.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #12: December 2016 Ada Twist, Scientist written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548383474-KODLA4IJI6QVXHFJVHMH/Cronin_Lost.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #13: January 2017 The Lost House by B.B. Cronin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548450435-AQ4IFCR4TWCGAOBMCJU4/Jenkins_Greyhound.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #14: February 2017 A Greyhound, A Groundhog written by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Chris Appelhans https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548523376-JL244RLZ3FWPRO09WLKC/Brosgul_Leave.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #15: March 2017 Leave Me Alone! by Vera Brosgol https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548573956-1VSEGICBS547Y32Z1PAD/Barnett_Noisy.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #16: April 2017 Noisy Night written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Brian Biggs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548689349-124IXI5WXZLY01PAZZ0U/Lehrer_Rocket.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #17: May 2017 Rocket Boy by Damon Lehrer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548825160-JQUMIM5YPXZZN5LPQCSJ/Graegin_Fox.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #18: June 2017 Little Fox in the Forest by Stephanie Graegin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548887303-BH7LVROLNRCEH5ZL24RG/Kvasnosky_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #19: July 2017 Little Wolf's First Howling by Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Kate Harvey McGee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549068655-FIP4Q6TE7ZL30NCK2W1M/Lamothe_This.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #20: August 2017 This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549215560-8Q0V0R5W5GSXM10B525N/Ishida_Chibi.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #21: September 2017 Chibi Samurai Wants a Pet by Sanae Ishida https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549305362-0UVDF8C8STJ23RCBKNGI/Atteberry_Swamp.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #22: October 2017 I Love You More Than the Smell of Swamp Gas by Kevan Atteberry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549361733-HDS840NPZZY4TATZLH7N/Segal_Mitzi.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #23: November 2017 Tell Me a Mitzi written by Lore Segal, illustrated by Harriet Pincus https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549416355-MZZIS7LJIAXQHX6U6SNQ/Jeffers_Here.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #24: December 2017 Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809140298-MX34ZCJLYV8E4HIS9IB2/Barnett_Wolf.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #25: January 2018 The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809153662-OHE5BJ7CPZT6SKA08CN1/Slate_Marcel.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #26: February 2018 Marcel the Shell: The Most Surprised I’ve Ever Been by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809165183-V4YCDCE1FOFHJKHB2EH3/Charlip_Fortunately.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #27: March 2018 Fortunately by Remy Charlip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809181867-SJK1XGLZWFJD3ASV7Z59/Slater_Antlered.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #28: April 2018 The Antlered Ship written by Dashka Slater, illustrated by the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809195228-ZFAU2WZ7D0OQY8AHTCAF/Diaz_Islandborn.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #29: May 2018 Islandborn written by Junot Díaz, illustrated by Leo Espinosa https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809207184-YRXOXV47LAURHWGVCQVJ/Tamaki_They.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #30: June 2018 They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809220810-YJ3UXNG1WNQ0SXD5HD9K/Yoshitake_Still.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #31: July 2018 Still Stuck by Shinsuke Yoshitake https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809278969-8BLC427YE04S3V7D33EF/Adbage_Grand.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #32: August 2018 The Grand Expedition by Emma Adbage https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809304378-3K685W9N763YQAN4DK5N/Lin_Big.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #33: September 2018 A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809318205-N1XP080UPBV9A9WWSIFU/Lohr_Wimmelbook_Animals.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #34: October 2018 My Big Wimmelbook: Animals Around the World by Stefan Lohr https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809329760-ITU5BGGU8H40095LTSYY/DeLaPena_Carmela.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #35: November 2018 Carmela Full of Wishes written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809343266-209PSNB4SO0EINRDPLK7/Lies_Got.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #36: December 2018 Got to Get to Bear’s by Brian Lies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809355543-DDIYC88VO6EY4HH4KA41/Kousky_Harold.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #37: January 2019 Harold Loves His Woolly Hat by Vern Kousky https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809367512-OK4WEL6BG0EPDV869ZQG/Soundor_Snug.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #38: February 2019 You’re Snug with Me written by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Poonam Mistry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809380142-I0K1W97UZV6P5PNSHQV9/Beaty_Madame.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #39: March 2019 Happy Birthday, Madame Chapeau written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809392099-2L8NH14U9MF2R0MZ1UV8/Mabbitt_Can.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #40: April 2019 I Can Only Draw Worms by Will Mabbitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809406489-73HO3PZJFXP9BTC5XU79/Robinson_Another.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #41: May 2019 Another by Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809419901-GPQSPP82IAFU9XYVG85R/Asch_Yellow.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #42: June 2019 Yellow Yellow written by Frank Asch, illustrated by Mark Alan Stamaty https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809431814-CK4QRSUBXF11JMVQVNK6/Smouha_Sock.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #43: July 2018 Sock Story written by C.K. Smouha, illustrated by Eleonora Marton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809441174-NG9ZA45PA7K2XWOUKN1X/Shea_Kid.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #44: August 2019 Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads written by Bob Shea, illustrated by Lane Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809448899-0VUMKB9048GW73SQF5UT/Wenzel_Stone.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #45: September 2019 A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809459396-5J848C44O67RFWVI3RM4/Ferry_Scarecrow.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #46: October 2019 The Scarecrow written by Beth Ferry, illustrated by the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809467394-H7YWDLXLS03XB15WYAU2/Lin_Big_Bed.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #47: November 2019 A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603066701528-NLN2A2YS5TCHRPJ7X1PS/Volker_Million.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #48: December 2019 A Million Dots by Sven Volker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603066894830-613PXEQIVKNRYIE91H7K/More_Saturday.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #49: January 2020 Saturday by Oge Mora https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603066976479-VCAHZDS41I4FAWT4DH8X/Nicholls_Button.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #50: February 2020 The Button Book by Sally Nicholls and Bethan Woollyin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067050567-1VTHT4CZ76FK2LUS2P2Z/Meloy_Everyone.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #51: March 2020 Everyone’s Awake by Colin Meloy and Shawn Harris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067126025-ASL0B56NBB8PB3X49VWR/Keret_Long.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #52: April 2020 Long-Haired Cat-Boy Cub by Etgar Keret and Aviel Basil https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067357077-9BLQEG79XEAHXR8UP2PP/Brown_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #53: May 2020 The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067446730-7MZ264U6RAYV4KEAOST3/Ahlberg_Postman.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #54: June 2020 The Jolly Postman, or Other People’s Letters by Janet and Allan Ahlberg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067516978-68H9Y357HYLQ9RQYVEDW/Sterer_From.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #55: July 2020 From Ed’s to Ned’s by Gideon Sterer and Lucy Ruth Cummings https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067586002-SNFB5DBIKO2554YF40GQ/Fogliano_Just.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #56: August 2020 Just in Case You Want to Fly by Julie Fogliano and Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067639443-1LF1S5CRBPV4503H1NHW/Vendel_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #57: September 2020 Little Fox by Edward Van De Vendel and Marije Tolman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067765563-YZ40S8AB2G0XH502RA7O/Thornburgh_Skulls.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #58: October 2020 Skulls! by Blair Thornburgh and Scott Campbell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753335015-6KAF7K9U2MC68JO1UMHJ/Ball_Feather.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #59: November 2020 Flip-a-Feather by Sara Ball https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753355800-48525UTSW5T7OB1BTIH4/Haldar_No.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #60: December 2020 No Reading Allowed: The Worst Read-Aloud Book Ever by Raj Haldar, Chris Carpenter, and Bryce Gladfelter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753370335-0QLGCH7MMJ1G59PTYDOH/Rex_Gum.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #61: January 2021 On Account of the Gum by Adam Rex https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753428931-VI1QAB6JXIE4NYZ3VDHB/Loomis_Ohana.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #62: February 2021 ‘Ohana Means Family by Ilima Loomis and Kenard Pak https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021579135-JSX3H5NOTM9HZTNJVU1M/Camper_Ten.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #63: March 2021 Ten Ways to Hear Snow by Cathy Camper and Kenard Pak https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021591627-65ZCOS9M6TLQ9HG751U0/Goffstein_Fish.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #64: April 2021 Fish for Supper by M.B. Goffstein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021601788-HVQARV94A7MDCDYRJ2AR/Eggers_Lights.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #65: May 2021 The Lights and Types of Ships at Night by Dave Eggers and Annie Dills https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021631204-983DUEHHHK876XMSKFHH/Hwang_Toasty.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #66: June 2021 Toasty by Sarah Hwang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021950468-P2WAZM19X5JMHA3BXDH2/Robert_Other.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #67: July 2021 On the Other Side of the Forest by Nadine Robert and Gerard DuBois https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086519443-J18ZKC3DJ2ADTEPKF39A/Prahin_Ship.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #68: August 2021 Ship in a Bottle by Andrew Prahin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086568553-POL37050SXBQ24L41RQ6/Baek_Moon.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #69: September 2021 Moon Pops by Henna Baek https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086585524-TVTD9NA73F6ZI1KO74V7/Sima_Hardley.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #70: October 2021 Hardly Haunted by Jessie Sima https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086627338-26V7JXS1Q90AL7KS0EDN/Mann_Camping.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #71: November 2021 The Camping Trip by Jennifer K. Mann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356942331-77Y7ZFMO8F90EN9T1LW3/Morstad_Time.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #72: December 2021 Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356963319-LNXKFLHGWU02X81TRV6E/Gauld_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #73: January 2022 The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902009637-80M20OZ019IZLUISP85H/Shapiro_Carol.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #74: February 2022 Carol and the Pickle Toad by Esme Shapiro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902086286-GASM3TH949WGACUBP7JK/Forsythe_Mina.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #75: March 2022 Mina by Matthew Forsythe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902103384-3JW4PU11F2CNMPE0S0S2/Young_Emile.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #76: April 2022 Emile and the Field by Kevin Young and Chioma Ebinama https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902340880-F38JMOSCZXN7INYWD176/LloydJones_Tiny.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #77: May 2022 Tiny Cedric by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Rowboat Watkins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902385770-WMBPX58S5ZHWLOO3NGWI/Fan_Lizzy.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #78: June 2022 Lizzy and the Cloud by the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659473093940-4H9S6Z4U3U628O9ODTM0/Wahl_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #79: July 2022 Little Witch Hazel: A Year in the Forest by Phoebe Wahl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659473159989-F8TW2LB52ERW9HD6HIE6/Oziewicz_Feelings.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #80: August 2022 What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking by Tina Oziewicz and Aleksandra Zajac, translated by Jennifer Croft https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158224231-FZH6DBEFVFA58LJNPE78/Yum_Twins.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #81: September 2022 The Twins’ Blanket by Hyewon Yum https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158292401-D49C9FOYURA48GVS01YG/Blackall_Farmhouse.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #82: October 2022 Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158309073-9VF4W9QTLNWBI8PCZEOC/Seve_Kitten.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #83: November 2022 This Story Is Not About a Kitten by Randall de Seve and Carson Ellis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158325195-S97OHKL24XZ87WODRYDI/Kuo_Luminous.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #84: December 2022 Luminous: Living Things That Light Up the Night by Julia Kuo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158580506-VE7LF5K86PJW0213UTSV/Corbet_Animal.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #85a: January 2023 Animal Land Where There Are No People by Sybil and Katharine Corbet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158979106-DUIT103CKG096AOY38UQ/Hoban_How_Tom.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #85b: January 2023 How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677894898108-EILE3COVJ13K8482MRUX/Tate_Sweeter.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #86: February 2023 What’s Sweeter by June Tate https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454227943-QYONQW8GRBMB1YR156N8/Dorleans_Our.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #87: March 2023 Our Fort by Marie Dorléans https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454384917-BUQNES3O13P6KHTKOECC/Lui_Frank.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #88: April 2023 Meet Frank by Mavis Lai https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454460797-C6O34H04F286KRR6MX82/Hest_Sometimes.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #89: May 2023 Sometimes It’s Nice to Be Alone by Amy Hest and Philip C. Stead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454923306-B7C4AU7ZNPU93TFJ3DUC/Skorpen_Tired.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #90: June 2023 We Were Tired of Living in a House by Liesel Moak Skorpen and Doris Burn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454960589-5RPP8H9KHGFVR1R412UM/Bagley_Maurice.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #91: July 2023 Maurice by Jessixa Bagley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455000174-6Q7IGM2FK7YBCI6BYOPK/Luyken_ABC.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #92: August 2023 ABC and You and Me by Corinna Luyken https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455069591-E2I7W4XHEZOJ3QK4S8R5/Warburg_My.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #93: September 2023 My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat by Sandol Stoddard Warburg and Remy Charlie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455112328-F3LPHLX616YQVBE2KY67/Piercey_Grand.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #94: October 2023 Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball by Rachel Piercey and Freya Hartas https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455218881-RHKCH3M4JZYMGXAXPYX3/Clanton_Ploof.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #95: November 2023 Ploof by Ben Clanton and Andy Chou Musser https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751412697218-VR34XMBKS7AVQUF37YI2/Rex_Aunts.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #96: December 2023 Oh No, the Aunts Are Here by Adam Rex and Lian Cho https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068577798-4P9YO7OXD54IL25DBHFJ/McPhail_Truffle.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #97: January 2024 Truffle by David McPhail https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068591217-SF4XZQHNJOXPCDLMRNHW/Mack_Time.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #98: February 2024 Time to Make Art by Jeff Mack https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068611481-FOV8XM81GB3EHB50HSDB/Sedaris_Pretty.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #99: March 2024 Pretty Ugly written by David Sedaris, illustrated by Ian Falconer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068623785-DTD5370O7T99CVWYHQP5/Alexander_Thingamajig.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #100: April 2024 The Thingamajig by Rilla Alexander https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068635076-JLAQQBXA062GQG0LIN3N/Fraser_Mavis.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #101: May 2024 Mavis the Bravest written by Lu Fraser, illustrated by Sarah Warburton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068646154-4OJ6PQ5KKB5YCKYA3V7J/Sala_If.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #102: June 2024 If You Run Out of Words by Felicita Sala https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068655668-DQY5ZYE44C1PIEV5WT79/Marentette_Rumie.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #103: July 2024 Rumie Goes Rafting by Meghan Marentette https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068665109-JS1QMXF3YJS9HW5CUE61/Fang_Human.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #104: August 2024 We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068679596-UVJVNREG6SE83NSYZVKQ/Jeffers_Dictionary.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #105: September 2024 The Dictionary Story written by Oliver Jeffers, illustrated by Sam Winston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068691521-1OEUSQLFQDHY6TG687ML/Camp_Aldo.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #106: October 2024 Aldo: Ghost Dog by Joaquin Camp https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068704759-W3UYVP3INPKN4TV8HFYA/Wells_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #107: November 2024 The Little Chefs by Rosemary Wells https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068715543-UXPA110YVPDPPPABOPMK/MacKay_Frostfire.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #108: December 2024 Frostfire by Elly MacKay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068725524-0B910V8W7QWXD7CY1YS0/Takeuchi_All.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #109: January 2025 All in a Year by Chihiro Takeuchi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068743196-I8XA1RBRPEPOZMZDZCPU/Clark_Needed.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #110: February 2025 We Needed a You written by M.H. Clark, illustrated by Olivia Holden https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068752521-Q3E9QGOL4DEKEPALG9K0/Awan_Every.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #111: March 2025 Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068762179-B7AGAUZ82441ADIIPMB5/Clanton_Papilio.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #112: April 2025 Papilio by Ben Clanton, Corey R. Tabor, and Andy Chou Musser https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068770951-OB17V9EO2EZD49U3MXDZ/Pantaleo_Music.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #113: May 2025 And There Was Music by Marta Pantaleo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068783269-S5B17Y8M9IZELODBC4YB/Stead_Anything.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #114: June 2025 Anything written by Rebecca Stead, illustrated by Gracey Zhang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068793275-L4VJ0QNNQWFAE2U0L75B/Alves_Owls.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #115: July 2025 Time for Bed, Little Owls written by Katja Alves, illustrated by Andrea Stregmaier https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068806569-H2SAJLPR7WG5QQMEFANQ/Jackson_Sleeper.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #116: August 2025 The Sleeper Train written by Mick Jackson, illustrated by Baljinder Kaur https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068817515-W4TA7HU4ZRKLKMQS8MS6/Borando_Short.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #117: September 2025 Short Stories by Silvia Bocando https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068826505-CKVFP4EVVD3BUTVEAIMP/Lies_Cat.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #118: October 2025 Cat Nap by Brian Lies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068873766-P1WWJ6JZCK3JGHVKZG89/Gottwald_Buzz.jpg Phinney by Post Kids Gallery - Book #119: November 2025 Buzz! Boom! Bang!: The Book of Sounds by Benjamin Gottwald http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2017-gallery daily 0.75 2017-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148832354-XLVGA2REHU4RRXSF857U/Bannos_Vivian.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148832354-XLVGA2REHU4RRXSF857U/Bannos_Vivian.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513149075250-8IJHS9KQP0RYUB4HCP0D/Boyne_Heart.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513194147694-R7ZQOFCXWGDEEL8VPEYW/Erpenbeck_Go.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148988426-XPUBWB51S6M8E412HNWO/Gurba_Mean.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Mean by Myriam Gurba https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148772676-M6LGMTU9ZM0XQQAY0MHS/Habash_Stephen.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148943654-J8A5XCQGPWI7UFCYWMIP/Pullman_Dust.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148690975-ZRFNHF3AM8E6S84ITOBV/Rothstein_Color.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148731229-CGE9D2XVMYRQQZ78ON3N/Searls_Inkblots.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing by Damion Searls https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148799319-LH32ZMXDKCU0OJELP2C1/Silber_Improvement.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Improvement by Joan Silber https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513148922134-WDGD2GSIL3I87UYAB66E/Smith_Dont.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513149041964-5HE2J0Y5J7J82C14DELL/Szilagyi_Daughters.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Daughters of the Air by Anca L. Szilagyi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513194073433-XQBXI9Z7W7UOXEZC13MD/Young_Bunk.jpg Tom Unread 2017 Gallery Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News by Kevin Young http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2017-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2017-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853463716-57XEHIHZXL2I7CPNDVQN/Alexie_You.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie Sherman Alexie's memoir—an unsparing, grief-torn, angry, and admiring portrait of his late mother that is equally unsparing toward himself—seems like one of the must-read books of the year, especially for fellow Seattleites who have been following his career for decades. And I highly recommend that if you do read it (you should!), you do so by listening: Alexie is one of our great raconteurs no matter what he's reading, but this book in particular feels like the full-throated cry of a survivor, circling around the cruelties, the poverty, and the love of his childhood in prose and poetry whose blunt anguish and repeated incantations find their true medium when spoken aloud. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853463716-57XEHIHZXL2I7CPNDVQN/Alexie_You.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie Sherman Alexie's memoir—an unsparing, grief-torn, angry, and admiring portrait of his late mother that is equally unsparing toward himself—seems like one of the must-read books of the year, especially for fellow Seattleites who have been following his career for decades. And I highly recommend that if you do read it (you should!), you do so by listening: Alexie is one of our great raconteurs no matter what he's reading, but this book in particular feels like the full-throated cry of a survivor, circling around the cruelties, the poverty, and the love of his childhood in prose and poetry whose blunt anguish and repeated incantations find their true medium when spoken aloud. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852675928-A7DGRDT7W59A32VIOVMF/Coates_Eight.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates As impressive and conversation-changing as Coates's last book, Between the World and Me, was, it felt like part of a larger project, incomplete without his earlier memoir, The Beautiful Struggle, and his ongoing reporting in the Atlantic. His new book collects thoseAtlantic articles, many of which were publishing events of their own (especially the centerpiece, "The Case for Reparations," which builds the case for the "plunder" Coates alludes to in Between the World and Me), and he knits them together with autobiographical reflections that include some of the fiercest writing in the book. Coates traces the rise and fall of hope in Obama's eight years, and his pride and reluctance in his own rise as one of our country's most influential thinkers. It's a complicated, larger book, full of changes of mind and grim conclusions, and it might be his best yet. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853640925-SGJDTG2UCUBZC4Y4LHZH/Dederer_Love.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning by Claire Dederer "And there she is. That horrible girl." In the middle of life, after decades of working, marrying, and mothering responsibly, Dederer suddenly felt the restless desires of a teenager welling up again, driving her to revisit her youth as a "disastrous pirate slut of a girl." Love and Trouble has all the charm and insight of her excellent first memoir,Poser, but it digs down to a further stratum of self-examination and candor. Amid the comfortably familiar trappings of her story (e.g. her Ave rat's map of the U District circa 1984), she is discomfitingly, fearlessly frank about what it was—and is—like to desire, and to be desired. As a memoir of an adventurous, intelligent woman looking back on her Seattle youth, it belongs right next to Mary McCarthy's classic Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853313625-V3OCNRAXKIFGLGQDYPCF/Ferris_Monsters.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery My Favorite Thing Is Monsters (Part One) by Emil Ferris I've been antsy to write about this breathtaking book, but we sold out of our small first batch and waited months for a reprint. Now we have it back in the store (for the time being), so let me declare: it's hard to imagine there will be a book with more drama, beauty, and power published this year than Ferris's debut graphic novel, about a girl obsessed with monster magazines and the monstrosity of life around her. The story may be drawn like a sketchbook on three-hole-punched notebook pages, but every page is composed with exquisite virtuosity, all in the service of a story that feels like it had to be told. As young Karen's brother tells her, "the best way to get through hard things is to draw your way through." One-of-a-kind and unforgettable. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852918056-26I9NW4UOCRK93CGLZZX/Kassabova_Border.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova "Once near a border, it is impossible not to be involved, not to want to exorcise or transgress something." The border Kassabova is drawn to is the territory where Turkey, Greece, and her native Bulgaria meet, but for all the wonderful specificity of her portraits of the people who live and travel through there—smugglers, refugees, cops, generous hosts, opportunists, and a whole history of Ottomans, Stalinists, and the forgotten pawns of empire—she also evokes the distorting, destructive, seductive effects those arbitrary national edges have on all of us. With the observant humor of Elif Batuman, the eerie historical gravity of W.G. Sebald, and an open-minded, world-weary curiosity all her own, her Border is a fantastic, fascinating book for our time or any time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852846442-51LKTUDDMDDWKRAH346B/Li_Dear.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li Here's the best way to say how much I like this book: when I read, I turn down the corners of pages to remind me to write down a memorable quote later. In good books I might do this a few times, in great books a few dozen times. In my copy of Dear Friend, almost every other corner is turned down. It's a hard book to describe, beginning with its unwieldy title (a quote from Katherine Mansfield): it's a book of essays, but it reads like a single, desperate search for meaning. It's a memoir of changing cultures and languages, of surviving the desire for suicide, of choosing to be a writer, but it doesn't have the tidy shape of the usual memoir. Li lives by writing and reading, and it feels like no exaggeration to say her life is at stake every time she picks up her pen. It might be the best book I read this year; I'll be rereading it before the year's out to be sure. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853030979-58UKR5KTTJDGSO5M22YA/Mohr_Sirens.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Sirens: A Memoir by Joshua Mohr Josh Mohr drank immensely, consumed every drug he could, and did unspeakable things he now does his best to speak of. And then when he got clean he had a stroke. Sirens is his first memoir after five books of fiction set in the same Mission District demimonde he's worked his way out of: in it, he's unsparing about everything but artful too, and generous to everyone he writes about, even himself. It's hard to write about recovery without falling into cliches, but Mohr brings a sense of open-hearted adventure and romance to what has been—and remains—a life-or-death struggle. Death is never far away in this book, but life is everywhere too. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852749503-F5J8QJ2TS2EHTT5MI0L8/Murphy_Long.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy Maybe you saw that recent map that showed that the most common job in 29 of the 50 states is truck driver, but when was the last time you read a book by one? Finn Murphy is an anomaly: the black sheep of a bookish family who, drawn by the quick money, hard work, and rough camaraderie, dropped out of college to drive trucks and kept at it for most of the next forty years. He developed a specialty—long-distance executive moves—that has given him a unique window into America from top to bottom, and his memoir is both thoroughly entertaining and as sharp an analysis of our class system as you'll find. It's hilarious, smart, insightful, brash, and sweet: pour yourself a "Dr. Cola" (Murphy's road beverage of choice) and enjoy. It's easily one of my favorite books of the year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853547375-T5HMHXOVZPFP5HFK0I1S/Shopsin_Arbitrary.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin First of all, Arbitrary Stupid Goal is not about football. (It's just a funny cover.) It is, ostensibly, about the general store Tamara Shopsin's parents ran in Greenwich Village, which they turned into a diner so they could keep making rent, and which became a small, secret legend. But it's really about the old, weird Village, where freaks, crooks, artists, and general misfits—the "fringe people" who were the true lifeblood of the city—made a community. Shopsin grew up there, crawling among the diners' legs, then bussing tables and cooking while building a career as a graphic designer (it's her funny cover), and her appealing, oddball memoir, crammed with people and anecdotes like Shopsin's messy menu, will make you think she got just about the best human education possible. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511852975771-HNMMQ31O78J8ZGMNGY0V/Shum_Queen.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Queen of Spades by Michael Shou-Yung Shum Why is this novel so absurdly entertaining? Shum, who was a casino dealer in Lake Stevens before getting his English PhD, loosely bases his story on an old gambling tale by Pushkin, but it has a seemingly effortless liveliness all of its own (I say "seemingly" because that kind of effortlessness takes a lot of work to pull off). The book wears everything lightly: the fateful turns of cards, the odd presence of magic, the setting in Snoqualmie in the aerobicized '80s, and a cast of characters who each spring immediately from the page into life. It reminds me of another enjoyable and strangely compelling favorite, The Queen's Gambit (about a different royal game). What a surprising treat! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853236635-6FHHVTTAV1EABDWAHBWR/Spufford_Golden.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Golden Hill by Francis Spufford What a delicious feast! Golden Hill is Spufford's first novel, after five idiosyncratic books of nonfiction, and it's clear he had a ball with it, delighting in the language and the details of his subject: the colonial outpost of New York City in 1743, and the entry of a charming, secretive, and apparently wealthy young man into its tiny, fractious society. Not everything goes well for Richard Smith, but things certainly do go, and Spufford packs a heap of action into his mid-sized novel, adding a few modern notes to the gleefully rogueish style of 18th-century masters like Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett. I had been looking forward to Golden Hill ever since it swept a handful of prizes in the UK last year, and I wasn't disappointed at all. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511853118641-RI7XYSH3FDJZRGNPFUUB/Walls_Thoreau.jpg Tom 2017 Top 10 Gallery Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls From the very start of his career, Thoreau has been one of the most divisive members of the American literary canon—visionary or crank? self-reliant or sponge?—in large part because he offered his own eccentric life as a model. Walls (who first discovered Walden on the shelves of Island Books on Mercer Island!) has made a beautiful and moving story of that life: wonderfully dense with the details of his world and his writing but still graceful and light on its feet. She makes clear his passionate engagement and his continued relevance to our lives, and most strikingly, reminds us of the constant importance of friendship and society to our country's best-known hermit. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2017-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2017-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855026278-HCCCGHZV7YT7OXRVLFSC/Demick_Nothing.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855026278-HCCCGHZV7YT7OXRVLFSC/Demick_Nothing.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855138251-3HP2EUKJGUM2LCL7DL4B/Ferris_Monsters.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery My Favorite Thing Is Monsters (Part One) by Emil Ferris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855173357-7JQLUREHQGXKMT7OPBXJ/Garbacik_Ghosts.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery Ghosts of Seattle Past edited by Jaimee Garbacik https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854839957-WFAX7D28XNT4IDUG9U2J/Horowitz_Magpie.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854996059-6FP9812DYD8DAGLO40GL/Jamieson_Faire.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery All's Faire in Middle School by Victoria Jamieson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855097408-FB09UZUX7OJR66HNXRAX/Lewis_March.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854910803-IJ1INM9MPA245S6X0K0T/Montgomery_Soul.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511854955550-G8WKDDLRU8A3LYBA8OKP/Nordstrom_Genius.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Ursula Nordstrom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855055383-D7666N3460B9UM67IXBA/Stibbe_Love.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home by Nina Stibbe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855223561-T4BTN3O5VSZRRGZJYITX/Villoro_WIld.jpg Haley 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Wild Book by Juan Villoro http://www.phinneybooks.com/molly-2017-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2017-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855843880-FRGUWTGRTDTK111WND5D/Dickens_Great.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Great Expectations by Charles Dickens https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855843880-FRGUWTGRTDTK111WND5D/Dickens_Great.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Great Expectations by Charles Dickens https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856002514-CRP88DHX1L3W7EKQYVJF/Kahler_Runebinder.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Runebinder by Alex R. Kahler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855916223-ZPBF837CI5E7Y99W2715/Lewis_Perelandra.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Perelandra by C.S. Lewis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855771548-JY6GVPU6WJEJCICP7445/McCarthy_Road.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Road by Cormac McCarthy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855746920-PJG3S6K82X8TN8V5DJMA/Morgenstern_Night.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855796710-GNVXXU4L10CL4W6ZIDKZ/Riggs_Miss.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Trilogy by Ransom Riggs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855868843-3P84UL704LB5TDJMCVMY/Rowling_Azkaban_Illustrated.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Illustrated Edition by J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855967173-703K4X4TKE8NDKO4JXK3/Shakespeare_Hamlet.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery Hamlet by William Shakespeare https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511856027162-G2TJSCCQ1N15FC2M0N27/Slater_Antlered.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Antlered Ship by Dashka Slater and the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511855940213-XXUA6TP48ATB26623E7H/Wilde_Earnest.jpg Molly 2017 Top 10 Gallery The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde http://www.phinneybooks.com/lauren-unread-2017-gallery daily 0.75 2017-12-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513059948983-GPN7V2GHCN36ZR0XD53T/Tartt_Secret.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery The Secret History by Donna Tartt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513059948983-GPN7V2GHCN36ZR0XD53T/Tartt_Secret.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery The Secret History by Donna Tartt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513059975050-4KQW6FWRQ6D7OQLC6K0M/Hockney_Martha.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery Martha's Vineyard and Other Places by David Hockney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060323027-LPPQRHN58DEGZDG3CV0B/Truitt_Daybook.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery Daybook by Anne Truitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060005960-N1IXHUYFCKVSTS32PWES/Rhys_Wide.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060036121-CKOXKVAW8DOTK2YG0TH9/Verne_Green.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery The Green Ray by Jules Verne https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060067936-VUG6LFLJ2SVPGJ40YT86/Nelson_Cruelty.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060136510-4RB4P4AOUXCE7MD5DM3J/Solnit_Men.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060161908-4HROZ1PJFU6BU92XPAXC/Haraway_Cyborg.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060185507-H087CXKUXXRZHR1TOBKF/Acker_Blood.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1513060216204-7HKHLTWVR0JOZLUS4UOF/Laing_Lonely.jpg Lauren Unread 2017 Gallery The Lonely City by Olivia Laing http://www.phinneybooks.com/newsletter-2018-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544747139658-AHIBWYX0MEG9GXEFUL09/Dorpat_Seattle.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 11, 2018) Seattle Now and Then: The Historic Hundred by Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard For almost forty years, and over 1,800 installments, Paul Dorpat's Seattle Now and Then series, pairing a historical city photo with a current one and a short essay, has been one of the most beloved features in the Seattle Times's Sunday magazine, and now Dorpat and photographer Jean Sherrard have chosen 100 of their favorite pairs for what will certainly be one of the definitive Seattle history books on local coffee tables. Think our city's been transformed entirely in the last five or ten years? How about the last fifty or a hundred? You'll find remarkable changes in our urban landscape, and some surprising continuities: I was drawn to a 1953 photo of pedestrians celebrating the opening of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a celebration set to be repeated at its closing next month. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544747139658-AHIBWYX0MEG9GXEFUL09/Dorpat_Seattle.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 11, 2018) Seattle Now and Then: The Historic Hundred by Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard For almost forty years, and over 1,800 installments, Paul Dorpat's Seattle Now and Then series, pairing a historical city photo with a current one and a short essay, has been one of the most beloved features in the Seattle Times's Sunday magazine, and now Dorpat and photographer Jean Sherrard have chosen 100 of their favorite pairs for what will certainly be one of the definitive Seattle history books on local coffee tables. Think our city's been transformed entirely in the last five or ten years? How about the last fifty or a hundred? You'll find remarkable changes in our urban landscape, and some surprising continuities: I was drawn to a 1953 photo of pedestrians celebrating the opening of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a celebration set to be repeated at its closing next month. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1542850301820-LN6J240AJTAL0OS3RQAA/Gallardo_Land.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 19, 2018) Land of Smoke by Sara Gallardo I've been reading these stories for months, off and on in between other books. I'm not sure I could have read them any other way: they read easily, but take some digesting, in the best way. Gallardo wrote from the '50s through the '70s and was a well-known figure in Argentina, but this is her first book translated into English, and it landed (on me at least) like stone tablets from another world. She's described as a "magical realist," because she's South American and because there are fantastic elements in her stories, but she stands apart from her apparent peers, Garcia Marquez and Borges. Some of these many stories are only a page long, some are twenty. There are monsters, suicides, priests, exiles, and many, many animals. But more than anything there is her voice: spoken with utterly confident authority, able and willing to turn a story on a dime at any moment. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544747301799-PNDUTMAMQCRP9149JVME/Portis_Dog.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (December 10, 2018) The Dog of the South by Charles Portis I hardly ever truly laugh out loud when I'm reading. But I make a racket when reading Portis, especially this novel, the third of the merely five he has written in fifty years. I could describe the plot, which—barely—consists of the hero's pursuit of his runaway wife through the south, Mexico, and a long, aimless sojourn in Belize City, or I could try to explain why Portis is so damn funny (I think it's partly from his exquisite taste for human oddity but mostly from his surprisingly tender understanding of the ways human hubris and humility can operate side-by-side, in the very same human). But really the best recommendation I could give is to request that you read the opening few pages of The Dog of the South, which begin, "My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone. I was biding my time," and go on from there. My eyes are tearing up just reading them over again. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544747665796-CVBO3O3449AZHLVAGX2J/Lies_Got.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (December 10, 2018) Got to Get to Bear’s by Brian Lies Got to Get to Bear's is a sweet and simply constructed tale of friendship ("If Bear asks, you gotta go!"), cooperation, and surprise, but what makes it special are Lies's illustrations, which evoke the special, adventurous thrill of a big winter snow and make you feel like you too are along for the ride, carried through the storm by this band of friends. It's delightful. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1542850390141-3ENKFE9RR0MWX7ZTVIW4/Berger_Song.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 19, 2018) Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History by Glen Berger At some point in the previous decade, news filtered back to me that Glen Berger, the most talented person I knew in college, was writing a Spider-Man musical with U2 and Julie Taymor. What a break for an unknown playwright! Well, you may have heard how that turned out: a notorious Broadway disaster that still managed to survive for over a thousand performances. If you want to hear more, Berger told all in this 2013 memoir, written amid the wreckage left by a typhoon of artistic overambition and technical catastrophe. If there were any bridges left standing after that debacle, he burns them here, but with a rueful earnestness that makes it clear he wishes he could build them all back again. My favorite Broadway book is Act One, Moss Hart's delightful tale of his charmed debut. Glen's story is, sadly, its opposite, but a fascinating page-turner that might be just as useful for a young artist to read. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1542850532381-551Q0C4QRXVTK3D40D24/Jenkins_All.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 19, 2018) All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins and Paul O. Zelinsky When I first started to read on my own I couldn’t get enough of Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family chapter books, which I recently heard called the “Jewish Little House on the Prairie.” The series follows five sisters as they grow up in New York City during the first few decades of the 20th century, recording family dramas (low-key) and traditions. So I was thrilled to see that an award-winning children’s author and illustrator had teamed up to create a picture-book introduction to these not-all-that-well-known classics. Vibrant, page-filling pictures, which often give the delicious feeling of peeking into a dollhouse, are the backdrop for the story, starring 4-year-old Gertie, who is frustrated that she’s not old enough to help make the latkes, just before finding out that she is the perfect age to light the first candle on the menorah. Any young person who enjoys the book this year will most certainly be ready to start on the series by Hanukkah-time next year. (Ages 3 to 6) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1542422823419-HY7B0469NC4E5MBFDT8G/OFarrell_I.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 12, 2018) I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell As someone who thinks about death more than is probably average or healthy, I couldn’t resist diving into Maggie O’Farrell’s unconventional memoir. Told in non-chronological order, each chapter is the story of a near-death experience and is dated and named for the body part—neck, lungs, abdomen, etc.—we see become compromised. With direct, self-aware prose, O’Farrell conveys the fragility of life without melodrama as she takes us through memories of her childhood illness and her reckless adolescence, into her present, where she’s mother to a child who has a life-threatening immunological condition. O’Farrell is a wonderful storyteller, and her writing manages to be both gorgeous and harrowing, haunting and inviting. Throughout this book, I found myself holding my breath and pressing my hand to my own bragging heart. Then, once I breathed a final sigh of relief at another near miss coming to pass, I started recommending this book to everyone. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1542422914236-TQ4OQCCSS8MICN71BUIZ/Ginzburg_All.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 12, 2018) All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg This one sneaked up on me. It’s the story of two bourgeois families, neighbors in a Northern Italian town, beginning with the deaths of both patriarchs and following the second generation as it comes of age and World War II comes to the country. Propelled by Ginzburg’s deceptively breezy style—plain language and charming humor—I doubted her young characters were substantial enough to bear the weight of unfolding history. Also, unlike Elena Ferrante’s melodrama, Ginzburg practices the opposite, relating traumatic events calmly and deploying single images or repeated phrases freighted with all the suppressed emotion. By the time the survivors were reunited in the old neighborhood, I was oddly surprised how their accrued layers of experience had given them density and war had aged them much more than the five years that had passed. I also realized I was in the presence of one of Italy’s best, a true literary lioness. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1542423003166-7XQPFMDAFCAWOKRP856P/Tetri_Tiger.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 12, 2018) Tiger Vs. Nightmare by Emily Tetri What do you do if the monster under your bed turns out to be a pretty great friend? Well, if you're Tiger, you bring back a little bit of dinner for your friend and play games until bedtime, before your friend fights off your nightmares until morning. But what do you do if your friend encounters a nightmare too strong to resist? That's the story of this beginner's graphic novel, painted in washes of bright orange and scary (but not too scary) grays, and full of the spirit of friendship and shared courage. (Age 3 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541812183454-2E6683B80S73XAWY59N7/Alehouse_Allred.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 5, 2018) The Alehouse at the End of the World by Stevan Allred This is a tough one to describe, because as soon as I start I'm afraid I'll scare some of you off. Avian demigods? Fertility goddesses? An epic journey to the Isle of the Dead to recover a lost love? Sure, fantasy fans will hear me out, but the rest of you should, too. Drawing on European, Asian, and North American folk traditions, Stevan Allred plows the oldest narrative field there is, the open commons that existed before anyone thought of subdividing it with genre fences. Pure story, in other words, once-upon-a-time stuff that doesn't seem fringy at all. Turns out that a modern version of ancient myth involving love, death, and talking birds is exactly what we need in these trying times. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541812301443-TNRFD725TWIOMDHDUAS0/Winik_Glen.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 5, 2018) The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Winik This tiny book is made up of tiny sketches of the departed, their brevity a reminder of the brevity of all of our lives. They are known only by the nicknames Winik gives them—the Clown, the Junkie, the Queen of New Jersey—and their lives are not summarized on their own terms but by their presence, slight or central, in her own, which makes the book a kind of memoir by indirection, by an author who could easily have shared the fate of her subjects. (In time, like all of us, she will.) You might be reminded of Jim Carroll's punk-junkie anthem, "People Who Died": she shares some of his made-it-out-alive-for-now bravado, and the poignancy of a life, and a death, defined in just a few words. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541812413077-UW2F2OIN3CVOZ4JAICZ3/Berger_Red.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 5, 2018) The Red Tenda of Bologna by John Berger This month's Phinney by Post selection (see above) was so tiny I added a couple of our popular Penguin Modern booklets to the package, including this perfect companion, Berger's marvelous elegy for his uncle: a ne'er-do-well, a curious and thoroughly idiosyncratic man, and a traveler with a love of, among other places, the old city of Bologna. It's as beautiful and off-handedly insightful as anything I've read of Berger's. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541812566449-D4NC2UU15QB8MK3EAZYX/DeLaPena_Carmela.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 5, 2018) Carmela Full of Wishes by Matt de la Pena and Christian Robinson The duo behind Last Stop at Market Street, the rare picture book weighty enough to win the Newbery Medal, returns with another story balancing melancholy and hope. It's Carmela's birthday, and she gets her dearest wish, to finally go on family errands with her older brother, only to learn from him, in the usual mean-and-sweet big-brother way, that there is another wish to be made. It's a lovely and tender story. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541120298526-5VXOPY04NLOMEZOHOKXZ/Hatfield_Seattleness.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 29, 2018) Seattleness: A Cultural Atlas by Tera Hatfield, Jenny Kempson, and Natalie Ross What is Seattle? Anyone who has lived here more than a year has watched the city transform under our feet, as it has many times before. The three creators of Seattleness use their expertise in design, architecture, and geography to turn our ideas of Seattle inside-out again and again on the page. See our familiar topography of hills and inlets remapped to reveal layers of history and patterns of behavior: two of the pages I lost myself in most thoroughly were a color-coded 3D map of downtown's building booms and a stylized grid showing the density and influence of corporate and independent coffee shops. And of course I was fascinated by a chart measuring the frequency of various plot elements in Seattle-set novels. (Also, Phinney Books gets a mention!!) Open it up, and rethink your own city. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541120399317-IO7VN4MXSSXSMV26Y18S/Mount_Bibliophile.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 29, 2018) Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany Those of you who know Jane Mount only from her colorful illustrations of shelved and stacked book spines might be surprised—as I was—that her new book of literary "miscellany" is as miscellaneous as it is, full not only of her trademark spines but of profiles of bookstores and libraries, lists of recommended reading, and general celebrations of bookishness in all its varieties. Whatever self-congratulatory preciousness you might fear would lie within such a project is overwhelmed by the warmth and open-eyed joy she makes you feel for the physical presence of books and the places they inhabit. To say her illustrations leap off the page is not quite right; rather, they remind you how much leaping can take place on a page. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541120839031-XZMKJ44YE2PEDPIEQDIO/Moss_Paperback.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Ex-Kids Book of the Week (October 29, 2018) Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ‘80s and ‘90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss Return with Gabrielle Moss to what she calls a "pastel parallel universe," the moment in teen and tween fiction between the '70s heyday of Judy Blume and the millennial rise of J.K. Rowling. In that interregnum, two other queens reigned: "foxy blonde sociopaths" named Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, the heroines of dozens of Sweet Valley High romances that were less likely to be recommended by librarians than bought by the handful at Waldenbooks. Moss revisits their era with the same affectionate analysis as her publisher's previous Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction, going beyond contempt or nostalgia to do justice to an entire generation's imaginative life, as blonde and blow-dried as it might have been. (Ages 35 to 50) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541120083398-2QJ0DH83WEU56AGSFF7R/Laymon_Heavy.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 22, 2018) Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon Heavy is a book unsatisfied with itself, by a writer unsatisfied with himself, and with us. He begins by saying he "wanted to write a lie," a happier, less messy memoir, but he couldn't. Instead, he wrote an almost unbearably intimate book, framed as a letter to his mother, who has been his champion, his protector, his abuser. Reading it, you may at first focus on the pain he reveals, but what becomes even more overwhelming is the tenderness he feels toward even his tormentors. There is plenty of theory behind Laymon's thinking about living as a black person in Mississippi and in the United States—as he says, and as his professor mother made sure, he has read everything—but you will rarely read a book so fully weighted in a body and all its messy, destructive, tender desires, or one that argues so convincingly that bodies are where thinking—and change—must begin. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1541120211513-NDOT67HK53Q3XW3P3QHK/Ball_Mix.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 22, 2018) Mix-a-Mutt by Sara Ball We're all getting used to seeing labradoodles and puggles, but this new oversized board book takes the canine combos a step further. Three sets of flip pages let you concoct your own new breeds: how about a dachshund-shar pei-komondor, or a greyhound-Yorkshire terrier-Dalmatian? The wittily drawn dogs add to the good humor, and the useful descriptions of breed characteristics makes it surprisingly edifying too. (2 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1539815091849-AWNZJFTOEI370IXPMPPK/Paige_Man.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 15, 2018) Man with a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige Ray Eccles is leading a modest, unassuming existence when he's abruptly struck on the head by a falling bird and finds his whole life changing course. Read Harriet Paige's new novel and you may find yourself similarly affected. The opening of Man with a Seagull on His Head tempts you with its brisk prose and summery seaside setting to pick it up as a momentary diversion, but it quickly establishes powerful links among its many characters, connecting hearts and minds across distance, time, and cultural barriers. By the end it takes them, and you, much further than you'd have ever expected. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1539820785191-CEFPDWW7MMZVJ4HV7SP6/Laing_Crudo.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 15, 2018) Crudo by Olivia Laing The reputation that Olivia Laing gathered from her books on writers and nature (To the River), writers and drinking (The Trip to Echo Spring), and writers and loneliness (The Lonely City) caused quite a bit of anticipation for this, her first novel. It's a slim one, and immersed in the moment, in the summer of 2017 in particular, a time, as she writes, of increasing cruelty, and of people warming to it. She's writing in the style of the new "autofiction"—some parts of the story seem taken from her life—but with a twist: rather than a mere "I" her main character is "Kathy," filled with the spirit of the late writer Kathy Acker. That turn brings a nicely unsettling shift in identity, and also a melancholy sort of hope, as we watch Kathy (the real Acker died in 1997) surviving into this terrible time, and also into a late discovery of love. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1539820914985-EB9YIKYQK8KSXL8AMJRU/Macfarlane_Lost.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 15, 2018) The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris We had heard about this book for a while—it was wildly popular and a "book of the year" in the UK, and Macfarlane, Britain's leading nature writer, is becoming beloved in the States too. But seeing it in person is something else entirely. Macfarlane and Morris have set about reclaiming basic words of nature ("acorn," "heron") that, they noticed, have been taken out of children's dictionaries in favor of tech terms like "broadband." But the book they made is not a dictionary—it's a thing of exquisite beauty, celebrating both these simple, evocative words (with poems of Macfarlane's) and the animals and plants they represent (with Morris's glorious paintings). It's a giant book, and one that both kids and grown-ups are likely to cherish. (Age 3 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1538613208175-047FWI9S9Y81QURZJ9BA/Burns_Milkman.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Upcoming Book of the Week (October 1, 2018) Milkman by Anna Burns I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husband feels when his team makes the Final Four. I say “in love” because Milkman is told in a singular voice—a smart, funny middle-aged “middle sister” looking back on a few months during her eighteenth year. She has a large vocabulary (sometimes invented) and deploys it off-kilteredly (but not confoundingly). And while she eschews proper nouns, the other characters—“wee sisters,” “maybe boyfriend,” “real milkman,” etc.—are fully realized individuals too. The political situation however—also unnamed but obviously the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s—is rendered eerily generic. It could be any situation in which violent tribalism reigns and one’s ability to see beyond the accepted wisdom is the only—but risky—way to escape. I just hope I can remain philosophical if the Booker judges make a mistake and pass over Milkman. “It is better to have loved and lost...” blah, blah, blah. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1538613455157-I3R375A4F3GE6WH5T2Q2/Vuillard_Order.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 1, 2018) The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard The Prix Goncourt is France's highest award for fiction, and the most recent recipient was Éric Vuillard for The Order of the Day. It's an interesting choice for at least three reasons. First, it's really good, like prize-winning good, written in crystalline sentences ably translated by Mark Polizzotti. Second, it's not a bog-standard war story about generals and infantrymen or even suffering civilians. Instead it focuses on the bureaucrats and businessmen who quietly and cravenly capitulated to a Fascist regime that in the 1930s didn't yet have a stranglehold on power. Over and over again in Vuillard's account, civility outweighs principle, as in the chilling scene where Chamberlain and Ribbentrop linger over a diplomatic dinner while Nazi forces drive unopposed across the German-Austrian border. Every detail marshaled here is devastatingly accurate, which brings us to a final point of interest: this isn't really fiction. Sure, there's creative description on every page, but at its heart, The Order of the Day is history as it was made. As fact-based as it is, it probably wouldn't be eligible for an American fiction prize, but the French don't worry about categories, just beautiful writing. In this case, I'm on their side. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1538613816904-824BRHZE13G4ZG5KEP2Y/Hayes_Float.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 1, 2018) To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight by Terrance Hayes Poetry is such a compressed art that for me it often requires some space, some context, in which to breathe. Terrance Hayes has taken an entire book to put the work—really a single poem, the appropriately titled "The Idea of Ancestry"—of one of his predecessors, the Black Arts-era poet Etheridge Knight, into context. The result feels like a whole ecosystem, full of air shared and recycled and revived from poet to poet, tracing not only Hayes's debt to Knight but his embeddedness in a written and lived world of friends, fellow artists, mentors. Some of my favorite books—Nicholson Baker's U and I, Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage—are structured like this one: one writer reckoning with a lifelong obsession with another writer, in all its flaws and failures and excesses. I loved this book too. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1538006494649-WGEFENHLXE6IAB1NX3EF/Mikhail_Beekeeper.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 24, 2018) The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Dunya Mikhail The recently announced longlist for the first National Book Award for translated literature inspired me to pick up, finally, a book I'd had my eye on: this remarkable account of Iraqi women who escaped their imprisonment and sexual slavery under ISIS (or Daesh, as they are referred to there). Mikhail is an Iraqi poet and journalist, living in exile in Michigan; her link to these stories (via spotty cell-phone calls) is a man named Abdullah, a former beekeeper who has responded to the crisis by becoming a full-time hostage smuggler and negotiator. It is a story of almost unimaginable—but horribly familiar—cruelty, and also of matter-of-fact human decency and heroism. Mere decency, in this case, often feels heroic, even if, unbearably, it may not be enough. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1538006735468-FI5PSR7GSAGV3ANDKID6/Macy_Mrs_pb.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (September 24, 2018) Mrs. by Caitlin Macy Every so often I feel like reading about rich people in New York. Not just any book—it needs to be a bit sociological (I don't want to ogle, ahem, but to analyze) and if it provides some schadenfreude, well, I won't complain. So when I heard that Caitlin Macy had written a new novel (18 years after her first) I knew it was the one. Not only is she well-attuned to pecuniary nuance, she can really tell a story! As in her earlier book, The Fundamentals of Play, which riffs on The Great Gatsby, she starts with a classic of class-consciousness: Mrs. is full of echoes of The House of Mirth—social-climbing, stock market shenanigans, addiction, blackmail. Her focus is a trio of women from different social strata but she also voices characters from a Wall Street trainee to a seven-year-old with hilarious and touching fluency, saving most of her snark for a Greek chorus of private pre-school mommies. After laughing and tearing up and thoroughly enjoying myself, I came to feel what I was least expecting: a kind of Go, Girl! compassion for Phillippa, Gwen, and Minnie. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1538006819372-P6OU45BBLHPJOKPLZT28/Walls_Thoreau_pb.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (September 24, 2018) Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls From the very start of his career, Thoreau has been one of the most divisive members of the American literary canon—visionary or crank? self-reliant or sponge?—in large part because he offered his own eccentric life as a model. Walls (who first discovered Walden on the shelves of Island Books on Mercer Island!) has made a beautiful and moving story of that life: wonderfully dense with the details of his world and his writing but still graceful and light on its feet. She makes clear his passionate engagement and his continued relevance to our lives, and most strikingly, reminds us of the constant importance of friendship and society to our country's best-known hermit. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537474977015-8E3WM9HNKTGXTYCB0M8I/Lutes_Berlin_all.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 17, 2018) Berlin by Jason Lutes Over twenty years in the drawing, Berlin covers just a few crucial years in the city's history, from late 1928 to the end of the Weimar Republic in early 1933. Lutes's scope is wide—he marks the major political turning points, and his lovingly detailed cityscapes are often his most powerful panels—and his cast includes dozens of characters, some of them, including the courageous editor Carl von Ossietzky, taken from real life, but his most vivid stories are the personal ones, particularly those of the young art student Marthe Müller and the older journalist Kurt Severing. Lutes's nature, in his brilliant compositions and his clean lines (evocative equally of Tintin and Los Bros Hernandez), is optimistic, but the story he has to tell isn't, and he knows it. His panoramic, 550-page epic makes you want to turn back to the first page and put it all together again. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537475079992-9H41P3Q0HM2T0DKS3QYX/Thorpe_Ulverton.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 17, 2018) Ulverton by Adam Thorpe I’ve become a bit obsessed with English villages. Not that I want to live in one—it just seems the most inviting microcosm through which to read about history happening. Whether over years (Reservoir 13), decades (Akenfield), or centuries, change is absorbed at a pace gradual enough that it becomes legible. In Ulverton, Thorpe traces the topographical, architectural, agricultural, and biographical transformations of a fictional village from the time of Oliver Cromwell to Margaret Thatcher. Even more amazingly, he tells each succeeding tale in a different resident’s voice—rendering a survey of nothing less than the evolution of Homo britannicus rusticum.* Some chapters are harder to penetrate than others, but for Anglophile history buffs the effort is worth the rewards. When I spotted a clue and gleaned a meaning I felt like a veritable archeologist. —Liz *Not official Latin nomenclature. Or even really Latin. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537475168793-RW6T9N2LVU239OC5VSC1/Farmer_Charlotte_pb.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer As far as time-travel goes, Charlotte takes a minimal leap—she only goes forty years into the past. But since she is living in 1958, today’s reader goes back a nice round century. Details about the Great War, the influenza epidemic, and women’s suffrage might surprise kids these days even more than they do Charlotte, but the book’s real focus is that perennial stumper, “Who am I, really?” Is Charlotte who she feels she is, or who people thinks she is? If I had found this book when I was ten I would have adored the old-fashioned setting and pondering the logistics of alternate history. Reading it now, I am most delighted by the writing. Farmer’s style is idiosyncratic enough to be noticeable but never overwhelms the story. When she evokes a boarding school in wartime by describing the soap as “glum and parsimonious," and the carpet under her bare feet as “unfriendly," we know Charlotte has a singular self—and that it can make itself known through language. In the right ten-year-old hands, this book could create a writer, or at least a life-long book-lover. (Fun Fact: Charlotte Sometimes inspired the Cure song of the same name.) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537305289716-CDF6W6YZ9VHVXK70SO2L/Cunningham_Fashion.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (Sept. 10, 2018) Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs by Bill Cunningham Part of what made the documentary Bill Cunningham New York so fascinating was the enigma of its subject: the photographer infatuated with fashion who himself lived an ascetic and deeply private life. One of his secrets, revealed after his death in 2016, was that he had written a memoir, apparently in the '60s. Does it lift that veil of privacy? Not really, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Covering his beauty-loving youth in a dour Boston family and his gleeful, intrepid life as a '50s hat designer and '60s fashion journalist (after women stopped wearing hats), it's a further testament to his marvelous insistence on living a life in pursuit of your passion. More inspiring than introspective, the young Bill—naive but ambitious, prim but open-minded—comes across as a combination of Mr. Rogers and Andy Warhol. What a wonderful life. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537305531985-8K3FFSH6D1LGYEJRRUB4/Origo_War.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 10, 2018) Phinney by Post Book #45 War in the Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944 by Iris Origo A few weeks ago I recommended Origo's diary from the first years of the war, but this book, for good reason, is the one that made her famous, in part for the understated clarity of her style, and in part from the drama of reading a record written from within a tumultuous time, during the chaos of the Allied invasion of Italy. But it may be best-loved for what Origo and her landowner husband did: made their Tuscan estate a refuge for children bombed out of Italian cities, for partisan guerrillas, and for various soldiers in transit, until the Origos themselves became temporary refugees. It’s a model of aristocratic behavior: using her privilege to protect others with a generosity that seems both savvy and instinctual. The time, and their values, seem far from our own, even if the crisis she responded to does not. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537305647926-JAB7XBIZ3ZI8AQDLFIU3/Lin_Big.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (September 10, 2018) Phinney by Post Kids Book #33 A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin One sign of how much Lin's new picture book feels like a timeless classic is how surprising it is to turn to the book's last pages and learn that the fable she tells—of a girl whose nighttime nibbles of a big cake create the slowly waning moon—is one of her own invention. It's such a beautiful and simple tale I was sure she had borrowed it from traditional legends. Add her subtly evocative illustrations—how I love Little Star's starry pajamas!—and you have one of my favorite picture books of the year, easily. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537907463550-YNH4RL3Q7RK5S38XC8WN/Quammen_Tangled.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 27, 2018) The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen Is there such a thing as a tree of life, or is it closer to a web? With his explanation of the branching of species, Darwin made the tree one of the central images of biology. But the last half-century of discoveries, especially the molecular-level understanding of what's known as horizontal gene transfer, in which genetic material makes its way into cells in newly comprehended ways, has complicated that picture. Quammen, one of the most authoritative of science journalists, not only explains those discoveries but tells the equally non-linear story of their development, with room for both idiosyncratic legends like Carl Woese as well as the lesser-known lab-bench heroes who also made them possible. Science, it seems, can be as messy as the structures it unearths. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537907579289-QRDA27PCK9CTUC9IXK62/Dewitt_French.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 27, 2018) French Exit by Patrick deWitt When I started listening to the audiobook edition of French Exit, I thought, "Oh, this narrator [the book is read by Lorna Raver] is a bit much." Well, it turned out she was just right, because French Exit itself, especially its two main characters, moneyed widow Frances Price and her coddled adult son Malcolm, is a bit much too, in the best way. DeWitt has turned his comic mind to westerns (The Sisters Brothers), Mitteleuropean fairy tales (Undermajordomo Minor), and now to what he calls a "tragedy of manners." It's an inspired choice. The novel is kept afloat, for the most part, by Frances's sour, witty remarks, and by the fun of their tiny family's receding fortunes ("moneyed," in their case, is in the past tense), and for me that was plenty. It's horribly enjoyable. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1537907694227-NB2OYYLEA5J04YY4LAJV/Baldwin_Little.jpg Newsletter 2018 Gallery Kids Book of the Week Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood by James Baldwin, illustrated by Yoran Cazac Not many kids' books come with a foreword, an introduction (with endnotes), and an afterword, but the reappearance of the only children's book by the great James Baldwin (nearly forgotten after it was published, to little notice, in 1976) does carry some weight. But the story, as soon as you begin it, claims its own rhythm, locking onto the voices of TJ, WT, and Blinky, the kids on a Harlem block, who see the adult lives around them with the knowing eyes of children (it reminded me most of Lynda Barry's Marlys comics). Is it a kids' book, or, as Baldwin described it, a "child's story for adults"? Either way, it possesses the patient subtlety of revealed character and the measured empathy for human pain of his finest stories. (Ages 8 and up) —Tom http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-11-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127301180-YNVSLQK6EICNXDYKT9S5/Abrams_Wire.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams "How did something this good actually get made?" That's the underlying question at the heart of this superb oral history, because The Wire still seems like a bit of a miracle: a slow-building series about poverty, crime, and institutional failure that survived its low ratings long enough to become a modern masterpiece. Abrams talked to everyone involved, and their voices, which all carry that still-surprised pride at what they accomplished, bring you through both the five seasons of the series and the behind-the-scenes collaboration and drama required to bring it to the screen. It's candy for any Wire fan. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127301180-YNVSLQK6EICNXDYKT9S5/Abrams_Wire.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams "How did something this good actually get made?" That's the underlying question at the heart of this superb oral history, because The Wire still seems like a bit of a miracle: a slow-building series about poverty, crime, and institutional failure that survived its low ratings long enough to become a modern masterpiece. Abrams talked to everyone involved, and their voices, which all carry that still-surprised pride at what they accomplished, bring you through both the five seasons of the series and the behind-the-scenes collaboration and drama required to bring it to the screen. It's candy for any Wire fan. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127313574-GCQO59UHY6PEHNNOQMRW/Fighters_Chivers.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq by C.J. Chivers How do you tell the story of America's decade and half at war (during a time when much of America hardly felt like it was at war at all)? Chivers, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times correspondent and former Marine, chooses a grunts'-eye view, focusing on the lives of six soldiers, from enlisted corpsman to fighter pilot, who have fought through surges and drawdowns in wars whose purposes and strategies have only become more elusive over time. He gives full weight to the idealism, professionalism, and heroism of his subjects, and to their frustrations, mistakes, and tragedies. It's both a soldier's book and one of the most damning indictments of the Iraqi and Afghan wars you can imagine. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127426054-0E753FBNG2QGHHJVSZJ1/DeWitt_Some.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Some Trick: Thirteen Stories by Helen DeWitt In the mathematical fable Flatland, the inhabitants of a two-dimensional world can only see three-dimensional visitors as a flat slice of their true being. That's sometimes how I think of Helen DeWitt, visiting our flat world and trying to translate her countless dimensions into a slice of fiction. Many of you know how ecstatically I adore DeWitt's first novel, The Last Samurai, so to say this book, her first collection of stories, can hold its own with that book is saying something. Her subject is often, again, the struggle of a restless intellect to translate itself into an indifferent world, and for all her brilliance, the most impressive thing (aside from how funny she is) is how fully she expresses her knowledge (and the drama of its burden) in fiction. She's a storyteller most of all. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127229591-N2QHMXKE8F112AT0WTBL/Forna_Happiness.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Happiness by Aminatta Forna Attila is a psychiatrist from Ghana who has made a career of assessing trauma in war zones. Jean is a divorced wildlife biologist from New England. It almost seems enough that Forna has imagined these two imperfect but wonderfully admirable and interesting people as thoroughly as she has, but when she allows chance to bring them together for a week in London, along with the networks of people, thought, and experience they carry with them, the result is magical—the sort of magic that, like a romance between people who have seen love and loss before, unfolds slowly and deeply. And only as the end of this beautiful book approaches will you understand how appropriate and well-earned its title is. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127472295-EL2PDSOJNJ2DA1FQ8C7N/Gallardo_Land.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Land of Smoke by Sara Gallardo I've been reading these stories for months, off and on in between other books. I'm not sure I could have read them any other way: they read easily, but take some digesting, in the best way. Gallardo wrote from the '50s through the '70s and was a well-known figure in Argentina, but this is her first book translated into English, and it landed (on me at least) like stone tablets from another world. She's described as a "magical realist," because she's South American and because there are fantastic elements in her stories, but she stands apart from her apparent peers, Garcia Marquez and Borges. Some of these many stories are only a page long, some are twenty. There are monsters, suicides, priests, exiles, and many, many animals. But more than anything there is her voice: spoken with utterly confident authority, able and willing to turn a story on a dime at any moment. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127407685-O3RGJ395K8NVAZFR7Z99/Johnson_Largesse.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson When a writer's first collection of stories was Jesus' Son, quite possibly the best American book of the last few decades, it's natural to ask how his second collection, published 26 years later, compares. (When it is also his last book—Johnson died last spring at the age of 67—that question carries some further poignancy.) The quick answer is that no book can compare to Jesus' Son, but the better answer is that the five long stories in this new book carry the same spirit. No writer could shift so easily, so surprisingly, so believably, from despair to ecstasy and back, often in a single sentence, and these stories are alive with those shifts, and, almost prophetically, with the hovering presence of death within life. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127444849-Y3B8K3WFY7MAO03ICWWP/Kushner_Mars.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner Romy Hall has a son, a past, and the impossible sentence of two life terms plus six years to serve in a remote central California prison, which she's just beginning when this novel opens. If this is a great novel, and I think it might be, it's both because of what it gives you—a hungrily detailed and generously observed look at American prisons and prisoners—and what it withholds: easy judgments in a place where judgments have already been made, emotional reconciliations in a place designed to prevent them. Romy is good company, but in prison with her, you'll feel a growing ache of absence and distance, one that feels thoroughly true to the life she is serving out. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127348396-MMP9YAR54ISFB2XIS1G4/Laymon_Heavy.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon Heavy is a book unsatisfied with itself, by a writer unsatisfied with himself, and with us. He begins by saying he "wanted to write a lie," a happier, less messy memoir, but he couldn't. Instead, he wrote an almost unbearably intimate book, framed as a letter to his mother, who has been his champion, his protector, his abuser. Reading it, you may at first focus on the pain he reveals, but what becomes even more overwhelming is the tenderness he feels toward even his tormentors. There is plenty of theory behind Laymon's thinking about living as a black person in Mississippi and in the United States—as he says, and as his professor mother made sure, he has read everything—but you will rarely read a book so fully weighted in a body and all its messy, destructive, tender desires, or one that argues so convincingly that bodies are where thinking—and change—must begin. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127459354-NE15NPNRGKT0K7FZS30H/Lazar_Vengeance.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Vengeance by Zachary Lazar Despite the words "A Novel" on the cover, I found myself struggling to think of Vengeance as anything but true. In part, that's by design: the main character is a journalist named Zachary Lazar who meets an inmate at the notorious plantation-style Angola Prison in Louisiana and decides to look into his claims of innocence. But it's also a tribute to the humble, detailed brilliance of the novelist's work in portraying both his character and the lives of those he investigates. His true-or-not-true style becomes a way of reckoning with the difficult, ambivalent work of paying witness in a society organized around punishment and race. True or not, it's a quietly stunning work of fiction. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127374261-YLXFR3C543H5WNNF3VV0/Mailhot_Heart.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot Mailhot's memoir is short, but she doesn't let it go down easy. She knows how indigenous memoirs, like hers, are taken. "I tried to tell someone my story, but he thought it was a hustle," she writes on the first page; "I didn't know if what I felt was authenticity," she adds later, "or a disease that would overtake me." Blunt and artful at the same time, ruthlessly honest but restlessly uncertain about the truth of her life, she writes as if she's saving her life. Her book reminds me of some of the best ones I've read in recent years, by Vivian Gornick and Yiyun Li: fellow writers who look at the world with a kind of lonely intensity, who never seem satisfied with the words they write even as they hold on to them as if they are all they have. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127251275-KVKQKADT67JMFZVDLK13/Offutt_Country.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery Country Dark by Chris Offutt Country Dark is the first fiction Offutt, who in his youth was compared to Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver, has published in twenty years, and it shows. Not because it's an encyclopedic novel packed with two decades of material, but the opposite: it's a tale that has been pared back by a master to only the most necessary and vivid words and moments. Beginning when Tucker returns, still young, from the Korean War to his home in the hollers of Kentucky, he finds his life overturned again and again by love and by threat and by his own often violent decisiveness. Call it "country noir" if you like; I call it a thrilling, thoughtful page-turner and one of the best books I've read this year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543127334649-0GX14GPUB5O1CRGE2O1G/Snyder_Road.jpg Tom 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder Perhaps you read Snyder's bracing pamphlet, On Tyranny (or the Facebook post it was based on)—from its title, I had imagined this new, much larger book as an expansion of those ideas, but, while it's written in the same level-headed-but-urgent tone (which Snyder's voice for the audiobook perfectly represents), it's doing something related but different, focusing less on tyranny in the abstract than on the very specific case of Putin's Russia. And while there are many excellent books on that subject, what's most impressive, enlightening, and disturbing is the way he systematically traces the intellectual structure of Putin's regime and his foreign interventions, introducing concepts like "eternity politics" and "implausible deniability" that give some order to the disorder we're living through. http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382033820-TATF47VYE93DP3LGTCF2/Emezi_Freshwater.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Freshwater by Awkaeke Emezi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382033820-TATF47VYE93DP3LGTCF2/Emezi_Freshwater.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Freshwater by Awkaeke Emezi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382017424-Y6AOD0VDZR4VA543EZ0M/Ferris_Monsters.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381980283-EEXTHNKXYVYB1G1HFOP0/Groff_Florida.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Florida by Lauren Groff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381872563-I66S3AGO1SU7UMGI76MA/Lockwood_Priestdaddy_pb.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382050493-H8MYZ4KMLAQCJ39XBFZW/Murata_Convenience.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382061968-VZTWX7OX8O74W5FWKHVI/Nunez_Friend.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Friend by Sigrid Nunez https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381950986-UVS64QJOSKKMXOZ0SCRB/Shopsin_Arbitrary_pb.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381917427-1OV5EYRBDRQ6L5CNBDUM/Silber_Improvement_pb.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery Improvement by Joan Silber https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382079953-U0SJTP28DJM8ZXINDKRV/StJohn_Women.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382042922-LD8V874U5YXOH96U0QVE/Williams_Changeling.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Changeling by Joy Williams https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382092425-R9891XJZVEUCW2EMTDFC/Winik_Glen.jpg Kim 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Winik http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382718602-VDQXDLBTPYTCQYQU2S79/Blanchet_Curve.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382718602-VDQXDLBTPYTCQYQU2S79/Blanchet_Curve.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382728133-MLB7WIS5Z6AH95I2QSY3/Goodman_Victorian.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life by Ruth Goodman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382740533-VT8M6POM39ZXNQYZ11YQ/Krist_Mirage.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles by Gary Krist https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382618886-HECFH6RWM9GL9LJE456X/Krug_Belonging.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382764152-8JNSH7RX0EWSJJ708ICO/LeGuin_Wizard.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382603325-A87QZRKQNUQDXUGD4TC7/McBee_Amateur.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man by Thomas Page McBee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382641716-Z4FBGGMTG4RRHP1K32OS/Mount_Bibliophile.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382708728-KJE0RO2EWIAPG7RW6BO9/Sedaris_Calypso.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery Calypso by David Sedaris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382751392-HR3GGVK3IO3DMAABFPQU/Simonson_Summer_pb.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543382776071-J3DITBMVSPNAG17RA3EM/StJohn_Women.jpg Haley 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-11-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216248982-7RTOBUZO3IPG8JRDP24V/Burns_Milkman.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery Milkman by Anna Burns I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husband feels when his team makes the Final Four. I say “in love” because Milkman is told in a singular voice—a smart, funny middle-aged “middle sister” looking back on a few months during her eighteenth year. She has a large vocabulary (sometimes invented) and deploys it off-kilteredly (but not confoundingly). And while she eschews proper nouns, the other characters—“wee sisters,” “maybe boyfriend,” “real milkman,” etc.—are fully realized individuals too. The political situation however—also unnamed but obviously the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s—is rendered eerily generic. It could be any situation in which violent tribalism reigns and one’s ability to see beyond the accepted wisdom is the only—but risky—way to escape. I just hope I can remain philosophical if the Booker judges make a mistake and pass over Milkman. “It is better to have loved and lost...” blah, blah, blah. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216248982-7RTOBUZO3IPG8JRDP24V/Burns_Milkman.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery Milkman by Anna Burns I usually watch the Booker Prize unfold with nothing at stake. But this year I picked up Milkman: within ten pages I was in love, and when I saw it on the shortlist, I finally understood how my husband feels when his team makes the Final Four. I say “in love” because Milkman is told in a singular voice—a smart, funny middle-aged “middle sister” looking back on a few months during her eighteenth year. She has a large vocabulary (sometimes invented) and deploys it off-kilteredly (but not confoundingly). And while she eschews proper nouns, the other characters—“wee sisters,” “maybe boyfriend,” “real milkman,” etc.—are fully realized individuals too. The political situation however—also unnamed but obviously the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s—is rendered eerily generic. It could be any situation in which violent tribalism reigns and one’s ability to see beyond the accepted wisdom is the only—but risky—way to escape. I just hope I can remain philosophical if the Booker judges make a mistake and pass over Milkman. “It is better to have loved and lost...” blah, blah, blah. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216318650-MBGBT7GHXTJWUA5QXBAW/Burns_Gallery.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Gallery by John Horne Burns The Gallery turned out to be a masterpiece of WWII literature I wasn’t expecting and didn’t know I needed. Burns alternates brief recollections of his travels in the military bureaucracy trailing the American forces with longer stories about a generation certainly no greater than any other. Set against the morally murky backdrops of Allied-occupied Casablanca, Algiers, and finally Naples—in the mess halls, censorship mills, a gay bar, and a VD clinic—these are portraits of Americans (and a few Italians), some better, some worse, but all whose selves are boiled down to their essence by war, except when they evaporate completely. Burns’s unsparing vision pierces hypocrisies, but he never misses moments of harmony. And with the sequencing of his unconnected vignettes, he artfully traces an arc bending toward, if not justice, at least the possibility of justice. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216338170-3EAHVYR65N62R0FZZ633/Cusk_Kudos.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery Kudos by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216274069-AOJFOATIDVUUGW9NWU9J/Farmer_Charlotte_pb.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer As far as time-travel goes, Charlotte takes a minimal leap—she only goes forty years into the past. But since she is living in 1958, today’s reader goes back a nice round century. Details about the Great War, the influenza epidemic, and women’s suffrage might surprise kids these days even more than they do Charlotte, but the book’s real focus is that perennial stumper, “Who am I, really?” Is Charlotte who she feels she is, or who people thinks she is? If I had found this book when I was ten I would have adored the old-fashioned setting and pondering the logistics of alternate history. Reading it now, I am most delighted by the writing. Farmer’s style is idiosyncratic enough to be noticeable but never overwhelms the story. When she evokes a boarding school in wartime by describing the soap as “glum and parsimonious," and the carpet under her bare feet as “unfriendly," we know Charlotte has a singular self—and that it can make itself known through language. In the right ten-year-old hands, this book could create a writer, or at least a life-long book-lover. (Fun Fact: Charlotte Sometimes inspired the Cure song of the same name.) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216426006-8HDFHW0IODP6ZWFBHXQP/Gessen_Terrible.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen I want to keep on top of our Russian situation but I also need to maintain my mental health. So instead of Masha Gessen’s documentary-type account of post-Soviet life, I picked up her little brother’s comic-novel treatment of the same topic. It’s the story of Andrew/Andrei, a hockey-loving post doc who moves to Moscow to care for his grandmother. Having emigrated to America when he was six and the USSR was still intact, Andrei isn’t “an idiot. But neither was [he] not an idiot” about the new Russia. In an unadorned dude-speak that I found funny and endearing, Andrei tells how he adapts to, as his grandma has always said, this “terrible country,” where might makes rich—and doesn’t care about right (or human rights). He loses his accent, but he can’t shake an essentially American trust in Justice—a dangerous liability under Putin’s regime. I think I’ll pick up big sister Masha’s book next. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216224405-G5B3B1G235VCX584HQ2W/Ginzburg_All.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg This one sneaked up on me. It’s the story of two bourgeois families, neighbors in a Northern Italian town, beginning with the deaths of both patriarchs and following the second generation as it comes of age and World War II comes to the country. Propelled by Ginzburg’s deceptively breezy style—plain language and charming humor—I doubted her young characters were substantial enough to bear the weight of unfolding history. Also, unlike Elena Ferrante’s melodrama, Ginzburg practices the opposite, relating traumatic events calmly and deploying single images or repeated phrases freighted with all the suppressed emotion. By the time the survivors were reunited in the old neighborhood, I was oddly surprised how their accrued layers of experience had given them density and war had aged them much more than the five years that had passed. I also realized I was in the presence of one of Italy’s best, a true literary lioness. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216392761-SKLAKZ25XJ2VFUCSG3FO/Macy_Mrs_pb.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery Mrs. by Caitlin Macy Every so often I feel like reading about rich people in New York. Not just any book—it needs to be a bit sociological (I don't want to ogle, ahem, but to analyze) and if it provides some schadenfreude, well, I won't complain. So when I heard that Caitlin Macy had written a new novel (18 years after her first) I knew it was the one. Not only is she well-attuned to pecuniary nuance, she can really tell a story! As in her earlier book, The Fundamentals of Play, which riffs on The Great Gatsby, she starts with a classic of class-consciousness: Mrs. is full of echoes of The House of Mirth—social-climbing, stock market shenanigans, addiction, blackmail. Her focus is a trio of women from different social strata but she also voices characters from a Wall Street trainee to a seven-year-old with hilarious and touching fluency, saving most of her snark for a Greek chorus of private pre-school mommies. After laughing and tearing up and thoroughly enjoying myself, I came to feel what I was least expecting: a kind of Go, Girl! compassion for Phillippa, Gwen, and Minnie. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216358492-X8JDA6EGXLN6FHRCA6UG/Myers_Gallows.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers The Gallows Pole recounts the rise and fall of the Cragg Vale Coiners who, as the pastoral moorlands of their native Yorkshire were being transformed by the architecture of industry in the 1760s, so tirelessly counterfeited currency that the local economy almost crashed. In spite of a dim sense of social justice, they were less Robin Hood’s Merry Men and more The Sopranos, and demands for loyalty and the impossibility of trust, a neighborhood co-opted through intimidation and largesse, and reputations built on brutality and even more bravado all make for a tale as propulsive as—well—the best gangster stories. And like those, what elevates the familiar plot is the telling. Myers’s just-over-the-top style is the perfect pairing for the harsh yet otherworldly environment and its true-myth-in-the-making. And be sure to read aloud (in your head) the alternating chapters of King David Hartley’s phonetically rendered jail cell confession so you get every last pungent drop. This book is not for those with delicate ears or stomachs. Take that as either warning or added inducement. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216375988-C0KIAIRWQRLL60XUY8WS/StJohn_Women.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John I’ve noticed more and more people coming into the bookstore asking for a type of fiction the Guardian has recently dubbed "Uplit." Not escapist fluff to help forget reality, but books to reassure them that reality doesn’t have to be this way. And the hilarious, heartening novel I just finished should be a classic of the genre. With her slightly out-of-the-way locutions, St. John sets a retro-Aussie scene and hits all her marks. She slyly nips at the innocent provincialism of midcentury Sydney, but also helps map the inner topographies of characters who don’t always know how to get where they want. The women who work in Ladies’ Frocks at F.G. Goode’s Department Store may not get a fairy-tale happily-ever-after, but they remind us that—even in the real world—hope is not always misplaced. Full disclosure: I am usually wary of “happy” books, firmly believing that a pessimist is actually a realist who is occasionally pleasantly surprised. But it turns out that some of my favorites of the last year and half have been exactly that. And The Women in Black is so simply perfect that I doubt I’ll read anything better all year ... but then you never know. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543216297850-AJVWA7WF9B5XBLFV6BQD/Thorpe_Ulverton.jpg Liz 2018 Top 10 Gallery Ulverton by Adam Thorpe I’ve become a bit obsessed with English villages. Not that I want to live in one—it just seems the most inviting microcosm through which to read about history happening. Whether over years (Reservoir 13), decades (Akenfield), or centuries, change is absorbed at a pace gradual enough that it becomes legible. In Ulverton, Thorpe traces the topographical, architectural, agricultural, and biographical transformations of a fictional village from the time of Oliver Cromwell to Margaret Thatcher. Even more amazingly, he tells each succeeding tale in a different resident’s voice—rendering a survey of nothing less than the evolution of Homo britannicus rusticum.* Some chapters are harder to penetrate than others, but for Anglophile history buffs the effort is worth the rewards. When I spotted a clue and gleaned a meaning I felt like a veritable archeologist. *Not official Latin nomenclature. Or even really Latin. http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2018-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992910913-NMS2G4N1B5RZUEHYNALR/Apekina_Deeper.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992910913-NMS2G4N1B5RZUEHYNALR/Apekina_Deeper.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992990988-5XTUNUYA24AJ3SYHNIKK/Castillo_America.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992599257-PEXBTM45VXOL2EA35YJ0/Cusk_Kudos.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery Kudos by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992776276-9KXANAYGUIF9CTV344HV/Enard_Tell.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992765576-2PMTBAL0PKJNE4RUR3DF/Freeman_Field.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992672950-KR5XPIWHNOI2LND3RDV7/Goldfarb_Eager.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992843405-P0GI0J4JJ1YNW13AS37J/Hayes_American.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992865218-UZQUVIYE525TSP88VDAX/Ondaatje_Warlight.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery Warlight by Michael Ondaatje https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992980463-RFSF3MIEQWK6MFB8FB2U/Scott_Common.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery Common Wind: Afro-American Organization in the Revolution Against Slavery by Julius Scott https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543992828160-QECSRWKW9JSM7G9YHP9A/Tokoarczuk_Drive.jpg Tom Unread 2018 Gallery Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk http://www.phinneybooks.com/james-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383883603-0MKQ13POG18VSXDXPDQX/Arvin_Bad.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Mad Boy by Nick Arvin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383883603-0MKQ13POG18VSXDXPDQX/Arvin_Bad.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Mad Boy by Nick Arvin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383808736-H1GKUFVDKWSN1E4ANKWH/Enard_Tell.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383845972-X194ZOSQBHS29366V6ZJ/Forna_Happiness.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Happiness by Aminatta Forna https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383770905-E0UGQXM9QMOJATFIXZR9/Griggs_Iconoclast.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Iconoclast’s Journal by Terry Griggs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383861263-Q728V70MB3ZMRGH7RUTC/Moore_She.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383785594-AOVZY0F8IFXGHRVQKP84/Paige_Man.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Man with a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383733357-0XVV0YT9MR4YLAD7W9S8/Powers_Overstory.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Overstory by Richard Powers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383831525-P1QSA8XP1ZT248MJGP1X/Schoffstall_Half.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Half-Witch by John Schoffstall https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383874169-DZOWQKX8DPQ4LFQCVZXF/Valente_Space.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543383822301-4L9KH24FBHSC58U1F0RX/Youngson_Meet.jpg James 2018 Top 10 Gallery Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-11-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360140214-SYYRLMOEX2J6IRP4NPXG/Albertalli_Simon.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360140214-SYYRLMOEX2J6IRP4NPXG/Albertalli_Simon.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360244750-UVRUDNLUMMKEMF8Y3RRH/Frankel_This_pb.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360284522-QHLCV6Z6RRKLCOD52MV6/Hadyu_Life.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydu https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360348767-YINHO2ORI0KKNGZX9GSF/Heaney_Would.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360098243-G3MJHGPJ9BRCYJKO173C/Highsmith_Price.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543359932586-370TP0ZOEJ6A5JNJ3OGI/Limon_Bright.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543359885194-7EY593YL3LIRF52KAOFT/Ng_Little.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543359858692-6EOCIS5S62T0K5BC1NVC/OFarrell_I.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360179339-ED74UCHEM9EJ351XUVOT/Rothfuss_Name.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543360001999-QSZ31530THWHSJ1R93ES/Meet_Cute.jpg Anika 2018 Top 10 Gallery Meet Cute: Some People Are Determined to Meet by various authors http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2018-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2018-11-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381367121-9RLGK1EK5UP14FSKXJQE/Alderman_Power.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Power by Naomi Alderman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381367121-9RLGK1EK5UP14FSKXJQE/Alderman_Power.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Power by Naomi Alderman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381255255-UB6L68AOYZNB3AFASA4I/Farmer_Charlotte_pb.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381542934-FG1XQU38T1PEHEZKOVY3/Gyasi_Homegoing_pb.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381406472-OW0MWSKG5X9QM7EJHP5Y/Hay_Late.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381157735-VBOJ9MN9BS6XMOHKCIZK/Krosoczka_Hey.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381332514-S6MUF199KJOG4MB7ZVU0/Singer_California.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery California Calling: A Self-Interrogation by Natalie Singer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381463610-U8AZPIJCNNR8E0LXS38K/Stein_Terrible.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery Terrible Blooms by Melissa Stein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381576112-B802BDIH233L1MHOP08V/StJohn_Women.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381502858-JSAGRI8IU5KMUC0LLYYJ/Tamaki_They.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543381295395-WV5EF7G73B0C95CUBNIF/Westover_Educated.jpg Nancy 2018 Top 10 Gallery Educated by Tara Westover http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2018-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990410923-D2VW87FOB2L3U4AJW6AW/Berlin_Evening.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Evening in Paradise: Stories by Lucia Berlin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990410923-D2VW87FOB2L3U4AJW6AW/Berlin_Evening.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Evening in Paradise: Stories by Lucia Berlin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990306477-OF20Y2QR3OER8DOC74O6/Brinkley_Lucky.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery A Lucky Man: Stories by Jamel Brinkley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990237458-0SDVDJ065GN478BLJMF0/Burns_Milkman_US.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Milkman by Anna Burns https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990155071-AH2TK3V6GJN5HNJ7SDI7/Drnaso_Sabrina.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Sabrina by Nick Drnaso https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990227406-H35CE8JASZJ29DLA3US5/Laymon_Heavy.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990203095-ABLI6DMO0GDKK4O98I6G/Macy_Dopesick.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990137510-3GYN4RH8ZK2L4DXAC81F/Makkai_Great.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990250582-DL5AQFWU6B0XQV9Z5IWJ/Orlean_Library.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery The Library Book by Susan Orlean https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990424485-BHHDF6H3HFHTWOTSE2EU/Pollan_How.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990116947-NZEY2LD2LX7KKJNNT9HX/Starnone_Trick.jpg Kim Unread 2018 Gallery Trick by Domenico Starnone http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2018-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030070173-U97LE8WEGKL5JVODR2E2/Delderfield_To.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030070173-U97LE8WEGKL5JVODR2E2/Delderfield_To.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery To Serve Them All My Days by R.F. Delderfield https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030814395-NZWMXUTMWP9OAAYKJ4WX/Eden_Letters.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Up the Country: Letters from India by Emily Eden https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030129394-0J90AZ8A797S4PZ3BYJ7/Lutes_Berlin_3.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Berlin: City of Light (Book Three) by Jason Lutes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030167482-QTEJN9CWOMLBR4V8UF7S/McKay_Love.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Love to Everyone by Hilary McKay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030103340-6D1NMM39GASQ92Z4X78E/Pushkin_Eugene.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030092229-H97XTDBIULC8E046WDTP/Rappaport_Caught.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917—A World on the Edge by Helen Rappaport https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030179037-PGV9FHDA6YMNRVUT1VUN/Tokarczuk_Primeval.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030119300-B0OO8RQ2GY05B9R79USG/Turgenev_Fathers.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030148460-69JD1DQW9R3XCDXOMGOL/Twitty_Cooking.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544030802464-890MBBV6GE68V4FA9ZRV/Whipple_Priory.jpg Liz Unread 2018 Gallery The Priory by Dorothy Whipple http://www.phinneybooks.com/james-unread-2018-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990851813-G408LE3ISD264FRLF6SF/Braithwaite_My.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990851813-G408LE3ISD264FRLF6SF/Braithwaite_My.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990941743-HGY2BRMK2ESJZTZ136C2/Davenport_Kenner.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner edited by Edward M. Burns https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990757634-89OI6KTMGJGDTVJCU3CP/Emezi_Freshwater.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990721491-41KBEYZM4O8NROEWOWHS/Johnson_Everything.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Everything Under by Daisy Johnson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990662780-3EOOU25GQ95UEGYH5NKN/McLaughlin_Bearskin.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543991083719-8027Y8V0L5EBG65KYFOB/Nettel_After.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery After the Winter by Guadalupe Nettel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990893989-L4VACQGRMZ6A9QPYF40N/Ondjaki_Transparent.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Transparent City by Ondjaki https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990739527-1FU5MNZTFKIYPP9Z2JF1/Orange_There.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery There There by Tommy Orange https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543991009389-A3RDGR0BAGRE42J5B4Z9/Trueblood_Terrarium.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Terrarium: New and Selected Stories by Valerie Trueblood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1543990791435-BCJBFZ42XQYPWNBLPR4G/Wagamese_Indian.jpg James Unread 2018 Gallery Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese http://www.phinneybooks.com/newsletter-2019-gallery daily 0.75 2021-07-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1626308281873-JSKB717GM6XQRT8KP31H/Austin_Everyone.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 12, 2021) Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin This book had me at "Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death." I was fully prepared from that one-sentence summary to love this novel, but I hadn't anticipated how much I would identify with Gilda's character (and her neuroses); reading her story was sort of like looking at the worst-case scenario version of myself on paper, which could have easily been terrible, but instead was strangely cathartic. Through Gilda's stream of consciousness, Austin captures what it is to be anxious and depressed and flailing in a way that is darkly funny and emotionally honest and leads us to some surprising and dubious places. It's like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but with actual young adults instead of teens. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1626308281873-JSKB717GM6XQRT8KP31H/Austin_Everyone.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 12, 2021) Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin This book had me at "Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death." I was fully prepared from that one-sentence summary to love this novel, but I hadn't anticipated how much I would identify with Gilda's character (and her neuroses); reading her story was sort of like looking at the worst-case scenario version of myself on paper, which could have easily been terrible, but instead was strangely cathartic. Through Gilda's stream of consciousness, Austin captures what it is to be anxious and depressed and flailing in a way that is darkly funny and emotionally honest and leads us to some surprising and dubious places. It's like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but with actual young adults instead of teens. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1626306954365-ABZX6DR2MVDDNMILJVCI/Momaday_Names.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 12, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #79 The Names: A Memoir by N. Scott Momaday A review quoted on the back of The Names calls it "a Native American version of Roots," an obvious comparison at the time (both books came out in 1976, and Roots was an immediate blockbuster) for an American story of non-white ancestry, but that's about where the similarities end. There is ancestry in The Names, but, unlike Roots, it is equally the story of an individual consciousness, of a writer coming to understand the world. The story has a forward movement to it, from his forebears to his own coming of age, but it is hardly linear, as Momaday circles back through memory, his own and his ancestors', to construct his own imagination. His "I" is often a "we," but it is no less concrete for that, full of a wonder that's grounded in the details of personality and place and that makes his well-observed existence seem like a miracle. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1626307040232-ST6UBGXOFO03K36DR5UA/Robert_Other.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (July 12, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #67 On the Other Side of the Forest by Nadine Robert and Gerard DuBois Amid all the bright colors and exclamation points in our picture-book section, you might overlook this lovely, but more subdued, item. Illustrated mostly in muted grays and browns, and featuring a rabbit father who labors to exhaustion toward his dream—building a tower of stones to see over the dark forest that surrounds their small community—it's a story that asks for a little patience. But the story it so modestly tells rewards that patience with a sense of beauty and kindness and, on its final page, a grand sense of mystery and wonder. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1625599932142-ZK81XT4LHQUCZV2J2D3R/Lewis_Premonition.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 28, 2021) The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis You open a Michael Lewis book knowing it will be full of Michael Lewis characters—brainy, contrarian visionaries—and here they include a California public health official, a Zuckerberg-funded biochemist, and a self-styled "redneck epidemiologist," all of whom, in some sense, saw COVID coming and, more contentiously, saw what would be required to stop it. And while the public mishandling of the COVID crisis is part of Lewis's tale, his real story—told, as always, with cinematic skill and almost impossibly larger-than-life characters—takes place behind the scenes, as decades of effort and then months of urgent warnings fail to move elected officials and a reluctant bureaucracy to action. The Premonition is too anecdotal to stand as the last word on the COVID era, but it is a rousing and infuriating first read of history and those who, often anonymously, make it. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1625599992838-LV1GMDCT4OVCG9RZ1IJR/Taylor_NewYorkers.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (June 28, 2021) New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time by Craig Taylor No book could capture the endless chaos, ambition, and struggles for survival of our biggest city, but you can get a hint of its millions of voices here. Working in the Studs Terkel oral-history tradition, Taylor, a Canadian who gave the same loving treatment to another adopted city in Londoners, has chosen the best from his years of conversations with ordinary New Yorkers, and the best of these—from a skyscraper window washer, a 911 dispatcher, an elevator repairman, and a lawyer almost killed by COVID—express, with everyday profundity, philosophies of living in a great and merciless metropolis. (For the audiobook, available through our partners at Libro.fm and read by a rotating cast of ten narrators, a special shoutout to Luis Moreno, who pulled off the tricky assignment of reading other people's oral histories with a particular New York flair.) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1625600011457-1W5797ZCBLDYRS8N3FYX/Coombs_Between.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (June 28, 2021) Between You, Me, and the Honeybees by Amelia Diane Coombs This sweet, sunny YA novel is just in time for graduation and summer. Josie Hazeldine is supposed to be going to college in the fall—it's her mother's dream for her—but Josie has other plans. She's turned down her college acceptance with hopes of staying in her hometown to continue on with the Hazeldine family bee business. The only problem is she hasn't told anyone yet: not her mother, and not her best friend. It's a good thing the loving labor of beekeeping helps to quell Josie's ever-present anxiety, because the first person she finally confesses her dream to? He becomes yet another secret. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1624217896845-LYIDNPXZKLFUPML6KHAY/Gordon_Juneteenth.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 14, 2021) On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed Gordon-Reed made her name, and won a Pulitzer, as a historian of Virginia, and specifically of Thomas Jefferson's estate of Monticello, as she told the history of its black residents alongside its white ones in unprecedented detail. But she was raised in Texas, East Texas specifically, and her little handbook about Juneteenth, the local holiday that is finally becoming a national one, gives the history behind the celebration, as well as a very personal history of the presence of black people—alongside white and indigenous people—in that one-of-a-kind state. She loves the state in which she was raised, and for that very reason, she is compelled to tell its honest history. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1624217563785-X4794RJESKNQKLIOSTYD/Dove_Thomas.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 14, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #78 Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove I had always wanted to choose a book of poetry for Phinney by Post, and I knew, when we did, it would be one in which the poems truly made a book, something Dove leaves no doubt about at the beginning of hers: "These poems tell two sides of a story, and are meant to be read in sequence," she declares in boldface. The sequence is "Thomas" and then "Beulah," two halves that imagine the lives, mostly in Ohio, of her grandfather and grandmother, but as I've read the sequences over and over, they've gained their value to me by knocking against each other, as different moments speak to me, and to each other, two lives gaining their shapes from moments held in memory, fleeting and forward-borne. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1624217591423-R6I4N0Z8IAB9HZ7UR8ZK/Hwang_Toasty.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 14, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #66 Toasty by Sarah Hwang What is the proper level of preposterousness for a picture book, especially one about a piece of toast that thinks it's a dog? Whatever it is, Sarah Hwang hits the perfect balance of logic and absurdity in her debut. Can a piece of toast, like our hero Toasty, roll in a puddle like a dog? Of course not: it gets soggy! But can Toasty bark like a dog? Surprisingly, yes! You'll laugh and root for this intrepid piece of bread as he finds his ideal home. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1622751141834-XST2JHY0JH7YRX1IH974/Polzin_Brood.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 31, 2021) Brood by Jackie Polzin "Life is the ongoing effort to live. Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not." As a person who aspires to one day keep my own backyard chickens, I was delighted by this little novel about an unnamed woman who becomes mother to a flock of four hens in rural Minnesota. Polzin's writing is spare but so specific in its attention to detail that I forgot, more than once, I wasn't reading a memoir, or sitting outside, observing the meanderings of actual flesh-and-blood chickens. But Brood is about so much more than the precarious business of raising chickens. It's a meditation on life—expectations, transitions, grief—and reading it felt like a hug after a hard year. P.S. I am team Gloria. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1622751147611-F81CF3MLZPT0SB7H8D1O/Kubica_Local.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 31, 2021) Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica If you’ve seen my past Top 10 lists, you know I love mysteries and thrillers. Especially during the pandemic, when I’ve compulsively read one after the other, I’ve focused on all the novels by a single author: Tana French, Ruth Ware, Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series. But I’d never read Mary Kubica until a colleague suggested I read her newest book, Local Woman Missing. After that breathtaking page-turner, I plan to binge-read all of her books. A young mother of a newborn disappears one night while going for a jog. A few weeks later, another woman in the same small town disappears, along with her young daughter, leaving behind a cryptic note. Eleven years later, the daughter reappears, severely damaged psychologically. Chapters alternate in time from then and now, and from different characters’ points of view, as the story slowly unfolds to show you the connections between characters—and how each is not exactly who they seem on the surface. Yes, that’s typical form for a good mystery, but in Kubica’s hands, it’s an extraordinary tale that will most likely be in my Top 10 list this year. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1622751152941-QZ10II98I1EID4SYXRNJ/Silber_Secrets.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 31, 2021) Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber Does Joan Silber's novel contain any of the secrets promised by its title? Actually, yes! Such titles are often ironic, and there is certainly plenty of unhappiness to go around in this story, but there are also models for ways to live well, which include forgiveness, patience, and taking love where you find it (which is often not where you are supposed to). Her story opens with the rupture of one family, when a prosperous New Yorker learns that his father has two more children by a Thai woman living in Queens. From there, Silber, like Bernardine Evaristo in Girl, Woman, Other, nimbly steps from life to connected life in each chapter, linking her characters together and showing that the families they make are often stronger than the ones they are given. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1620869932237-P6WUZ9B8YEGHM2UHHAMH/Williams_Homewaters.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 10, 2021) Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound by David B. Williams When it comes to books about Seattle and its surroundings, there's one must-read writer as far as I'm concerned, and that's David B. Williams. I've long been telling recent arrivals and lifetime residents alike about such titles as Too High and Too Steep and Seattle Walks, and now I can add another to my recommendation list. Homewaters is the author's most wide-ranging work yet, a comprehensive account of the human and natural history of Puget Sound. From the formation of the land- and seascape by ancient glaciation, through the long years of indigenous stewardship and into the colonial and contemporary eras, the waters of the Salish Sea have been the region's lifeblood, enabling commerce, culture, and connection, and Williams addresses all that's gone before while also looking toward the future. The vital tie between ecology and the progress of people is the string that holds Homewaters together and will, I think, be the most-remembered message of this essential book. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1620869921768-AAUB96QJGXJ9GBBMKPDV/Galgut_Promise.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 10, 2021) The Promise by Damon Galgut A modest property on the outskirts of Pretoria, an unhappy white family whose dysfunctions seem likely to be remembered by no one outside their tiny circle: these might seem unpromising materials for a national epic, but Galgut weaves them into the last four decades of South African history—from Botha to Mandela to Mbeki to Zuma and beyond—in a way that makes you feel the press (the oppression) of national destiny. With a narrative consciousness that flows easily and often wittily from mind to mind through dozens of characters—nearly all of them stunted and miserable in their own ways—his story arrives at a similar conclusion to Coetzee's Disgrace: the only legitimate response for white South Africans to the legacy of apartheid is a kind of monkish self-abnegation. Enjoyable? I can't say that it is. Bracing? Certainly. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1620869944110-5SSKCTZZPSLKT3MDHEKJ/DeGroot_Auberge.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 10, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #77 The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth by Roy Andries de Groot The "Auberge" of the title is a small inn and restaurant, tucked away in a valley in the Alps and largely undiscovered, until de Groot's 1973 book, which has been celebrated by chefs like Julia Child, Alice Waters, and Samin Nosrat ever since. In this misty Shangri-La, two women, Mademoiselle Vivette and Mademoiselle Ray, present daily menus (always accompanied by multiple wines and cheeses) grounded in the terrain and seasons of their valley and the surrounding locales. The first half of the book tells the story of these women and their valley and these meals and the second half provides the recipes, all presented with de Groot's voluptuously appreciative charm, which makes your mouth water for such delicacies as Les Rognons de Veau Grillés à la Broche, Sauce Diable, even if, like me, you have no desire to actually eat Veal Kidneys Spit-Roasted with Deviled Sauce. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1620869952354-3SS48T9LBNRMM80BJ7HY/Eggers_Lights.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (May 10, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #65 The Lights and Types of Ships at Night by Dave Eggers and Annie Dills Those former and current bedtime-readers among you likely are aware how difficult it can be to turn a much-loved fact book (e.g., in our house's case, the DK volume on Airplanes) into an enjoyable bedtime story. One of the beauties of this recent picture book is that Eggers has turned a fact book on ships—trawlers, junks, galleons, etc.—into a witty readaloud. The other beauty is, well, how beautiful it is, as illustrator Annie Dills has managed to back up, in shimmering glory, Eggers's typically grandiose assertion that "there is nothing more beautiful than a ship and its lights on the sea at night." (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1619656350362-CNUYU2SLFTTR0OG0BCMP/Beard_Festival.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 26, 2021) Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard Jo Ann Beard doesn't write—or at least publish—a lot, but, boy, when she does... She's in her mid-sixties, and this is just her third book; her first, The Boys of My Youth, made her a bit of a cult hero in the rather uncultish world of essay writing. I am a card-carrying member of that cult (it was a Phinney by Post selection a few years ago), so when I say that her new book, Festival Days, is as good as that one, please understand that makes it the best new book I've read this year. Why are these essays (and two pieces she calls "stories") so heart-flutteringly good? There is her tender, clear-eyed intimacy with mortality (most of the stories concern the dying and the dead); there is the equally tender, lively presence of animals (dogs, mostly) through nearly every story. But most of all it is the structure of these stories, subtly ricocheting and reverberating between mourning and laughter, between memory and the moment, that gives them the fullness that only the most observed and felt life ever achieves. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1619656360111-NWZ6UX72IOF1KBHXX0QC/Lehmann_Dusty.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 26, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #76 Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann Does it sound patronizing if I call this a "young person's book"? I don't mean it to—realizing what it is (a book that finds it impossible to imagine what it's like to live past the age of 25) released me to enjoy it even more fully than I already was. Lehmann herself was only 26 when this debut novel had a Fitzgerald-style scandalous success in the UK in the '20s, and she captures with a lush, breathless intelligence what it feels like to grow into the first years of adulthood and learn that the people you have desired from afar—in this case, a glamorous neighboring family of cousins—can be desired up close, and might (or might not) desire you back. If you feel like being swept away, wade in. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1619656369381-Z11F9E2SGAEUM0NG5PKS/Highsmith_Tremor.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 26, 2021) The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith When you start a novel with Patricia Highsmith's name on the cover, you have certain expectations: betrayal, desire (often same-sex desire), consequence. The most striking thing about this novel, about an American writer who goes to Tunisia to work on a small movie set there, is how most of these elements are withheld. For the most part, nothing happens, and then something does, but what of it? You hardly know what to think (Ingram, the writer, certainly doesn't), and Highsmith isn't going to help you (or him) out. Somehow, though, the stark abstraction of this story of a man far from home in a poor desert country made it oddly compelling, and it remains vivid in my mind as few novels I've read lately have. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1618446911684-LGZQB3DT3EZH8I1LJQ2S/Silverman_We.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 12, 2021) We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman If you’ve ever struggled to lead a creatively satisfying professional life, there’s a good chance Cass’s story will resonate. Cass’s chosen career path? Theater. After an entire decade of working on “weird downtown plays” as a no-name playwright in NYC, she wins an award along with $50,000 and lands herself an off-Broadway debut. She’s 33 and being lauded as a “fierce new voice” that’s both queer and feminist. Finally, she’s reached the tipping point in her career. Everything is taking off. The only problem is the higher you rise, the harder you fall. Cass falls hard, fleeing to LA after a scandal of her own making. There, she’s thrust into another landscape of ambition: film, and fame for fame’s sake. We Play Ourselves is a wry, intelligent, and sincere grappling with the ideas of failure and success. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1618446924809-BONFXXO42OK7IF0UUZ1K/Knox_Absolute.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 12, 2021) The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox Over a year ago I read one of those reviews that makes you want to drop everything you're doing and rush to the bookstore, even if what you're doing is running a bookstore. Tantalizingly, I couldn't then read the book that inspired such raptures, as it was available only a hemisphere away in New Zealand. It's now been published in the US, and having obtained it at last, I can confirm the initial reports: What a book! The Absolute Book is stuffed full of ideas and images, with enough plot for a series of novels. It starts as a taut thriller, as a young woman stumbles onto a foolproof way to avenge her murdered sister, but it quickly expands across multiple genre boundaries, using myth and fantasy to play a literary game for the highest stakes there are. It's very much a story built out of stories, inspired by similar tales of conspiracies, ancient secrets, and quests for lost objects, but it surpasses almost all of these in scope and style. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1618446939359-5NMYRSXS40Q0X2GH22W1/Goffstein_Fish.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 12, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #64 Fish for Supper by M.B. Goffstein The story (a Caldecott Honor winner from 1976 just now brought back into print) is as simple as its endearingly simple pen-and-ink illustrations. A grandmother wakes up early, has breakfast, cleans up quickly, and packs to spend the day fishing in her rowboat on a lake, after which she comes home, cooks the fish for dinner, cleans up, and goes to bed so she can wake up early to do the same the next day. Oh, how I love this little book and its celebration of a woman who does as she pleases! (Age 2 to grandmother) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617320518022-XMSX0UJZ1QQW24LRJSUO/Kennedy_Where.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 29, 2021) Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy When it comes to the British Home Front during WWII, the Blitz gets all the attention. As a Blitz-Lit lover myself, I won’t deny its historical dazzle. But having just finished this diary, kept during the summer after Dunkirk—when Brits reasonably thought they could be invaded and even lose the war—I see why the “quiet” can be just as fascinating as the “storm.” A published historian, as well as a famous novelist at the time, Kennedy had a keen sense for detail, dialogue, and geopolitics. But she was also a mother to three children, and she discovered that the qualities that make her diary so compelling were not as practical as the staunch sentiments of her less “imaginative” fellow citizens. Her account has eerie echoes of the year we just endured: she penetrates the amorphous dread that arises when nothing too extraordinary is happening except History-with-a-capital-H. (And she manages to be really funny too.) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1618446899333-NGQTAVVZ5P39APH78GQD/Bailey_Roth.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 12, 2021) Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey In the funniest of his often droll footnotes, Bailey notes that, after he finished his Zuckerman trilogy, Roth had to have his typewriter repaired because the "I" had worn off. Through 31 books, including some of the most acclaimed (and most notorious) novels of the last fifty years, Roth puckishly and often perversely filtered his self through a handful of alter egos, but Bailey, who had access to all the fiction but also to hundreds of pages of unpublished missives from Roth justifying his own equally notorious existence, never gets lost in that hall of mirrors: he makes you feel, and know, a life, lived by a real, flawed person. Did I like Roth any more or less afterwards? I'm not even sure: he was both generous and vindictive, capable of great friendship with women and consumed by youth-chasing lust. But the real drama, and the reason we eagerly read an 800-page biography (at least one as good as this one), is the time he spent at that typewriter, and the artistic stamina that pushed him to write his greatest books when most writers would have coasted to the finish. And it's back to those books I want to turn next. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321130992-IUQYYQIRO01GSKUUU5CY/Forna_Devil.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 29, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #75 The Devil That Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna One of our favorite novels to recommend in recent years has been Happiness, Forna's story of two people meeting in London: Jean, an American woman in her 40s, and Attila, a wonderfully appealing Ghanaian man in his 60s. After reading this memoir, I couldn't help imagining that Attila is an idealized portrait of the man Forna's father might have lived to become. The Devil That Danced on the Water recounts Forna's earliest years, as she is shuttled between Sierra Leone and Scotland, the homelands of her father and mother, while her idealistic physician father rises in the government of his newly independent nation and is then destroyed as it falls into dictatorship. It's a tender, fascinating, and brilliantly observed story that seamlessly weaves together her child's perspective with the often terrible knowledge of later experience. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321142744-Z30U8MROCJ7EDOQQKR0F/Wein_Code.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids’ Book of the Week (March 29, 2021) Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein If not for World War II, and their roles in it, Queenie of Scotland and Maddie of Manchester would likely have never met, which would be a shame, because their fierce love and dynamic talents make them a sensational team. Each is doing her part for the British War Effort: Queenie “Verity” as an interrogator, and Maddie “Kittyhawk” as a pilot. But their mission to Nazi-occupied France goes awry, forcing Maddie to crash land the plane and Queenie to parachute out, only to be arrested by the Gestapo. “Verity” must reveal the details of their assignment or face execution. Code Name Verity is a vivid and brazen story about love and loyalty. It’s deeply researched, profoundly painful, and perfectly exemplifies how a made-up story might reveal a deeper truth. I only wish I’d read it sooner. (Age 14 and up) —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321152771-4JL1PSM8T663U7KLSJWS/Camper_Ten.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids’ Book of the Week (March 29, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #63 Ten Ways to Hear Snow by Cathy Camper, illustrated by Kenard Pak Our weekend-long Seattle snowfest is already fading into memory, but you can evoke snow's wondrous sensory transformations with this lovely celebration of the sounds—Ploompf! Thwomp!—of winter, which also manages to expertly weave in a story of cultural tradition and family aging into its catchy premise (helped by the quiet paintings of Kenard Pak, who, I realize, was the illustrator of last month's Phinney by Post Kids pick too). (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321416364-SXJVEMVBFS3YE51WM9EM/Youngson_Narrowboat.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 15, 2021) The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson Anne Youngson became an instant Madison Books favorite with the release of her 2018 debut novel Meet Me at the Museum, and we've been eagerly anticipating a follow-up ever since. She's at last obliged us with a tale of a trio of women, all of a certain age, drawn together by a shared journey along the English canal system. As we've already become used to with this essential author, her characters are fully dimensional and interact with each other in all the complex ways that real people do. A sweet story that never becomes too treacly, charming but not superficial, The Narrowboat Summer exudes all the warmth of the sunniest season. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321426157-DC55XX4B7T4NKV5Z9SN6/Shorto_Smalltime.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (March 15, 2021) Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob by Russell Shorto Shorto is an acclaimed historian (you can usually find his modern classic, Amsterdam, on our Cities shelf), but he was reluctant to tell his own family history, specifically that of his namesake grandfather, Russ Shorto, who, with his brother-in-law, ran the local mob—and the town—in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the mid-20th century. But you'll be glad he finally did: Smalltime (especially as read by Shorto himself) is moving, funny, and enlightening, unearthing family secrets but also embedding them in a fascinating social history of Sicilian immigrants climbing the American social structure in about the only way available to them. (I heard many echoes from a previous Audiobook of the Week, The World According to Fannie Davis, a rosier portrait of family prosperity built on the other side of the law.) —Tom (Order the audio download of Smalltime from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321492766-F1PH6A80V5ESPUWV8RM6/Gibbon_Sunset.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 15, 2021) Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon I was that weirdo who adored every book I had to read in high school. Now, I’m that weirdo who seeks out the books teenagers in other countries have to read. And that’s how I discovered why Sunset Song was voted "the best Scottish book of all time.” Set in a northeastern hamlet called Kinraddie during the first two decades of the 20th century, it recounts the coming-of-age of bookish crofter’s daughter Chris Guthrie, and the passing-of-an-era of unmechanized farming. While Gibbon doesn’t write in dialect, he seeds his lilting prose with an abundance of Scots words so that you feel like you’re learning a new language by living among its speakers. (I checked my work with the glossary at the back.) Being significantly older than a teenager, I thought I knew how the story would unspool, but it twisted and untwisted my heart right up to the end. Sunset Song is rooted in a specific time and place but yields timeless, universal enjoyment. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1617321502327-0J81OPFRQYI1MW1BL28M/Loomis_Ohana.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids’ Book of the Week (March 15, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #62 'Ohana Means Family by Ilima Loomis and Kenard Pak Loomis takes the cadence and concept of "The House That Jack Built" and makes them her own with a wonderfully rhythmic and evocative story of traditions of Hawaiian food, land, and farming, writing of a sun "that warms the wind on which stories are told / that lifts the rain to the valley fold" and so on. And Kenard Pak's beautiful illustrations of figures in washes of landscape will immediate evoke the island for anyone who has visited Maui, while turning the perspective toward those who have lived there for centuries. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1614818026814-AOXYRA8Q3OF7WOLN9Y3H/Hunt_Zorrie.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 1, 2021) Zorrie by Laird Hunt Zorrie is a short novel about a full life. Not full in the usual way we think of for a character in fiction: travel, romances, adventure, public achievements. Zorrie Underwood's life, covering most of the 20th century, was so tied to the soil of her patch of rural Indiana that a few months spent working in Illinois as a young woman remained an exotic memory for years after. Mostly she worked, hard, and loved, patiently, with her curiosity and appreciation of the world around her burbling along at a low simmer. This little gem will remind readers of Marilynne Robinson and Kent Haruf and (for me especially) of Brad Watson's lovely Miss Jane, as it reminds us of the passions that can grow, and be sustained for decades, in a quiet mind and a laboring body. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1614818037855-Z9O2Y8SS04HLHS39TAVF/Schalansky_Inventory.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 1, 2021) An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky What sort of book is this? Schalansky, a German writer and designer (she designed this starkly beautiful book), loves lists, and in part it is just what the title promises, a list of things that are no longer here: an extinct tiger, a destroyed palace (two, actually), a lost film. But each missing item is accompanied by—well, this is where definitions get tricky—a story of some kind, or an essay. Some are fairly literal excavations, some fanciful (one favorite follows grumpy Greta Garbo around for a day), but what they add up to is less a factual reclamation of these lost things than an emotional reckoning with what it means to lose. The last chapter, in which an old rumor that everything lost on Earth ends up on the moon is confirmed, explained the book best to me: this book is the moon. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1614818052541-0OKWYA3ZVM3GZCMCO75R/Kelley_Different.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 1, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #74 A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley Like Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, Kelley's novel (his debut, published in 1962 when he was 24) straps itself into the straitjacket of American racial history but leaves just enough room to wriggle out and imagine something else. Set in an unnamed southern state wedged somehow between Alabama and Mississippi, A Different Drummer has the Great Migration taking place in single month, emptying the state of every one of its black residents. And perhaps most challengingly to the traditions of African American (and American) fiction, Kelley presents it entirely from the perspective from the state's white residents, giving readers a puzzle he declines to solve for them. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612406490520-3E724LGG5LQXDT4K9D9V/North_Outlawed.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 1, 2021) Outlawed by Anna North I got to read an early copy of Outlawed last year and have been impatiently waiting until it went on sale and I could share it. This book deftly recasts the Western genre through a queer, feminist lens, with lots of fun and adventure along the way. In an alternate 1890s where any woman who can't get pregnant is suspected of being a witch, teenage Ada barely escapes her hometown with her life. She finds herself at a hideout in the company of the Hole in the Wall Gang, a ragtag group of misfits who each have something they're running from too. I loved living in this world for the much-too-short time it took me to read Outlawed. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612406512205-5UB5E9AWP6QV776KL4W9/Unsworth_Grown_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (February 1, 2021) Grown Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth From the outside, 35-year-old Jenny McLaine appears to be a successful adult. She owns her house, has a cool writing job in London, a few good friends, and up until recently she lived with her famous photographer boyfriend. Her inner monologue quickly shatters this illusion of put togetherness, revealing Jenny to be neurotic, self-obsessed, and needy; she can’t put down her phone and cares exceedingly about being “liked” on social media to the detriment of her real world relationships. Grown Ups is a satirical portrait of the elder millennial that is messy, tender, and hilarious. Go ahead: put your phone down, pick it up! —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612406516162-042KJ4N0T9MIBZGF231F/Barich_Laughing.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 1, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #73 Laughing in the Hills: A Story of Life and the Race Track by Bill Barich When Bill Barich decided, "with the same hapless illogic that governed all my actions then," to spend the spring of 1978 at a second-rate racetrack in Northern California, he might have been looking for a big score—the book does track the progress of his small wagering bankroll—but what he found was people, a collection of characters drawn to the track not by the promises of riches or glamour (there is little of either to be found here) than for subtler and more mysterious reasons: perhaps a desire for an orderly life, organized around the nine daily races, or for a disorderly one, outside the strictures of nine-to-five respectability. Barich's wry and affectionate eye for his fellow denizens makes this read like—and please note the high praise this implies—the nonfiction book Charles Portis never wrote. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612406523719-VG5D826BT4KC6KYO9660/May_Black_aud.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (February 1, 2021) The Blackhouse by Peter May There has been a murder on the stark Hebridean Isle of Lewis, in the same small town where Edinburgh police detective Fin Macleod was raised, but Fin, sent to investigate, spends much more time peeling back the tragic history of his own youth than following the usual clues. Once the events of The Blackhouse have all unfurled, you'll understand why Fin was so reluctant to return to the island he left for good at the age of 18. The revelations are disturbing and dramatic (even melodramatic), but the real fascination for me was the setting, especially a brutal traditional bird-hunting outing on a nesting rock in the Atlantic, and in the audio version, the atmosphere is only heightened by Peter Forbes's wonderful narration, modulating between island and mainland Scottish accents. —Tom (The audiobook, via our partners at Libro.fm, is the only edition I can currently recommend, since the paperback appears to be between US editions right now.) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1611196747422-RHKGUZEDPKVE3EWV65GX/Saunders_Swim.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 18, 2021) A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders George Saunders is one of the best short-story writers around—he blew out the doors of the genre back in the '90s and has not rested since—and if you've seen him speak or read his interviews you'll know that he's also one of the wisest givers of advice on the craft and creative process of fiction writing, so it's no surprise that this book is a treat. Based on a class he taught at Syracuse for two decades, it includes seven stories by 19th-century Russian masters (including three by Chekhov, among them the exquisite "Gooseberries," the source of his title), each followed by Saunders's modest, funny, and thoroughly insightful analysis of both the technical and—dare I say it—moral details that make them tick. It's obviously a book for writers, including some exercises at the back that I, who hate writing exercises, might actually try, but it's equally a book for readers, especially those for whom stepping back and examining how art is made just adds to the wonder of its creation. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1611196755843-CJH6W4QXBZUCR1MJC8PV/Vesaas_Ice.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 18, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #72 The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas I read this book twice last year, at the beginning of the year and the end, and my awe and delight at its beauty only increased. The story is simple—a new girl comes to a small Norwegian town, and makes a connection to a girl there—and the language is stripped down to its minimum. But oh my, the intensity that those simple words—some of them unspoken—carry! In other hands, this might have felt like a horror story, but Vesaas (a household name in Norway, but nearly unknown here) invests it with stark enchantment. When I describe it as a cross between Denis Johnson's Train Dreams and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, please forgive my glibness and know that I am giving it the highest praise I have. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1611196771537-URUQKD7HZDNW7ZVEWRB7/Rex_Gum.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 18, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #60 On Account of the Gum by Adam Rex And you think the old lady who swallowed a fly had problems! What starts with a little gum stuck in your hair soon grows until there are scissors, a vacuum, and a rabbit (and much more) up there. Adam Rex handles both the expert rhymes—"Your grandpa, who said that your aunt was mistaken, is mostly to blame for the noodles and bacon"—and the delightfully disastrous illustrations, in which the funniest elements are the wide, fed-up eyes of the poor kid whose sloppy gum chewing set this whole snowball rolling. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1611196737805-7CPS0JNISO75PC66NHV1/Haldar_No.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Phinney by Post Kids Book #60 No Reading Allowed: The Worst Read-Aloud Book Ever by Raj Haldar, Chris Carpenter, and Bryce Gladfelter We know what a homonym is, those words that amusingly sound alike, but what do you call it when it's a whole sentence? Haldar, Carpenter, and Gladfelter, authors of the witty P Is for Pterodactyl, have raised their wordplay game in their second book to an entirely new level (with illustrations to match), from "Sir Francis Bacon" / "Sir, France is bakin!" to "The new deli clark runs a pretty sorry store" / "The New Delhi clerk runs a pretty sari store." A delightful celebration of the flexibility and inclusiveness of the English language. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1606523808806-6JUSUCJBYHH09PWFQWQD/Hazareesingh_Black.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 23, 2020) Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh Having read The Black Jacobins, C.L.R. James's still-classic 1938 account of the Haitian Revolution, earlier this year, I was curious what a modern version could add to the story. Even more than James, Hazareesingh focuses on the miraculously compelling figure of Toussaint Louverture, and from the mists of legend is able to create the picture of a man. Inevitably, the first 45 years of his life, spent largely in undocumented slavery, can only be speculated about, but once he ascends to power, there is a wealth of records to work from—much of it from Toussaint's own voluminous letter-writing—and by carefully tracking Toussaint's maneuvers through the tightest of domestic and international squeezes and by documenting his self-educated and sometimes idiosyncratic wisdom, he makes you understand both the brilliant improbability of his success and the tragedy of his personal failure, just as his country was headed toward independence. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1606523902675-5E743QI2I57JZSH1J1CV/Hale_Blades.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 23, 2020) Blades of Freedom (Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales #10) by Nathan Hale One response to the complexity of explaining the Haitian Revolution is to narrow the scope, as Hazareesingh (see above) does by focusing on Toussaint. Despite his tinier canvas and his younger audience, Hale, in the tenth installment of his wildly popular series of graphic histories of thrilling episodes in American history, does the opposite, making his story about the Louisiana Purchase as well as Haiti and detouring along the way to explain, among many other subjects, the production of sugar, the syncretism of Haitian vudou, the rise of Napoleon, and the succession of the Spanish empire. It's a lot to thread together, and even the wisecracking characters in the story complain, but it's thrilling to see the story placed in such helpful and fascinating context. As much as I've read on the subject this year, I learned a lot! —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1606523914740-3DHMTDO51PYE027K09PK/Lockhart_Again.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (November 23, 2020) Again Again by E. Lockhart Again Again both was and wasn’t the young adult love story I expected. Adelaide’s summer can and does go a myriad of different ways, in a number of possible worlds, perhaps thanks to her introduction to multiverse theory. However, it seems that in each world, even the worlds where she might, possibly, fall in love with someone new, she must first contend with a painful breakup. And yet, the heart of this story isn’t the romance(s); it’s Adelaide’s relationship with her opioid-addicted little brother. Lockhart’s thought-experiment of a novel celebrates the perhaps overly analytical mind that carries out hypothetical conversations to their furthest conclusions, that ponders the consequences of second and third chances, that dares to wonder what if? The result is charmingly weird, bittersweet, and philosophical. (12 and up) —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1605986215710-TAKH1GXKCCWRG3L7YYZ6/Danforth_Plain.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 16, 2020) Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth Plain Bad Heroines is a delicious feast of a book served by a compelling narrator-host, who’s omniscient, witty, and opinionated without being tiresome. This horror-comedy boasts multiple storylines spanning more than a century, each of them a savory slow-burn. In 1902, we’re introduced to doomed, romantic, Mary MacLane-obsessed boarding school girls Flo and Clara, whose macabre deaths inspired 16-year-old Merritt Emmon’s bestselling, 21st century book, The Happenings at Brookhants. In present day, we meet the cast for the book’s forthcoming horror-film adaptation: film-star celesbian (celebrity + lesbian) Harper Harper and B-list actress Audrey, daughter of a famous 1980’s scream queen. Part queer gothic romance, part Hollywood satire, Plain Bad Heroines is wholly unique, wonderfully entertaining, and extremely meta. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1604792791298-J57J9PRFLPH52F75EX4Z/Walter_Cold.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 2, 2020) The Cold Millions by Jess Walter Jess Walter's fiction has covered comedy, history, crime, character study, and more, but I don't think he's ever put so much into one book before. His most recent novel centers on two brothers, Rye and Gig Dolan, scrabbling for a living as they ride the rails of the Northwest in 1909. Both are caught by a current of social unrest, swept downstream along with a cast of labor organizers, plutocrats, suffragists, vaudeville stars, mobsters, and many humble others. The judicious blend of reality and imagination brings E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime to mind, but as a portrait of the Inland Empire of the Palouse, there's nothing else like it. The Cold Millions is an extravagant, panoramic story told with rumbustious verve, and it's sure as heck going to be on my year's best list. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1605986296521-HGKIUJEVVM5AYUC7J03F/Brower_Starship.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 16, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #71 The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower The starship is a father's dream, the canoe—really a kayak—his son's. The father is Freeman Dyson, physicist and wild thinker who concocted plans to colonize comets and send spaceships to Saturn, and the son—estranged for a while in his early 20s from his father—is George Dyson, living sometimes in a treehouse north of Vancouver and building kayaks based on the technological traditions of the indigenous Arctic. Brower shuttles between them before bringing the two together, writing with all the grace, curiosity, and humor of John McPhee, a comparison that brings another set of father/son dynamics, since Brower's own famous father, David, was the subject of McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. A wonderful book that gathers even more meaning from its context, both before and after it was published in 1978. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1604792908477-0BM68OG1RZUMHFR0307O/Garner_Spare.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 2, 2020) The Spare Room by Helen Garner I’ll admit the set-up is not promising even in the best of times: two upper-middle-aged/class friends, one with cancer, the other caring for her. BUT STICK WITH ME! In the highly capable hands of one of Australia’s most celebrated authors, there’s no bathos or cliche to be found in this sharply entertaining novel, which might end up my favorite of this unimaginable year. Garner is as famous for her journalism as her fiction, and the specificity of her details and dialogue is so ordinarily odd that they just feel true. The narrator (a writer named Helen) sounds like she’s talking to you—her friend, you hope—because she’s so smart, funny and recognizably human: she knows she’s imperfect but would prefer to be less so. And since actual events don’t unfold neatly, Garner cleverly structures her story to uphold that reality while delivering a satisfying narrative. This slim, unassuming book reminded me that an everyday miracle of creativity can reassure us of the everyday miracle of kindness. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1605986300927-4ZKK37EPU0DZCHBQBX42/Ball_Feather.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 16, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #59 Flip-a-Feather by Sara Ball The idea is simple: mix-and-match flip pages that create various bird combos of head, body, and tail. But, as with Ball's previous book, Mix-a-Mutt, the execution is superb: sturdy board-book pages, bright illustrations full of personality and a little humor, and just enough fun facts about each species to make it an interesting and edifying reading, as well as flipping, experience. Besides, who wouldn't want to see what a Toucan-Ostrich-Hummingbird looks like? (Age 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1604792927922-9DIY8JRD145018KTPOQL/Garner_Owl.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 2, 2020) The Owl Service by Alan Garner The strangest and most baffling book I've read this year—and one of the best—is shelved in our Middle Reader section. Alan Garner is a legend in the UK but much less well-known here, and The Owl Service was one of his breakthrough books, winning the Carnegie Medal in 1967. Set during a family's vacation at a rural house in Wales, it bristles with class friction and complex family dynamics but also, most memorably, with the insistent, and increasingly fantastical, eruption of very local myths into the present. And the strangeness is only increased by the storytelling, which is carried off in a deceptively chatty and familiar style that makes you feel like every third sentence has been removed. You are, like most of the characters, continually catching up with what's going on, and it's worth it. (Age 10 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603324047441-07CSIGJ8MS0RFLAUMQTB/Akhtar_Homeland.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 19, 2020) Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar Akhtar pulls you in with his very first sentences—intellectual and political, but flowing with the energy and intimacy of friendly conversation—and you are off on a ride through post-9/11 America, as lived by one man—like Akhtar the son of Pakistani immigrants and like Akhtar a Pulitzer-winning playwright, although the book is fiction. His father is an America-embracing, Trump-friendly cardiologist/failed businessman; his new best friend (for a time) is a hedge-fund billionaire pouring his money into positive PR for Islam. It's a marvelously complex, challenging, and companionable portrait of America, by one of its children. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603324054010-S62MHWBCKDOWVZRWZOQL/Jackson_Castle.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 19, 2020) We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Living in the “castle” are the surviving Blackwood family members: 18-year-old Mary Katherine “Merricat” and her cat, Jonas, 28-year-old Constance, and their old Uncle Julian, who spends his days sitting in the sunny garden in his wheelchair or obsessing over the details of his memoir. Six years ago, someone murdered the rest of the family via arsenic poisoning, and the nearby village is rife with speculation about which remaining Blackwood could’ve done such a thing. Darkly humorous and deliciously atmospheric, Shirley Jackson’s 1962 gothic mystery cleverly tells the myth of a foreboding castle-like house—and its suspect residents—from the inside. A classic choice for October! —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603324088018-HFP0XJU29THN216K1ZU3/Hardwick_Sleepless.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 19, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #70 Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick Hardwick called this book a novel, and it may look to some like a memoir (the life of the "Elizabeth" in it matches of the outline of Hardwick's), but to my mind, it's a book of criticism: not of works of art but of people. Hardwick was one of the great critics, and here she makes a series of witheringly sharp portraits of friends and relations, summing them up with a few deft words, a few well-chosen actions, and only rarely, tantalizingly, turning that same judging eye on herself. If you're the sort of reader who underlines in your books, you sometimes will feel like you should underline every sentence of this brilliant gem. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603324093913-K03TTPJK6TQHA1A8V7Y4/Thornburgh_Skulls.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 19, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #58 Skulls! by Blair Thornburgh and Scott Campbell Skulls, glorious skulls! You might think of this as a scary Halloween book (it is October, after all), but really it's a wonderfully unscary celebration of that big, well-shaped bone in your head, a "car seat for your brain," as your young tour guide, and skull enthusiast, tells you. You'll never look at a skeleton in the same way. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1602114623059-6TLQGWNF7NU05S6T4DRB/Hession_Leonard.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 5, 2020) Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession I was drawn to this novel for two reasons: because it was a surprise hit in the UK last year, from a small publisher I admire, and because it was described as "a nice book about nice people." That might sound bland or even patronizing, but in the hands of Hession, an Irish musician publishing his first novel, it feels almost radical to write, not about betrayal and tragedy (the usual stuff of fiction), but about everyday kindness and forgiveness and small steps that seem immensely large to those who make them. It helps that Hession has a wonderfully modest sense of humor and, even more, a sense of the drama inherent in the lives of these two quiet, and quietly courageous, men. By the end of their story, you'll be rooting for them too. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1602114649199-0SOR2M2W09O7I7BCLFKF/Pearl_Writers.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 5, 2020) The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager I delighted in this book of twenty-three author interviews conducted by world-famous librarian Nancy Pearl and her co-author Jeff Schwager, the perfect duo for this literary project. I found listening in on these conversations to be a deliciously voyeuristic experience, particularly because I was lucky enough to transcribe all but a few of the interviews for the book; I’m happy to report that reading the physical copy of the book is just as vivid and entertaining as listening to the MP3 files. The Writer’s Library is chock full of book recommendations, laugh-out-loud moments, and nuggets of wisdom 
as its eclectic cast of authors reflect on their reading histories and habits and enthuse about the books they love most. Grab a copy and prepare for your to-be-read stack to grow! —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1602114688400-Y97VET3DVBS23S7KEGSH/Vendel_Little.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 5, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #58 Little Fox by Edward van de Vendel and Marije Tolman You might be drawn into this book by the brilliant bright orange of that rambunctious little fox, set against the pale, windswept Dutch seaside. But then the book opens out into an expansive story that you might not expect in a picture book, with dreaming and danger and the little pleasures of a little fox's life, and a thoughtful new understanding of the words his father always tells him: "Too nosy is dead nosy." (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1601063513699-0XMXWR8AATD0OLHG1Z6R/Taylor_Real.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 21, 2020) Real Life by Brandon Taylor It hasn't been easy to explain why I like this novel so much (Laura and Nancy and the Booker Prize judges do too), but I think it comes down to what it's like to be inside the head of Wallace, the gay African American Big Ten biochemistry grad student whose real life you share for a few alternately slack and intense summer days. He's a hard one to get to know, for his friends and for a reader, armored with defenses and then suddenly so bristly and vulnerable when those defenses are pierced that you might need to turn away. The vulnerability might remind you of Kiese Laymon's Heavy, but you might also think of Sally Rooney's novels, with their similar deliberately banal titles and similarly drifting, passionate twentysomethings. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1601063533189-F0GA00H5HD5REHKATWZ1/Backman_Anxious.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 21, 2020) Anxious People by Fredrik Backman Fredrik Backman knows exactly how to break my heart. And he does it just moments after making me snort with laughter. The author of A Man Called Ove and Britt-Marie Was Here ups the comedy in his new novel, but his trademark unfolding of each character’s back story several times left me so stunned I had to stop reading and remind myself to breathe. Anxious People is about a bank robber, a bridge, an apartment open house, a father-son relationship, loneliness, and how so many of us are unable to tell people we love them out loud but do so in quiet ways that go unnoticed. It is classic Backman, where he illuminates the flaws and foibles that make us fully human. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1601063548949-TD08FZDUA4FVGA2YLY23/Yang_Three.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (September 21, 2020) Three Keys by Kelly Yang Mia Tang is back in Three Keys, the sequel to Front Desk! Since its debut last year, Front Desk has been one of my go-to middle-grade recommendations, and Three Keys returns to the Calivista Motel—just five miles from Disneyland, but a world apart. There, Mia and her parents have created a welcoming atmosphere for immigrants, with classes for adults and kids. But they still struggle to make ends meet. To make things worse, a nasty state proposition threatens to kick undocumented kids out of school and encourages a string of hate crimes against immigrants. The resolute Mia finds a way to fight for her friends and make things right, while dealing with a bitter new teacher, motel investors, and parents who have put aside their former dreams to clean motel rooms. Kelly Yang again manages to pack so many important and thought-provoking topics in a short book (her books are inspired by her real-life experience growing up as the daughter of motel managers). (Ages 8-12) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1598487536426-N18MO4GMAJZD9Z6AKFGY/Perlstein_Reaganland.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 24, 2020) Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein Who knew that the finest chronicler of the modern conservative movement would be a writer from the left? Or that his four massive volumes of history, taking us from Goldwater's landslide defeat to Reagan's landslide victory, would be so incredibly entertaining? Perlstein's method is full immersion: a moment-by-moment recounting of political news and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, which in this case means the rollercoaster of hope and malaise of the Carter presidency and the rise of direct-mail politics and the Christian right that brought us the elderly ascent of the Gipper. Reaganland may be the finale of Perlstein's epic, but as we know, the story was just beginning, and you'll find the echoes of our current times deafening. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1598487543124-4SJOPKEKVWVUYDQHY3Y0/Taussig_Sitting.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 24, 2020) Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig Too often in our discussions about diversity, we leave disability out of the conversation. In this memoir-in-essays, Rebekah Taussig brings her fresh and incisive voice to the table, sharing her story of what it’s been like growing up and living in her “ordinary resilient disabled” body. With humor and honesty, Sitting Pretty examines ableism in our society, which includes lack of representation, inclusivity, and accessibility, and also reveals the ways well-meaning nondisabled folks disregard and undermine the experiences, desires, and abilities of disabled people. While this book is a lesson in disability studies and intersectionality, it is also a love story with a message of empowerment and body positivity at its center. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a body (and also a heart). —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1598487550404-ZJ0ND14AVBQ9LIMAXK3U/Miller_Know_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (August 24, 2020) Know My Name by Chanel Miller During the trial of Brock Turner, Chanel Miller was known as Emily Doe, “the unconscious intoxicated woman” Turner attacked on Stanford’s campus. Now, in this stunning and unapologetic memoir, Miller owns her experience as a sexual assault victim and honors her pain. Know My Name is an emotional and unflinching look into the trauma of sexual assault and the upsetting treatment survivors face in the court system. It is also beautifully written, humanizing, and empowering. Through her own telling, Miller reveals herself to be a whole person, one who is not easily defined by this terrible thing that happened to her. Her story is a powerful reckoning.

 “You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.” —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1597277737340-IKKSBBPCGZBFMAO3RO6H/Moreno-Garcia_Mexican.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 10, 2020) Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia How about some chills to cool you off this summer? Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia fulfills the eerie haunted house genre perfectly. After society girl Noemí receives a strange letter from her newlywed cousin Catalina, she treks to a remote mining town in the Mexican hills to investigate her cousin's sanity. A decrepit Victorian mansion in the foggy woods, strange rumors about the odd family within, and the ever-present whiff of danger make for a very fun page-turner that will keep readers guessing. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1597277749087-RVN42N191DOFOVMMTE02/Mieville_City_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 10, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #68 The City & the City by China Miéville Miéville is best known as a baroque and endlessly inventive fantasist, but in this novel he harnesses his imagination to the rules and the spare language of a police procedural, which he turns inside-out with a single, intriguing twist. I won't spoil his premise, since he only gradually reveals it, but let's just say the border between the two cities in his story is unlike any you've seen before—that is, until you start to think how our own cities are divided. A wonderful and strange book that thoroughly fulfills the promise of its idea. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1597277757977-9343TSAD1N2U0GIORYLO/Fogliano_Just.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (August 10, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids #56 Just in Case You Want to Fly by Julie Fogliano and Christian Robinson Christian Robinson's name keeps popping up on the covers of our favorite picture books (Gaston, Last Stop on Market Street, and Another, to name a few), and here his sprightly, generous illustrations find an ideal match in the wonderfully evocative—and equally generous—words of Julie Fogliano: "Just in case you want to fly," they begin, "here's some wind and here's the sky." (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1596065467984-J5HRFCYKLFEBTQ1G8G0N/Tomine_Loneliness.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 27, 2020) The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine I hope it doesn't trivialize last week's New Book of the Week, Erica C. Barnett's memoir of alcoholic blackouts and self-destruction, to say that the humiliating confessions in this book are nearly as relentless and excruciating. Because the humiliations, in the case of this graphic memoir, are tiny: failed bookstore events, comicon party snubs, parenting meltdowns, extracted from a life of evident professional and personal success. But there's something about that ceaseless rhythm of minor abasement, presented, as always, in Tomine's pristine, deadpan lines, that is both hilarious—I laughed out loud more than I have for any book since The Dog of the South—and, finally, moving, as Tomine himself questions, and then resumes, his maniacal devotion to his career and craft. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1596065505542-SSHX70S3CIE8C7CEWEFQ/Kobabe_Gender.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (July 28, 2020) Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe This delightfully illustrated graphic memoir is an emotional and straightforward account of self-discovery and acceptance. Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, explores coming to terms with eir genderqueer identity and asexuality in a way that is personal, thoughtful, and educational. Kobabe's self-aware recollections range from uncomfortable and painful to awkward and joyful and liberating. The artwork is beautiful, and the discussions—particularly the conversations (and their respective panels) on coming out, dating, and pronouns—are heartfelt and great. This book is a welcome addition to LGBTQIA+ literature! —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1596065517477-FOIT1GB0W2A41K975TGR/Manguso_Ongoingness.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 27, 2020) Ongoingness: The End of the Story by Sarah Manguso This short, unconventional memoir is an account of Sarah Manguso’s meticulously kept diary: eight hundred thousand words written over twenty-five years. I am fascinated by people who keep daily records of their lives, though I’m intrigued by the process more than the product. Ongoingness doesn’t include a single excerpt from Manguso’s diary, but rather describes the author’s compulsion to write, “to retain the whole memory” of her life. It is a meditation on memory: remembering, and forgetting, as well as a confession of what it is to be human. Despite the fact that I don’t journal obsessively or even daily, I found this book to be deeply resonant; if I’d have highlighted each passage that captivated me, most of its pages would now be yellow. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1595460319155-SYFQ2HJMSXUEPHCCBY0T/Barnett_Quitter.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 20, 2020) Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery by Erica C. Barnett You may know Erica C. Barnett from her dogged local reporting in the Stranger or PubliCola or on her current blog, The C Is for Crank, or her appearances on KUOW, but what you may not have known was that she spent a decade of her reporting career as a blackout drunk, cycling through recovery and relapses and nearly destroying herself in the process before finally finding a sobriety that stuck. What sets Quitter apart as an addiction memoir is that she reports on her own life with the same ruthless attention to detail (and wry humor) she brings to City Hall, and that she declines to fit her story into the usual arc of rock-bottom epiphany. She knows failure is as likely as success, and that there's always a bottom below the one you thought was bedrock, and her skepticism toward solutions makes the ones that ultimately worked for her feel even more precious and hard-earned. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1595460331343-EWIUXKTA05RJLOBZC0HK/Ernaux_Years.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 20, 2020) The Years by Annie Ernaux All of Ernaux's work blurs the line between fiction and memoir, but The Years blurs it further, into history. The book covers a lifetime—hers, from 1941 to the present—but it is the history of a "we" much more than an "I." (Or, from another perspective, it shows how much any "I" depends on the "we" it's part of.) She progresses impressionistically from war through postwar austerity through personal liberation and social revolution into our tech-mediated times, marking moments with the shared ephemera of clothing, pop culture, and sexual mores no less than French milestones like Algeria and May 1968. For an American reader, the effect is to see those years through the novelty of another national experience; for any reader, the effect is a poignant immersion in the fleetingness of human identities and attachments. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1595460340236-KFBATYLXTMEC2ZZ9VI69/Ernaux_Girl.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 20, 2020) A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux The "girl" of the title is Ernaux herself, at age 18, marked by her bookishness for a life outside the working class in which she was raised. And the story is, in essence, that of a single moment and its aftermath: an ambiguous encounter with a slightly older man, forced and then forgotten by him but altering her life forever. As in The Years, she holds her own past self at arm's length—who is this "I" who once was me, she asks again—but for all the distance she places between herself, now in her seventies, and this girl, the connection between them, along with the ruthless honesty of her self-investigation, give this little book an intensity beyond anything contained in The Years. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1594862684178-JUOQOMJMG9A0KKN657G0/Williams_Her.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 13, 2020) Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams I love historical fiction that focuses on strong female characters, especially when it’s written by Beatriz Williams, who is a master at slowly unfurling connections between characters years apart. Her latest book, Her Last Flight, is a kind of homage to Amelia Earhart and the daring men and women of the 1920s and ’30s who took to the skies to prove that airplanes were the future of travel. In 1928, 20-year-old Irene Foster meets famed aviator Sam Mallory, who teaches her to fly before the two attempt a historic flight from California to Australia. Irene’s fame soon eclipses Sam’s as everyone is fascinated by a woman pilot, until they both disappear without a trace 10 years later. In 1947, a daring female journalist with her own secrets tracks down a woman she believes to be Irene, as she tries to discover what really happened to Sam and Irene on that last flight. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1594862707580-TOIU1ZCL3SLMC2YZ84SG/James_Jacobins.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 13, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #67 The Black Jacobins C.L.R. James Rare is the book of history that remains in print over eighty years later, but James's ground-breaking account of the Haitian Revolution—written in 1938, revised in 1962, and meant to inspire and celebrate the revolutions of the oppressed in both moments—has become a part of history itself. And the book remains a marvelously readable telling of a crucial, stunning, and still poorly understood event. James (a Marxist) often pays more attention to factions and classes than the personalities that popular historians usually build their stories around, but even he can't resist the phenomenon of Toussaint L'Ouverture, a slave until he was 45 and then, for a decade, one of the most capable and consequential people on the planet, whose tragic career shows, as James writes, that "Great men make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1594862726614-LJ07YYEPL4QRB9XSJS35/Sterer_From.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (July 13, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #55 From Ed’s to Ned’s by Gideon Sterer, illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins Remember visiting your friends' houses? This blissfully kooky book carries with it an immediate and probably unintended nostalgia for those carefree days of going from house to house. But the real pleasure comes from the sing-song rhymes that will make for excellent lap reading and the increasingly convoluted ways—tightrope, parachute, cannon blast—this horde of friend-loving kids find to get from place to place. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1593888510992-M9Y64IN0W3PW4G3HWETO/Bennett_Vanishing.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 29, 2020) The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett Within the first few pages of The Vanishing Half, I knew I was reading something special. In this slow-burn novel, twins Desiree and Stella grow up in Mallard, a small black community in segregated Louisiana that prides itself on the lightness of its people’s skin. At sixteen, the twins flee from Mallard after their mother pulls them out of school to work cleaning white people’s houses, sacrificing the familiarity of home, the safety of their community, and the predictable trajectory of their lives. In New Orleans, the twins begin their new lives together, but eventually Stella takes off on her own, choosing to live the rest of her life “passing” as white; Desiree marries a dark-skinned man, has a child who looks like him, and ends up living back in Mallard. The consequences of the twins’ life choices unfold throughout the book, from the 1950s to the 1990s, and include the lives (and perspectives) of their daughters, Kennedy and Jude. The Vanishing Half is a fascinating story about family relationships, identity, and belonging, and I savored every page. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1593888642996-13RZ7GL2ZTPE5CDKA6ZE/Holleran_Grief.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 29, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #66 Grief by Andrew Holleran Thomas Wolfe once divided novelists into "putter-inners" (like himself) and "taker-outers," who pared their art down to its bones. This is one of the taker-outerest novels I've ever read. There's so much you don't know about in this elegant, reticent story, despite its setting in the concrete details of Northwest Washington, DC, in the late Clinton era. The great unspoken is the recent plague, the devastation of AIDS, of which the narrator and his friends are survivors. Those years are not entirely suppressed, but they are spoken of with the shared exhaustion of those who have lived through a tragedy together and are still trying to live. Grief, for that lost generation, and for other losses, surrounds the story with a white, silent space that gives this spare story its gravity. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1593888711432-UIBOMX3AVQBH37LGKIV9/Ahlberg_Jolly.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 29, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #44 The Jolly Postman, or Other People’s Letters by Janet & Allan Ahlberg The Jolly Postman, by the British married duo, the Ahlbergs, was a throwback when it was published in the '80s and seems even more so now, but its inventiveness remains, with letters between Mother Goose characters—an apology note from Goldilocks to the three bears, an attorney's threat to the Big Bad Wolf—each placed in their own envelope. A librarian's nightmare, but lots of fun, especially for young isolated readers who might want to send and receive their own letters to absent loved ones right now. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1592335819325-UKSUVXHYN7ONMAF61E22/Johnson_Center.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 15, 2020) At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson "Solitude" is a seductive word in our chaotic times, but Johnson doesn't just mean a quiet week in the woods to rejuvenate us for the rat race. His solitude is a lifelong vocation, a choice made by the artists he profiles—and by himself—to live as "solitaries," uncoupled for the most part (and often celibate) and devoted to creative work that unites them not with a single person but with all of humanity. Some of his ideals are familiar (Thoreau, Dickinson, and Cezanne, from whom he borrows his cover image), but he also includes Rabindranath Tagore, Nina Simone, Bill Cunningham, and even rehabilitates Rod McKuen! The most moving passages concern his self-described "bent sexuality" and his family's formative friendship with their neighboring monks in Kentucky, including Thomas Merton. You'll be glad to draw some deep breaths of rarer air with his help. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1592335834889-GJLY95T1K2VU1NBRX0PM/Leovy_Ghettoside_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 15, 2020) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy I know it's early yet, but this is the best book I've read in 2015, and it might remain so. For over a decade Leovy has reported on murder in L.A., especially on the killing of black men (and boys) by black men (and boys) in the south side of the city, and in Ghettoside she does justice to a vast and varied range of characters: victims (often chosen nearly at random), killers (often motivated by revenge), witnesses (often terrified and reluctant), and especially the few dogged homicide detectives who refuse to shrug and let murders go unsolved. And from this daily tragedy she builds a compelling conclusion: that black-on-black homicide flourishes because it is not punished; while the law harasses African Americans over pretexts and petty crimes, it declines to protect them from the worst crime of all. It's a complex, subtly skillful, and necessary book. —Tom [from an February 2015 newsletter] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1565826705951-XJWLUZFXQ7KLN5XFL8T5/Chesnutt_Marrow.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 12, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #56 The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt Nearly every discussion of Chesnutt's 1901 novel, only recently acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of its time, focuses, understandably, on the real event it was inspired by: the white riot in Wilmington, NC, in 1898 that overthrew the biracial elected city government. And that's part of the reason to turn back to it over a century later (when it feels like times have hardly changed). But the other is Chesnutt's wizardry as a social novelist: his ability to trace the box limiting empathy and imagination that each character carries around, and then to construct scenes that force them to the edges of those boxes (where, almost always, they end up turning back toward convention). It's a funny, tragic, brutal, and deeply human story. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1592335499024-AN1STPXFMKFFS1ZVZTP4/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 1, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #65 The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd It's hard to imagine that a book this powerful sat unread in its author's drawer for thirty years. Written in the '40s and finally brought out a few years before Shepherd's death, it has since become, rightfully, one of the classics of nature writing. Shepherd lived her whole life among the Cairngorms, Scotland's most mountainous area, and her beautifully exact reflections are a result, not of conquering a mountain, but of living in and around it. Every page in this compact marvel has sentences so thought-provokingly observant you'll want to write them down, and, like the best nature writing, her writing is so selflessly attentive that it becomes a philosophy. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1592335380922-QO1TAAR23DBW2AL3X9GL/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 1, 2020) Sin Eater by Megan Campisi Sin Eater takes a little-known historical role and expands it in this imaginative novel set in an alternate Elizabethan England. For stealing a loaf of bread, teenage orphan May is forced to become a sin eater—shackled with a metal collar proclaiming her status to all she meets and with a black "S" tattooed on her tongue. Shunned by society, sin eaters must only speak to the dying, who tell them their sins. Each sin corresponds with a food item—raisins for adultery, mustard seeds for lies, etc. By eating the "sins," the sin eater takes them on as their own, releasing the dead person's soul. At first distraught from the isolation and contempt her new lot in life brings, May gradually realizes that it isn't without its benefits. One of those benefits is access to the court of Queen Bethany (a thinly veiled Queen Elizabeth I), where courtesans are being murdered and accusations of witchcraft are flying. Fans of Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and Godshot will find similar themes in this fast-paced, high-stakes adventure. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1592335691603-COYWM8AD81NBHIF7N40X/Brown_Little.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 1, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #43 The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard We usually choose new picture books for Phinney by Post Kids, but when this one—which I had never seen before, even though it was written by Margaret Wise Brown and won a Caldecott in 1947—came into the store recently, there was something about its story of isolation and connection that seemed perfect for the time we're in, and Weisgard's illustrations, full of the brightness of sea and sky, seemed an ideal tonic for our own shuttered lives. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269880349-8XV0MREPGRN9C0BJC7BX/Gornick_Unfinished.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 18, 2020) Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick Striking a balance in my reading these days is a challenge, like so much else. I want reading with feeling, but not too much; reading with truth, but not too much; reading with poignancy, but certainly not too much. Unfinished Business hit this slippery target beautifully. I was ready for this book, ready in the way Gornick defines it: "responsible for every successful connection ever made between a book and a reader—no less than between people—is that deepest of all human mysteries, emotional readiness.” It is with that stark perceptiveness that Gornick revisits her life’s reading and re-reading of a handful of favorite authors. Her connection to the characters, plots, and themes shifts with each reading, so all the while she is crafting beautiful reflections on her own life’s unfolding. It’s a book I wish I could read for the first time again and again to capture its magic, though I suppose I will have to be content to simply re-read it. —Kim https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269896518-GNCBFJ4ZYHRAPH5LG5BW/Jacobsen_Unseen.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 18, 2020) The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen It seems impossible that this short novel of family life on a remote Norwegian island hasn't been handed down for generations. It feels as much like a document for the ages as it does a piece of contemporary fiction, depicting lives filled with toil and reward that might as easily be led in the middle ages as in the 20th century. The Unseen's characters aren't primitives, though, nor are they simple. Jacobsen's uncondescending narration richly individualizes them and grants them the full scope of human expression, from fear and strain and grief to whimsy, desire, and joy. I don't think I've ever read anything that better touched the essential truth of what it is to be alive. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269913678-BOV11LE31Z7R4NIV3WDS/Enright_Actress.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (May 18, 2020) Actress by Anne Enright My usual policy (with a few notable exceptions) is that an audiobook is almost always better when read by the author, who brings, if nothing else, the emotional resonance of speaking words she has written. In no case so far has that paid off as grandly as with this book and this author, a born actress herself, not for her polish but for what feels like its opposite, a swervy, drolly impulsive style of speech that keeps surprising you mid-sentence—mid-word!—with shifts in rhythm and emphasis. its a good match for her tale—a grownup daughter recalling the once-famous Irish actress who was her mother—which follows no pat arc of a life but is deliciously full of sentence-by-sentence observations and odd bits of fully lived life, mostly in 1970s Dublin. A treat. —Tom (Order the audio download from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269134253-YE6L3PA636JFQ2EMWVK1/Yourcenar_Hadrian.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 20, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #64 Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar I really think of this as two books. There's the novel itself, a beautiful, thoughtful channeling of the great late-Roman emperor that is graced by an elegant, regal reticence and one of the rare powerful-but-admirable main characters in literature. And then there's Yourcenar's twenty-page afterword, "Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian," which is one of my very favorite pieces of writing from any time or anywhere, a romance of passion and patience between author and subject that distills Yourcenar's thirty-year struggle, through war and exile, to write the book you hold before you. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269628874-03RD3H6I9SWLCT8G0GML/Wright_End.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 4, 2020) The End of October by Lawrence Wright Are you the sort of person who would choose to read The Road in the middle of a blackout? Then The End of October might be for you! Wright has been justifiably acclaimed for his fearlessly reported accounts of both al-Qaeda (The Looming Tower) and Scientology (Going Clear), so perhaps it's not too surprising that his first fictional thriller—written when COVID-19 was a mere twinkle in a bat's eye—would turn out to be so unsettlingly prescient. Yes, a viral pandemic is quickly ravaging the planet, and some of the elements—ventilator shortages, accusations of foreign lab culprits—will feel weirdly familiar, but Wright, in true thriller fashion, turns the dial up to eleven in every respect: the blood-gushing brutality of the virus, the immanence of global war, the rapid collapse into anarchy. It's not easy going, and his brilliant epidemiologist hero—spoiler!—can't fix everything; some might find it cathartic to read, others too close to home. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269639312-ED9OP3IDJYHYWF5RIO83/Christman_Midwest.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 4, 2020) Midwest Futures by Phil Christman I'm one of the few members of our staff who is not from the Midwest, but the region's allegedly bland mysteries are a draw to me as well. The mystery starts with the region itself (does South Dakota count? Pittsburgh? Missouri?), but Christman, a Michigan working-class native turned Michigan academic, wisely doesn't try to unravel a single answer, choosing instead to ravel a whole host of threads—political, literary, geographic, natural—together in a thought-provoking tangle. The most convincing case he makes is that our "Heartland," often claimed as the site of American authenticity, is built on ideas and abstractions, not the least of which were the grids America's frontier planners used to make sense of the land they were taking over, a grid wittily mimicked by the structure of his book. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1554943269326-YA8QPHPWNPZ3O7FKTTL5/Auxier_Sweep.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 8, 2019) Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier When I heard an interview with Jonathan Auxier talking about how many years of historical research he did when writing Sweep, I couldn't wait to dive into his authentic world of Victorian chimney sweeps. As perfectly as he has constructed this world it is, after all, the story of a girl and her monster, so there is plenty of fantasy mingled with the realistic details. Nan Sparrow is a child chimney sweep, or "climber," who by the age of twelve has become accustomed to being invisible in Victorian London society. The mysterious sweep who raised her simply vanished one day, leaving her with a small piece of coal that always stays warm. As magical events develop, Nan learns to open herself to vulnerability and rely on others. This beautiful, heart-wrenching book deals with friendship, sacrifice, and love. I particularly enjoyed reading a story with a tough and street-smart preteen girl protagonist in a world traditionally dominated by boys. (Ages 8 to 12) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269091512-JWMG8P7CT6M0ZMUPK2V7/Volz_Home.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 20, 2020) Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco by Alia Volz When an advance copy of Home Baked arrived at the store, I took it home hoping merely to escape into the iconic 1970s San Francisco setting. I never anticipated that this memoir would give me an in-depth education on both the history of the era and the politics surrounding marijuana. Home Baked tells the story of the underground, and extremely illegal at the time, first known pot brownie business, Sticky Fingers. The author’s mother, Meridy, known to many simply as “The Brownie Lady,” and her friends expanded the operation through the swinging ‘70s and into the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when marijuana went from a recreational drug to one that could mean life or death to many of their friends suffering from the disease. This book is about so much more than a homespun "magic brownie" business and the people whose lives it touched. It’s the story of a 20th century family, a movement, and an era. Whether you’re a square like me or an experienced pothead, I "highly" recommend Home Baked! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1590269122886-WV9JFRMUNT4LAUPYZ9OY/Gardam_Verona.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 20, 2020) A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam Jessica Vye is a 13-year-old girl living in the North of England during World War II. Yet she maintains that the “violent” experience that shaped her was being told, at the age of 9, by visiting author Arnold Hanger that she is “a writer beyond all possible doubt!” At 13, Jessica has internalized the sentiment that she is a born writer and also believes herself to be a mind-reader and a compulsive truth-teller. She’s smart, funny, odd, and widely misunderstood by her fellow students and teachers, who worry that she’s getting above herself. In this short, sweet coming-of-age novel, the eccentric young Jessica Vye paints a vivid picture of her school days, family life, and social sphere amidst the bleak realities of wartime: food rations, gas masks, and the threat of air raids. At the end of my reading, I’m inclined to agree with Arnold Hanger. What a wonderful writer!. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1587067122052-QBH7FJS2SQN5JADV6K66/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 13, 2020) Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes Melchor’s English-language debut is a portrait of a Mexican village as unnerving and entrancing as any painting by Bruegel or Bosch. The scene opens on the village's outskirts, its resident Witch found murdered and floating in a ditch. Chapter by chapter, Melchor shifts focus from one inhabitant to another, edging closer to the why, how, and who of the crime. She trains her lens on the most anguished and the pages overflow with their torrential voices: the abused and the abusers, as well as complicit bystanders. Yet all are to be pitied—all prisoners of their hellish social-scape. Melchor alludes to drug gangs, political corruption, racial tensions, heavy-handed religion, and economic exploitation, but the true devils are machismo and misogyny that have metastasized until they engender rampant femicide and devour their hosts. A maelstrom of language that demands to be heard, Hurricane Season is currently on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize, which awards both author and translator. And it’s already won a spot on my personal Top 10 of 2020. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1587277866544-U32JTFGB074BV6QR4RCL/Kolker_Hidden.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 13, 2020) Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker Schizophrenia is among the most ruthless of diseases, suddenly erupting in a life, often in adolescence, and turning it inside out in ways few treatments have been able to solve. That's what happened to six of the twelve children in the Galvin family in Colorado in the '60s and '70s, creating a house of turmoil for the stricken and their family members, but also a rich genetic record for researchers desperate to solve the disease's puzzle. With an empathetic and scientific mastery that will remind many readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Kolker weaves the devastating but still humane story of the Galvins together with the often equally frustrating history of schizophrenia's many failed treatments, and brings the two storylines together to offer some hope for the future. A superbly compelling book. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1587277880556-L0Q1QK83W05G29UCOSAG/Keret_Long.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 13, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Selection #52 Long-Haired Cat-Boy Cub by Etgar Keret, illustrated by Aviel Basil If you think that Etgar Keret, the Israeli master of oddball tales for grownups, might also be pretty good at writing stories for kids, you would be correct. Here he turns the premise of a distracted dad and a kid lost at the zoo into a fantastical—but emotionally true and satisfyingly well-rounded—adventure involving an airship, a rhinoceros, and chocolate milk. (Ages 3 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586584096295-CY8A9JSGDKF0EFEEGXTY/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 6, 2020) Godshot by Chelsea Bieker In a drought-stricken California town, a teenage girl grows up in thrall to her troubled single mother and a pastor with a cultish power over his flock, struggling to assert autonomy over her mind, soul, and body. Debut novelist Bieker employs muscular language and Technicolor imagery with the deftness of a seasoned pro in creating what might be an entirely new genre, Central Valley Gothic. And from the department of small victories comes this news: while many books are being postponed this spring, the publisher of Godshot decided to grace readers with it ahead of schedule. More than a few of you will be grateful for the extra time you get to spend in the grip of its feverish intensity. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586584167827-Z26BKTYAV2INFRFB46OZ/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (April 6, 2020) Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly as Lasdun about how people think, and his narrator—an acquaintance of both the he and the she—recounts what he is told as well as how he processes that information. While we live with the optimism and anxiety caused by a tectonic cultural shift, when masses of received wisdom are breaking up and new standards haven’t quite solidified, it’s crucial to examine not just ideas but the motives and emotions that undergird them. Lasdun’s novella has the plotting and pacing of a thriller, each revelation causing you to reexamine the situation and your own assumptions—even after you finish it! But it’s his sly wit and quietly elegant prose—shot through with images of surprising aptness (he also writes poetry)—that elevate this ripped-from-the-headlines story into a thoroughly satisfying reading experience. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586584255711-PDWNTRMPM2ECO2QSFRH4/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Teen Book of the Week (April 6, 2020) Great by Sara Benincasa Great is a retelling of The Great Gatsby as a contemporary YA novel. In this version, Nick Carraway is reimagined as a teenage girl named Naomi Rye, who is spending the summer at her mother’s East Hampton home. Naomi’s status-obsessed mother encourages her to mingle with the popular, elite crowd, including senator’s daughter and aspiring model Delilah Fairweather and her boyfriend Teddy, who never skips an opportunity to wax nostalgic about his career as a child actor. But Naomi is more interested in studying for her SATs and reading Save Me the Waltz than being social until she meets her next door neighbor, Jacinta: fashion blogger, thrower of lavish parties, and card-carrying member of the Delilah Fairweather fan club. Benincasa captures the mood, pacing, and drama of the original and cleverly updates the story with modern technology, social media, and gender swapping. The result is charming and fun, especially in picking out parallels between the two texts. I wish my high school English teacher had assigned this! —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583781292-G05FO6TTSBCTHHPITMJB/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 30, 2020) The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes Barnes has written wonderful historical fiction; this lovely book is nonfiction, but it's written with a novelist's wandering eye. On the face of it a biography—of the celebrity physician Samuel Pozzi, the subject of the Sargent painting adapted for the cover—it's really a portrait of an age, the French Belle Epoque, a world of dandies and duels, of beauty and rage, tied together by images from the Félix Potin trading cards, collectibles found in department-store chocolates celebrating the 500 most famous figures of the time. Barnes is a graceful and thoughtful inquisitor, but the best part of the book is Pozzi himself, once-famous, now-forgotten, a charismatic, brilliant, innovative, and flawed figure who is a delight to have unearthed from history. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583899254-5GDQV87TF9DQEEEJA6MB/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 30, 2020) The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel Yes, I know that Station Eleven is one of the most brilliant and entertaining books about a pandemic ever written, but I swear, it's a coincidence that I'm recommending another book by Emily St. John Mandel this week. Her latest novel has at last been published, and it's one that I've been waiting a while to be able to tell you about. It has the sort of plot that's the right amount of tricky, not overly complicated but with enough surprises that I don't want to spoil any. Suffice to say that the author has said that her working title for the book was Ghosts and Money, and that the characters within it are haunted by both, metaphorically and just possibly literally. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583979369-VH3JDW6L6FSHAZF2Z2LE/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (March 30, 2020) Normal People by Sally Rooney Normal People, while a coming-of-age novel about first love, is not a romance. The story is written with insight into two protagonists, Marianne and Connell, which lends a sort of he-said, she-said quality to the narrative. Each chapter moves us a little deeper into what each of them is thinking and feeling. Each chapter is also a time jump, advancing us as little as five minutes or as much as seven months into the future. In this novel, character is plot, and I found it both fascinating and frustrating to observe Marianne and Connell and the way they often talked but failed to communicate. Rooney’s simple yet distinct writing style, filled with comma splices and no quotation marks, took some getting used to but eventually began to sound like a friend telling a story: life-like, intimate, vulnerable. I’m impressed and grateful not to be offended that Sally Rooney has been called the voice of my generation. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583503652-4W6SI4FUIGJQKPLOYSW7/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 23, 2020) House Lessons: Renovating a Life by Erica Bauermeister Erica Bauermeister's memoir-in-essays is a treasure for anyone who, like me, can't resist the intrigue of an open-house sign. House Lessons beckons you inside a trash-filled hoarder house in Port Townsend, where a family is determined to transform it into a beautiful, memory-filled home. The project proves to be an undertaking that is easier dreamt than done, and Bauermeister is transparent about the frustrations inherent in the process. This book is in part an education in architecture, informative as well as interesting, and its structure is strong enough to hold this story, with its cast of eccentric real-life characters and stranger-than-fiction moments. Told with loving language and such respect, this was a most enjoyable read. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583593096-A3396DATNKGJBZ9FOLHF/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 23, 2020) The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune The House in the Cerulean Sea is a heart-swelling wave of sweetness and hope. Mild-mannered government caseworker Linus Baker is sent on a secret assignment to an island orphanage he's never even heard of. The astonishing inhabitants he gets to know there will change his life and make him reassess everything he thought he knew. This book will leave you believing in the good in everyone—even those society has given up on—and contemplating how huge changes have to start somewhere. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583678721-2BOXHGB32BH7YELIDW08/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (March 23, 2020) The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis If you're looking for a book that has something useful to say about the current situation that isn't too, you know, on point, look no further. In previous books (The Big Short, Flash Boys, etc.) Lewis took on the issue of deregulation of the financial markets, but in this, his most recent work, he casts a wider net and does a cost-benefit analysis of government as a whole. Embedding himself in the lives of workers in what he expects will be the most superficially dull and least important sectors of the federal system (Agriculture, Energy, etc.), he finds unsung heroes at every turn, displaying expertise and professionalism essential to the smooth functioning of democracy. When asked by an interviewer last year what it would take to remind Americans about the true importance of those qualities, he said, "For people to suddenly start to value what good government does, I think there will have to be something that threatens a lot of people at once. The problem with a wildfire in California, or a hurricane in Florida, is that for most people it is happening to someone else. I think a pandemic might do it, something that could affect millions of people indiscriminately and from which you could not insulate yourself even if you were rich. I think that might do it." —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583241013-9R1UHU40T3DPEG1K7ONC/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 16, 2020) Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit is one of the best sociopolitical writers we have (she's the coiner of the term "mansplaining") but I like to imagine a better world in which she doesn't feel obligated to take on tyrants, terrorists, and people who occupy more than one seat on the train. Because when she's not making devastatingly cogent arguments in support of truth, justice, and the American way, she's one of the best writers we have, period. Whether the subject is history, travel, architecture, or nature, her limpid prose elevates and illuminates it. In the memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence, her subject for the first time is herself, the young woman who came of age as a human being and a writer in once-bohemian but increasingly gentrified San Francisco. Since we don't live in the better world of my imagination, this is a political book as well as a personal one, examining the ways in which our culture tries to erase women individually and collectively. It's an essential addition to a body of work for the ages. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583339474-B0W3YRST106RTV2POPMX/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 16, 2020) Short Life in a Strange World: Birth to Death in 42 Panels by Toby Ferris A 42-year-old writer looks at his young sons, considers the recent death of his 84-year-old father, and tries to make sense of it all in the only natural way: by undertaking a round-the-world quest to see the 42 existing paintings by one of the greatest masters of the Northern Renaissance, Bruegel the Elder. The book that results from this whimsical impulse is a gorgeous object and an even lovelier read, both an account of a physical journey and a tracing of a curious mind at play. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1586583400734-GE558L1D7MQT4G0T5M1P/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 16, 2020) Bad Debts by Peter Temple Peter Temple launched his career as a novelist (at age 50) with a very enticing sentence, introducing one "Edward Dollery, age forty-seven, defrocked accountant, big spender, and dishonest person." That was enough to draw me in, but it helped too that Nancy Pearl is a big fan of Bad Debts, Temple's debut. So am I now: his hard-boiled banter justifies the comparisons to Elmore Leonard, and his hero, Jack Irish, a somewhat good-hearted attorney who, among other things, doesn't mind cashing in on a giant horse-racing scam, is a compellingly flawed and reluctant sleuth. I see why, in his short career—only eight novels long—Temple became Australia's most acclaimed crime writer. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1583975313504-DF9195EK20B4EJJXOF7X/Russell_Dark.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell As the title promises, this story is a dark one. It is a modern-day Lolita, in which 32-year-old Vanessa is still reckoning with the affair she had at the brave and vulnerable age of 15 with her 42-year-old English teacher. As an adult, Vanessa is adamant that she was not abused, that she is unlike the other girls now coming forward with allegations against Mr. Strane. She argues that she was a willing participant and does her best to convince herself (and us) that her and Strane’s relationship was a love story—“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?” My Dark Vanessa is full of empathy and nuance as Russell grapples with the issue of agency in victimization, explores the long-term effects of trauma, and reveals the grittier side of the #MeToo movement. It is one hell of a debut. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1583975406148-PKMTBVIMTIPFYNQX2SF8/See_Sea_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Paperback of the Week The Island of the Sea Women by Lisa See I love to learn things from the books I read, and this book taught me so much—not only about the South Korean island Jeju, its matrifocal society of haenyeo (women divers), and its culture and traditions, but also about friendship, the horrors of war, loyalty, and grief. The Island of Sea Women is vividly imagined and deeply researched, which is apparent as we follow “sisters of the heart” Young-sook and Mi-ja from their girlhood in the 1930s to present day 2008 through the dramatic events—both personal and historical—that shape their lives and test their relationship. The story is at turns beautiful, brutal, absorbing, and raw. Females are strong as hell. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1583975416455-B4E3YJDPCZT52HB2DX1S/Meloy_Everyone.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week Phinney by Post Kids Book #51 Everyone’s Awake by Colin Meloy and Shawn Harris As anyone who reads kids books out loud knows, not every rhyming picture book has rhymes that really sing. But Colin Meloy, the singer and songwriter of the Decembrists, knows how to compose a singable line, and his new book balances the chaos of a night when no one is sleeping—the dog throwing darts, the dad buying chintz, the cat giving tattoos—with the perfect order of rhythm and rhyme. This book is a hoot. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1583374419879-N408LJOFWE3XTP6KC7PM/Szabo_Abigail.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week Abigail by Magda Szabo Booksellers geek out devising pithy comparisons that telegraph the feel of one book with the modified title of another. So I gave myself a pat on the back when I realized I had just finished the Hungarian To Kill A Mockingbird! Szabo was a popular and acclaimed author, and Abigail was voted the sixth most beloved novel by her compatriots (as well as adapted as a TV show and a musical). The story is told from the point-of-view of a girl (at a point in time after the events) with a wise father fighting on the right side of history, and a mysterious benefactor whose identity is revealed at the end. Adolescent readers will commiserate with Gina as she navigates her cloistered boarding school, and when they share her discoveries about the outside world, their minds just might be blown. Adults will be amused and appalled by the specifics of a Calvinist girls school in 1940s Debrecen (Szabo was a teacher in one), and the plotting and pacing guarantee a twisty, breakneck ride even if they can guess the destination. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1583374439942-3UHVQVATOS4V0RNI53RR/Atkins_Fake.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 2, 2020) Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking by Annie Atkins It doesn't seem a stretch to wonder if Wes Anderson makes films (especially The Grand Budapest Hotel) as an excuse to create exquisite fictitious letterhead, and when he wanted someone equally meticulous about such things, he found Annie Atkins, who worked with him on graphic prop design (did you know that was a job?) for Isle of Dogs too, as well as on Bridge of Spies, The Tudors, and Penny Dreadful. Atkins's yummy first book shares reproductions of her own work as well as the period ephemera—movie tickets, signage, hotel stationery—that inspire her. For certain kind of design- (and movie-) besotted person (such as me), this book of behind-the-scenes magic is candy, specifically the sort of candy you might be presented in a pink Mendl's box. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1583374448589-DAEVZGCWBW50CRSLE9GU/Pumphrey_Old.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (March 2, 2020) The Old Truck by Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey The first book by the Pumphrey brothers has the classic feeling of the old truck (and the way of life) it celebrates, with beautiful pastel prints and a story of technological obsolescence that brings a believably happy ending to the roadside romance of neglected old vehicles. An additional presence is the equally neglected tradition of American American farming that was inspired by their own family history. (Ages 0 to 4) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1582161290838-3E7MH2U5SJ46WPJE8PPO/Matar_Month.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar Matar wrote this book in between books. The one he had just finished, The Return (which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017), was a memoir of his attempt to discover the fate of his father, who was disappeared by the Libyan regime when Matar was a child, and so his month in this Italian city was intended as a respite. And it reads that way: not as a vacation, but as a chance for Matar to wander, in body and mind, a project for which the ancient walled city turns out, paradoxically, to be ideal. Drawn at first by his almost inexplicable longtime attraction to the paintings of the Sienese School, Matar turns out to be equally drawn to chance encounters with locals (often fellow outsiders like himself) and to the play of his thinking through days of near silence. It's a small book about a small city that opens the space for large thoughts. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1582161300010-1Q0EEUA9UQTZPZB1VDO5/O%27Brian_Master_aud.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian For so long I've looked forward to trying Patrick O'Brian's famous tales of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and I'm glad I finally did so via Patrick Tull's utterly delightful audio rendition. The novel itself (the first of twenty (!) in the series featuring captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin) is full of superb character studies as well as a density of period language and absurdly detailed seamanship that's even more delicious to consume than I expected, all of which are matched by Tull's wonderfully dramatic impersonations, true to person, to naval lingo, and to the variety of accents onboard. Reef the topsails, Mr. Marshall! Set the topgallants! Mr. Pullings, fire as they bear! —Tom (available from our audio download partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1582161319620-9OBE35C6HC5R1NJKZU8S/Martin_Imaginaries.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week The Imaginaries: Little Scraps of Larger Stories by Emily Winfield Martin Many books are bad (I can admit that), some books are good, and a few books are great. Even fewer are great at being more than one kind of book at the same time. Oregon's Emily Winfield Martin has long been one of my favorite children's book artists, but she's reached new heights with this, her most recent publication. The Imaginaries collects an array (a sequence?) of her evocative, inimitable illustrations, each accompanied by a caption that will delight and perhaps confound kids of all ages, from toddlers to tweens. As a readaloud, this is a neverending story that allows a child's imagination unfettered rein. But adults too, at least those of a creative bent, will be inspired just as much. Is it a picture book? Art book? Guide for seekers of truth and beauty? The Imaginaries says yes to all those questions, and to many more. —James [from the Madison Books newsletter] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581555370398-TRA6A2RO07RY47TRR5HH/StJohn_Women_US.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 10, 2020) The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John I’ve noticed more and more people coming into the bookstore asking for a type of fiction the Guardian has recently dubbed "Uplit." Not escapist fluff to help forget reality, but books to reassure them that reality doesn’t have to be this way. And the hilarious, heartening novel I just finished should be a classic of the genre. With her slightly out-of-the-way locutions, St. John sets a retro-Aussie scene and hits all her marks. She slyly nips at the innocent provincialism of midcentury Sydney, but also helps map the inner topographies of characters who don’t always know how to get where they want. The women who work in Ladies’ Frocks at F.G. Goode’s Department Store may not get a fairy-tale happily-ever-after, but they remind us that—even in the real world—hope is not always misplaced. Full disclosure: I am usually wary of “happy” books, firmly believing that a pessimist is actually a realist who is occasionally pleasantly surprised. But it turns out that some of my favorites of the last year and half have been exactly that. And The Women in Black is so simply perfect that I doubt I’ll read anything better all year ... but then you never know. —Liz [from our April 2018 newsletter] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581555393475-LB5GSOZUHC99TNAOSF8X/Segal_Her.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 10, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #62 Her First American by Lore Segal My favorite book I've read so far this year came out in 1985 and takes place in the late '50s. You may know Segal (I did, at least) from her fantastic kid's book, Tell Me a Mitzi, but boy, she is quite a novelist too. Her First American features two indelible characters, a young refugee from Austria, Ilka Weissnix, trying to find America, and the American she finds, Carter Bayoux, a charismatic, troubled African American intellectual. Surrounding them is an equally memorable cast of supporting roles and cameos, and while at its heart this is an encounter between identities—young European meets older African American—its brilliance comes from the sheer, strange, lively individuality of everyone she imagines. It's funny, poignant, brilliantly told and heard, and so subtly insightful that it still feels ahead of its time. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581555415973-MCXPV731I6A94TB6LZER/Nicholls_Button.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (February 10, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #50 The Button Book by Sally Nicholls and Bethan Woollvin With its primary colors and interactive premise, The Button Book is not the first picture book to be inspired by (or, alternatively, rip off) Hervé Tullet's modern classic Press Here. But regardless, I can just imagine the chaotic fun this book's premise—"press" the yellow button and everybody bounces, press the purple button and it's a tickle attack!—will stir up among toddler audiences. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581034398585-7WWJU6JEEKZ34NITEGB8/Wiener_Uncanny.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 3, 2020) Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener It's a subject ripe for satire: a young literary woman leaves publishing to try out tech in San Francisco and gets drawn into the money and ambition of Silicon Valley. But Wiener's memoir, sharp-tongued as it sometimes is—of the photos on a first date's Instagram feed, she writes, "They were, I had to admit, very high resolution"—is more melancholy than that. She finds that she likes most of the people she meets, even the CEOs, and in her eyes, the intermingled idealism and greed (the latter often disguised as the former) of her cohort—or rather the cohort around her that is hoovering up money while she's just grateful to have a decent health plan—come across as deeply human characteristics, though no less sad and disturbing for it. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581034422294-X1X14JIDV8O66NZFFUM5/Ondaatje_Conversations.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film by Michael Ondaatje One of my favorite books on creativity is this book-length dialogue between a novelist and a film editor, who got to know each other when Murch, best known for his work on The Godfather and Apocalypse Now and for his own classic book, In the Blink of an Eye, edited the adaptation of Ondaatje's The English Patient. The cross-disciplinary discussion, their wide-ranging curiosity, their shared love of film, and the genuine affection between them all make for a deliciously enlightening conversation of interest for any film lover, or anyone interested in the construction of a good story. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1580508008722-K8ZNNBNZ86NK1JX43ACX/Greenwell_Cleanness.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 27, 2020) Cleanness by Garth Greenwell I loved Greenwell's first book, What Belongs to You, the elegant and intense story of an American's desire for a Bulgarian man, and I love this one too. It's also the story of a young American in Bulgaria, it's also a story of desire, and it's also elegant and intense. But, as a set of connected stories, it's more diffused, and, with a three-story centerpiece called "Loving R.," it's more open to the possibility of joy. Greenwell writes about desire and physical intimacy with a jaw-dropping candor and intelligence, but the most striking thing in this book are the sentences: cascading series of comma splices that (in a manner that might remind readers of Cusk or Sebald, though Greenwell's style is his own) create both an intimate engagement and a melancholy distance for the narrator and ourselves. This feels like life, breathed and lived, and stylishly recalled. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1580507765975-U35SWWYTNEFDIEUP12QD/Yoshitake_Boring.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 27, 2020) The Boring Book by Shinsuke Yoshitake Yoshitake's Still Stuck, the story of a boy who can't get his shirt off, is one of our very favorite picture books, and in his latest, a child is confronted by an even more common, and more challenging, difficulty: being bored. Turns out being bored can lead you to wonder: what does "boring" really mean? What things are fun and what are boring? Can fun things become boring? Can boring things become fun, once you aren't doing them any more? The Boring Book includes a little everyday philosophy, a handful of coping mechanisms, and whole lot of oddball humor. Not boring at all! (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581034410239-A6P2A31UIA03MZC58ZYL/Yuknavitch_Verge.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 3, 2020) Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch This short story collection does what Yuknavitch does best—asks you to trade your life for a book that is just strange and beautiful enough for you to make the deal. I floated through these stories the same way I've floated through her other work, almost unaware of time passing. Her endangered characters make terrible and necessary choices to preserve their difficult lives, and to move through a world that was not made for them. —Erica (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1579132792940-PQ32AO0I9J710TCHJ0VV/Gibson_Agency.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 13, 2020) Agency by William Gibson Famously, Gibson predicted our future in books like Neuromancer, and then our present caught up to him. Fittingly, his current loose trilogy, of which Agency is the second book, is set both in the future and in our recent past, or rather an alternative past—a "stub," in the book's term—to which people from the future can travel, through various intermediaries. Gibson is one of my favorite writers, whose vision of the future makes you feel so intensely the conditions and possibilities of our own present, but I had forgotten just how enjoyably challenging it is to situate yourself in the worlds he creates and only slowly explains. Agency's alternative past is full of horrors, at least at a distance, but is surprisingly utopian in the possibilities of good will on display. My mind was crackling with thought and pleasure throughout. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1579132806031-IA2S28IZHRNOZ9BD9AG0/Zucchino_Wilmington.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 13, 2020) Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino The hit new TV series Watchmen, adapted from Alan Moore's comic of the same name, opened its first season with dramatic scenes of widespread white-on-black violence in 1920s Tulsa, Oklahoma, that were so shocking many viewers couldn't believe they were drawn from history. The massacre was all too real, as was an earlier series of events in North Carolina that is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino's most recent book. In the 1890s, Wilmington was the state's largest city, home to a thriving black population whose members owned many of the community's businesses and held a number of political offices. All this effort at post-Civil War Reconstruction was torn down in 1898 after what was sometimes referred to (when discussed at all) as a "race riot." In fact, it was an intentionally orchestrated coup, one of the only occasions in American history when a duly elected government was overthrown by violence. The story of how its perpetrators seized control of the state legislature and destroyed the city is essential, jaw-dropping reading. Like David Grann in his Killers of the Flower Moon, Zucchino performs an invaluable service in uncovering history that's too long been suppressed. Unputdownable. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1579132812982-BLQ9P7YH7JVNSK3BFD0U/More_Saturday.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 13, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #49 Saturday by Oge Mora We loved the art and story of Mora's first picture book, Thank You, Omu, but might like her new one even more. It's a simple tale of a shared routine between mother and daughter in a busy life, of modest hopes, disappointments, and togetherness, given full dimension by her beautiful painted-collage illustrations. A keeper. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1578692637086-OPMD06WJ9B3WQW4AOJYN/See_Golden.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 6, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #60 Golden Days by Carolyn See This book never goes where you expect it to. Is it a satire of '80s SoCal self-empowerment? Is it a post-nuclear-war story of human apocalypse and survival? Both? Neither? The real story, for me, is in See's sentences: as swervy, surprising, and suddenly breathtaking as the hairpin turns of the Topanga Canyon road on which her narrator, post-divorce, finds a home in the midst of the particular LA excess of the era. As I emailed the friend who had tipped me off to this forgotten gem, after reading the jaw-dropping first dozen pages, "Joan Didion is reading this and thinking, 'I'm getting left in the dust.’" Rediscover this crazy and wonderful book, as we approach our own apocalypse(s). —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1578692647640-ANR2OY9MPT0O04JUDTEZ/Bass_Oil.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 6, 2020) Phinney by Post Book #61 Oil Notes by Rick Bass This is a young man's book, written at a particular time (the late '80s) about a subject that, in our own time, is almost impossible not to see in a different way. Before Bass moved to remote Montana for a career as an environmental writer and activist, he worked as an oil geologist in Mississippi. A contradiction between environment and oil? Not entirely, when you look at the mysteries of the earth in the way Bass does here, curious about what you can learn about millions of years of geologic history and youthfully confident in wagering thousands of dollars of other people's money to find out more. Bass may now see the earth in a different way, but the life-loving exuberance of these early notes will make you appreciate the appeal of roughneck prospecting. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1578692657487-EEF8LJZ313032M4F5MZO/Volker_Million.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 6, 2020) Phinney by Post Kids Book #48 A Million Dots by Sven Völker There are counting books, and then there are counting books! With elegance and imagination and, finally, an extremely long foldout page, Völker demonstrates, in concrete terms, the difference between linear and exponential growth, doubling from one dot to a million (actually, 1,048,576 to be exact) in just 21 page spreads. Your young reader might not fully understand the math, but they'll sure love all the dots. (Age 2 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576397816599-AG2R6HGYHZT280BUDGP9/Christle_Crying.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 9, 2019) The Crying Book by Heather Christle I am, for better or worse, not usually a cryer. Heather Christle is, and at first I thought her book would be a defense of that maligned, female-aligned activity. And in some ways it is, but it quickly becomes far more complex than that. Written as a series of tiny anecdotes, quotes, aphorisms, and notes from science, art, and myth, her narrative turns her subject through a kaleidoscope in which tears are both a burden and a release and a source of pride and stigma, and in which this most intensely personal phenomenon is held close and at the arm's length of observation. (Did you know tears from crying have more proteins than those made to cleanse the eyes?) I was dog-earing pages and examining (metaphorically) my own eyes. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574923577051-RH1TWAWXIO0Q3OH3P8Y4/Seattle_at_150.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 25, 2019) Seattle at 150: Stories of the City Through 150 Objects from the Seattle Municipal Archives by Jennifer Ott and HistoryLink When your city is changing every time you turn around, history can be something you want to hold onto, and the indefatigable local historians at HistoryLink know that is often best done deep in the archives. In this approachable coffee-table keepsake, they've unearthed an object for each of our city's 150 years, and their choices balance between boosterish nostalgia (oh, that Ivar!) and critical documentation (the waves of bureaucratic exclusion of Chinese and Japanese residents). The best documentation comes from actual documents—handwritten, hand-typed, hand-annotated—that evoke the haunting presence of individual humanity in the tides of the past. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574306113148-0DGIDNSVJQ67GEG8JDNW/Goldsmith_Hoffa.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 19, 2019) In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth by Jack Goldsmith You may remember Jack Goldsmith from the Bush-Cheney years (he stood up to Cheney to stop the Stellarwind surveillance program and now is a Harvard law professor), but his life has been shadowed by a more notorious piece of American history: when he was twelve, his beloved stepfather, Chuckie O'Brien, became one of the leading suspects in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, for whom he had been a right-hand man so intimately close he had inspired the Tom Hagen character in The Godfather. With Chuckie's reticent assistance, Goldsmith investigates the crime, but his book, written with tenderness but also a lawyer's stolid fact-sorting, is a far broader, and more interesting, portrait of the rise and fall of union power and a hapless, doomed life spent at the intersection of a charismatic labor leader and the implacable Mob. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574306160756-8ZAE6F1OQ9W461JRXYWJ/Lin_Big_Bed.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 19, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #47 A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin A Big Mooncake for Little Star was my favorite picture book last year, and Lin has followed it with a companion book that is a perfect match for its feeling that you have stepped into a timeless fable, in this case a story that makes an ideal winter bedtime story. Grace Lin is amazing! (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574923592805-T32XDEVVEKJDT4DX92C1/Cha_Your.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (November 25, 2019) Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha You could be forgiven for wondering, for the first half of this novel, why we have it shelved in the Crime & Mystery section, as you get to know two families, the Parks and the Matthewses, in contemporary Los Angeles. There is indeed a crime, and then another one, but the mystery is less who done them than how these two families will reckon with their intensely private and unbearably public aftermath. It's a story taken from the headlines—the original crime shares many elements with the 1992 murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper—but Cha humanizes those headlines with her wide-ranging but unsentimental empathy. —Tom (audio download available from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574923652500-FIBQTSQPDO95RC6LC76T/Hyde_Gift.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 25, 2019) The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World by Lewis Hyde The Gift first appeared in 1983 to immediate acclaim and lasting popularity. Despite the praise, I avoided it for years because I thought it was a long-winded version of those insipid inspirational posters of sunsets and kittens that used to hang on office walls. Not the first time I’ve been wrong. It is in fact is a rigorously intellectual, approachably written combination of history, psychology, ethnology, economics, poetry, personal anecdote, and self-help manual. The Gift is about a lot of things, but the primary question it asks is how creativity can be expressed in a society like ours, where the value of art is assigned in such unpredictable ways. Take Van Gogh, who sold only a single painting for a pittance while he was alive, but whose collected output might now fetch over a billion dollars at auction. Hyde suggests an alternative framework based not on commodity but free exchange without obligation, a framework that supports self-expression regardless of the world's response. He’s not advocating some loose, neo-hippie ideology where we burn all money, just distinguishing between different kinds of value. His book amply rewards any reader in search of a mindful life. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574306149607-XL0NUDWL0P9RUCA0BC3I/Summerscale_Whicher.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 19, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #59 The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale Detectives and detective fiction arose together in the 19th century, and Summerscale, with relish, uses the style of the murder mystery to unravel an infamous true-life crime that helped birth the genre: the inexplicable murder of a young English boy that made him the JonBenet of his day (and inspired Wilkie Collins's ground-breaking detective novel, The Moonstone). While tracing the many turns in the case, which humiliated Scotland Yard's man on the scene, Jonathan Whicher, Summerscale expertly weaves the early histories of policing and detective stories, and, most fascinatingly, follows the long afterlife of some of the crime's central characters to convincingly suggest a further turn beyond the conviction that closed the case. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1573089854574-0OATJ7M88LBMV8IDGCYL/DelAmo_Animalia.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 4, 2019) Animalia by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo The buzz surrounding this award-winning French author’s first English translation—the saga of a family of pig farmers—always includes a warning along the lines of “You’ll never eat bacon again!” Well, I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of literary challenge I feel compelled to accept. Del Amo’s rich, heady style almost overwhelms the imaginative senses, immediately plunging readers into the gorgeous and grisly of Gascon peasant life. We meet farmer’s daughter Éléonore pre-WWI, when human-porcine relations are interdependent if not entirely pleasant, but by the time she is a great-grandmother, (possibly) inevitable forces have twisted that relationship until the farm is untenable for pigs and people alike. It’s a visceral book, but also heart-breaking and thought-provoking—recommended for those who read environmental nonfiction as well as those who, like me, prefer to investigate most topics through a narrative lens. Timely and engaging, Animalia might be the most important book I’ve read all year. P.S. I’m still eating bacon, but much more, um, consciously. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1573089873221-WFYWGWMAQBMLVJZOCY4Z/Gaitskill_This.jpeg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 4, 2019) This Is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill To say that Mary Gaitskill is the ideal author to translate the #MeToo movement into fiction doesn't really do justice to the subtlety of her work, or the complexity of the movement. But nevertheless, when her novella This Is Pleasure appeared on the New Yorker website this summer (now it's a book too), there was a palpable level of excitement: she has been detailing the brutal and tender relations of sex, power, and desire since her first collection, Bad Behavior. The new story is just what you might hope for: a dialogue, both cutting and sympathetic, about a somewhat disgraced, somewhat bad-behaving man that imagines the desiring, power-playing women and men of her earlier stories transported into our changing times. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1573089926622-VQUCDOCF2X6CKRDU3PGI/Krauss_Roar.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 4, 2019) Roar Like a Dandelion written by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier While we wait for her weird and wonderful collaboration with Maurice Sendak, A Hole Is to Dig, to return from the out-of-print limbo to which it's been inexplicably banished, we have this never-before-published gem that brings A Hole Is to Dig's oddball leaps of imagination to the classic alphabet-book form: "Fall like rain" and "Make music"? Of course. But "Go like a road" and "Look under the bed for poetry" might make a toddler (or a grownup) think a little more deeply. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1572567929582-SPM71L3CCZO61QOA1AWS/Evaristo_Girl.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 28, 2019) Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo You might, on first glance, find Evaristo's prize winner daunting: the stories of twelve characters, told over 450 pages in a style that, with its idiosyncratic layout and mid-sentence line breaks, looks almost like free verse. It turns out to be anything but: the writing itself is almost breezily straightforward and the characters so lively and distinctive that by the end you feel as if they are friends sitting around your living room. The challenge comes instead from the sheer accumulation of lives and identities: if "identity" is one of the central themes of our time, these twelve people, all by some definition Black and British and nearly all women, explode identity by their sheer variety and individuality, never unaware of their identities and never anything but individual within them. Imagine Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, with its collection of masterfully compressed and connected life stories, but stretched not across history but contemporary Britain. I expect Girl, Women, Other will evoke the same level of interest and discussion. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1572567944121-1Q7FEX0PON22ZH8ZVLIY/Lerner_Topeka.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (October 28, 2019) The Topeka School by Ben Lerner If you've read Lerner's cultishly celebrated first two novels, Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04, you'll find both familiar and unfamiliar things in his third one. Familiar is the character Adam Gordon, who shares a name with the impishly semiautobiographical hero of Atocha Station and many characteristics with 10:04's unnamed writer narrator too. But The Topeka School is a different beast, expanding into a more traditional form by including Adam's parents, two New York psychologists transplanted into red-state Kansas, as narrators too. And while there are fascinating aspects of Adam's story as a high school debating champ wrestling with teenage prairie masculinity, it's with his parents, full of the knowledge and lingo of psychiatric analysis but still unable to escape the flawed dramas of human relations, that this speech-drunk (and speech-skeptical) story really takes flight. —Tom (Download the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1572567961351-EDUE6KA3ELK85PQDEE73/Kincaid_Party.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 28, 2019) Party: A Mystery by Jamaica Kincaid and Ricardo Cortes This must surely be a first: a Phinney by Post selection has been adapted into a children's picture book. In this case, it was one of the New Yorker Talk of the Town vignettes in Jamaica Kincaid's Talk Stories, an account of a publicity event for the Nancy Drew books told, in a droll deadpan, in fully Nancy Drew style, which illustrator Cortes thought—correctly, it turns out—could be turned into a charming, if oblique, illustrated tale of three girls discovering a mystery at a fancy reception, in which the true story is the frustration of the youngest girl at being, once again, left out of the know. (Ages 2 to 5, as well as older Nancy Drew or Jamaica Kincaid fans) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1571876456477-5ANW684MI9A3RU4E2GFH/Ffitch_Stay.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 21, 2019) Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch Stay and Fight follows a rotating cast of narrators making do on a plot of land in Appalachia. Although set in the present, the homesteading project they tackle, which includes a lot of acorns and snakes but no running water, would be perfectly recognizable by Laura Ingalls Wilder. What she would make of the non-traditional family they create, or of ffitch's 21st-century feminist sensibility, is another matter. The characters (one of whom is a Seattle expatriate) are fascinating if not exactly likable, and their choice to make their land and lives their own way, instead of abandoning the project, ultimately makes this a story of redemption in a sometimes bleak environment. —Erica (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1571876494537-Q8YOHQ31RVE7CSQBTCNC/Price_How.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 21, 2019) How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price The diagnosis is obvious, and one I make for myself nearly every day: that marvelous, seductive object, the smartphone, is an addictive parasite (as is my laptop as well), drawing my attention multiple times an hour with the junky promise of dopamine hits and depriving me of the gift of sustained and focused thought. But recognizing an addiction (I don't use the term lightly here) is only the first step in breaking it, and holding tight to this little book—a bestseller in our store, for obvious reasons, in the year and a half since it came out—I hope will be what I need, with its sensible, stern-when-necessary good humor and thirty-day plan for building a new relationship with this necessary tool. Check back with me in a month and see. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1571876513791-ZLIE48U6H6TBZWR2GBVR/Aickman_Inner.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Little Book of the Week (October 21, 2019) The Inner Room by Robert Aickman I took the opportunity of this little volume in the Faber Stories series to introduce myself to a new writer, Robert Aickman, the British horror specialist in whose stories, to quote my favorite podcast, Backlisted, "Very ordinary, unimaginative people suddenly find themselves caught in a horrible nightmare." And so it is in The Inner Room, in which a child's acquisition, and then abandonment, of a strangely run-down dollhouse leads to uncomfortable dreams and then, much later in life, an even more uncomfortable visit to an actual house. The horror (and the pleasure) comes in part from the story, but more so from Aickman's sentences, nearly every one of which seems to overflow with a Lovecraftian surplus of dread. Quite delicious, this first, rotten bite... —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1571291791099-8EU4OCVFK8Y1LTL2SXCT/Davis_Hard.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 14, 2019) The Hard Tomorrow by Eleanor Davis Is "pre-apocalyptic" a word? There are books all over our shelves that imagine futures after various disasters, but Davis's graphic novel taps into a feeling that's more intensely present: how to move forward when you feel the horror of the apocalypse just beginning. Hannah is a home health-care worker in an unnamed city, living in a trailer with her boyfriend while he smokes weed with a prepper friend and, relatedly, barely makes progress on the house they dream of building for themselves, and for the baby they are trying to have. Amid protest, violence, sloth, and death lives a hope that's so beautiful you're terrified to see it enter the world. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1571291801840-I62G6AICPS0V8E8S02VB/Krabbe_Rider.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 14, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #48 The Rider by Tim Krabbé You'll rarely find a novel so straightforward: a single cyclist, a single race; 137 kilometers in 148 pages. Like the racers themselves, it's stripped down for speed, every gram weighed against necessity. Krabbé himself was, like his main character (who shares his name), a competitive amateur racer, and his lean and thoroughly compelling account inhabits the strategies, the impulses, the frustrations, and the pain-is-pleasure joys of a driven, focused athlete. And perhaps best of all, in constructing his fictional race he convinces you of the result, but also that, given the collection of racing personalities he presents, and the turns of chance, it could have turned out many other ways. You never know what will happen when you clip your feet onto the pedals and set off. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1571291811139-5FQWM6XVMSG0ESS5LLIU/Ferry_Scarecrow.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 14, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #46 The Scarecrow by Beth Ferry and the Fan Brothers The work of a scarecrow is lonely: your job is to keep things away from your fields. But when a baby crow, lost and lonely itself, lands nearby, this scarecrow ignores his job description and leans down to take care of the little bird. Beth Ferry's graceful rhymes and the Fan Brothers's always-exquisite illustrations make this a sweet and lovely story of connection. But what does the farmer think? (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1570679809101-DRN0BM60QGQZALVU0307/Dalrymple_Anarchy.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 7, 2019) The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple How did a corporation conquer one of the world's great civilizations? Dalrymple's storytelling gifts and his mastery of the archives of many nations and languages are on display once again as he shows how a private London business, the East India Company, exploited short-term technological advantages and a divided India to take control of one of the world's wealthiest and most productive regions in a few short decades. It's a stunning tale of one empire's disintegration and another's rise, and a surprisingly contemporary reminder of the dangers of unchecked corporate rapacity. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1570679827879-TCWXQ18LOIIFBJDY5D0U/Burns_Black_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 7, 2019) Black Hole by Charles Burns When I'm asked for a favorite Seattle book, I usually choose one of two titles: Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (and its sequel, How I Grew), set in her teen years in the 1920s, and this strange and beautiful graphic novel, the story of a disfiguring "bug" spread among teens in '70s Seattle. Burns's inky-black style has become a trademark in illustrations you may have seen in many places, but this is his masterpiece, a disturbing but tender tribute to the isolation and tenuous camaraderie of teen life (especially in the hands-off '70s). You'll wonder how any of us get through those years alive. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1570679842428-4OSEMHU4X3K2DIX504XJ/Coats_Many.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 7, 2019) The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming by J. Anderson Coats I should perhaps be focusing on Coats's newest book, the middle-grade fantasy The Green Children of Woolpit, but it's just come out and well, I haven't read it yet. But I really want to, based on how much my daughter and I enjoyed Coats's earlier novel The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming. I can't say enough about this book, which is based on the real history of the Mercer Girls, who in the 1860s sailed from the East Coast around the horn to a bustling logging town on Puget Sound. The fictional Jane Deming is an eleven-year-old girl living with her young stepmother and little brother, all of whom are grappling with the Civil War death of the family patriarch. Eager to seek opportunity elsewhere, they head west with stars in their eyes. Initially disillusioned by the muddy streets and rough manners of frontier Seattle, Jane’s self-reliance comes to the fore and she eventually falls in love with her new home. Many Reflections more than withstands comparison with the classic Little House on the Prairie, and the local setting—at one point Jane commutes to school by canoe across Lake Washington—makes it even more special. (Ages 8 to 14) —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1569871550594-DSMK0HPTSDKFV3C8VSMK/Kincaid_Talk.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 23, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #57 Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid When I sat down to write the little introductory card I include in our Phinney by Post selections for what I had planned would be this month's choice—Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place (see below)—I realized the book of hers I really wanted to send out was this one, a collection of her first published work, when she got started writing Talk of the Town pieces for the New Yorker in the '70s and '80s. The subjects of the pieces are often the fluffiest of fluff—publicity luncheons for the most part—but you can watch her voice—and her playful restlessness with the form—develop. Best of all are the two introductory essays, one by Kincaid and one by her friend and New Yorker colleague Ian Frazier, that make their adventures as young writers in the city sound like the most appealing youth I can imagine. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1569871560972-D6IJHWBKHY44GNVRJ0GV/Kincaid_Small.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 23, 2019) A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid Someone on Twitter asked for suggestions of "angry" books just when I was in the middle of reading this one, one of the angriest books I've ever read. It comes in such a deceptive package, with its modest title and its muted design, but hoo boy. Written to just the sort of visitor to her tiny home island of Antigua who might pick up such a book for a bit of local color for the plane trip, it is unsparing about tourism but also about the corruption of the island's business and government, all told with the clarity and style of a New Yorker writer and the I'll-tell-it-to-your-face mockery she was raised to wield. It's bracing and enlightening. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1569871570564-6UDCOL3WWDTONAPGF1ML/Wenzel_Stone.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (September 23, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #45 A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel Wenzel returns to the same premise as in his Caldecott Honor winner, They All Saw a Cat—everyone brings their own perspective to the same thing—but for me there's something even more evocative about making a stone—so solitary, cold, and unmoving, at least on first glance—the center of his attention. You'd never think a mere stone could carry the emotion and insight he brings to it, but by the end, there it is, dark and bright, smooth and rough, a pebble and a hill, in all the variety we bring it, with a wonderfully incantatory text to accompany it. Lovely. (Age 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1568856573650-93GUS3E08XZILQAHW48N/Fishes_Salish.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 16, 2019) Fishes of the Salish Sea by Theodore W. Pietsch and James Wilder Orr illustrated by Joseph R. Tomelleri To say this is the perfect gift for the fish fan in your life is both an understatement and an assumption that you have $150 to throw around. Over two decades in preparation, this three-volume wonder from the University of Washington stands where no book has stood before, as an authoritative—and exquisitely beautiful—guide to the 260 fishes of our Northwest waters. I am sure it will be a necessity in the library of any professional in the field; for an amateur fish-lover it would be a breathtaking and treasured possession. Come by and check it out. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1568856559661-I9MFAMRXZ745JLHN6DRZ/Broom_Yellow.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 16, 2019) The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom Even if you've been to New Orleans, it's unlikely you've been to New Orleans East, a sprawling tract reclaimed from marshland in the '60s but suffering from neglect even before Katrina swept many residents and businesses away. Broom was raised there, in the Yellow House of the title, the youngest child of her mother's twelve, and her memoir—lovely, insightful, and sprawling in its own way—captures her sense of dislocation as part of a vibrant and close-knit family that nevertheless scatters to all corners of the country, whose only toehold in their vibrant city becomes, after the storm, a vacant lot in a part of the city not even half-heartedly rebuilt. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1568856583144-BW7PPPQNT2989P5H0RXU/Rivera_Juliet.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Teens’ Book of the Week (September 16, 2019) Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera In this wonderfully funny and charming YA debut, we accompany a young queer Puerto Rican woman—Juliet—as she travels to Portland to intern for the hippy-dippy white woman who wrote her favorite book. Raging Flower is a book about feminism, women’s bodies, and queerness, and it’s clearly taught Juliet most of what she knows about both feminism and the LGBT community. She has much more to learn from her time with author Harlowe Brisbane in 1990s-era Portland, and it’s a joy to learn along with her, seeing what she chooses to take to heart and what she prefers to leave. Juliet Takes a Breath is a fresh look at the significance of intersectionality. It’s vulnerable, fun, a little weird, and totally illuminating. (14 and up) —Anika P.S. If you’ve ever wanted to read an entire chapter dedicated to periods, you’re going to LOVE chapter eleven! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1568497734296-65I4X034NY50D0D9QY6C/Warner_Corner.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 9, 2019) The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner Who knew that NunLit was a genre with a passionately devoted following? Not me, until I read this unique story about a medieval convent, considered one of its classics. Townsend writes brilliantly about the momentous and mundane with the period detail typical of historical fiction, but without the novelistic reins of character hierarchy or narrative arc to steer your mind in a particular direction. When I started to contemplate (quite nunnishly) her authorial choice, I had an epiphany! She recreates for the reader the same sense of distance with which the nuns experienced life! The sisters are concerned with worldly things but they take the eternally long view: events ebb and flow and everybody and everything are significant and inconsequential at the same time. My favorite of the nuns, Dame Isabel, summed up what I think is the crux of the book: “The world was deeply interesting and a convent was the ideal place in which to meditate on the world. She was twenty-three. If she should live to forty, to sixty, her love of thinking would not be satiated.” NunLit has a new convert! (Sorry, couldn’t stop myself.) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1568497702203-RP856M0XABGIEMHH3A2K/Ellmann_Ducks.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 9, 2019) Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann No getting around it, this sounds like a tough sell: 1000 pages of unbroken thought, not a stream of consciousness but a torrential river scouring a mental landscape. But that's how you produce something as deep and broad and beautiful and American as the Grand Canyon. Because this torrent spills from the mind of one ordinary woman (an Ohioan, a wife, a mom, a baker of pies), because she's hilarious, because her doubts and deprecations, her fondnesses and fears, are so mundane and relatable, because she exists as one of the truest-to-life fictional characters you could ever hope to meet, this book probably won't get the credit it deserves, credit for originality, insight, and literary excellence. Which is a shame, because Ducks, Newburyport is a domestic national epic to set beside Moby-Dick, a corrosive comic cultural indictment to compare with William Gaddis's National Book Award-winning J R. Read it and weep from laughter and righteous anger. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1568497756652-K818N3B01FTUX282N8RU/Lai_Pie.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (September 9, 2019) Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai Pie in the Sky is a wonderful hybrid of a regular middle-grade novel and a graphic novel, with illustrations vividly fleshing out all the silly, heartbreaking, and imaginative moments in this story. Eleven-year-old Jingwen has just moved to Australia with his mom and obnoxious little brother Yanghao, and he feels like he'll never fit in in his new home. Lonely and still processing the guilt of his last unkind words to his father before his father's death, Jingwen thinks things will start looking up if he can just make the thirteen cakes that were going to be on the menu at the bakery he and his dad dreamed of opening someday. The brothers begin stealthily baking a cake each night while their mom is at work and eating the entire thing to hide the evidence (which turns out to be less fun that you might imagine). As the secret grows and things spiral out of control, it's up to Jingwen to figure out a way to make things right. Pie in the Sky packs much more of an emotional wallop than I expected from a middle-grade novel, and the book will leave its readers with plenty to chew on when they've turned the last page. (Ages 8 to 12) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1567034643735-ENF3OG5WBSGR3QTY8CWH/Larue_Dishwasher.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 26, 2019) The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue This is a novel about gambling, heavy metal music, late-night debauchery, and washing dishes in a restaurant. Guess which is the most interesting, by far? The dishwashing! If you've read other behind-the-scenes food-service accounts, perhaps you won't be surprised, but a busy night in the dishpit and on the prep line can be thrilling, especially in the hands of a writer with such a vivid sense of the work and the characters involved, and of how work like that can be a lifeline for a young man otherwise screwing his life up at every turn. Larue's debut, a bestseller already in his native Quebec, has been called a cross between Kitchen Confidential and The Gambler, but I think of it as somewhere between two other favorites of mine, Queen of Spades and Love Me Back. Forgive me for saying so, but I ate it up. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1567034656052-SCT6MWM7OTM8OQOIXLEP/Morrieson_Scarecrow.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 26, 2019) The Scarecrow by H.R. Morrieson Why is laughing-out-loud at the written word so rare that it feels like an unexpected gift when it happens? Well, whatever the reason, this seriously funny coming-of-age story had me LOL-ing so often (there are witnesses) that I feel an obligation to share. Much of the humor comes from its dialogue: 1950’s slang and New Zealand idiom, malapropisms and idiosyncratic accents. And Morrieson—through his 14-year-old narrator, Ned—describes physical humor in a way that achieves slapstick genius. Ned’s voice hilariously renders a bookish, small-town boy’s experience, but it’s his older sister, Prudence Poindexter, who steals the show as an ingenue for the ages. And let’s not forget the titular serial killer. While cartoonish in his creepiness, the terror and devastation he causes is real. And Morrieson has the writerly skill and moral decorum so that you never laugh when you shouldn’t. (He even brought an actual tear to my eye.) His finesse makes this odd hybrid a Kiwi classic and one of the best novels I’ve read all year. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1567034664004-POBLXKW7P403DVUYRVKP/Martin_Early_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Paperback of the Week (August 26, 2019) Early Work by Andrew Martin This is the kind of book I used to read more of: a debut novel by a young writer about, well, young writers. They drink too much, sleep with the wrong (or the right?) people, get poorly paid for iffy teaching gigs, read books off of each other's bookshelves, and—maybe—get a little writing done. It's quite enjoyable, especially for the up-to-date cultural banter (H Is for Hawk jokes!), which teeters on the edge between sharp commentary and satire. Does it add up to anything weightier? Your mileage may vary, but the weight, for me, came from a subtle turn in perspective that puts an unexpected twist on the title. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1565826689106-1GLBTOSUB4NTEKK1X9N3/Tokarczuk_Drive.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 12, 2019) Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk Calling Drive Your Plow a murder mystery is a bit like calling Beloved a ghost story. There is a series of unsolved murders (which—spoiler!—are solved), but the real story is in the storyteller: Janina Duszejko, a reclusive, strong-opinioned, sixtyish woman living in a village in southwest Poland, who loves animals and William Blake and is certain of the truths of astrology. Like the narrator of Milkman, she prefers nicknames to given ones (including her own); like Ottessa Moshfegh's narrators, she sometimes courts the repulsion of her neighbors. Like both, she has a voice like no other, and Tokarczuk's novel is a scathing portrait of a place and an illuminating one of the inner life of a fiercely idiosyncratic woman. One of the best books I've read this year. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1565826712193-D2RDN4KMKVNW19X89IG7/Shea_Kid.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (August 12, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #44 Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads by Bob Shea and Lane Smith One more time hearing Steph's masterful storytime rendition of this tale of a small Western town beset by bandits and saved by a young paleontologist (who arrives, slowly, on a tortoise) convinced me to finally make it a Phinney by Post Kids selection, and I advise anyone who takes it home to use your best cow-punchin' voice to spin this oddball yarn for your young listeners. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1564886696501-Q6LV9UEH7BZ1B6FLGPMU/Marlantes_Deep.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 29, 2019) Deep River by Karl Marlantes Having missed out on Marlantes's fiercely admired Vietnam epic, Matterhorn, and in the mood for a big Northwest tale, I decidedDeep River, only his second novel in four decades of writing, would be my big book of the summer. I'm very glad I did. It is indeed a big Northwest tale, following a few decades in the lives of a dozen or so main characters and many memorable secondary players, nearly all of them Finnish immigrants to the logging camps and fishing villages near the mouth of the Columbia a century ago. Characters grow and die, succeed and fail, fall in and out of love, suffer tragedy and survive it, and get caught up in the larger dramas of their time—war, labor battles, good times and bad. But most of all, they work: for women and men, old and young, the highest praise among these stoic Finns, whether for an employee or a love match, is to be called a "good worker." I lived in their world for two weeks, and they'll live in mine—Aino and Aksel, Matti, Ilmari, and Kyllikki—for a lot longer. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1564886710396-TW2L7R826MEHSD5OVFEL/Lethem_Chronic.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 29, 2019) Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Reading last week about the late Michael Seidenberg, I got to thinking about this book by his great friend Jonathan Lethem, who started selling books for him as a young Brooklyn teenager. Perkus Tooth, the novel's most memorable character, might be based more closely on another Lethem pal, the critic Paul Nelson, but the book is saturated with the spirit of Seidenberg's salon: taking place in bohemian pockets hidden away in the billionaires' city, clouded with pot smoke, and full of brilliant cultural chatter curdled by impotence into melancholy and paranoia. Lethem's big Brooklyn novels might have gotten all the attention, but this one is a connoisseur's pleasure, with the sneaky staying power of, to make a reference its characters would likely appreciate, Bowie's Low. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1564886719186-1ANI8DK4LL35JAML4FMZ/Anderson_Shona.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Year (July 29, 2019) Searching for Shona by Margaret J. Anderson While perusing a list of women mystery writers’ favorite mysteries by women, one plot synopsis caught my eye: two girls swap identities while evacuating Edinburgh in 1940. When I looked on Goodreads it turned out to be a 1978 kids’ book, but so many adult commenters mentioned how it had stuck with them that I had to give it a try. The quietly compelling story follows Marjorie—aka Shona—as she grows from 11 to 17 in a Scottish village during WWII. Historical details about rationing and air raids, the emotional ties that develop between the evacuees and their foster families, as well as a spooky mansion that holds the secret to the real Shona’s parentage, all provide plenty to capture the imagination. But I bet it’s the eerie ending that inspired the would-be author and struck all those other young readers. It’s not so much a twist as a shock—the jolt of an unexpected but undeniable answer to that age-old mystery: what really makes you who you are? For fans of The War That Saved My Life and Charlotte, Sometimes. (Ages 9 to 12) —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1564012110783-M981OWGYF4L1K194JN4U/Winn_Salt.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 22, 2019) The Salt Path by Raynor Winn A bad investment causes fifty-year-old Raynor Winn and her husband Moth to lose their family farm and livelihood. Around the same time, Moth is diagnosed with a terminal degenerative illness that leaves him depressed and in constant pain. Homeless and hopeless, the couple decides to embark on the 630-mile South West Coast Path along the English coast with no preparations and hardly any gear besides a cheap tent and thin sleeping bags. The long walk tests everything they have, including their 32-year relationship, but ultimately changes their lives in ways they never could have expected when they took that first step. Along the way, strangers they meet demonstrate the best and worst qualities in humanity. This uplifting memoir is a great summer read for anyone dreaming of far-off travel adventures. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1564012121130-6QIQCJPD48FKWSUZJZAT/Sprawson_Haunts.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 22, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #56 Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero by Charles Sprawson This wonderful and strange book may have launched the sub-genre known awkwardly as the "swimoir," but there is much more swimming than memoir here. You hardly learn more about the author than you do from the thrillingly terse biography at the back of the book: "Charles Sprawson lives in London. He recently swam the Hellespont," but it is clear that Sprawson, a throwback English colonial eccentric, is obsessed with swimming, and his survey of its history is full of off-handedly learned and deliciously surprising tidbits (who knew that Jane Austen loved sea bathing, or that Victorians learned their breaststroke form from frogs kept in tubs?). He is drawn to the beauty of swimming (and swimmers), to its dangers (the title is an allusion to a bizarrely masochistic Tennessee Williams story), and to its immersive otherworldliness, and you will likely want to put it aside and take a summertime plunge yourself. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1564012131724-LQY27CLX33CK5JO5I0UH/Smouha_Sock.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (July 22, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids #44 Sock Story by C.K. Smouha and Eleonora Marton Do friends have to stay exactly the same to stay friends? Smouha and Marton take the old lost-sock gag for a new spin (sorry) and wring (sorry!) a surprisingly subtle tale out of a sock who gets separated from his beloved pal and returns a little changed by his journey. The bright, wash-resistant colors (sorry!!) of Marton's illustrations are a lovely bonus. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1562803595949-WJYCMPUHIMCYIKXG4X2W/Alexievich_Last.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 7, 2019) Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by Svetlana Alexievich In Nobel Prize winner Alexievich’s latest book to be translated into English we hear from the most unacknowledged of all war veterans—those who experienced it as children. The physical details of their memories are specific to the USSR between 1940-45, but it is the children’s (boys and girls, rural and urban, Jewish and gentile) position closer to the ground that allows them to perceive unmediated the fundamentals of all war—fear, loss and uncertainty. Even more poignant are their echoed tales about how war mangles common talismans of childhood—dolls, candy, the word “Mama.” The chapters fly by—each is just a few pages of conversation—because they are both horribly compelling and too intense to linger over. Our consolation is that these children grew up to tell their stories, and Alexievich composed them into this shattering testimonial to the idea that no child should ever suffer for the political follies of their elders. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1562803615824-XSGG6YIXO8I3UAR6YLQA/Vuong_Earth.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (July 7, 2019) On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong I'm not sure if Ocean Vuong's first novel is more intense on the page or in your ear. I took it in the latter way, read in Vuong's own soft, quavering, and forceful voice, which he keeps at such a pitch of high, vulnerable emotion that even his reading of the copyright notice at the end could bring you to tears. But so could any note of his character's story, written as a letter to his immigrant mother in a language she could never read, recounting the losses and fleeting joys (see the title) of their lives with an almost unbearably tender exactness for physical details—the toxins of nail salons, the brush of a farmer's son's teen mustache as they embrace in the barn—and the metaphors they spawn. The traditional immigrant's story charts a growing assimilation in the new culture and estrangement from the old; Vuong's follows no such arc but hovers in the anguish of the middle, sung like a bluesy, bitter lullaby, one of those in which down comes baby, cradle and all. —Tom (Order the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1562803640501-YAVOQMSZZQURT46SUNQG/LaCour_We.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (July 7, 2019) We Are Okay by Nina LaCour I first read Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay shortly after it was published, and now that it’s been released in paperback, I feel compelled to write about it. It’s a quiet, character-driven book about family, first love, loneliness, and grief. When Marin’s grandfather dies unexpectedly, she’s left with no one. She heads from California to New York for college, where she suffers in silence for months before her childhood friend Mabel comes to visit her over winter break. LaCour’s writing is beautiful and melancholy, her storytelling straightforward and intimate. We Are Okay is so much more than just a pretty cover—and it is indeed a gorgeous cover. (12 and up) —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1561683972783-EBVDUMYO18SSPFTUSZ3Q/Mason_Darwin.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 24, 2019) The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason What begins as a story about attempted assassination—Queen Victoria is shot at during an 1860 coach ride through London—quickly becomes a knotty but witty mystery involving Charles Darwin’s recently publicized theory of evolution, high-level political conspiracies, and an elusive, diabolically brutal killer. Responsible for defusing these volatile elements is Scotland Yard Inspector Charles Field, the oft-impetuous inspiration for Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket in Bleak House (as Field is so often reminded). Supported both by his resourceful spouse and by Victoria’s science-minded husband, Prince Albert, Field must confront Karl Marx and other historical luminaries as he struggles to figure out who’s behind efforts to suppress the democratizing potential of Darwin’s postulations. This may be Mason’s first novel, but it bears the polish of greater experience. —Jeff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1561684030298-CWDX71NP0IRME2N3WZIP/Butler_Sower.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 24, 2019) Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler Published in 1993—decades before YA dystopias became so popular and ubiquitous—Parable of the Sower tells the story of 18-year-old Lauren Olamina, who is surviving in the year 2024. Octavia Butler’s imagining of the mid-2020s feels remarkably contemporary. Via Lauren’s diary entries, we learn that she lives with her family inside a gated community in southern California, while outside society is disintegrating into anarchy as a result of economic, environmental, and social crisis. Despite Lauren’s relative security, she anticipates things will change for the worse, and she’s better prepared than most when disaster strikes. Except for one thing: Lauren has a condition called hyperempathy, a supernatural ability to feel the pain (and pleasure) of others, which complicates the plot in interesting ways. Butler’s narrator is thoughtful and pragmatic, her cast of characters diverse and vibrant, and her prose clear and cutting. While the near-future Butler details is horrifyingly bleak and upsettingly fathomable, this story is infused with so much empathy and optimism that I find myself feeling hopeful about what comes next, both in the Parable of the Talents and in real life. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1561684084668-NWJVDWFUQI40NH20QUVQ/Andrews_This.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 24, 2019) This Was Our Pact by Ryan Andrews Everyone always says that the lanterns they set off during the annual Autumn Equinox Festival eventually turn into stars. This year Ben and a group of friends, accompanied by unwanted tag-along Nathaniel, make a pact to follow the lanterns down the river further than anyone has before to find out if it's true. Only Ben and Nathaniel keep their word to "never look back" and together they embark on an enchanting adventure that is both funny and heartwarming. This Was Our Pact is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel for anyone who loves the quiet kind of magic you can typically find only in a Ghibli movie. (Ages 10 to 14) —Gabi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1561683962560-9V6O2UW0QQ0TAHCEUBMB/Macfarlane_Landmarks.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 17, 2019) Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane I will, at some point, shut up about Robert Macfarlane, but while it's fresh in my mind I wanted to recommend an earlier book of his that I've just gotten to know. I like books about nature, but I really like books about books about nature, and that, in part, is what Landmarks is. The other part of the book has gotten the most attention: a glossary of terms for the natural and human landscape that he's gathered from across the British Isles. But it's the rest of the book that drew me in: eleven essays on nature writing that are, mostly, appreciations of his favorite writers—Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin, Barry Lopez, and more—every one of which will make you want to track down their books and read them next. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1560384873661-9Z75O9R5SGFP26VWJ9I3/Macfarlane_Under.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 10, 2019) Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane Macfarlane is often called the great nature writer of his generation, but his vision of nature is not one of a pristine, unpeopled wilderness: his wilds are, for better or worse, deeply human, connected to the culture and language we've built over centuries. Having looked, in his first book, Mountains of the Mind, at how we're drawn to the highest places, now in this gorgeous and provocative new book, he has done the opposite: descending into caves, mines, catacombs, and nuclear storage facilities to unearth our relation, in both myth and practical action, with the underworld. There's no better guide: he writes with a fully grounded beauty, and brings a natural optimism to some of our darkest places. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1560384884600-FDB9KRK7LSJSQFOGAY6Z/Gloss_Outside.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 10, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #54 Outside the Gates by Molly Gloss I almost gave up on Outside the Gates. Having liked Gloss's Wild Life quite a bit, I decided to read her first novel (also recently republished by Saga Press) but at first thought its allegorical style (a boy, for unknown reasons, is banished from his community to a forest outside the "Gates" known as the UnderReach) wasn't for me. At some point, though, I forgot about the allegory and fell into the story, thanks to the detail with which Gloss makes her forest come alive and, especially, the wary tenderness of the alliances the boy makes with humans and animals. By the end of this short novel I was in love with the book, and ready to read my next Gloss. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1560384901367-3BIDWXRI1REX4BSELPNS/Asch_Yellow.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 10, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #42 Yellow Yellow by Frank Asch and Mark Alan Stamaty Sometimes I suspect the gradual reprinting of Mark Alan Stamaty's books from the '70s and '80s has been undertaken with me in mind. Certainly Phinney Books must be among the nation's top sellers of his fabulous 1973 picture book, Who Needs Donuts?, and I recently praised the reissue of his '80s comics for grownups, MacDoodle Street. And now we're lucky to have his first book, Yellow Yellow, a picture-book collaboration with his friend Frank Asch, back too. Any Stamaty fan will immediately recognize his dense, delirious style, in support of a simple tale of a boy who finds a yellow hat that isn't his. If I call it the Mean Streets to the Taxi Driver of Who Needs Donuts?, will that give the wrong impression that these are anything but sweet, good-hearted stories? (Ages 2 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1559777428281-A5AXT5Q3RYQX2P0SPVZE/Porter_Lanny.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 3, 2019) Lanny by Max Porter A family of three (mom, dad, and small son) resides in an English hamlet, a site with historic roots that's now a commuter suburb of London. All the mod cons, but with room for a creative kid to roam in nature and get his hands dirty. Idyllic, except for the old prejudices that some of the inhabitants still harbor, and the ancient mythic spirit who monitors everything best kept hidden. Lanny is contemporary writing that's already timeless, a song, an incantation, a poem of people, place, and power. Porter's village is a world, his characters are all-too-human archetypes, and his novel is a glorious verbal artifact. —James (via the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1559777455089-YM9OSDJO95JH1T7NIP5M/Ratliff_Mastermind.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 3, 2019) The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. by Evan Ratliff Paul Le Roux is a Zimbabwean-born software coder who might have built the Uber of prescription painkillers—exploiting the complexity and anonymity of the internet to create a massive business in the gray area of the law—but, out of boredom, greed, or a sadistic thirst for power, eagerly stepped from the gray into the black, building an international network of drugs, weapons, and murder. Ratliff followed his case for years, trying to trace his network as federal agents were doing the same, and his story—which he narrates himself in the audiobook—has the depth of detail and character that only comes from deep reporting and understanding. At its heart, though is a hole the size of Paul Le Roux, who is so blandly evil he's nearly dull; what fascinates are the lesser characters drawn into his orbit, for good or ill, and the frightening ease with which he can construct his nearly borderless criminal empire. —Tom (Download the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm.) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1559777462357-SY2B24UUG584T3VDMPCB/Stutzman_Tiny.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 3, 2019) Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug by Jonathan Stutzman and Jay Fleck Those of you familiar with the quirks of Cretaceous-era evolution might be aware of the problem our hero, Tiny, faces: "It is very difficult to hug with tiny arms." So what do you do when your friend Pointy (a stegosaurus, naturally) needs some cheering up? Well, in this endearing tale (which doubles in enjoyment when you hear it read in our storyteller Steph's adorable Tiny voice), you just have to practice. (Preferably not on a cactus.) (Age 0 to 4) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1559189039700-14WXQB7A4FLZUOXE4TSB/Mueller_Scribner.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 27, 2019) The Mueller Report by the Office of the Special Counsel In Robert Mueller's short statement this morning, he more or less pleaded, "Uh, have you read my report?" I recently have, and I can state that it is both refreshing and depressing to actually read the report about which so much as been said (mostly by people who haven't read it). Like Fates and Furies, like Furious Hours, it contains two distinct halves. In the first, various Russians and Trump campaign operatives meet, and fail to meet, to discuss, or not discuss, Russian cooperation with Trump, all while the Russian military, known or unknown to the above, is actively working toward Trump's election. The upshot, prosecutorially, is legitimately muddled, and likely only the 30th or 40th worst thing done in his name. In the second half, the president himself takes center stage, and the clear crimes are committed: repeated, and public, obstruction of justice, which the special counsel clearly thinks (though he often explains this through a thicket of legalese) should be prosecuted, but only by Congress, leaving the ball in Congress's court, bouncing somewhere around the back fence, waiting to be picked up... —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1559189052423-RDIOVMIJ7ILV8A9KNN3M/Faviell_Chelsea.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 27, 2019) A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell For all my fellow Blitz Lit fans out there: have I found a book for you! This thrilling memoir of WWII London is written with such immediacy and attention to detail that I swear I could hear my heartbeat while reading about some of the more harrowing "incidents" (as those nonchalant Brits referred to death and destruction). Faviell, a well-connected professional portrait painter, was in the thick of it, Chelsea being relatively hard hit, and because she volunteered as an assistant nurse, emergency telephonist, and interpreter/caretaker for the Belgian refugees in her neighborhood. She is awed by the humor, bravery, and know-how of those who endured the nightmarish scenes, but she’s also aware of intermittent despair and loss of empathy in herself as well as others. Her account feels like such a classic of the genre I’m amazed it was only brought back into print in 2016 after its initial publication in 1959. And I’ve already ordered another reissued Faviell memoir, The Dancing Bear, set in the city where she moved with her young family in 1946—Berlin! —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1559189065778-MSLR329FNILD61A8H6K0/Gravel_Worst.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (May 27, 2019) The Worst Book Ever by Elise Gravel A dull romance between a nose-picking princess (sorry, "prinsess") named Barbarotte and a hot-dog-loving prince (sorry, "prinse") named Putrick that includes soft-drink product placement and an "it was just a dream!" ending? It might indeed be the Worst Book Ever, so thank goodness Elise Gravel, creator of, among other delights, the Disgusting Critters series, has included three characters (a spider, some sort of a black smudge, and something that looks like a cross between a poop emoji and gefilte fish) to express their own disdain for the story, which should make this a goofy pleasure for readers just learning they can have their own opinions about books too. (Ages 4 to 8) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1558565109067-MSDBXMZU4HPQ7KBGIHUK/Cep_Furious.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 20, 2019) Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep One of the great mysteries of American literature—what was Harper Lee working on for the fifty years after To Kill a Mockingbird?—was left mostly unanswered after her death in 2016, but Casey Cep has unearthed part of the answer. She recounts the story of Lee's life, her reluctant fame after the success of Mockingbird, and her struggles to repeat it, but first, audaciously, she tells the tale that Lee spent much of the '70s and '80s trying to write: the true-crime account of an Alabama reverend who (apparently) murdered five family members for insurance money before being killed himself by a vigilante at his final victim's funeral. I'm still debating with myself (and with anyone else who has read the book) about Cep's structure and approach, but both halves of her tale—especially Lee's—are fascinating and intrepidly reported. For any fan of Mockingbird, or of David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1558565123770-QMRMGG8PPZKVVE8HDWWB/Bulosan_America.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 20, 2019) America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan Republished by Penguin this week alongside three other mostly neglected classics of Asian American literature (John Okada's No-No Boy, Younghill Kang's East Goes West, and H.T. Tsiang's The Hanging on Union Square), Bulosan's 1946 book is a tender and bitter memoir of his life of labor and poverty in the Philippines and the western United States, with crucial scenes in Seattle, where Bulosan first arrived in the U.S. and where he later died in 1956 at the age of 42, though most of the action, after his youth in the Philippines, follows the harvests up and down the West Coast, where Bulosan became a labor activist, and where his brutal experiences drove him to become a writer and tell the story of an immigrant's America, "so kind and yet so cruel." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1558565139051-CMTL8JX4R4KED0RXQO67/Langholtz_United.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (May 20, 2019) United Tastes of America: An Atlas of Food Facts and Recipes from Every State! by Gabrielle Langholtz There are plenty of cookbooks for kids, and lots of oversized illustrated books of facts too, but I've never seen the two combined, and in such an appealing way. Langholtz has adapted her giant book for grownups, America: The Cookbook, into a bright and approachable guide that includes food facts from each state and recipes (designed for somewhat experienced kid cooks) that sometimes match expectations (Key lime pie for Florida) and sometimes surprise in informative ways (tabbouleh for Michigan's many Arab immigrants). (Age 8 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1557982969492-ZNHPWEN4ZHHSTITVV5XV/Gottlieb_Maybe.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 13, 2019) Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb In one of my future dream scenarios, I become a therapist at age 55. This idea becomes even more alluring while I read the memoir Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. In this book, she weaves together client stories and her own recent stint as a therapy patient. For me, the psychological information she includes is just as compelling as the client stories. If the Psych 101 class I took at college had been as interesting as her portrayal of this science, perhaps I would have attended medical school long ago. I’m willing to place a bet on the number of folks who decide to give therapy a try after reading this memoir. At the very least, I believe this gem of a book will give its readers a new appreciation for the art and science that lead to transformation within a therapy office. —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1557982975297-Q6526EHU5ZVS9QJ6LNM5/Fagan_Little.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 13, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #53 The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan Imagine a history of Europe, from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Age, that makes little or no mention of Martin Luther, or Newton, or Queen Elizabeth, or Columbus. Instead, the main figures in Fagan's index include volcanic explosions, glacial expansion and retreat, and an atmospheric phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation. Writing twenty years ago, Fagan was one of the first to popularly synthesize the relatively new science of climate history, and with convincing detail (but in little more than 200 pages) he shows the decisive and often devastating impact that long-term climate shifts, as well as the abrupt year-by-year swings they spur, have on societies, especially those at the edge of subsistence. As he notes, it's the achievement that protected us from those vicissitudes—the harnessing of fossil fuels to advance industry and trade—that is now making those changes more extreme. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1557982987048-PBRIUSIZC8Y0JXL7G8JP/Robinson_Another.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (May 13, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #41 Another by Christian Robinson Robinson's first solo picture book, after his collaborations with Matt de la Pena (the Newbery-winning Last Stop on Market Street) and Kelly DiPucchio (our beloved Gaston), is a quietly mind-blowing little story. A cat notices a hole in the wall, and follows a twin cat inside. A girl follows, and finds a twin girl, along with a delightfully strange mirror world, full of happy kids and round balls and round holes that echo the bright round beads at the end of each of the girl's braids. It's a story for you and your young readers to figure out—and invent for yourselves—as you read it again and again. (Age 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1557455275917-T413XAUKN7J7OD1E4M10/Jacob_Good.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 6, 2019) Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob "Sometimes, you don't know how confused you are about something important until you try explaining it to someone else." Starting with a premise similar to Ta-Nehisi Coates's in Between the World and Me—trying to explain to her son the America he is growing up brown in—Mira Jacob has made a very different, but equally thought-provoking, book. Jacob is a novelist, but here she uses a collage comic-book style that turns out to be ideal for her approach of layering conversation after conversation—with her son, with her Indian-immigrant parents, with her Jewish husband, with friends, lovers, kooky employers, jerks in bars—that capture the difficulty, the weirdness, the humor, the sadness of talking about identity, especially with those you love. A brilliant, funny, challenging, and appropriately mixed-up read. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1557455292234-7BVWI065XUK8K8SEY4TV/Hempel_Sing.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 6, 2019) Sing to It by Amy Hempel Amy Hempel is one of the modern masters of the short story—really, as many of her admirers would say, of the sentence. Her stories are spare, and mostly short, as are her books, which are a once-a-decade treat. Some of the stories here are just half a page, but a couple are surprisingly garrulous, including "Cloudland," the novella-length ramble that closes the book, and the gem for me, "A Full-Service Shelter," which bears Hempel's other great passion (besides sentences), for dogs and those who care for them. The audiobook, available from our partners at Libro.fm, brings another treat: Hempel's wry reading voice, a perfect match for her terse declarations. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1557455464085-SFNG8C3LW0ILW7ZG83TV/Perez_First.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (May 6, 2019) The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Pérez Malu finds herself caught between a Mexican mother who wants her to be the perfect señorita and a music-loving father who helped foster her love of all things punk. After their divorce, Malu and her mother move to Chicago from Florida, where Malu has to start a new school and find her place, ultimately discovering that it’s okay not to fit into a specific box. Follow spunky and rebellious Malu as she navigates middle school, forms a band with her fellow misfits, and creates zines to express herself! This book will remind anyone to embrace your eccentricities and love yourself for all of the things that make you unique. You are guaranteed to fall in love with Malu! (Ages 9 to 12) —Gabi (shared from this week's Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1556912329001-RAFV2L2D6J5LLBX2B0Z0/Newhouse_100.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 29, 2019) The 100 Most Jewish Foods edited by Alana Newhouse In our mixed household, the Jewishness of certain foods (and other items) is a subject of frequent debate. Noodle kugel? Obviously. Marshmallows? Apparently not. (I'm not the expert.) In this fun and useful compendium, Alana Newhouse and her contributors (which include such titans as Ruth Reichl, Joan Nathan, and Yotam Ottolenghi as well appreciative Gentiles like Ian Frazier and Edward Lee) hit just the right note with celebrations of classic Jewish cuisine like chopped liver and hamantaschen as well as cultural quirks like "sugar cereals for Shabbos morning" (no cooking on the Sabbath meant Froot Loops for some Orthodox kids). With equal parts laughs, nostalgia, and actual recipes, you won't know whether to keep it in your kitchen or on your coffee table. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1556912339270-IX8GL2GUD1NM6V982RIZ/Soderberg_Doctor.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 29, 2019) Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Soderberg You could subtitle this book “Diary of a Madman,” except Dr. Glas is too logical and high-functioning for that. Maybe “Diary of a Sociopath,” but I’ve never come across one so genuinely charming and sympathetic. How about we just say he “has issues” because really, who doesn’t whose diary makes for such compelling reading? Glas is a thoroughly modern character (from an era when the term “modern” was just starting to be applied to a certain kind of literature) with a moral conundrum. And because he’s a step ahead of most men of his time and place (late 19th C. Stockholm), Freudian dream analysis, evolution, atheism, and women’s rights find their way into the few months worth of musings he jots down while debating with himself whether or not to take action. Elegiac, funny, epigrammatic—Dr. Glas is Hamlet or Roskolnikov in a bowler hat. This classic novella of proto-Modernism is not to be missed. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1556912346805-IEWUAZH0FP3QEA41G2HI/Stark_Extraordinary.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 29, 2019) Extraordinary Birds by Sandy Stark-McGinnis How does a child recover from abuse? If you’re 11-year-old December, you become convinced you’re really a bird, with wings ready to sprout from that ugly scar on your back. Those wings will take you away from the succession of bad foster homes and cruel school mates and let you soar where you really belong. While you’re waiting for those wings to unfurl, you’ll keep your expectations of happiness low, your earthly possessions light, and continue to practice your “flying” from tall trees. In this beautiful middle-grade debut by Sandy Stark-McGinnis, December slowly begins to understand that by trusting others and making peace with her past, she may just find a home. (Ages 8 to 12) —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1556156162265-B8HQ57OXA34H56M4ESN4/Caro_Working.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 23, 2019) Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert A. Caro This is absolute candy for me. Caro, the buttoned-up, indefatigable biographer of Robert Moses and—in five volumes—Lyndon Johnson, has, in his 80s, become a cultural hero weighted with some of the same admiration we place on hardworking throwbacks like Vin Scully, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Robert Mueller. In this anecdotal working memoir he embraces his identity, sharing his patient and creative methods—"turn every page!"—for unearthing the untold stories behind his subjects' lives and the lives of those they effected. Fascinating and entertaining for anyone who has read (or, like me, has always aspired to read) any of Caro's giant volumes, but also a wonderful self-portrait for anyone else who is interested in a life tirelessly devoted to a worthy vocation. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1556156172906-XYE0LFJYPEC2G72UV3QR/Louvin_Satan.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 23, 2019) Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers by Charlie Louvin Any expectations that a memoir by a member of a legendary gospel country duo might be squeaky clean ends on its first pages, with Charlie's foul-mouthed account of kicking his older brother Ira's ass after he drunkenly slighted their mom. The book proceeds from there, a two-fisted tell-all that sometimes reads a little like an Opry version of Motley Crüe's The Dirt but is an eye-opening and compulsively compelling story, full of insights into the desperation of a hardscrabble upbringing, the relentless, road-weary struggle of building a country music career in the '50s and '60s, and the fiery creative collaboration behind the strange, mournful harmonies of the Louvin Brothers. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1556156186394-TCFLCFYRVW43FN82XJVB/Lee_When.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 23, 2019) When Spring Comes to the DMZ by Uk-Bae Lee A picture book about the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea? Despite its unusual setting, When Spring Comes to the DMZ has the makings of a classic. Originally published in 2010 as part of the Peace Picture Book Project, this book by award-winning Korean author/illustrator Uk-Bae Lee has recently been translated into English. Each season, Grandfather climbs to the DMZ observatory and looks through binoculars at the homeland he can no longer visit. Salmon swim under the barbed wire fence, while birds migrate over it, free of the restrictions that bind their human counterparts. Beautiful watercolor and pencil art in a style based on traditional Korean techniques illustrates the lush wildlife that flourishes with the absence of human habitation, even amid rusted military equipment and the ever-present barbed wire fences. This poignant picture book ends on a hopeful note as Grandfather imagines reuniting with his family in North Korea one day. (Ages 2 to 5) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555642341712-LL1O0CLA6P2CIJ7TLR77/Rooney_Normal.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 15, 2019) Normal People by Sally Rooney Marianne is a loner in high school. Connell is a smart, popular jock. But Connell's mom cleans Marianne's house, and when they are drawn together, they tell no one. Rooney's second novel arrives here with a full wind of anticipation, with a half-dozen awards in the UK and Ireland and the twenty-something Rooney talked about as the voice of her generation. But the novel at the center of that storm might surprise you with its modesty: it's the story of that single relationship, of two (mostly) normal people working out, through their early twenties, whether they should be together. Some of you will consider it a masterpiece, some of you might shrug. I thought it was wonderful, with a subtle attention to character, love, and power that gathered over time. What will you think? —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555642357137-BMO94262TPPTJDNEQB4W/Hamilton_Slaves.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 15, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #52 The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton Oh boy. I remembered loving this book when I first read it a decade ago, but it was even more delicious than I recalled. The action, such as it is, takes place in the miserable confines of the Rosamund Tea Rooms, a drab suburban rooming house outside London during the Second World War where the horrible bully Mr. Thwaites dominates the conversation, the meek Miss Roach cringes at his every word, and the "cute" Vicki Kugelmann arrives to throw the household upside-down. I choose my word carefully when I say this is a comic masterpiece, a companion, in an odd way, to our in-house favorite, The Women in Black: another Christmastime tale, and although it wallows in the worst of petty human nature while The Women in Black (mostly) seeks the light, there is a similar sense that, just once in a while, the meek might really inherit the earth. Or at least a cozy little bit of it. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555642367118-9VDP0U9UXOT250ZY427L/Mabbitt_Can.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 15, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids Book #40 I Can Only Draw Worms by Will Mabbitt In the admirable title-that-sums-up-the-story tradition of The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars, the story of this goofy, Day-Glo counting book is just that: if you can only draw worms, well, you are pretty much limited to making a book about worms. I can't imagine how to make this review longer, but I found it hilarious. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1554943248021-QWN90G8GDTRJI6TSL9NL/Lasdun_Afternoon.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 8, 2019) Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly as Lasdun about how people think, and his narrator—an acquaintance of both the he and the she—recounts what he is told as well as how he processes that information. While we live with the optimism and anxiety caused by a tectonic cultural shift, when masses of received wisdom are breaking up and new standards haven’t quite solidified, it’s crucial to examine not just ideas but the motives and emotions that undergird them. Lasdun’s novella has the plotting and pacing of a thriller, each revelation causing you to reexamine the situation and your own assumptions—even after you finish it! But it’s his sly wit and quietly elegant prose—shot through with images of surprising aptness (he also writes poetry)—that elevate this ripped-from-the-headlines story into a thoroughly satisfying reading experience. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1554943257133-4Z0TCXIH3NE9TSVL537L/James_John.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 8, 2019) John Crow’s Devil by Marlon James The ferocious energy of Marlon James's prose, the first sign of the literary genius that the Booker judges later recognized in A Brief History of Seven Killings, is immediately evident in this debut novel, which summons into being the Jamaican village of Gibbeah, a community put to the scourge by conflict between two rival preachers. With its rich language and biblical cadence, John Crow's Devil is a Miltonic epic of unrelenting spiritual darkness, but with James's ear for dialogue and knack for earthy humor it flashes with light on a human level. Rarely has a writer's career been announced with a trumpet blast this pure and powerful. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1554330903550-SCXTALYSNJPUXRCQC531/Toews_Women.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 1, 2019) Women Talking by Miriam Toews Toews has become one of Canada's leading novelists by writing with insight, sorrow, humor, and anger about the patriarchal Mennonite community in which she was raised. So how would she deal, in fiction, with a horrific (and true) incident in another Mennonite colony—the systematic drugging and rape of the colony's women by many of its men? Not as you might expect: the incident itself is offstage, replaced by the conversations of women as they, long kept isolated from the world around them, debate the ethics and efficacy of reform, revenge, and rebellion, finding the language of personal politics as they speak it, almost like a Continental Congress welling up in the attic of a barn as they wait for the men to return. It's rousing, subtle, and provocative. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1554330916924-73Y57RMWUSQT9UQUMAWO/Stamaty_MacD.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 1, 2019) MacDoodle St. by Mark Alan Stamaty First, for me, was Washingtoon, Mark Alan Stamaty's '80s comic strip, starring Congressman Bob Forehead, that was just nutty enough to help me make sense of the Reagan Era as a teenager. Then, to my unending gratitude, I discovered Who Needs Donuts?, the picture book fabulously packed with donuts, heart, and birds with horse heads that launched Stamaty's career in 1973. Now, resurrected, comes the work he did in between: MacDoodle St., a weekly celebration of Greenwich Village weirdness circa 1978-79, similarly jam-packed with his sweet-hearted satire and deliriously populated cityscapes in which—and I mean this as very high praise—the donut-loving Sam and Mr. Bikferd would feel right at home. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1554330935098-T00QZ2U49XIPP004DNMY/Lam_My.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 1, 2019) My Cat Looks Like My Dad by Thao Lam "Family is what you make it": Thao Lam's third picture book (and her first with words) takes an unexpected route to that final line, making a convincing and hilarious case for the dad/cat resemblance (they both love belly rubs and neither of them replaces the toilet paper roll) with her distinctive paper-collage illustrations before springing a sweet and thought-provoking surprise. Delightful. (Age 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1553820043262-RFMML91LGJJU1OBE6HR4/Wallace_Uninhabitable.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 25, 2019) The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells Last month I read the U.S. Climate Report, but only when I read this book did our predicament come devastatingly to life. Why? The facts are, mostly, the same; Wallace-Wells has only gathered existing reports into what, at times, reads like a Harper's Index of doom. Is it because it's written in a literary way, packaged in a handsome, literary volume, as befits a writer who used to work at the Paris Review? Is it because he vividly describes the climate changes that are already snowballing (or, rather, fireballing) and that are just a few decades from making our planet unrecognizable and, for many, unlivable? Is it because, despite calling himself an "optimist," he offers little hope, even though the knowledge of our situation and the technical (if not political) solutions are both at hand? Whatever the reason, there is no book I've read in years that is going to live under my skin every day the way this one does. Its dire portrait of the coming decades—"It is much, much worse than you think" is the opening sentence—may lead you to action, or to fatalism, but I can't imagine leaving this book unchanged. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1553820058408-RHT2ARPOP4TW77L6S569/Fisher_How.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 25, 2019) How to Be Loved: A Memoir of a Lifesaving Friendship by Eva Hagberg Fisher I read How to Be Loved in two days' time, but I’ve been carrying to book with me for weeks. I mean literally putting it in my bag so I can pop it open any time, to reread one of the 30 pages I've folded over about Eva Hagberg Fisher's journey to learn how to both love herself and be loved. It’s the story of how she endured life-threatening illness while a friend who eventually dies of cancer shows her how to grow deep connections. While it sounds hokey, this book was good medicine for me. I imagine everyone wants to hear they’re worthy of love. I couldn’t help but read pages of the book to my middle school students. I wanted them to hear Eva’s friend say, “The things you think are bad, those are the things that make you lovable.... You don’t have to tie yourself up in knots to be someone else.” I remember every time someone has made this same point clear to me in my own life. It’s a joy to read an entire book that drives home the point that being completely ourselves makes us entirely lovable to some people. —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1553820066964-YARID4Y7YILN6ALO6QQ6/Gomi_Crocodile.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (March 25, 2019) The Crocodile and the Dentist by Taro Gomi Sure, many people are afraid of crocodiles. And many people are afraid of dentists. But what about a crocodile who (with all those teeth to take care of!) is afraid to go to the dentist? And a dentist afraid to treat a crocodile? Taro Gomi (the genius behind Everyone Poops) starts with this brilliant picture-book premise and takes it somewhere you might not expect: the croc and the doc don't become any less afraid of each other, but the croc will definitely brush his teeth from now on. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1553299412694-T580EYWUWPURE3O4QV6S/Gloss_Wild.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New/Old Book of the Week (March 18, 2019) Wild Life by Molly Gloss For those of us who are late catching up with the Oregon writer Molly Gloss, Saga Press is doing a great service this year by bringing much of her work back in handsome new paperbacks. Her books have been balanced between speculative fiction and stories of women in the historical West; Wild Life seems like it's firmly in the latter camp, set as it is in the logging territory of southwest Washington at the turn of the last century, but it takes a fantastic turn too (or a realistic one, depending on how you feel about the legends of the Sasquatch). The turn is subtle and thought-provoking but the book's real strengths are the vivid, exact details of her setting and, best of all, Gloss's heroine, Charlotte Bridger Drummond, a flamboyantly independent woman who manages to feel fully modern without seeming out of her time. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1553299459365-VDH3MTJ49BVRRES0CYO8/Jones_How.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 18, 2019) Phinney by Post Book #51 How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones How did Hettie Cohen become Hettie Jones? By marrying the poet LeRoi Jones, who later marked his own transformation by changing his name to Amiri Baraka and leaving his mixed-race family behind. That's the supposed scandal of her story—which she's thoughtful and tender about—but what will keep you reading is Hettie herself, both her bold, youthful self and her wise reflection when writing three decades later. It may have taken her a long time to find her voice in the midst of the mostly male cacophony of the Beats, but she found it here, with precision insights and evocative details about youthful bohemia that make her memoir every bit the equal of Patti Smith's Just Kids. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1553299470038-F3WE2GGHMB40W6PY7CS6/Beaty_Madame.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (March 18, 2019) Phinney by Post Kids #39 Happy Birthday, Madame Chapeau by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts Beaty and Roberts have become picture-book superstars for their ongoing series about brilliantly ambitious youngsters—Rosie Revere, Iggy Peck, Ada Twist, and, coming soon, Sofia Valdez. And for good reason: Beaty's witty rhymes read as well as any this side of Seuss, and they are matched for inventive detail by Roberts's illustrations. One of their collaborations has been unfairly neglected, though, perhaps because it features a grown-up. But the rhymes are just as sprightly and the illustrations—perhaps because the clothes-besotted Roberts, like Mme Chapeau herself, was once a milliner—are top-notch. If your young reader can't wait for Sofia in September, bring Madame Chapeau home. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552537579484-M4KJUOIQH9KUYY3ANM2L/Luiselli_Lost.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 11, 2019) Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli Luiselli has quickly built a reputation among American readers for her short novels and, especially, for Tell Me How It Ends, her short but blistering little book about working as a translator for Central American children looking for asylum in the unwelcoming U.S. Now she has gone big, with her first novel written in English, which at first reads as if she had taken the subject of Tell Me How and built a Rachel Cusk novel around it, an elegantly but indirectly told autofictional story of marital discontent. But as the book goes on, the layers of storytelling might make you think of Roberto Bolaño as well, as she uses the deceptively companionable story of a family on an American road trip to evoke the devastating truths of history and the very present day. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552537595265-NG4QGYY9N2ZXHPLVDHLZ/Davis_World.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Audiobook of the Week (March 11, 2019) The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers by Bridgett M. Davis You might think a memoir of growing up in the middle of Detroit's illegal underground numbers racket might be gritty and grim, but Davis's story is, pointedly, just the opposite. Told through a loving daughter's eyes (with an affection even more evident in her sweet, soft voice in the audiobook), it's a heroic tale of a brilliant, generous woman who wrested a bourgeois life for her family out of the most unpromising soil. Davis recalls the modest splendor of her childhood with understandable pride—the words "myriad" and "plethora" appear again and again—and rarely has hard-earned financial independence seemed like such a political act. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552537630745-DUL7WIV064L4U1772Y0O/Pan_Astonishing_pb.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Teen Book of the Week (March 11, 2019) The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan One of the things I love best about young adult fiction is that it doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff. In Emily X.R. Pan’s impressive debut, just out in paperback, she illustrates an expert handling of delicate subjects: depression and suicide. The Astonishing Color of After follows Leigh on a journey of grief and remembrance. Since Leigh’s mother died by suicide, Leigh has become certain that her mother has turned into a bird; in hopes of finding her, Leigh travels to her mother’s home country of Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. The pages are infused with a magical realism that lends itself to fully telling Leigh’s gorgeously complex story. The writing is lyrical, immersive, and—as I expect from a book with "color" in the title—visually stunning. It’s an emotional read, powerful enough to break your heart and put it back together. (Age 14 and up) —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552245339258-LOLBE7U1DWA2LNALY63M/Newman_Heavens.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 4, 2019) The Heavens by Sandra Newman For whatever reason (having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that publishing is dominated by intellectually aspirant professionals who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn), the New York novel is a fixture of every publishing season. Some people can’t get enough of them, some find them insufferable, and never the twain shall meet. Until now. In The Heavens, Sandra Newman has finally written one that will satisfy both camps. The meet-cute opening that takes place on an apartment rooftop is quintessentially I❤NY, but brown-skinned Ben and Kate aren’t typical WASPy protagonists, and alert readers will notice that the romantic metropolis they occupy isn’t exactly the one we know and love (or loathe). And then Ben learns about Kate’s recurring dream, in which she’s an Elizabethan noblewoman caught up in a tortuous relationship with a certain obscure playwright. As her nocturnal life grows more and more vivid, the familiar becomes strange and the couple’s grip on daily life weakens. Is Kate going mad, or can her dream actually be altering reality? Beneath its glittering surface, The Heavens asks profound questions about what kind of world we want to live in and what lengths we'll go to change it. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552245354645-S57HO8MPQ58PVX2L4ZD1/Bernard_Black.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 4, 2019) Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine by Emily Bernard I believe story is how we make sense of the world. This is not an original thought, but it is why I read books. Author Emily Bernard is a masterful storyteller. She makes writing her life look easy in the memoir Black Is the Body. Yet her life isn’t easy. In the first of ten essays, Bernard writes of being randomly attacked by a stranger with a knife at a coffee shop when she was a graduate student at Yale. All of these essays use her particular lens: a black woman married to a white man, a teacher and a parent to two daughters from Ethiopia. I was carried along by her beautiful writing and a need to follow her storyline (what happens next?). But when I was done reading, I had learned more about race relations in America. I plan on reading this book twice: I have more to learn. —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552245400460-LKY5GZU8G1FR9JID9P2A/Brooks_Orphan.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 25, 2019) The Orphan of Salt Winds by Elizabeth Brooks For many Seattleites, Snowpocalypse 2019 was an enforced staycation requiring the flip side of a “beach read.” And by pure luck (and Haley’s recommendation) I had a copy of The Orphan of Salt Winds on hand when the first flakes started to fall. Its isolated manor house perched on the edge of a menacing marshland was the perfect setting for waiting out the blizzard, and its double-stranded story—told in alternating chapters by 86-year-old Virginia Wrathmell and her preteen self—wove together enough well-placed clues to keep me guessing, and then revising my guesses, until her whole tragic story was revealed and the snow started to melt. Also, its 1940’s-era details and cinematic imagery gave me the sense that it would have made a smokily glamorous black-and-white film. You just might want to stow a copy next to the flashlight and bottled water in case of another storm. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552245444898-YHULH2D65MZKEPWBLS9W/Yang_Front.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (February 25, 2019) Front Desk by Kelly Yang When Kelly Yang was a child, she would hide out in the school library to avoid her bullies at lunchtime. Many years later, her love of books allowed her to turn her pain into an award-winning new middle grade novel, Front Desk. Her protagonist is ten-year-old Mia Tang, who moved from China to California with her parents two years ago. The family is struggling to get by in their new country and when they're offered a position managing a motel, they readily agree—despite the unfair terms set by the owner. Living and working at Calavista Motel while also worrying about money and trying to fit in at school is a lot to handle, but Mia gradually creates a community and begins to change her world for the better. Yang clearly recalls the deep emotions of her youth, and I felt myself becoming genuinely outraged at many of the injustices Mia faces. Front Desk doesn't shy away from dark topics like racism, bullying, and inequality, but seeing how Mia takes charge of every tough situation and works to change negatives to positives will leave her readers feeling hopeful and inspired. (Ages 8 to 12) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552245370311-2HZ5U3TCWHR5JZF0LYCZ/Adjei_Friday.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 4, 2019) Friday Black: Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah I’ve thought for a while now that short stories just aren’t for me, but Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s debut has made me reconsider. At just under 200 pages, Friday Black is an intense and provocative read. In many of these bizarre and inventive stories, Adjei-Brenyah imagines a near-future dystopia in which many of the social issues we face today, such as racism, violence, and consumerism, have escalated to grim conclusions. At times the writing is magically realistic and hyperbolic, but it is continuously sharp and clever. This collection’s dark and speculative nature is similar to that found in the contemporary television series Black Mirror, as well as Jordan Peele’s Academy Award-winning film Get Out. A worthy and necessary read. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1552245424502-AC285HWZ5K260F41QUAN/Conklin_Last.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 25, 2019) The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin I was enamored at first by the idea that an old, famous poet was the narrator of The Last Romantics, but what captivated me, once I started reading, was the narrator’s deep dive into her childhood with her three siblings and the course their lives took after. This novel by (now) local author Tara Conklin asks what siblings owe each other. Can you save a sibling? How well can you see someone you know up close yet may not know well enough? And how do people change over a lifetime? Was what happened at age seven a warning or just a bad tantrum? Ah, I was sad when I was done hanging out with Renee, Caroline, Joe, and the poet, Fiona. Conklin’s tale reminded me of Meg Wolitzer’s book The Interestings, and I’m thrilled that I haven’t yet read her first book, The House Girl. —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550104963824-L2C193KZNIKN0XXIH56V/Li_Where.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 11, 2019) Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li This short, intensely moving novel—an imagined dialogue between a mother and her teenage son after his suicide, written after Li lost her son in the same way—reads as though Li has invented, out of dire necessity, a form to hold the words she needs to say. But the echoes of other grief stories are there as well: like Joan Didion in A Year of Magical Thinking, Li's mother exists in a time of suspended reality; like the husband in Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, she comes at her sorrow sideways, shifting between banter and despair; like the mourning president in George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, she holds tight to a unearthly connection with the dead that could be lost at any time. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550104976813-I6HLFINSAHBYKFJ3SVIQ/Climate_Report.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 11, 2019) The Climate Report: The National Climate Assessment by the U.S. Global Change Research Program Even as the president uses snowstorms to mock the science of climate change, the scientists working for his government quietly do their work, producing a report buried on that most deadly of news days, the Friday after Thanksgiving, but published now by Melville House. It contains few surprises for anyone paying attention and, to be honest, is mostly written, despite the full-color graphs and maps, in a mind-numbing committee-ese. But suddenly, when you reach Appendix 5, a 60-page FAQ at the end of the book (available, like the rest of the report, online as well), you have laid before you, in the clearest, least histrionic language, explanations of what is happening, why the science is so sure, and what can still be done. The language is reassuring; the facts are not. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550105206939-OGEOIAL05NFPF87I0IMH/Lofts_Town.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 11, 2019) The Town House by Norah Lofts I must acknowledge that this is the most unattractively published of any book I've chosen for Phinney by Post, but don't let the cover (or typeface inside) turn you aside: there is superb storytelling to be found here. I have my new favorite podcast, Backlisted, to thank for leading me to Norah Lofts, a bestselling historical novelist from the middle of the last century who, from the evidence of this book at least, was brilliant at marshaling historical details to dramatize how lives were bound by status, money, and capricious fate. The first in a trilogy tracing the inhabitants of an English village home from the 14th century to the 20th, The Town House follows the rise from serfdom of a smith named Martin Reed, braiding choice and cruel chance in an unsentimental, affecting, old-fashioned tale. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550105230943-W3K8MFJDA77GF97J9FXY/Soundor_Snug.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (February 11, 2019) You’re Snug with Me by Chitra Soundar and Poonam Mistry It's our third straight snowy selection for Phinney by Post Kids, and finally it reflects the local weather (and how). That little thumbnail image of the cover can hardly do justice to the intricate beauty of this tale of a mama bear talking her cubs through their winter worries: the bears, their icy habitat, and their neighbors in nature are all evoked with patterns inspired by the traditional art of India, which make them seem made of stars, or ice crystals, or woven textiles. It's a magical companion to the authors' previous You're Safe with Me. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1549496965192-CJQQES6AI8EKAT4IGLS5/Dreyer_English.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 4, 2019) Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer Being copyedited well—having a wise and sympathetic reader improve your sentences—is one of life's great pleasures, and perhaps the highest praise I can give Dreyer's English is to say it made me desperate to write a book for Random House so he might copyedit it. Apparently, though, if you're not Elizabeth Strout he doesn't do that anymore, so the next best thing is to follow him on Twitter or read this guide, whose* chatty style and loosey-goosey organization are tip-offs that the "utterly" in his title is somewhat tongue in cheek. He has standards (and peeves), but he has humor (lots of it) and an understanding that editing is an art and a dialogue. You want to be his friend, and not only because he's more likely to cite Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-String Murders than, say, T.S. Eliot. Best of all: he loves semicolons and Shirley Jackson (who loved semicolons). —Tom *Yes, he says, it's ok to use "whose" for a non-person. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1549496978644-NL9OUFFYEO1KDK718QI2/Cander_Weight.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 4, 2019) The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander Two families, separated by decades and thousands of miles, discover the physical—and emotional—weight of a certain rare piano. That piano represents love, freedom, tragedy, grief, and, ultimately, letting go of the past. This lovely third novel by Chris Cander alternates chapters between the past as young Katya discovers the freedom a 60-year-old German-built Bluthner piano brings to her life in the Soviet Union, and years later as 26-year-old Clara moves the piano—a gift from her father for her 12th birthday—that she doesn’t know how to play but can’t part with. As the piano and its owners’ histories are slowly revealed, we learn that a piano can both weigh you down and set you free. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1549496990288-CKM4ZPIAISDMNQ1S43P2/Zuill_Business.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (February 4, 2019) Business Pig by Andrea Zuill Oh, Business Pig, I can't believe it's taken me this long to put you in the newsletter. Not very proactive of me! This little tale of a pig unlike any of the others in the barnyard—he was born, apparently, in a three-piece suit, and delights in spreadsheets, flowcharts, and exchanging business cards—has been amusing us since it arrived last year, and every time I look at it and see Business Pig's can-do attitude, as well as the support of his friends in the barnyard, I can't help but smile. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1548985147305-PK3TQ0MB05UJ2E79TPW8/Park_Great.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 28, 2019) The Great Soul of Siberia: In Search of the Elusive Siberian Tiger by Sooyong Park For twenty years, Park has spent the summers tracking the rare and regal Siberian tiger through Russia's eastern wilderness, and for each of those twenty winters he has hidden himself in tiny underground bunkers waiting, sometimes for weeks or months, for a glimpse of the big cats roaming through their territory. His memoir paints a fascinatingly detailed portrait of the tigers' habits and intelligence and of the threats they face from poachers and lost habitat, while at the same time sharing a compellingly humble philosophy of patience. "To see a tiger you must stay in one spot," he writes. "You must become a tree on a slope." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1548984925744-P2351CAH36MFD4CXFV5U/Thompson_Dreamers.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 28, 2019) The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: You send your child out into the world, and tragedy strikes. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker opens with a series of small-town college students falling asleep—and not waking up. But this is no Sleeping Beauty fairy tale with a handsome prince to save the day. There is no rhyme or reason to who falls asleep and who ultimately wakes up. Not all do. Is it a virus? Mass hysteria? Doctors are baffled. Parents are terrified. And the dreamers keep on sleeping as the town is quarantined, hospitals fill up, and young men and women are forced to grow up faster than they ever expected. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1548985169735-UQWT7OEJ2XURFJ9T610Z/Mora_Thank.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 28, 2019) Thank You, Omu! by Oge Mora This week Oge Mora added a Caldecott Honor to the many accolades she's won for her debut picture book, and for good reason. Using a painted collage style full of muted colors, she creates a cityscape reminiscent of the one Ezra Jack Keats's Peter wanders through, though a little less melancholy, for a story of her grandmother's generosity that's like the stone soup fable turned inside out. It's a warm as a bowl of stew held in your hands. (Ages 0 to 4) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1548985192629-8SEK5IDMY98MHJGADROB/Cottom_Thick.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 21, 2019) Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom Tressie McMillan Cottom is a very public intellectual. A sociologist by trade, she tweets with great volume and skill and has been placing essays across the internet since grad school—writing too much, as one protective older academic once warned her. But that's what she does, turning the analytical tools of her trade as well as her lived experience into unsparing, funny, paradigm-shifting commentary about, among other things, the brutal cost for a black woman of being presumed incompetent and the rationality of the "irrational" spending of the poor. These are not essays written to make you feel good about what's possible—she's just telling you what is. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1548985219965-ATMJN1XSA1KB25FCCBRC/Percy_Moviegoer.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 21, 2019) The Moviegoer by Walker Percy It's been over 50 years since Percy's debut novel was the surprise winner of the National Book Award, and—gulp—it's been about 30 years since I first fell in love with its sprightly tale of despair, Gulf Coast drives, and William Holden. Is it only a young person's book (young man's, really)? A little bit, surely, but when I read it again recently after many years, something about its humor, laid so delicately over the yawning pit of possible misery we all navigate, gave it the same power I had felt in it the first time. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1548985238274-8MH08CTFC77A4M9VFWX9/Luyken_My.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 21, 2019) My Heart by Corinna Luyken I must say that yellow is not my favorite color (or even close). But seeing what magic Olympia-based artist Corinna Luyken can work with it makes me think again. As she did in her wonderful debut, The Book of Mistakes, she adds washes of yolky yellow to her already-evocative pen-and-ink drawings and somehow fills her pages with insight, curiosity, melancholy, and hope. "My heart is a window. My heart is a slide," she writes, and her lovely illustrations are the best possible expression of such open-ended declarations. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1547700500713-VG79V6VPFRCT79AA3JIA/Shapiro_Inheritance.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 14, 2019) Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro I’ve read and loved all of Dani Shapiro’s memoirs, so I brought high expectations to Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love. Shapiro has a firecracker of a storyline: when she whimsically submits her DNA for analysis, she finds out her deceased father is not actually her genetic father. But it’s not the plotline that had me racing through this memoir. It’s Shapiro’s skill at weaving beautiful, descriptive sentences while sharing hard-won insights with the reader. Like this line about her deceased (but not genetic!) dad: “He smiles the hard-earned smile of a wounded man who lives for pockets of joy and is still able to feel them.” Another sentence reads “Every syllable, deliberate.” Ah, yes, that’s why I read Shapiro’s memoirs. Every syllable in this book seems deliberate, and the journey she takes me on blows insight into my own life. Which is why I read Inheritance in just a few sittings, folding pages over and underlining text again and again. Readers hungry for thoughtful deliberation in memoir form, this one is for you. —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1547700625285-B68G3EY6DN70T7D5ZRMH/Kohnstamm_Lake.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 14, 2019) Lake City by Thomas Kohnstamm It's a few months after 9/11, and Lane Bueche, who has long fancied himself the Bill Clinton of Lake City Way, headed from the nowhere of north Seattle toward an upscale, intellectual life of NGOs and Economist editorials, is right back where he started, slicing turkey at the Fred Meyer deli and drinking Rainier tallboys at his mom's, just off the endless strip of car dealerships and bikini-barista huts. Kohnstamm's debut novel is a love letter of sorts to his old (and current) neighborhood in all its unambitious ugliness, and Lane is the colossal screw-up at its center. It's a messy farce with a sloppy heart, a kind of underbelly, Lesser Seattle companion to Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and pretty much required reading for anyone who cares about where Seattle has been, and is headed. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1547700766756-45J07GL5VTV0Y896JCEP/Kousky_Harold.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the World (January 14, 2019) Harold Loves His Woolly Hat Harold's woolly hat is indeed special. Made up of nine strokes of Vern Kousky's paintbrush, five red and four yellow, plus a little dab of blue at the teetering-over top, it's the kind of deliciously beautiful object that seems to have a life of its own, the kind that makes your own life more vivid just by having a place in it. The question becomes (after a crow snatches his hat away): what is Harold's life like without it? Is it still special? Is he still special? His story presents a sweet and mildly surprising answer, but really, the true delight of the book is that hat, bright and teetering on nearly every page. You can hardly blame the crow. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1547083415245-YMPYYRGSMA6GMFFS7MD4/Scott_Common.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 7, 2019) The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott This innovative book of history comes with a history of its own: as a legendary PhD thesis shared for three decades among scholars but never published for a wider audience until now. Its innovation? Piecing together the vibrant lines of communication that existed among slaves and free blacks in the 18th-century Caribbean, not from the communication (mostly verbal) itself, but from the records of those who were threatened by it: the letters of planters and colonial governors, newspaper reports, and court records. Scott's story is not flashily told, and often, necessarily, has to stick to generalities, but once it reaches the twin revolutions of the age, the French and the Haitian, it catches fire with the excitement of discovery and till-now-unspoken knowledge, just as it did for those looking for freedom at the time. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1547083428080-PAPMZ3N6GHTNH0G6LK0P/Hayes_Infrastructure.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 7, 2019) Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape by Brian Hayes "What's that thing?" Brian Hayes's daughter used to ask from the back seat. You might have asked the same, when seeing some strange man-made object sticking out of the ground or on the side of a building, something obviously built for function not for beauty, but whose function is obscure. Hayes wrote a book answering that question over and over, and it's one of my favorite one-of-a-kind obsessive encyclopedias, full of photographs of mud pumps, electrical insulators, and overflow inlets and—even better—explanations of how and why they work. Presenting these elements as if they were beautiful birds in a Peterson field guide, he encourages you to question where the true beauty of our landscape lies. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1580507753537-I7LFJGCV0GHKMQZMEUOS/Airth_Decent.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 27, 2020) The Decent Inn of Death by Rennie Airth Twenty-one years and five books after the release of his exceptional first historical mystery, River of Darkness, Airth continues to devise new investigations for his original Scotland Yard-trained sleuths. This new novel, set in the early 1950s, sends former Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair—currently suffering from heart problems—off to visit friends in the south of England. There he learns about a German church organist, Greta Hartmann, who recently drowned in a stream, supposedly by accident. Greta’s housemate doesn’t believe such codswallop, however, and Sinclair has doubts, too, after learning the deceased had been discomposed by encountering an unidentified man whose car had broken down. Sinclair wonders whether that driver was a Nazi war criminal and killer from Greta’s past. But before he can inquire further, the chief inspector finds himself snowbound at an isolated country manor. Meanwhile, ex-Inspector John Madden pursues his friend Sinclair, increasingly worried for his health and fearing that he may also be at risk from Greta’s murderer. Although it’s slightly compromised by a plotting coincidence, Airth’s latest procedural remains a tightly constructed, classic-style whodunit with a genuine surprise ending. —Jeff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1626307002350-PBKHAE4YNQL6B75G87SX/Cohen_Netanyahus.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 12, 2021) The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen Yes, those Netanyahus—sort of! The Netanyahus is, on its face, a novel about Ruben Blum, an economic historian and, as the story takes place at the end of the 1950s, the only Jewish professor at small-town Corbin College. And for its first half it is a more-or-less-well-behaved campus comedy of Jewish assimilation and petty academic maneuvering. Then Benzion Netanyahu, a possible professorial hire who Blum, as a fellow Jew, has been asked to host and vouch for, arrives with his wife and three incredibly badly behaved children, including 11-year-old Benjamin, and chaos, to say the least, ensues. Or, to put it in Philip Roth terms, a book that read like Goodbye, Columbus suddenly turns into Portnoy's Complaint. Is this an authentic portrait of a "very famous" Jewish family? (Cohen claims he based it on an actual incident.) An allegory of some kind? An impish goad? All I know is it was entertaining, funny, and provocative, and I might need to read it another time or two to decide. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1547083438367-XV32ST7OY2PEZDR5PODU/Boothby_Sparks.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 7, 2019) Sparks! by Ian Boothby and Nina Matsumoto An enthusiastic customer tipped us off to this graphic novel, nearly a year after it came out. All we needed to hear, really, was "two cats in a robotic dog suit," but "narrated by a sentient litter box"? That sealed the deal. And the book itself lived up to every hope raised by those oddball ideas: funny, action-packed, and not a little heartfelt. We would be delighted if Boothby and Matsumoto created many more adventures for robot dog Sparks and August and Charlie, the two intrepid cats at the controls inside. (Ages 7 to 10) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627511391675-F04EA0CBRJVKQJBDW7JW/Taylor_Filthy.jpg Newsletter 2019 Gallery http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-06-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419935052-CRJQK3YW4SZ4RZZMOOMI/Caro_Working.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro This is absolute candy for me. Caro, the buttoned-up, indefatigable biographer of Robert Moses and—in five volumes—Lyndon Johnson, has, in his 80s, become a cultural hero weighted with some of the same admiration we place on hardworking throwbacks like Vin Scully, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Robert Mueller. In this anecdotal working memoir he embraces his identity, sharing his patient and creative methods—"turn every page!"—for unearthing the untold stories behind his subjects' lives and the lives of those they effected. Fascinating and entertaining for anyone who has read (or, like me, has always aspired to read) any of Caro's giant volumes, but also a wonderful self-portrait for anyone else who is interested in a life tirelessly devoted to a worthy vocation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419935052-CRJQK3YW4SZ4RZZMOOMI/Caro_Working.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro This is absolute candy for me. Caro, the buttoned-up, indefatigable biographer of Robert Moses and—in five volumes—Lyndon Johnson, has, in his 80s, become a cultural hero weighted with some of the same admiration we place on hardworking throwbacks like Vin Scully, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Robert Mueller. In this anecdotal working memoir he embraces his identity, sharing his patient and creative methods—"turn every page!"—for unearthing the untold stories behind his subjects' lives and the lives of those they effected. Fascinating and entertaining for anyone who has read (or, like me, has always aspired to read) any of Caro's giant volumes, but also a wonderful self-portrait for anyone else who is interested in a life tirelessly devoted to a worthy vocation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419878348-IE5UKQS1QEV50J6QQ5NY/Cottom_Thick_pb.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom Tressie McMillan Cottom is a very public intellectual. A sociologist by trade, she tweets with great volume and skill and has been placing essays across the internet since grad school—writing too much, as one protective older academic once warned her. But that's what she does, turning the analytical tools of her trade as well as her lived experience into unsparing, funny, paradigm-shifting commentary about, among other things, the brutal cost for a black woman of being presumed incompetent and the rationality of the "irrational" spending of the poor. These are not essays written to make you feel good about what's possible—she's just telling you what is. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419832325-IBRSDWG7CRHRP98KU2Y5/Evaristo_Girl.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo You might, on first glance, find Evaristo's prize winner daunting: the stories of twelve characters, told over 450 pages in a style that, with its idiosyncratic layout and mid-sentence line breaks, looks almost like free verse. It turns out to be anything but: the writing itself is almost breezily straightforward and the characters so lively and distinctive that by the end you feel as if they are friends sitting around your living room. The challenge comes instead from the sheer accumulation of lives and identities: if "identity" is one of the central themes of our time, these twelve people, all by some definition Black and British and nearly all women, explode identity by their sheer variety and individuality, never unaware of their identities and never anything but individual within them. Imagine Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, with its collection of masterfully compressed and connected life stories, but stretched not across history but contemporary Britain. I expect Girl, Women, Other will evoke the same level of interest and discussion. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419794643-EFI6XSVA2MN4O91W4D8S/Jacob_Good.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob "Sometimes, you don't know how confused you are about something important until you try explaining it to someone else." Starting with a premise similar to Ta-Nehisi Coates's in Between the World and Me—trying to explain to her son the America he is growing up brown in—Mira Jacob has made a very different, but equally thought-provoking, book. Jacob is a novelist, but here she uses a collage comic-book style that turns out to be ideal for her approach of layering conversation after conversation—with her son, with her Indian-immigrant parents, with her Jewish husband, with friends, lovers, kooky employers, jerks in bars—that capture the difficulty, the weirdness, the humor, the sadness of talking about identity, especially with those you love. A brilliant, funny, challenging, and appropriately mixed-up read. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419820673-PD3TYWD55BB2VYUE5KD9/Larue_Dishwasher.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue This is a novel about gambling, heavy metal music, late-night debauchery, and washing dishes in a restaurant. Guess which is the most interesting, by far? The dishwashing! If you've read other behind-the-scenes food-service accounts, perhaps you won't be surprised, but a busy night in the dishpit and on the prep line can be thrilling, especially in the hands of a writer with such a vivid sense of the work and the characters involved, and of how work like that can be a lifeline for a young man otherwise screwing his life up at every turn. Larue's debut, a bestseller already in his native Quebec, has been called a cross between Kitchen Confidential and The Gambler, but I think of it as somewhere between two other favorites of mine, Queen of Spades and Love Me Back. Forgive me for saying so, but I ate it up. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419919223-A3R5874HJPXHCL7L4FU1/Lofts_Town.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Town House by Norah Lofts I must acknowledge that this is the most unattractively published of any book I've chosen for Phinney by Post, but don't let the cover (or typeface inside) turn you aside: there is superb storytelling to be found here. I have my new favorite podcast, Backlisted, to thank for leading me to Norah Lofts, a bestselling historical novelist from the middle of the last century who, from the evidence of this book at least, was brilliant at marshaling historical details to dramatize how lives were bound by status, money, and capricious fate. The first in a trilogy tracing the inhabitants of an English village home from the 14th century to the 20th, The Town House follows the rise from serfdom of a smith named Martin Reed, braiding choice and cruel chance in an unsentimental, affecting, old-fashioned tale. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419966832-94JYFPXL2SY604FQBBO8/Macfarlane_Under.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane Macfarlane is often called the great nature writer of his generation, but his vision of nature is not one of a pristine, unpeopled wilderness: his wilds are, for better or worse, deeply human, connected to the culture and language we've built over centuries. Having looked, in his first book, Mountains of the Mind, at how we're drawn to the highest places, now in this gorgeous and provocative new book, he has done the opposite: descending into caves, mines, catacombs, and nuclear storage facilities to unearth our relation, in both myth and practical action, with the underworld. There's no better guide: he writes with a fully grounded beauty, and brings a natural optimism to some of our darkest places. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419806316-R1K6QY3ZBPOW70RDK8FW/Marlantes_Deep.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Deep River by Karl Marlantes Having missed out on Marlantes's fiercely admired Vietnam epic, Matterhorn, and in the mood for a big Northwest tale, I decided Deep River, only his second novel in four decades of writing, would be my big book of the summer. I'm very glad I did. It is indeed a big Northwest tale, following a few decades in the lives of a dozen or so main characters and many memorable secondary players, nearly all of them Finnish immigrants to the logging camps and fishing villages near the mouth of the Columbia a century ago. Characters grow and die, succeed and fail, fall in and out of love, suffer tragedy and survive it, and get caught up in the larger dramas of their time—war, labor battles, good times and bad. But most of all, they work: for women and men, old and young, the highest praise among these stoic Finns, whether for an employee or a love match, is to be called a "good worker." I lived in their world for two weeks, and they'll live in mine—Aino and Aksel, Matti, Ilmari, and Kyllikki—for a lot longer. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419911535-P1JS4OYVOX7IHQUL4JSZ/See_Golden.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Golden Days by Carolyn See This book never goes where you expect it to. Is it a satire of '80s SoCal self-empowerment? Is it a post-nuclear-war story of human apocalypse and survival? Both? Neither? The real story, for me, is in See's sentences: as swervy, surprising, and suddenly breathtaking as the hairpin turns of the Topanga Canyon road on which her narrator, post-divorce, finds a home in the midst of the particular LA excess of the era. As I emailed the friend who had tipped me off to this forgotten gem, after reading the jaw-dropping first dozen pages: "Joan Didion is reading this and thinking, 'I'm getting left in the dust.’" Rediscover this crazy and wonderful book, as we approach our own apocalypse(s). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575420020130-B7OC95STIXYGJ79447EE/Toews_Women.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Women Talking by Miriam Toews Toews has become one of Canada's leading novelists by writing with insight, sorrow, humor, and anger about the patriarchal Mennonite community in which she was raised. So how would she deal, in fiction, with a horrific (and true) incident in another Mennonite colony—the systematic drugging and rape of the colony's women by many of its men? Not as you might expect: the incident itself is offstage, replaced by the conversations of women as they, long kept isolated from the world around them, debate the ethics and efficacy of reform, revenge, and rebellion, finding the language of personal politics as they speak it, almost like a Continental Congress welling up in the attic of a barn as they wait for the men to return. It's rousing, subtle, and provocative. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575420067917-880SS67OZ4A9OBEE8CQX/Tokarczuk_Drive.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk Calling Drive Your Plow a murder mystery is a bit like calling Beloved a ghost story. There is a series of unsolved murders (which—spoiler!—are solved), but the real story is in the storyteller: Janina Duszejko, a reclusive, strong-opinioned, sixtyish woman living in a village in southwest Poland, who loves animals and William Blake and is certain of the truths of astrology. Like the narrator of Milkman, she prefers nicknames to given ones (including her own); like Ottessa Moshfegh's narrators, she sometimes courts the repulsion of her neighbors. Like both, she has a voice like no other, and Tokarczuk's novel is a scathing portrait of a place and an illuminating one of the inner life of a fiercely idiosyncratic woman. One of the best books I've read this year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419949718-FTY9ZA4M7Y90W2C3BCSS/Wallace_Uninhabitable.jpg Tom 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells Last month I read the U.S. Climate Report, but only when I read this book did our predicament come devastatingly to life. Why? The facts are, mostly, the same; Wallace-Wells has only gathered existing reports into what, at times, reads like a Harper's Index of doom. Is it because it's written in a literary way, packaged in a handsome, literary volume, as befits a writer who used to work at the Paris Review? Is it because he vividly describes the climate changes that are already snowballing (or, rather, fireballing) and that are just a few decades from making our planet unrecognizable and, for many, unlivable? Is it because, despite calling himself an "optimist," he offers little hope, even though the knowledge of our situation and the technical (if not political) solutions are both at hand? Whatever the reason, there is no book I've read in years that is going to live under my skin every day the way this one does. Its dire portrait of the coming decades—"It is much, much worse than you think" is the opening sentence—may lead you to action, or to fatalism, but I can't imagine leaving this book unchanged. http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575441343790-EO3JZSLG46W6EM5F4YWN/Cusk_Coventry.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Coventry: Essays by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575441343790-EO3JZSLG46W6EM5F4YWN/Cusk_Coventry.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Coventry: Essays by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426085821-6OQUOGIV637GZQYCQPT9/Machado_In.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425986381-HETJ6SAWBWZWKNESQZ77/Madden_Long.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir by T. Kira Madden https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426061123-9E37J9A704E5C1ZY52GE/Nunez_Mitz.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury by Sigrid Nunez https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426051886-V8LZGAWQBF5VTI8BWB00/Parsons_Black.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Black Light: Stories by Kimberly King Parsons https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426071414-MH3SA3DWAOLS3S8S18MM/Renkl_Late.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426027143-08PYBBM5SEO8SI8HRYB3/Scanlan_Aug.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Aug. 9—Fog by Kathryn Scanlan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426005876-PLUBMARQYJJL8EC1R7ON/Strout_Olive_Again.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426042302-HFSB3UPGP87W860ZB0RM/Tolentino_Trick.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426016470-763B5Y3O6MK83QO76XSP/Vuong_Earth.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425975031-1HTTOVJCK67J8JPA7NQE/Wang_Collected.jpg Kim 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419055020-874ZL4DVT4P346LWOVBA/Alexievich_Last.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by Svetlana Alexievich In Nobel Prize winner Alexievich’s latest book to be translated into English we hear from the most unacknowledged of all war veterans—those who experienced it as children. The physical details of their memories are specific to the USSR between 1940-45, but it is the children’s (boys and girls, rural and urban, Jewish and gentile) position closer to the ground that allows them to perceive unmediated the fundamentals of all war—fear, loss and uncertainty. Even more poignant are their echoed tales about how war mangles common talismans of childhood—dolls, candy, the word “Mama.” The chapters fly by—each is just a few pages of conversation—because they are both horribly compelling and too intense to linger over. Our consolation is that these children grew up to tell their stories, and Alexievich composed them into this shattering testimonial to the idea that no child should ever suffer for the political follies of their elders. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419055020-874ZL4DVT4P346LWOVBA/Alexievich_Last.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by Svetlana Alexievich In Nobel Prize winner Alexievich’s latest book to be translated into English we hear from the most unacknowledged of all war veterans—those who experienced it as children. The physical details of their memories are specific to the USSR between 1940-45, but it is the children’s (boys and girls, rural and urban, Jewish and gentile) position closer to the ground that allows them to perceive unmediated the fundamentals of all war—fear, loss and uncertainty. Even more poignant are their echoed tales about how war mangles common talismans of childhood—dolls, candy, the word “Mama.” The chapters fly by—each is just a few pages of conversation—because they are both horribly compelling and too intense to linger over. Our consolation is that these children grew up to tell their stories, and Alexievich composed them into this shattering testimonial to the idea that no child should ever suffer for the political follies of their elders. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419016194-O2ROBENU1OATJ04U26XW/DelAmo_Animalia.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo The buzz surrounding this award-winning French author’s first English translation—the saga of a family of pig farmers—always includes a warning along the lines of “You’ll never eat bacon again!” Well, I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of literary challenge I feel compelled to accept. Del Amo’s rich, heady style almost overwhelms the imaginative senses, immediately plunging readers into the gorgeous and grisly of Gascon peasant life. We meet farmer’s daughter Éléonore pre-WWI, when human-porcine relations are interdependent if not entirely pleasant, but by the time she is a great-grandmother, (possibly) inevitable forces have twisted that relationship until the farm is untenable for pigs and people alike. It’s a visceral book, but also heart-breaking and thought-provoking—recommended for those who read environmental nonfiction as well as those who, like me, prefer to investigate most topics through a narrative lens. Timely and engaging, Animalia might be the most important book I’ve read all year. P.S. I’m still eating bacon, but much more, um, consciously. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419070043-72IY8HPCYZYUD9LLB5FX/Faviell_Chelsea.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell For all my fellow Blitz Lit fans out there: have I found a book for you! This thrilling memoir of WWII London is written with such immediacy and attention to detail that I swear I could hear my heartbeat while reading about some of the more harrowing "incidents" (as those nonchalant Brits referred to death and destruction). Faviell, a well-connected professional portrait painter, was in the thick of it, Chelsea being relatively hard hit, and because she volunteered as an assistant nurse, emergency telephonist, and interpreter/caretaker for the Belgian refugees in her neighborhood. She is awed by the humor, bravery, and know-how of those who endured the nightmarish scenes, but she’s also aware of intermittent despair and loss of empathy in herself as well as others. Her account feels like such a classic of the genre I’m amazed it was only brought back into print in 2016 after its initial publication in 1959. And I’ve already ordered another reissued Faviell memoir, The Dancing Bear, set in the city where she moved with her young family in 1946—Berlin! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419080823-7B3TK37UHDYFQLE6VWPG/Lasdun_Afternoon.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun These days, when public discourse seems like so much shouting past each other, the last thing you want to read is a fictionalized he-said/she-said about a #metoo moment. BUT! Not many write as lucidly as Lasdun about how people think, and his narrator—an acquaintance of both the he and the she—recounts what he is told as well as how he processes that information. While we live with the optimism and anxiety caused by a tectonic cultural shift, when masses of received wisdom are breaking up and new standards haven’t quite solidified, it’s crucial to examine not just ideas but the motives and emotions that undergird them. Lasdun’s novella has the plotting and pacing of a thriller, each revelation causing you to reexamine the situation and your own assumptions—even after you finish it! But it’s his sly wit and quietly elegant prose—shot through with images of surprising aptness (he also writes poetry)—that elevate this ripped-from-the-headlines story into a thoroughly satisfying reading experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419041795-IFIOMP0NIY5AC5TP3LCG/Morrieson_Scarecrow.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery Scarecrow by H.R. Morrieson Why is laughing-out-loud at the written word so rare that it feels like an unexpected gift when it happens? Well, whatever the reason, this seriously funny coming-of-age story had me LOL-ing so often (there are witnesses) that I feel an obligation to share. Much of the humor comes from its dialogue: 1950’s slang and New Zealand idiom, malapropisms and idiosyncratic accents. And Morrieson—through his 14-year-old narrator, Ned—describes physical humor in a way that achieves slapstick genius. Ned’s voice hilariously renders a bookish, small-town boy’s experience, but it’s his older sister, Prudence Poindexter, who steals the show as an ingenue for the ages. And let’s not forget the titular serial killer. While cartoonish in his creepiness, the terror and devastation he causes is real. And Morrieson has the writerly skill and moral decorum so that you never laugh when you shouldn’t. (He even brought an actual tear to my eye.) His finesse makes this odd hybrid a Kiwi classic and one of the best novels I’ve read all year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419027178-QRSMQUYQV61AVGYNGY01/Samson_Auctioneer.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Auctioneer by Joan Samson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419001628-1D94Q0KQRCAZJA3154HD/Tokarczuk_Primeval.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery Primeval, and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575419089324-7W3XTTSGAKDRGKLXG7OT/Warner_Corner.jpg Liz 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner Who knew that NunLit was a genre with a passionately devoted following? Not me, until I read this unique story about a medieval convent, considered one of its classics. Townsend writes brilliantly about the momentous and mundane with the period detail typical of historical fiction, but without the novelistic reins of character hierarchy or narrative arc to steer your mind in a particular direction. When I started to contemplate (quite nunnishly) her authorial choice, I had an epiphany! She recreates for the reader the same sense of distance with which the nuns experienced life! The sisters are concerned with worldly things but they take the eternally long view: events ebb and flow and everybody and everything are significant and inconsequential at the same time. My favorite of the nuns, Dame Isabel, summed up what I think is the crux of the book: “The world was deeply interesting and a convent was the ideal place in which to meditate on the world. She was twenty-three. If she should live to forty, to sixty, her love of thinking would not be satiated.” NunLit has a new convert! (Sorry, couldn’t stop myself.) http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2019-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014854652-8J4YRNK4C9D2M4PH7H8Q/Arnett_Mostly.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014854652-8J4YRNK4C9D2M4PH7H8Q/Arnett_Mostly.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014909064-35ZOM3K5BDKVZLBT3BTH/Boyer_Undying.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery The Undying by Anne Boyer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014899583-1QT8S8QOC0LIIWHOBYBI/Chiang_Exhalation.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Exhalation by Ted Chiang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014931090-9HS75EFQPXGHQ01RNL3V/Dreyer_English.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014845449-432J2S1VOZN2GURCOHRR/Evaristo_Girl.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014872541-B6VMEFCXWUWNR2NL4EA5/Keefe_Say.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014831637-QR6I3RKJD0GNZN5OHPLL/Miller_Know.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Know My Name by Chanel Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014887131-WSTKXJIAL96V9DOZEPVG/Patchett_Dutch.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery The Dutch House by Ann Patchett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014943215-TPPGYJOGL5W0IBCVQDKE/Szabo_Door.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery The Door by Magda Szabo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014919031-W6AD7W592PS60MDITLGJ/Williams_Commute.jpg Kim Unread 2019 Gallery Commute by Erin Williams http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-unread-2019-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015229655-PQ7JOW4ZBSZMPI5PAB19/Arnett_Mostly.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015229655-PQ7JOW4ZBSZMPI5PAB19/Arnett_Mostly.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015238115-YV1Z8E80WGBHCM0LGOKP/Congdon_Find.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Find Your Artistic Voice by Lisa Congdon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015216887-DC192KA3MPRHSYE860ZK/Day_I.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015203546-2IQRIQ8BRG8HNIVZGX33/Gailey_Magic.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015254835-XEJP5OKEPT4DBX832QU8/Hamill_Cosmology.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015245320-KW9BMI3FOVH8I3237Q69/Maiklem_Mudlark.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015277157-NIK605KPCFNRX7LUWCA2/McQuiston_Red.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015269849-RX049MY1QAIFNRX1T6HE/Midge_Bury.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s by Tiffany Midge https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015296220-2SQUGF03VEYBN6DY49EK/Shawl_New.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576015287477-K3RO4ECRGES4FMIARZYN/Wang_Stargazing.jpg Haley Unread 2019 Gallery Stargazing by Jen Wang http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425010516-KPLLG84H19GVXGXF8M9K/Bauermeister_Scent.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425010516-KPLLG84H19GVXGXF8M9K/Bauermeister_Scent.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575424954785-P0BI774WM7CI2060O56X/Boyne_Heart_pb.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575424986628-G74K2CYM1UX8T4RDZICQ/Burns_Milkman_US.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery Milkman by Anna Burns https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425140278-DNB28HH6MIBWDK5GUBIL/Cep_Furious.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425026188-XOWRWFID5D6QN30HQFLA/Conklin_Last.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575424969908-ACUR2DV4L0KGO55X5EC5/Gilbert_City.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425095310-EJL1MCYG6VNT36P0AAKH/Orlean_Library_pb.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Library Book by Susan Orlean https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425104284-134ZYEBZ1X0XUK5I6K7N/Stark_Extraordinary.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery Extraordinary Birds by Sandy Stark-McGinnis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575424917033-J7RYFQW35Q9LKHUKJO6F/Westover_Educated.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575425150823-7V9HPULBT6IA4EY1D7JA/Williams_Wicked.jpg Doree 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423930077-2BDW03PBH71H1WOTU0YB/Auxier_Sweep.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423930077-2BDW03PBH71H1WOTU0YB/Auxier_Sweep.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423913319-6TUOBHC5M518QYN2NK0L/Castillo_Ping.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Ping by Ani Castillo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423863396-UA4NK8KV27H9WBU1S1A5/Gottlieb_Maybe.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423815987-09DQAQR6UAP4WQOZWFNP/Higginbotham_Midnight.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575424295987-MFKFCU947QAAVCN3IYFD/Meconis_Queen.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423901458-A5LVAEKMLK5QC19SE6QD/Purnell_Woman.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423825305-GS2V75IBKQAZKAQGG9YM/Solomon_Deep.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Deep by Rivers Solomon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423877526-5C66NXJJ8W7PGE1IAPPE/Vandermeer_Annihilation.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423891011-VNNO78TUX77CC5CIKMG6/West_Witches.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575423847738-HCQCKH5MCNOZM91LX0IZ/Yang_Front.jpg Haley 2019 Top 10 Gallery Front Desk by Kelly Yang http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427042252-QW2Q2XGMQDO9ATQKX64Y/Conklin_Last.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427042252-QW2Q2XGMQDO9ATQKX64Y/Conklin_Last.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426960138-ETRBOKQQ6MK2A9899EF6/Gottlieb_Maybe.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426984486-8AMWWJZIMFOYPDGAAIKQ/Hollis_Particular.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story by Jackie Shannon Hollis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427019248-QTQWXKW7HW3KKEHKWWAP/Holm_Our.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery Our Only May Amelia by Jennifer L. Holm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427069219-MPFDK2N2Z82B1K1Z6P0E/Laymon_Heavy_pb.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427031602-NPX5YL74Y2ULA4AB2JC3/Lombardo_Most.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427054373-5IW18V1ZYXW0D0Y2E4YK/Moyes_Giver.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427011319-7UUHS6IBLRDEUZGZ8ZWJ/Patchett_Dutch.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Dutch House by Ann Patchett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427001961-7SXGV5039RS3ID9PHI9M/Strout_Olive_Again.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575426973470-KHJISBZ7H6VA2AWEYN2L/Vuong_Earth.jpg Nancy 2019 Top 10 Gallery On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422206949-53KO8X8SGL8EGKMJ34G3/Adjei_Friday_pb.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery Friday Black: Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422206949-53KO8X8SGL8EGKMJ34G3/Adjei_Friday_pb.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery Friday Black: Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422423059-RPYUPI3KLFB5IQF16XHP/Brown_Tradition.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Tradition by Jericho Brown https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422234635-PVO30P3JVWZWFESXSCUE/Bui_Best.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422330477-3H14YAQ6Q9IQPKLWLWC1/Butler_Sower.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422767369-6Y41MDU2U4M7CXSK9EZJ/Ishiguro_Remains.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422392046-3S1ST0C25KGH6U6LBB8P/Jones_American_pb.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery An American Marriage by Tayari Jones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422734236-NIJ2P5T9YEPD3W8Q9HB7/Khor_American.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery The American Dream?: A Journey on Route 66 by Shing Yin Khor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422300962-12YOLJPCU98OODEVH8IK/Limon_Carrying.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Carrying by Ada Limón https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422781296-V0OCVJ6CUK29HH491V4J/Machado_In.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422168346-HD9CVWNS85UOX5K047YY/Pan_Astonishing_pb.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422344960-H62QAF586AF4DLB74N4H/Rivera_Juliet.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575422368309-6NWEO1Z0HQ2LOER44Y8I/Vuong_Earth.jpg Anika 2019 Top 10 Gallery On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous By Ocean Vuong http://www.phinneybooks.com/steph-2019-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427623440-L1WVVAXR66GGOK3GXL28/Beaty_Sofia.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Sofia Valdez, Future Prez written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427623440-L1WVVAXR66GGOK3GXL28/Beaty_Sofia.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Sofia Valdez, Future Prez written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427710937-TTVO8IG1TWJ0D1CFB2OU/Cummings_Can.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Can I Be Your Dog? by Troy Cummings https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427580880-W0JPHOPN6357IUK3N4M7/Higgins_Storm.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Bruce’s Big Storm by Ryan T. Higgins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427614505-6TLXIBDPRVCQNK3CPQS3/Kvasnosky_Squeak.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Squeak! by Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Kate Harvey McGee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427793278-TKDECX8OM4KD58IT36QF/Lam_My.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery My Cat Looks Like My Dad by Thao Lam https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427744793-65GMH0EYCHU5B3TZB2A6/Lin_Big_Bed.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427591006-EDUUF0RFY6W0BTD5AMMI/Rex_Why.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Why? written by Adam Rex, illustrated by Claire Kean https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427730592-A71KNNDBPDPIX9GA1CHA/Schneider_Ninja.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Ninja Boy’s Secret by Tina Schneider https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427646380-1UPWSLMCYM7YROQ4NTLA/Willems_Has.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery The Pigeon HAS to Go to School by Mo Willems https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1575427694536-CGUDQNYRQQA7V63ILWE1/Zuill_Business.jpg Steph 2019 Top 10 Gallery Business Pig by Andrea Zuill http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2019-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048003281-I6NYCWN9RONJXHGAMP5J/Choi_Trust.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Trust Exercise by Susan Choi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048003281-I6NYCWN9RONJXHGAMP5J/Choi_Trust.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Trust Exercise by Susan Choi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576047980035-HY6LKN5TK1R89PE3IR34/Damrosch_Club.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery The Club by Leo Damrosch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048052184-XZ2WQKQTIKL3Y42LT4HA/Gainza_Optic.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048116642-SM1DP2YPU0SKU14PW4N3/Keefe_Say.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576047925778-L8QOW8YEG146GV68SYJQ/Machado_In.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048249590-JG5OUI5F9GORR2EAP1X0/Morris_Out.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Out Loud by Mark Morris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048014658-5W2WQCYIEQ19MXA4B7E0/Palmer_Toft.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576048079791-S7BU1R1AFN8IVM4M6FI1/Tumarkin_Axiomatic.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576047903376-47IQLSTRIGQPI9VF42Y6/Warner_Corner.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576047988972-7Q4NVJQZ2UBRHOA82XNF/Ware_Rusty.jpg Tom Unread 2019 Gallery Rusty Brown by Chris Ware http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2019-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014449303-KU8AH46BPFU0GWG6MQLU/Albert_Warrior.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery Warrior: A Life of War in Anglo-Saxon Britain by Edoardo Albert with Paul Gething https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014449303-KU8AH46BPFU0GWG6MQLU/Albert_Warrior.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery Warrior: A Life of War in Anglo-Saxon Britain by Edoardo Albert with Paul Gething https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014314768-X6ITKNKEU0SZBJMK08YC/Ernaux_Years.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery The Years by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014401139-8WD7BX6M6TPLUZ1KOE1A/Figes_Europeans.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture by Orlando Figes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014365816-KCRUPRUCHGE3X0B4YP19/Gaitskill_This.jpeg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery This Is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014389194-6O7GA1FOUXZBPNWUBCIW/Meconis_Queen.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014338217-NN71OUNRNQTH7HBBB2UI/Pomerantsev_This.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014423318-CHGAQWOCSPAHF0RU5366/Pushkin_Captain.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery The Captain’s Daughter and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014350672-8TMZLTNNTC3CDNTG74KJ/Rubenhold_Five.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014437092-1CXLMFREDV252154SA85/Waldrop_Hanky.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery The Hanky of Pippin’s Daughter by Rosemary Waldrop https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576014326393-86BA352GAMHK8J41WPK5/Warner_Lolly.jpg Liz Unread 2019 Gallery Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-unread-2019-gallery daily 0.75 2019-12-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046608635-ENWABUHA6OTOT9B28BY7/Backman_Us.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery Us Against You by Fredrik Backman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046608635-ENWABUHA6OTOT9B28BY7/Backman_Us.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery Us Against You by Fredrik Backman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046534411-A1JTOK0KNKQJM3OW5FYP/Lee_Pachinko_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery Pachinko by Min Jin Lee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046632789-8FU1L74K83IBEHVYSQMO/Miller_Philosopher.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046519409-KBKQIR32MGJ3YSE2AIWU/Morrieson_Scarecrow.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery Scarecrow by H.R. Morrieson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046624310-WULH0KSF2GG2M2QFN5EW/Oluo_So_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046447645-JW3AY6XYR7V5XB6AVIDL/Orange_There_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery There There by Tommy Orange https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046484305-GA85SSJHBQSU7RVDPQMZ/Owens_Where.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046502273-0192T34ZRF2V85K7BZR7/Powers_Overstory_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery The Overstory by Richard Powers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046562331-QTSYNQKZRETCX7TNIEZW/Purnell_Woman.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1576046551787-58X0NFHXC3OMJW8GUZVI/Towles_Gentleman-pb.jpg Doree Unread 2019 Gallery A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463820503-3ABW2FE6RZNBQLFRKMOB/Bythell_Confessions.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463820503-3ABW2FE6RZNBQLFRKMOB/Bythell_Confessions.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463754141-LH4T7TKMQ2J39CMPT402/Campisi_Sin.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Sin Eater by Megan Campisi Sin Eater takes a little-known historical role and expands it in this imaginative novel set in an alternate Elizabethan England. For stealing a loaf of bread, teenage orphan May is forced to become a sin eater—shackled with a metal collar proclaiming her status to all she meets and with a black "S" tattooed on her tongue. Shunned by society, sin eaters must only speak to the dying, who tell them their sins. Each sin corresponds with a food item—raisins for adultery, mustard seeds for lies, etc. By eating the "sins," the sin eater takes them on as their own, releasing the dead person's soul. At first distraught from the isolation and contempt her new lot in life brings, May gradually realizes that it isn't without its benefits. One of those benefits is access to the court of Queen Bethany (a thinly veiled Queen Elizabeth I), where courtesans are being murdered and accusations of witchcraft are flying. Fans of Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and Godshot will find similar themes in this fast-paced, high-stakes adventure. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463926252-A304HPZT3KOCLL6WPDSF/Jusino_Walking.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Walking to the End of the World by Beth Jusino https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463642713-FHSTB2RCKV4Q44KZY5J1/Kimmerer_Braiding.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463864045-6HHMC82FR07N6RZ6FUX5/Klune_Cerulean.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery The House in the Cerulean Sea T.J. Klune The House in the Cerulean Sea is a heart-swelling wave of sweetness and hope. Mild-mannered government caseworker Linus Baker is sent on a secret assignment to an island orphanage he's never even heard of. The astonishing inhabitants he gets to know there will change his life and make him reassess everything he thought he knew. This book will leave you believing in the good in everyone—even those society has given up on—and contemplating how huge changes have to start somewhere. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463680053-4MKDB5C92X7JB0IR1NZA/Lewis_Across_pb.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America by John Lewis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463962439-N1MD1NZPPDWADPDO0DBA/Moreno-Garcia_Mexican.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia How about some chills to cool you off this summer? Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia fulfills the eerie haunted house genre perfectly. After society girl Noemí receives a strange letter from her newlywed cousin Catalina, she treks to a remote mining town in the Mexican hills to investigate her cousin's sanity. A decrepit Victorian mansion in the foggy woods, strange rumors about the odd family within, and the ever-present whiff of danger make for a very fun page-turner that will keep readers guessing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463912927-AONK1HG8UW5YZ3LDAUJ2/Petry_Street.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Street by Ann Petry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463994520-UKEVU8OH3NJKS2NWVA1G/Robinson_You.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery You Matter by Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463845214-TVEWFCAKH166IZKIRO7G/Volz_Home.jpg Haley 2020 Top 10 Gallery Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco by Alia Volz When an advance copy of Home Baked arrived at the store, I took it home hoping merely to escape into the iconic 1970s San Francisco setting. I never anticipated that this memoir would give me an in-depth education on both the history of the era and the politics surrounding marijuana. Home Baked tells the story of the underground, and extremely illegal at the time, first known pot brownie business, Sticky Fingers. The author’s mother, Meridy, known to many simply as “The Brownie Lady,” and her friends expanded the operation through the swinging ‘70s and into the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when marijuana went from a recreational drug to one that could mean life or death to many of their friends suffering from the disease. This book is about so much more than a homespun "magic brownie" business and the people whose lives it touched. It’s the story of a 20th century family, a movement, and an era. Whether you’re a square like me or an experienced pothead, I "highly" recommend Home Baked! http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-middle-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464140451-RO6S1OCT4LN5FSTD16HR/Giles_Last.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464140451-RO6S1OCT4LN5FSTD16HR/Giles_Last.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464355024-1KO6EWXACJO3MN3UNCE8/Jamieson_When.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464225626-XTKSTN4C05S3L4GX4O5L/LeZotte_Show.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464391735-QP8HCLG0TPK5WTI4L6UL/Noel_Coo.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery Coo by Kaela Noel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464084838-1IXFBCWKDC1WM5UXZZU1/Park_Prairie.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464462213-BJ015YAAIIRGLBLXHXLP/Probert_Lightfall.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery Lightfall: The Girl and the Galdurian by Tim Probert https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464111652-0K7PTFHN1F1WSZ7I54CR/Soontornvat_Wish.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464403110-NMOQH1U49CJVNS8JM72H/Stead_List.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464256170-ELTBTKGYPGJ57BIXHQ4Z/VanEekhout_Cog.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery Cog by Greg Van Eekhout https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464289785-AHGUT2C5GGR6ERRTV9ZJ/Venkatramen_Bridge.jpg Haley Middle 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-01-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032034387-GMRCED17IEMLAGRB5MA2/Akhtar_Homeland.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar Akhtar pulls you in with his very first sentences—intellectual and political, but flowing with the energy and intimacy of friendly conversation—and you are off on a ride through post-9/11 America, as lived by one man—like Akhtar the son of Pakistani immigrants and like Akhtar a Pulitzer-winning playwright, although the book is fiction. His father is an America-embracing, Trump-friendly cardiologist/failed businessman; his new best friend (for a time) is a hedge-fund billionaire pouring his money into positive PR for Islam. It's a marvelously complex, challenging, and companionable portrait of America, by one of its children. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032034387-GMRCED17IEMLAGRB5MA2/Akhtar_Homeland.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar Akhtar pulls you in with his very first sentences—intellectual and political, but flowing with the energy and intimacy of friendly conversation—and you are off on a ride through post-9/11 America, as lived by one man—like Akhtar the son of Pakistani immigrants and like Akhtar a Pulitzer-winning playwright, although the book is fiction. His father is an America-embracing, Trump-friendly cardiologist/failed businessman; his new best friend (for a time) is a hedge-fund billionaire pouring his money into positive PR for Islam. It's a marvelously complex, challenging, and companionable portrait of America, by one of its children. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032323817-BH1XSZT6U2JDPLQD3VG4/Brower_Starship.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower The starship is a father's dream, the canoe—really a kayak—his son's. The father is Freeman Dyson, physicist and wild thinker who concocted plans to colonize comets and send spaceships to Saturn, and the son—estranged for a while in his early 20s from his father—is George Dyson, living sometimes in a treehouse north of Vancouver and building kayaks based on the technological traditions of the indigenous Arctic. Brower shuttles between them before bringing the two together, writing with all the grace, curiosity, and humor of John McPhee, a comparison that brings another set of father/son dynamics, since Brower's own famous father, David, was the subject of McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid. A wonderful book that gathers even more meaning from its context, both before and after it was published in 1978. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032249489-GP040CSV5TJPNMBIPE81/Ernaux_Girl.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux The "girl" of the title is Ernaux herself, at age 18, marked by her bookishness for a life outside the working class in which she was raised. And the story is, in essence, that of a single moment and its aftermath: an ambiguous encounter with a slightly older man, forced and then forgotten by him but altering her life forever. As in The Years, she holds her own past self at arm's length—who is this "I" who once was me, she asks again—but for all the distance she places between herself, now in her seventies, and this girl, the connection between them, along with the ruthless honesty of her self-investigation, give this little book an intensity beyond anything contained in The Years. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032270858-TCZ0B4ZROZRUCX1RF1GQ/Gibson_Agency.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Agency by William Gibson Famously, Gibson predicted our future in books like Neuromancer, and then our present caught up to him. Fittingly, his current loose trilogy, of which Agency is the second book, is set both in the future and in our recent past, or rather an alternative past—a "stub," in the book's term—to which people from the future can travel, through various intermediaries. Gibson is one of my favorite writers, whose vision of the future makes you feel so intensely the conditions and possibilities of our own present, but I had forgotten just how enjoyably challenging it is to situate yourself in the worlds he creates and only slowly explains. Agency's alternative past is full of horrors, at least at a distance, but is surprisingly utopian in the possibilities of good will on display. My mind was crackling with thought and pleasure throughout. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607031976398-UN0MX473BOEL3B6JX1OX/Greenwell_Cleanness.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Cleanness by Garth Greenwell I loved Greenwell's first book, What Belongs to You, the elegant and intense story of an American's desire for a Bulgarian man, and I love this one too. It's also the story of a young American in Bulgaria, it's also a story of desire, and it's also elegant and intense. But, as a set of connected stories, it's more diffused, and, with a three-story centerpiece called "Loving R.," it's more open to the possibility of joy. Greenwell writes about desire and physical intimacy with a jaw-dropping candor and intelligence, but the most striking thing in this book are the sentences: cascading series of comma splices that (in a manner that might remind readers of Cusk or Sebald, though Greenwell's style is his own) create both an intimate engagement and a melancholy distance for the narrator and ourselves. This feels like life, breathed and lived, and stylishly recalled. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032200579-4H7YYXXW3KHPXCKFSXWK/Kolker_Hidden.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker Schizophrenia is among the most ruthless of diseases, suddenly erupting in a life, often in adolescence, and turning it inside out in ways few treatments have been able to solve. That's what happened to six of the twelve children in the Galvin family in Colorado in the '60s and '70s, creating a house of turmoil for the stricken and their family members, but also a rich genetic record for researchers desperate to solve the disease's puzzle. With an empathetic and scientific mastery that will remind many readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Kolker weaves the devastating but still humane story of the Galvins together with the often equally frustrating history of schizophrenia's many failed treatments, and brings the two storylines together to offer some hope for the future. A superbly compelling book. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032173972-6LUPBVPH97LMBP1DFQ5X/Perlstein_Reaganland.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein Who knew that the finest chronicler of the modern conservative movement would be a writer from the left? Or that his four massive volumes of history, taking us from Goldwater's landslide defeat to Reagan's landslide victory, would be so incredibly entertaining? Perlstein's method is full immersion: a moment-by-moment recounting of political news and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, which in this case means the rollercoaster of hope and malaise of the Carter presidency and the rise of direct-mail politics and the Christian right that brought us the elderly ascent of the Gipper. Reaganland may be the finale of Perlstein's epic, but as we know, the story was just beginning, and you'll find the echoes of our current times deafening. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032155722-Z0S7GF6GBIN2IUYZ7BR4/Segal_Her.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Her First American by Lore Segal My favorite book I've read so far this year came out in 1985 and takes place in the late '50s. You may know Segal (I did, at least) from her fantastic kid's book, Tell Me a Mitzi, but boy, she is quite a novelist too. Her First American features two indelible characters, a young refugee from Austria, Ilka Weissnix, trying to find America, and the American she finds, Carter Bayoux, a charismatic, troubled African American intellectual. Surrounding them is an equally memorable cast of supporting roles and cameos, and while at its heart this is an encounter between identities—young European meets older African American—its brilliance comes from the sheer, strange, lively individuality of everyone she imagines. It's funny, poignant, brilliantly told and heard, and so subtly insightful that it still feels ahead of its time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032021040-QQASHOEJQIOZUT7ZO043/Taylor_Real.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Real Life by Brandon Taylor It hasn't been easy to explain why I like this novel so much (Laura and Nancy and the Booker Prize judges do too), but I think it comes down to what it's like to be inside the head of Wallace, the gay African American Big Ten biochemistry grad student whose real life you share for a few alternately slack and intense summer days. He's a hard one to get to know, for his friends and for a reader, armored with defenses and then suddenly so bristly and vulnerable when those defenses are pierced that you might need to turn away. The vulnerability might remind you of Kiese Laymon's Heavy, but you might also think of Sally Rooney's novels, with their similar deliberately banal titles and similarly drifting, passionate twentysomethings. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032527477-76RNMQIAN1TV8J4EIW4U/Tolstoy_War_Garnett.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032286570-LF087J870GFG2BS76ZSS/Trethewey_Memorial.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607032417305-2J0G8PMR73LRRWVWAWHO/Vesaas_Ice.jpg Tom 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas I read this book twice last year, at the beginning of the year and the end, and my awe and delight at its beauty only increased. The story is simple—a new girl comes to a small Norwegian town, and makes a connection to a girl there—and the language is stripped down to its minimum. But oh my, the intensity that those simple words—some of them unspoken—carry! In other hands, this might have felt like a horror story, but Vesaas (a household name in Norway, but nearly unknown here) invests it with stark enchantment. When I describe it as a cross between Denis Johnson's Train Dreams and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, please forgive my glibness and know that I am giving it the highest praise I have. http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034130134-OA6M5C41F00V9G4K7Y28/Ernaux_Frozen.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Frozen Woman by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034130134-OA6M5C41F00V9G4K7Y28/Ernaux_Frozen.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Frozen Woman by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034454081-887AT903N3G6HXFOSBR4/Ernaux_Years.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034298425-VD6SY5VZFPRDJJO1WYFH/Ernaux_Happening.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery Happening by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607033782607-IY4V4MSYHPLEUB84BIUJ/Ernaux_Man.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034339655-F81WIM6A1F1W8LRQ1ZTL/Ernaux_Possession.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Possession by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034236927-BK1LIAKW9WI7VRBRHOQC/Ernaux_Shame.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery Shame by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034037980-CSFZGJZE4RC4KJMVEZHA/Ernaux_Simple.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607033900921-MXL2EAIIP13ADBJZTY4I/Ernaux_Woman.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034361010-U8TOFESLA4NBJM0GJMF0/Ernaux_Years.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Years by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607034427956-RW9G7R6H2OZEADJWUTWN/Erpenbeck_Not.jpg Kim 2020 Top 10 Gallery Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces by Jenny Erpenbeck http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462291251-L5S0DEYBRI660OXBGFX1/Backman_Anxious.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Anxious People by Fredrik Backman Fredrik Backman knows exactly how to break my heart. And he does it just moments after making me snort with laughter. The author of A Man Called Ove and Britt-Marie Was Here ups the comedy in his new novel, but his trademark unfolding of each character’s back story several times left me so stunned I had to stop reading and remind myself to breathe. Anxious People is about a bank robber, a bridge, an apartment open house, a father-son relationship, loneliness, and how so many of us are unable to tell people we love them out loud but do so in quiet ways that go unnoticed. It is classic Backman, where he illuminates the flaws and foibles that make us fully human. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462291251-L5S0DEYBRI660OXBGFX1/Backman_Anxious.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Anxious People by Fredrik Backman Fredrik Backman knows exactly how to break my heart. And he does it just moments after making me snort with laughter. The author of A Man Called Ove and Britt-Marie Was Here ups the comedy in his new novel, but his trademark unfolding of each character’s back story several times left me so stunned I had to stop reading and remind myself to breathe. Anxious People is about a bank robber, a bridge, an apartment open house, a father-son relationship, loneliness, and how so many of us are unable to tell people we love them out loud but do so in quiet ways that go unnoticed. It is classic Backman, where he illuminates the flaws and foibles that make us fully human. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462370477-V7Q2SL3CQVQRCOLDJ962/Carlyle_Girl.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462679002-7W43RXWHBYJSVOT5P1Q8/Christie_Greenwood.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Greenwood by Michael Christie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462550583-I8GOHXLL82SZH90O5XPW/Finn_Woman.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462498702-GYGYX5Q3RRD2YNH4K15N/Foley_Guest.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Guest List by Lucy Foley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462911257-6J03HJUS3H49TIQXHRTW/Little_Pretty.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462454470-UVAD6AAN7UDC4VO84CZ2/Owens_Crawdads.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462860628-J9QHCQJJGIX3Y79GG9NB/Swanson_Eight.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462615961-8S1MPT36XADGC5CTCZ8J/Williams_Along.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463009868-SHN59G1Y329GZIOJ5WKV/Williams_Her_Last.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams I love historical fiction that focuses on strong female characters, especially when it’s written by Beatriz Williams, who is a master at slowly unfurling connections between characters years apart. Her latest book, Her Last Flight, is a kind of homage to Amelia Earhart and the daring men and women of the 1920s and ’30s who took to the skies to prove that airplanes were the future of travel. In 1928, 20-year-old Irene Foster meets famed aviator Sam Mallory, who teaches her to fly before the two attempt a historic flight from California to Australia. Irene’s fame soon eclipses Sam’s as everyone is fascinated by a woman pilot, until they both disappear without a trace 10 years later. In 1947, a daring female journalist with her own secrets tracks down a woman she believes to be Irene, as she tries to discover what really happened to Sam and Irene on that last flight. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607462846173-GH86CS5RXXEO8AJ84VA3/Winspear_Dobbs.jpg Doree 2020 Top 10 Gallery Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465298768-LAAZLMO2P8XOKH3WJEPR/Bowen_World.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465298768-LAAZLMO2P8XOKH3WJEPR/Bowen_World.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465258057-MXPPITJ05OT93UG2GAR2/Burdekin_Swastika.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464994096-E4UNE3DLT9YI3CNS94DH/Ditlevsen_Copehagen.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Copenhagen Trilogy (Childhood, Youth, and Dependency) by Tove Ditlevsen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464960050-IFUKJS4R77L938PNE341/Garner_Spare.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Spare Room by Helen Garner I’ll admit the set-up is not promising even in the best of times: two upper-middle-aged/class friends, one with cancer, the other caring for her. BUT STICK WITH ME! In the highly capable hands of one of Australia’s most celebrated authors, there’s no bathos or cliche to be found in this sharply entertaining novel, which might end up my favorite of this unimaginable year. Garner is as famous for her journalism as her fiction, and the specificity of her details and dialogue is so ordinarily odd that they just feel true. The narrator (a writer named Helen) sounds like she’s talking to you—her friend, you hope—because she’s so smart, funny and recognizably human: she knows she’s imperfect but would prefer to be less so. And since actual events don’t unfold neatly, Garner cleverly structures her story to uphold that reality while delivering a satisfying narrative. This slim, unassuming book reminded me that an everyday miracle of creativity can reassure us of the everyday miracle of kindness. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465063552-P5M193Q2UJ85TEXNSGDZ/Melchor_Hurricane.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor Melchor’s English-language debut is a portrait of a Mexican village as unnerving and entrancing as any painting by Bruegel or Bosch. The scene opens on the village's outskirts, its resident Witch found murdered and floating in a ditch. Chapter by chapter, Melchor shifts focus from one inhabitant to another, edging closer to the why, how, and who of the crime. She trains her lens on the most anguished and the pages overflow with their torrential voices: the abused and the abusers, as well as complicit bystanders. Yet all are to be pitied—all prisoners of their hellish social-scape. Melchor alludes to drug gangs, political corruption, racial tensions, heavy-handed religion, and economic exploitation, but the true devils are machismo and misogyny that have metastasized until they engender rampant femicide and devour their hosts. A maelstrom of language that demands to be heard, Hurricane Season is currently on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize, which awards both author and translator. And it’s already won a spot on my personal Top 10 of 2020. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465322907-D471MHP97UMDI8SJ9FHX/Szabo_Abigail.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery Abigail by Magda Szabo Booksellers geek out devising pithy comparisons that telegraph the feel of one book with the modified title of another. So I gave myself a pat on the back when I realized I had just finished the Hungarian To Kill A Mockingbird! Szabo was a popular and acclaimed author, and Abigail was voted the sixth most beloved novel by her compatriots (as well as adapted as a TV show and a musical). The story is told from the point-of-view of a girl (at a point in time after the events) with a wise father fighting on the right side of history, and a mysterious benefactor whose identity is revealed at the end. Adolescent readers will commiserate with Gina as she navigates her cloistered boarding school, and when they share her discoveries about the outside world, their minds just might be blown. Adults will be amused and appalled by the specifics of a Calvinist girls school in 1940s Debrecen (Szabo was a teacher in one), and the plotting and pacing guarantee a twisty, breakneck ride even if they can guess the destination. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465048858-BYAURN90QPWILQNHO65Y/Tsypkin_Summer.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465164873-GEQ902QWURUA02ZJ4VE3/Turgenev_Fathers.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464945354-CKGIV2H8LZLSZBZ8QBTA/Warner_Lolly.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607465225429-94YVLFUFCWNDYGP5SRTP/Welch_Youth.jpg Liz 2020 Top 10 Gallery In Youth Is Pleasure by Denton Welch http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463156929-W3OS7N8KIAXXWDYFMMOH/Bennett_Vanishing.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463156929-W3OS7N8KIAXXWDYFMMOH/Bennett_Vanishing.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463321552-Z5JYU4I2VUSG2P1SLVE7/Crawford_Notes.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463405480-0LLV6SBW480GCXBG9VXC/Garner_Spare.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Spare Room by Helen Garner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463425097-5FMBMKJNYFWRV0QCGLFP/Gottlieb_Maybe.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463392739-UZ3SNS19RBXRC0K8N08X/Jenner_Jane.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463104373-FW948FRPGBCUGDB8UWPE/King_Writers.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery Writers and Lovers by Lily King https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463180965-BBZPDE6XS0N3OBJX0MT1/Makkai_Great_pb.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463133153-J68G0V5VTJC6YVGRLSAA/Miller_Know_pb.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery Know My Name by Chanel Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463359480-VHTTQM18KBJYOTFR5JGX/Stead_List.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607463261959-N204G2P26M6GQQK5NMHE/Taylor_Real.jpg Nancy 2020 Top 10 Gallery Real Life by Brandon Taylor http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2020-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464617581-2E60OV80USFPZW3BJL7Q/Bauermeister_House.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery House Lessons: Renovating a Life by Erica Bauermeister Erica Bauermeister's memoir-in-essays is a treasure for anyone who, like me, can't resist the intrigue of an open-house sign. House Lessons beckons you inside a trash-filled hoarder house in Port Townsend, where a family is determined to transform it into a beautiful, memory-filled home. The project proves to be an undertaking that is easier dreamt than done, and Bauermeister is transparent about the frustrations inherent in the process. This book is in part an education in architecture, informative as well as interesting, and its structure is strong enough to hold this story, with its cast of eccentric real-life characters and stranger-than-fiction moments. Told with loving language and such respect, this was a most enjoyable read. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464617581-2E60OV80USFPZW3BJL7Q/Bauermeister_House.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery House Lessons: Renovating a Life by Erica Bauermeister Erica Bauermeister's memoir-in-essays is a treasure for anyone who, like me, can't resist the intrigue of an open-house sign. House Lessons beckons you inside a trash-filled hoarder house in Port Townsend, where a family is determined to transform it into a beautiful, memory-filled home. The project proves to be an undertaking that is easier dreamt than done, and Bauermeister is transparent about the frustrations inherent in the process. This book is in part an education in architecture, informative as well as interesting, and its structure is strong enough to hold this story, with its cast of eccentric real-life characters and stranger-than-fiction moments. Told with loving language and such respect, this was a most enjoyable read. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464725368-PMZEJHDL7MNNJH7BLOLJ/Bennett_Vanishing.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett Within the first few pages of The Vanishing Half, I knew I was reading something special. In this slow-burn novel, twins Desiree and Stella grow up in Mallard, a small black community in segregated Louisiana that prides itself on the lightness of its people’s skin. At sixteen, the twins flee from Mallard after their mother pulls them out of school to work cleaning white people’s houses, sacrificing the familiarity of home, the safety of their community, and the predictable trajectory of their lives. In New Orleans, the twins begin their new lives together, but eventually Stella takes off on her own, choosing to live the rest of her life “passing” as white; Desiree marries a dark-skinned man, has a child who looks like him, and ends up living back in Mallard. The consequences of the twins’ life choices unfold throughout the book, from the 1950s to the 1990s, and include the lives (and perspectives) of their daughters, Kennedy and Jude. The Vanishing Half is a fascinating story about family relationships, identity, and belonging, and I savored every page. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464821345-4ZNGAXEWTEO8TP677C1Q/Fitzhugh_Nobody.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change by Louise Fitzhugh Originally published in 1974, a decade after Fitzhugh’s beloved Harriet the Spy, Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change is a punchy middle-grade novel about 11-year old Emancipation “Emma” Sheridan, who fantasizes about becoming a lawyer, and her 7-year-old brother Willie*, who dreams of becoming a dancer on Broadway. Emma’s father, a lawyer himself, balks at the idea of women lawyers and effeminate male dancers. This is a bold, empowering story about children’s rights—particularly the way children are at the mercy of their parents’ desires, expectations, and prejudices—and the importance of people advocating for their own wellbeing. While this novel was written for children, even adults will find sophistication in its brutally honest social commentary, especially in regard to gender roles. It’s dark, raw, humorous, and sometimes profane. An excellent book for parents and mature children to read and discuss. 

 *I do want to acknowledge that while the protagonists of this novel are Black kids, the author, Louise Fitzhugh, is a white woman. We live in this remarkable era of #OwnVoices and #WeNeedDiverseBooks, and there’s a lot of discussion about who should tell what stories. Let’s keep that conversation going. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464637555-IE7N9YPCCF4YO5BYAMQA/Gardam_Verona.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam Jessica Vye is a 13-year-old girl living in the North of England during World War II. Yet she maintains that the “violent” experience that shaped her was being told, at the age of 9, by visiting author Arnold Hanger that she is “a writer beyond all possible doubt!” At 13, Jessica has internalized the sentiment that she is a born writer and also believes herself to be a mind-reader and a compulsive truth-teller. She’s smart, funny, odd, and widely misunderstood by her fellow students and teachers, who worry that she’s getting above herself. In this short, sweet coming-of-age novel, the eccentric young Jessica Vye paints a vivid picture of her school days, family life, and social sphere amidst the bleak realities of wartime: food rations, gas masks, and the threat of air raids. At the end of my reading, I’m inclined to agree with Arnold Hanger. What a wonderful writer! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464662978-6TTLK6OZH59GRIDADKIO/Kobabe_Gender.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe This delightfully illustrated graphic memoir is an emotional and straightforward account of self-discovery and acceptance. Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, explores coming to terms with eir genderqueer identity and asexuality in a way that is personal, thoughtful, and educational. Kobabe's self-aware recollections range from uncomfortable and painful to awkward and joyful and liberating. The artwork is beautiful, and the discussions—particularly the conversations (and their respective panels) on coming out, dating, and pronouns—are heartfelt and great. This book is a welcome addition to LGBTQIA+ literature! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464767377-ELQPKT7HN6U0TERAQYND/Lacour_Watch.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour As a long-time admirer of Nina LaCour’s work, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one. It caught me at just the right time, with the changing of seasons, the cold settling in. Watch Over Me is the beautiful, strange, and melancholy story of Mila, who has recently graduated high school and aged out of the foster care system. When Mila accepts a teaching job and living accommodations on a remote farm off the Northern California coast, home to traumatized children, adolescents, and ghosts, she must contend with her own troubled past and her desire to belong. LaCour has a talent for precise language, for making the ordinary extraordinary. The result is haunting and emotional, a contemporary gothic reminiscent of Bronte’s Jane Eyre and du Maurier’s Rebecca. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464672651-GK1G3WVN88JM226JPHG2/Manguso_Ongoingness.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso This short, unconventional memoir is an account of Sarah Manguso’s meticulously kept diary: eight hundred thousand words written over twenty-five years. I am fascinated by people who keep daily records of their lives, though I’m intrigued by the process more than the product. Ongoingness doesn’t include a single excerpt from Manguso’s diary, but rather describes the author’s compulsion to write, “to retain the whole memory” of her life. It is a meditation on memory: remembering, and forgetting, as well as a confession of what it is to be human. Despite the fact that I don’t journal obsessively or even daily, I found this book to be deeply resonant; if I’d have highlighted each passage that captivated me, most of its pages would now be yellow. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464709755-4ZEOJ87U3CY3UDVKHB6K/Pearl_Writers.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager I delighted in this book of twenty-three author interviews conducted by world-famous librarian Nancy Pearl and her co-author Jeff Schwager, the perfect duo for this literary project. I found listening in on these conversations to be a deliciously voyeuristic experience, particularly because I was lucky enough to transcribe all but a few of the interviews for the book; I’m happy to report that reading the physical copy of the book is just as vivid and entertaining as listening to the MP3 files. The Writer’s Library is chock full of book recommendations, laugh-out-loud moments, and nuggets of wisdom 
as its eclectic cast of authors reflect on their reading histories and habits and enthuse about the books they love most. Grab a copy and prepare for your to-be-read stack to grow! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464684138-8MU586VB6668K15HDRNM/Stead_List.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery The List of Things That Will Not Change by Rebecca Stead The List of Things That Will Not Change refers to a list kept by our anxious young protagonist Bea, whose Mom and Dad divorced when she was 8 years old. The list’s purpose is to remind Bea of all the things that will stay the same, most importantly that her parents will always love her, and each other. Twelve-year-old Bea narrates her story, reflecting on her 10-year-old self and a time when many things in her life were changing very fast: namely, her Dad getting married to his boyfriend, Jesse, and Bea getting acquainted with her sister-to-be, Sonia. There’s so much to love about this wholesome, heartfelt book, from Bea’s charmingly thoughtful voice to Stead’s clear, straightforward prose and expert unpacking of big topics and feelings. This book felt like a hug. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1607464652160-XGYPU8B2VQHZMDNJ4VDX/Taussig_Sitting.jpg Anika 2020 Top 10 Gallery Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig Too often in our discussions about diversity, we leave disability out of the conversation. In this memoir-in-essays, Rebekah Taussig brings her fresh and incisive voice to the table, sharing her story of what it’s been like growing up and living in her “ordinary resilient disabled” body. With humor and honesty, Sitting Pretty examines ableism in our society, which includes lack of representation, inclusivity, and accessibility, and also reveals the ways well-meaning nondisabled folks disregard and undermine the experiences, desires, and abilities of disabled people. While this book is a lesson in disability studies and intersectionality, it is also a love story with a message of empowerment and body positivity at its center. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a body (and also a heart). http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-unread-2020-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399134114-HOTJC487EQRZR5EU3WEO/Bennett_Vanishing.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399134114-HOTJC487EQRZR5EU3WEO/Bennett_Vanishing.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399192916-B1QI93SMRIWAB7YS7MU4/Clarke_Piranesi.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery Piranesi by Susanna Clarke https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399209546-LG41U1GT6S9WW0IL3F57/Jacobsen_Unseen.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399216984-7CP1LF1AC47NWBL1QJDL/Katz_Ramona.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery The Art of Ramona Quimby by Anna Katz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399200123-8DFH14FXWWNQXKOQZINZ/Ma_Moms.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery Moms by Yeong-Shin Ma https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399240333-6W4O3K24I44YIDTAB6HR/Miller_Why.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399164708-DXHZRCKP05T7QTT3HS7V/Aimee_World.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399176342-5KATAB4R6XCOVMUPPAKC/Thomas_Cemetery.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399251174-FM1WN56M8IXRARVTOBR9/Tomine_Loneliness.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609399230497-T2JS90XWTO15GGZL0E9X/Wong_Disability.jpg Haley Unread 2020 Gallery Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-unread-2020-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398596116-7C9ICJR4JUSAUV3WDGRM/Batuman_Idiot_pb.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery The Idiot by Elif Batuman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398596116-7C9ICJR4JUSAUV3WDGRM/Batuman_Idiot_pb.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery The Idiot by Elif Batuman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398566288-1HFDAHGE7D5ZJFVAKZ27/Callender_Felix.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery Felix Ever After by Karen Callender https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398493321-YAFFU8PR3FCCDRJA84GM/Halsey_Would.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery I Would Leave Me If I Could by Halsey https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398518133-5VPWQAPGJQ311FNGT3RG/Kilgariff_Stay.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398552986-NOMX1F302CWCEQQF6PXB/Morrow_Song.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398537509-EO4862QF3WRHX4Q3SUEO/Straub_All.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398528278-O0ANB3QW5LKQMCFT3FYI/Unsworth_Grown.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery Grown Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398474143-4ANGJNPV3I9FVHKJ5NZ0/Vance_Hillbilly_pb.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609398577173-CQL5AI56KXJSE1EY6CAA/Winterson_Why.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609402643418-OTV5UXQWNH8FZ4USBL40/Zada_Valleys.jpg Anika Unread 2020 Gallery In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch by John Zada http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2020-gallery daily 0.75 2020-12-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274750301-R7DW9WRLBFKT4FQ60LKK/Alexander_Love.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery Love in the Blitz by Eileen Alexander https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274750301-R7DW9WRLBFKT4FQ60LKK/Alexander_Love.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery Love in the Blitz by Eileen Alexander https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274607835-KPVSED82HF2SXR5GS1IG/Banville_Snow.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery Snow by John Banville https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274763815-H4KBSWSYSDS6QGVOJ6TU/Erpenbeck_Not.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces by Jenny Erpenbeck https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274581818-QWFUBEKBYQFW2URAW64J/Gluck_Village.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery A Village Life by Louise Glück https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274625200-Z45ZYJY61HHTXSMHOXHP/Hargrave_Mercies.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274805713-6N14HOEKY3Q2ZRYWK47F/Mantel_Mirror.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274615810-F9USOMLVTCH17Z2WPYZV/NDiaye_That.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274598504-I8FCAJ56WMPM6W12WMQP/Onda_Aosawa.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274558805-Z77GFML5D377FWIO8H2Z/Rijneveld_Discomfort.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609274739507-XUPX41SPKNGTDCO8S7M2/Shibli_Minor.jpg Liz Unread 2020 Gallery Minor Detail by Adana Shibli http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2020-gallery daily 0.75 2021-01-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726610914-YQDHVN6CTL19N7VWNPXU/Cain_Indelicacy.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Indelicacy by Amina Cain https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726610914-YQDHVN6CTL19N7VWNPXU/Cain_Indelicacy.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Indelicacy by Amina Cain https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726478309-RIQD3N91GQ984Y5PD640/Chang_Obit.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Obit: Poems by Victoria Chang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726681553-15KORIBMLBTH25QWQV59/Goldblatt_Becoming.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Anonymous https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609725659664-ZM41HESI837L8I0HZR87/Gyasi_Transcendent.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726738693-VRISMXOOQP74QKWYY857/Hazzard_Collected.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Collected Stories by Shirley Hazzard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726594781-XP4S4G7V9NV1BODTEOKZ/Miller_Monogamy.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Monogamy by Sue Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726759073-RSHA098P6EZSA6TU2LB3/Rijneveld_Discomfort.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rjineveld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726868616-U10AXPBNKPHZ4P2XQI0B/Smith_Intimations.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Intimations by Zadie Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609725713801-IKNU5SZ6RJ459EDDN1XS/Stein_Kalman.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein, illustrated by Maira Kalman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609726653402-WJS6ENQZ7EXPPMPITPG9/Tretheway_Memorial.jpg Kim Unread 2020 Gallery Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2020-gallery daily 0.75 2021-01-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609735824459-MN464LO91WDQXNIRP3JF/Craske_Indian.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar by Oliver Craske https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609735824459-MN464LO91WDQXNIRP3JF/Craske_Indian.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar by Oliver Craske https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401645767-CNNJGVJM0UIFUWUUCFSQ/Glaude_Begin.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401743846-T1ZIBI1FYBADPXEEMFVJ/Gluck_Margery.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Margery Kempe by Robert Glück https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401655204-CKGJPVCKF6E1VGNQ5JU5/Kehlmann_Tyll.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401736664-GFPPMWCYE94CR74WXXO2/Ma_Moms.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Moms by Yeong-Shin Ma https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401686117-WSPZCNXNGSSYUQ8OANHM/Philyaw_Secret.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401832095-2NF4DEP7DFPCPWSYB7QS/Robinson_Ministry.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401720795-CTJ8NJVL07KJNEY24W0O/Sante_Maybe.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401711774-KLMGNEFLA4SZ5PCOFUF7/Schalansky_Inventory.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609401699185-59KW70Y0R6MQ7UICF4EY/Wang_Blockchain.jpg Tom Unread 2020 Gallery Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside by Xiaowei Wang http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-unread-2020-gallery daily 0.75 2021-01-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727316029-R4VY9TZUO05BYG29RTS6/Coates_Water_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727316029-R4VY9TZUO05BYG29RTS6/Coates_Water_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727474299-L5HA16LYX5LD43E9ECYM/Lemmie_Fifty.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727516827-MOIJ0VI3G7R8DXJYTNO1/Lewis_Walking.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727222250-JA5IDUTQR49M8QSVZAWW/Millet_Children.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727240736-G85U9I1ZD7D4LHCQ8CZO/Obama_Promised.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery A Promised Land by Barack Obama https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727535969-8GFBHPKEBAFZ4VFNR6ZT/Powers_Overstory_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery The Overstory by Richard Powers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727387114-8VMR85R3NJR4O6Z2LTNS/Reynolds_Stamped.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727334816-D8GPAHV5R8M10I9OK61E/Whitehead_Underground_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727464185-66FLF2N3Q6WSKHGEE7VY/Wilkerson_Caste.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1609727450175-BVFS7ZRTYH6SFBMY3GLM/Wilkerson_Warmth.jpg Doree Unread 2020 Gallery The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson http://www.phinneybooks.com/newsletter-2021-gallery daily 0.75 2024-11-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1728687902890-92CTLH16DOYC76CX5J48/Greenwell_Small.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 8, 2024) Small Rain by Garth Greenwell Greenwell's first two books, What Belongs to You and Cleanness, each made my year-end top 10, and this third one is likely to as well. Those earlier books were both disarmingly frank (and often breathtakingly beautiful) accounts of desire, seen through the eyes of a young gay American man in Bulgaria. In this new one the setting has shifted—to Iowa City—and the subject has too, to an aspect of the body equally autobiographical and nearly as unspoken: the vulnerability of sudden illness and the intimacy of medical care. The story is almost artless in its structure, following, with some digressions, the ten days of its narrator's hospitalization in close clinical detail, but full of art in its close attention to the body, to life and near-death, to the transcendence and the banality of everyday love. A beauty once again. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1728687902890-92CTLH16DOYC76CX5J48/Greenwell_Small.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 8, 2024) Small Rain by Garth Greenwell Greenwell's first two books, What Belongs to You and Cleanness, each made my year-end top 10, and this third one is likely to as well. Those earlier books were both disarmingly frank (and often breathtakingly beautiful) accounts of desire, seen through the eyes of a young gay American man in Bulgaria. In this new one the setting has shifted—to Iowa City—and the subject has too, to an aspect of the body equally autobiographical and nearly as unspoken: the vulnerability of sudden illness and the intimacy of medical care. The story is almost artless in its structure, following, with some digressions, the ten days of its narrator's hospitalization in close clinical detail, but full of art in its close attention to the body, to life and near-death, to the transcendence and the banality of everyday love. A beauty once again. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1728688037702-RLPYKY0JYCAH4FXS8V99/Steed_Forces.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 8, 2024) Forces of Nature by Edward Steed The New Yorker cartoon is one of those venerable comedy institutions that, like Saturday Night Live, is at this point often more "funny" than funny. But, as also happens on Saturday Night Live, once in a while a genius still emerges, and it's become clear that this generation's New Yorker cartoon genius is a young British transplant named Edward Steed. It was the bitter brilliance of "You call that a banana-mobile?" that first made me notice his name, but with dashes of Booth and Addams, and of Steadman and Stamaty, he has maintained that level of hilariously angry impotence and sadly misplaced hopefulness ever since, whether in the "World's Tallest Potato Contest," "Staff Picks" (oh that hits home for us booksellers), "You're not going to find anything in your price range that isn't full of bees," or this wordless gem. I weep with joy. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1728688056340-TSCSVZXN1ONW7254EVNP/Morton_Nervous.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 8, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #117 A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 by Frederic Morton For a number of reasons, it's rare I choose a history book for Phinney by Post, our backlist subscription, but Morton's 1979 microhistory made for a nice fit, both for its slim size and especially for its style: it reads, as the cliche goes, like a novel. Morton slides freely into the emotional lives of his characters, from his main figure, the Crown Prince Rudolf—“the most nervous man in the most nervous century”—to a chorus of contemporary Viennese, from Freud to Klimt, who are less noteworthy in this story for their achievements than for their moods. In fact, it reads like a specific novel: Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March (a Liz favorite), with which it shares both a soundtrack (those waltzes!) and a tone, an almost menacingly delicate irony that's a perfect match for the decadent decline of the Habsburg Empire. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1728688289265-77914S0G0HYGL09NPL91/Nelson_When.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (October 8, 2024) When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson I didn’t realize this was a Young Adult novel when I first picked it up, but I was immediately sucked into this gorgeous, multi-generational tale of a Northern California family that has more than its share of secrets. Told in fairy tales, diary entries, notes, and straight prose from each character’s point of view, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. The three children in the Fall family—19-year-old violin virtuoso and human wrecking ball Wynton; heartbreakingly gorgeous and seemingly perfect 17-year-old Miles; and ghost-seeing 12-year-old Dizzy, who sees only the best in everyone—have all been lost since their father left when their mother was pregnant with Dizzy. When they each have an encounter with a mysterious, rainbow-haired young woman, they think that somehow she’s the key to their happiness. But first there is A LOT of complicated family history to unpack. As a reminder that we never truly know everything our loved ones have gone through, this novel will almost certainly be in my Top 10 this year. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1728688386051-MZYC50B0TYRHQZUV6NQK/Camp_Aldo.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 8, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #106 Aldo: Ghost Dog by Joaquín Camp, translated by Kit Maude One day while playing catch, Aldo the dog gets caught in a white sheet hanging from the clothesline. Believing himself to now be a ghost, Aldo isn't too bothered at first. After all, there are some perks, like being able to steal food invisibly (or so he thinks). The whimsical illustrations by Argentinian author and illustrator Joaquín Camp hilariously juxtapose Aldo's narration with the reality of his situation. Will Aldo ever get to reunite with his beloved red ball or is he doomed to "booo!" instead of "woof!" forever? —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1727569725615-NJ2T1S6D1PYA3TSVLS7E/Messud_Strange.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 23, 2024) This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud Lucienne and Gaston “believe as much in their country as in their love.” Their country is Algeria, which at the time (the late '20s) was also France; their love is mismatched by age and circumstance, but true. Their story, and those of the generations that follow, traces how both beliefs fall apart and hold together over time. It’s Claire Messud’s own family story, told as fiction in decade-by-decade snapshots from 1940 to 2010. Because of that episodic form, and perhaps because its truth makes it less malleable to a novelist’s plotting, it gathers slowly but accumulates toward a powerful sense of connection and melancholy as the family, pushed by ambition, affection, and the forces of history, disperses across the globe, to Greece, Australia, Canada, France, Connecticut, while never quite losing the sense of a lost home, in a country they can’t return to. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1727569741089-65AJJ1X7K2D3MXSRAJ2V/Hallett_Examiner.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 23, 2024) The Examiner by Janice Hallett Six students of various ages and backgrounds all sign up for a new master's level art class at a university in England. The senior art tutor needs this class to work so it can be added to the university's curriculum going forward. But frictions arise almost right away, and we soon realize there's an undercurrent of...something...but we don't know what. Hallett's novels are always told through snippets of emails, texts, instant messages, etc., which slowly reveal that not everyone or everything is as it seems. I loved two of her previous books, The Appeal and The Mysterious Case of the Apperton Angels, so I assumed I would like this one as well, but I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the ending, and how Hallett managed to weave together all the different threads. I'm pretty sure I scared my cats when I loudly exclaimed as the endgame was finally revealed. As a master of misdirection, this is Hallett’s best book yet. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1727569749274-WAZ363613D7ATR6WYMSJ/Maxwell_One.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 23, 2024) One Day I'll Grow Up and Be a Beautiful Woman by Abi Maxwell For anyone who wants to be a trans ally—or who doesn't understand more than the male-female binary—I urge you to read this memoir. The author's young daughter transitioned at age 6 in a conservative town in rural New Hampshire, where the author grew up and thought of as idyllic. But when her daughter, still known as a boy, starts wearing pink tennis shoes to school, it's just the beginning of a years-long trauma complete with school board meetings where the family's supposed friends express fear of this young child using the "wrong" bathroom and talking to other children about gender identity. Already dealing with a school district that won't provide their autistic child with appropriate services, the family walks a tightrope every minute of every day. My family knows many trans people and I thought I understood a little of what they experience, but I was absolutely floored by reading this book. As soon as I finished it, I made a donation to the Trevor Project and bought a Protect Trans Kids t-shirt. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1727569787840-8U47USFM4MLZ33HGKBAK/Wilson_Swamp.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 23, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #116 Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson Ethel Wilson lived over ninety years, most of them in Vancouver, B.C., and many of them as a self-described “doctor’s wife,” but starting when she was nearly sixty, she published a handful of books, including this slim wonder of a novel from 1954, that have continued to find readers in Canada and beyond. She has a lovely, ironic touch, a great eye for people, and an appreciation of the beauties of the B.C. interior, but what makes this book particularly wonderful is its main character, Maggie Lloyd. When the story begins, Maggie goes by the name of her feckless husband, but quickly she reclaims her former identity and a freedom she once had too, making her way to a lake north of Kamloops where her thrilling competence can find its true expression. It’s a story full of both surprises and satisfactions, a little gem as enjoyable to reread as it is to discover for the first time. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1727569767245-4A0I993EL4N91A2VUXES/Jeffers_Dictionary.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (September 23, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #104 The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston Dictionary contains all the words that have ever been read, but unlike the other books, she doesn't tell her own story. So one day she decides to bring her words to life, starting with a hungry alligator--who immediately goes after Donut. Soon Ghost, Moon, and many other characters are pulled into the romp across Dictionary's pages as disaster ensues. Thankfully, young readers will be able to help clean up the mess with a well-known song. A close look at the "dictionary" pages in the illustrations reveals that author Oliver Jeffers has written all his own clever entries, many of which relate to the story ("alligator ... [has] a special fondness for baked sugary snacks"). —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1723923073171-IJRFSBUXZN9C2N14A9NO/Rickey_Complicated.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 12, 2024) A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda by Carrie Rickey Agnès Varda made her first film in her twenties, before the French New Wave, with which she was long associated, began to crest; she made her last in her nineties, when she had lived long enough to witness (and help create) her transformation into a Frida-esque pop icon of feminist art. In between she lived a life of restlessly eclectic creativity (pushing the boundaries of true and made-up filmmaking and befriending the Black Panthers and Jim Morrison, among many others) and personal consistency (nearly her entire career was headquartered in a Montparnasse studio she bought when she was 23). Varda often played with time and identity in her work; in her first book (and the first Varda bio), Rickey, a longtime film critic, largely plays it straight, bringing order to a life overflowing with invention. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1723923089739-REIX0WPJVB4AHBYTI40X/Higginbotham_Challenger.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 12, 2024) Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham The tenth and last flight of Space Shuttle Challenger lasted only 73 seconds; to tell the full history of those terrible moments, Adam Higginbotham requires, justifiably, over five hundred pages and more than three decades of backstory. After his acclaimed Midnight in Chernobyl, Higginbotham has become our laureate of engineering disasters, but this story is also about success, about the awesomely complicated scientific and political project of putting the "most complicated machine in history" into space, as much as it's about the hubris, cowardice, and expedience that led to the disaster. A very human story about the limits of human ambition. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1723923107431-YOK7KOI9R8D0ZVMEUHRH/Harvey_Orbital.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 12, 2024) Orbital by Samantha Harvey A delicate and lyrical counterpoint to the weighty Challenger, Orbital is called a novel, but it bears about as much relation to your average novel as its characters' sixteen daily zero-gravity orbits of the Earth do to your morning I-5 commute. Six astronauts—two women and four men—from five countries are sharing a nine-month space-station mission; we spend a day with them, a day of sunrises every ninety minutes, of memories of individual earthbound lives, of everyday astronaut tasks, and of continual, skybound wonder. Little plot-wise happens, and the six characters blur into a humanist whole, but that wonder, gorgeously captured, is a breathless, idealistic reminder of what we build such wasteful, dangerous machines to get a glimpse of. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1723923123876-2AU3EIF5U1P0B82YH71Z/Carr_Month.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 12, 2024) A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr This little book carried such a reputation—as one of those exquisite literary gems whose compact perfection is a miracle of tone and concision—that for a long time I didn't want to actually read it and risk breaking its spell. No danger of that, it turns out: the spell is only stronger when you've finished. The story: a young man, fresh from the horrors of the WWI trenches, is hired to restore a medieval mural in a Yorkshire village church. He works, slowly uncovering a masterpiece; he naps, he eats his lunch of bread and Wensleydale in the sun, he meets the townspeople, he falls in love. And then, summer over and painting restored, he takes his leave, and decades later he tells this small, sweet tale with such vivid intensity that you can hardly believe that this vision of the aftermath of the Great War could have been published in the distant year of 1980. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722205122790-EIR22I4R4WXMTVG1Y6EL/ONeill_Godwin.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 22, 2024) Godwin by Joseph O'Neill Godwin is, as advertised, about the search for a teenage soccer prodigy who may or may not exist in West Africa and who may or may not be the next Messi. But it's also about a minor power struggle at a small Pittsburgh firm of tech-writer freelancers. That O'Neill can credibly braid these two stories together—and make the latter drama as compelling as its more glamorous counterpart—is a sign of his particular talent for nailing with graceful irony (as he did in his marvelous novel, Netherland) the wonder, the pettiness, the greed, and the kindness that are all part of our interconnected modern world. He's one of the few writers I always read, and Godwin made me once again glad I do. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722205311684-UTZHFLRQNNY203546I4Y/Schlee_Rhine.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 22, 2024) The Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee Reading the latest offering from McNally Editions, you might think it’s a reissue of a slim Victorian classic. It’s actually a historical novel that was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize. Schlee not only sets her story in 1851; she seems to transform herself into a lady scribbler of that era. She allows no anachronisms of ideology or tone, understanding that she only has to record women’s daily lives and her modern readers will feel her feminist points more powerfully for having been shown and not told. Even her sly humor is exactly what you would expect a snarky spinster to indulge in with plausible deniability. Schlee’s writing is precisely calibrated to convey the nuances that carry so much meaning in a repressive atmosphere and her characters—both women and men—are believably (de)formed by the strictures of their times. And she so shrewdly dropped hints to convince me I knew how the story would end, that I was doubly wowed for having been misled. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1663877286791-20E5ERDK5K0DVWM3ER2Z/Beaton_Ducks.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 19, 2022) Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton While Kate Beaton was first creating the goofily hilarious history comics that made Hark! A Vagrant such a hoot, her day job was in the oil fields of Alberta, trying, like so many of her fellow Canadians from the Maritimes, where well-paying jobs were few and far between, to make money quickly (in her case to pay off her student loans). Now she looks back on those years in an epic graphic memoir in which her humor is subdued but not her powers of observation of the boredom, isolation, and low-key brutality—and the humanity—of working as a young woman in the masculine world of resource extraction. It's a quietly harrowing and sometimes heartening (and sometimes funny!) portrait of a place rarely seen, and also a self-portrait of another side of one of my favorite artists in any medium. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722205333408-0DKEELE2JWT24572JI7O/Jameson_Journey.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 22, 2024) Journey from the North by Storm Jameson I don’t often read memoirs but this reissue of two volumes by British writer Storm Jameson falls smack dab in the middle of my current literary sweet spot. Born in the small coastal town of Whitby, Jameson was a young adult during WWI, middle-aged during WWII, and so perfectly placed to watch the transformation of Britain from an empire to a European nation. The journey of the title is her move from the Yorkshire middle class to a kind of meritocratic world citizenry. Her prodigious energy of mind and body kept her continually moving house, traveling abroad, writing and speaking for political causes, all while producing a novel a year. Those books are mostly (deservedly?) out of print. But this one, recollections from her Victorian childhood though her Cold War seventies, is so alive with personality and insight that I couldn’t stop turning its 800+ pages—except when she described an emotion, a vista, or an idea so felicitously that I had to sit back and simply admire. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722205356590-U72N2DK7H5JLETFTG9CP/Hutto_Flatwoods.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 22, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #115 Illumination in the Flatwoods by Joe Hutto This is a joyful book. Much of the joy comes from the wild turkeys Joe Hutto raises from a clutch of eggs, as they investigate and appreciate their portion of north Florida woodland, but Hutto is full of the delight of animal curiosity himself. As the young birds imprint on him, accepting him as their parent and protector as they grow into independence, they leave perhaps a greater imprint on him. He records their months together with the quality of observation of Thoreau's journals, but without Thoreau's compulsion to turn every moment into metaphor. He does, though, finally come to some profound philosophical insights himself, about the comparative intelligences of humans and birds and about the eternal nature/nuture debate. And about the capacity for human and animal joy. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722205390727-O37IYJQZLR03DRN9G5YD/Marentette_Rumie.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (July 22, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids #103 Rumie Goes Rafting by Meghan Marentette Young mouse Rumie and Uncle Hawthorne build a mouse-sized raft from twigs, bark, and ribbons. But when Uncle Hawthorne oversleeps the next morning, it's too hard to be patient and Rumie decides to try out the raft alone. Look out for the fast current and waterfall, Rumie! Author Meghan Marentette illustrates the story with miniatures photographed in the lush forests of Nova Scotia. It's fun to get a peek into the process of making the book on her website (where she battles mosquitoes, shifting sunlight, and weather to get the perfect shot). —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722204598228-ZE3PGVNPCS7W7APZS242/Thorpe_Margo.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 8, 2024) Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe A young woman unexpectedly becomes a young mother after an affair with her English professor. As a broke college drop-out with a newborn, Margo's running out of rent money and employment options. She turns to her estranged father—famous in the world of pro wrestling—and OnlyFans in a messy, hilarious, and human attempt at building a life. I especially appreciate the way Margo takes control of her own narrative, partly accomplished by switching between first and third person in the telling of her story. As Margo puts it, "It's true that writing in third person helps me. It is so much easier to have sympathy for the Margo who existed back then rather than try to explain how and why I did all the things that I did." There's a great deal of nuance for all the quirk of this novel. For every penis-as-a-Pokemon description, there's a deeper insight into the work involved in sex work. I'm so very here for it. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722204621822-TPBG5SFE8JASZH21U0C4/Williams_Husbands.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 8, 2024) Husbands and Lovers by Beatriz Williams My favorite historical fiction author, Beatriz Williams, is back with her 16th book (not counting her collaborations with fellow authors Karen White and Lauren Willig), all but one of which have interconnected storylines (although you don’t have to have read any of her other books to read this one). A minor character in one book will become a main character in a later book; settings may pop up more than once but separated by decades. Husbands & Lovers is the third book set on New York’s Winthrop Island, this time focusing on Mallory and her teenage son, who needs a new kidney. Mallory reconnects with her former best friend Monk, now a world-famous musician, after ghosting him years before. Alternating chapters introduce us to Hannah, a Hungarian immigrant with a tragic past who becomes a British diplomat's wife in 1950s Cairo. As the connective threads between the two timelines slowly unfurl, we understand how both Mallory and Hannah did what they felt they had to do to save the people they loved the most. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722204638877-LEXDF97QJW0SV1TT9A9G/Roberts_Pavane.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 8, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #115 Pavane by Keith Roberts On the first page of Pavane, Queen Elizabeth I is assassinated. On the second, after the resulting chaos, the Catholic Church regains its medieval authority over Britain. And in the next, the story leaps forward to 1968 (the year the book was published) to a country that's still strangely ancient, but restless. Some alternative histories settle for the shallow fun of merely outlining a what-if scenario, but the deep beauty of Pavane is that it feels lived in, not explained. The story does build, satisfyingly, toward larger, more overtly historical concerns, but it always stays grounded in the grit of individual lives, and especially in some odd, fascinating professions in that parallel world. With the elegance of its writing and the drama of its ideas, and the list of SF stars who love it—William Gibson, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, George R.R. Martin, among many others—it's incredible that it's such a hard book to find. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722204654485-HX6GN1AJMMQEHYRO0APN/Sala_If.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (July 8, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #93 If You Run Out of Words by Felicita Sala After a long phone call one day, author/illustrator Felicita Sala's daughter asked her, “Mum, what if you talk so much that you run out of words, and then there won’t be any left for me?” Her daughter's worry developed into a picture book where a little girl asks her father the same question. Dad is ready with an answer: "I'd have to go pay a visit to the Elves' Word Factory." But what if he gets lost in the woods? The father answers his daughter's questions by weaving one fantastical scenario after another as he tucks her into bed. Sala's rich and vibrantly colored illustrations make this a beautiful bedtime book to share. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722203808395-310LEXGOA7V11QHN3HWD/Blitzer_Everyone.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 10, 2024) Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer The story of migration from Central America to the United States over the past few decades—especially in the last decade—is almost unutterably complex, and the misery driving it, and the misery further caused by the border's cruelty, are almost unutterable as well. But Blitzer makes a coherent and moving story out of this history, both by tracing the larger political forces across the region and by finding personal stories inextricable from those politics, especially of those, like Juan Romagoza, a Salvadoran health worker who is tortured by his home government, escapes north to work as an activist and clinician in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and returns home to continue his work, who find they can only respond to the crisis with labor and love. In the world Blitzer describes—our world—borders are everything, and are at the same time constantly blurred by the human connections made across them. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722203847540-JBJMWGHHJ35C617HLDJ7/Kilroy_Soldier.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 10, 2024) Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy For every mother everywhere, this book is a primal scream of new motherhood. The schizophrenic nature of those early days—when you're bursting with love for this little creature, but also dying inside from exhaustion and trying to figure out who you are in the world now—is brought to acute life as a mother recounts those early years as a bedtime story for her son. With a strained marriage to a clueless husband who doesn’t understand what his wife now does all day, her inability to concentrate on work, a lack of people she feels she can connect with, and the feeling that anyone—literally ANYONE—would be a better mother than her, every mother I know will feel SEEN by this novel. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722203872185-M4DVVT1JGFVIGI61QOUX/Winspear_Comfort.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 10, 2024) The Comfort of Ghosts (Maisie Dobbs #18) by Jacqueline Winspear I binge-read the first 17 books in Jacqueline Winspear’s historical fiction/mystery Maisie Dobbs series during the pandemic. Somehow, immersing myself in the years between World War I to World War II eased my anxiety about the current situation. Now, Winspear beautifully wraps up the series with The Comfort of Ghosts, as Britain begins to heal after the end of the war in 1945. Maisie discovers her late husband’s shocking secret, loses someone very dear to her, helps another heal, and generally tries to make her world a little more kind. I won’t say any more than that, so you can have the pleasure of discovering this story by yourself. I have loved getting to know this “investigator and psychologist” over the course of the books, and while I’m sad it’s the end (although Winspear says in her author’s note to never say never), I feel that Maisie and her family and friends may now find some peace as they look to the future. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722203886358-6XLXZBHVMXF0DZWS06FE/Fedarko_Walk.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 10, 2024) A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko In the decade since Fedarko's first book, The Emerald Mile, came out, that tale of someone else's record-setting whitewater ride through the Grand Canyon has become a modern classic of outdoor adventure. In that same time, Fedarko, who had worked as a grunt-level river guide on the Colorado, realized that the true way to get to know the canyon was not on the water but by foot, and set out on his own adventure, attempting, with a photographer friend, to become two of the handful of hikers to walk the canyon's full, 750-mile length. To say they didn't know what they were getting into is a massive understatement, and their initial heedless (and life-threatening) haplessness gives their story its Bill Bryson-ish humor. But as their skill, and their respect for the awesome, ruthless territory, increases, it becomes a story of grandeur and humility as well, describing a trek that few have made, and perhaps few should. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1722203929854-FJM28CYQDJ95HG8Y59SI/Zei_Alki.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (June 10, 2024) The Wildcat Behind Glass by Alki Lei, translated by Karen Emmerich If you're an adult who doesn't usually read middle-grade books, I highly recommend you give this one a try! Set in 1936, and originally published in Greek in 1963, this beautifully written book has just been re-released in a newly translated edition. Seven-year-old Melia and her older sister Myrto love the stories their grown-up cousin Niko tells them about the adventures of the stuffed wildcat displayed in their family's sitting room. When the girls' carefree summer is disrupted by a new authoritarian regime, suddenly there are secrets to keep and the adults are acting strangely. Even the wildcat is part of the intrigue. Will the new political landscape drive the family apart? The Wildcat Behind Glass poignantly captures a place in time through a child's eyes. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1717290555110-XBNPKR5KYBH2XOOV7BBH/July_Fours.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 27, 2024) All Fours by Miranda July Well, this might be the best book I've read so far this year. For all the flutter of "quirkiness" that surrounds July, she is a stone cold serious artist, in whatever form she chooses, and this is a capital-N Novel in all the best ways: morally serious, formally surprising and ambitious, and frigging hilarious. Imagine a character somewhat like Ms. July (middle-aged, "semi-famous"), and then launch her into a plot of self-transformation whose first half strikingly resembles an Emily Henry rom-com (driven urban woman connects with small-town hunk) and then shifts into something closer to the rebuild-the-world-from-scratch revolution of Women Talking. Throughout, it's funny, startling, moving, vividly and charmingly weird, and so breathtakingly raunchy it reads like a vegan Sabbath's Theater. Wow. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1717290573361-XTT1C8LE3RLFT95KNK1M/Alderton_Good.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 27, 2024) Good Material by Dolly Alderton Your first clue that this romantic comedy is a break-up story is the list that kicks it off: Reasons Why It's Good I'm Not with Jen. Here begins Andy's obsessive wallowing. To be fair, he deserves a good wallow; he was blindsided when Jen ended their relationship with little explanation after four years. At thirty-five, Andy's a struggling comedian who's not always emotionally mature but who is self-aware enough of his toxic traits so as not to be totally intolerable. He copes with the break-up by leaning on his friends (many of them married with kids, almost none of them single), drinking copiously at the pub, phoning it in at his gigs, rebounding with a twenty-three-year-old Gen Z'er, and diving down the rabbit hole of nostalgia again and again. It would be easy to find him exhausting if he weren't written with such levity, but I found him so damn likable and sympathetic even while thinking, you've got to get it together, dude! And then there's Jen's side of the story, which adds a new dimension to Andy's, highlighting problems you (and perhaps Andy) didn't know they had, which is infuriating as well as illuminating because while it takes two people to have a relationship, it only takes one to end it. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1717290589359-WF07L5EA865TRGJZJRE7/Brunk_Question.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 27, 2024) A Question of Value: Stories from the Life of an Auctioneer by Robert Brunk In an ideal world, every person would write a book like this near the end of their career, summing up their life's work with anecdotes, some funny, some wistful and even regretful, that capture the philosophy-in-action of a profession and a passion. But not everyone is as quietly stylish a writer as Brunk, who became an auctioneer in mid-life and built one of the most prominent auction houses in the South, nor has everyone had the good fortune to find a calling that matched his curiosity so well. His tales are about people as well as pieces, presented with some of the value-drama that makes Antiques Roadshow so watchable, but with a real tenderness for his clients and the history their objects represent. His book reminded me most of Thomas Lynch's lovely The Undertaking, both in his similar plain-spoken understanding of life and in the recurring presence of death in these stories of inheriting and letting go. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1717290615123-6B8Y4RK90WWJSZXCK0ND/Cohen_Train.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 27, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #113 Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World by Leah Hager Cohen This is a book about the human hunger for communication: the joy when it can fully take place, the frustration when it's thwarted. Many of its happiest moments happen when a group of Deaf people rearranges their physical space—putting chairs in a circle, clearing away visual barriers—so they can talk to each other, unimpeded, with the "thick rapport" that Cohen, a hearing person who was raised in their community, so admires and envies. Her book is a blend of memoir and reporting, always aware of questions of inside and outside that are so crucial in Deaf communities, but also willing to let those categories blur to reflect her own complicated identity. A classic of its form since it was published, it reads as fresh and relevant and human now as it must have thirty years ago. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1717290631589-Y56MAK6EYGMA5H98DB5D/Fraser_Mavis.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (May 27, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #101 Mavis the Bravest by Lu Fraser and Sarah Warburton Mavis the Bravest's excellent text and illustrations pair perfectly to tell a classic farmyard tale of heroism (with a good dose of silliness). Mavis is a chicken, both in the figurative and literal sense. When Sandra the sheep gets stolen, it's up to Mavis to summon the courage to save her friend. The illustrations of Mavis's expressive face crack me up! This rhyming picture book will make a great read-aloud. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715215218394-WZDABBRGSVSP91TA4O1V/Lieu_Manicurist.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 6, 2024) The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu Part family saga, part mystery, The Manicurist's Daughter grips you right from the beginning and doesn't let go. Local author Susan Lieu was determined to publish this memoir when she was thirty-eight, the same age her mother was when she mysteriously died from plastic surgery gone wrong. Lieu's tenacious mother had been the rock that held their extended Vietnamese family together. With no understanding of the circumstances and a family who refused to discuss what happened, Lieu's search for healing over the years led her from a cult to spirit channelling to a one-woman show about her mother. This absorbing and propulsive memoir is a must-read! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715215234754-WX1VCW67SN907EUQB0L5/Bradley_Ministry.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 6, 2024) The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley What happens when an author crushes on a real-life 19th-century polar explorer's photograph? The resulting obsession developed into The Ministry of Time, a book for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to talk to someone who lived long ago. The protagonist works for a government program that has time-traveled a sampling of humans from different years of the past to 21st-century Britain. She's assigned to live with and monitor Commander Graham Gore, kidnapped from an arctic expedition in 1847 (think Mr. Darcy plopped into the modern age). This was such a fun read and I enjoyed the thought experiment of how people from different eras would react to the peculiarities of our time period. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715215248997-MC37F9Z00B9J5Z6S5ZEF/Levine_Mice.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 6, 2024) Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine Two orphaned sisters, Jody and Mice—near adults, half-infantile—live in a fairly specific place: Miami, in the springtime of 1961. But in Levine's telling they also live in a landscape of blocky, odd words. She's the sort of storyteller who seems to pause in almost every sentence to wonder at the strangeness of the language we live through, and that makes reading Mice 1961 fun. (Its off-kilter style kept me thinking it was one of those novels that limits itself by removing one of the letters, but I checked: all 26 are there.) As for Jody and Mice (and for Girtle, their odd housekeeper/narrator, who "watched the half sisters near-always") it can take some time in this weird landscape to arrange themselves for action, but when one finally decides to go, she goes! —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715215264633-75899LV1I5E6XMXB8F17/Harris_Mortal.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 6, 2024) Mortal Leap by MacDonald Harris What a big, strange, good book the folks at Boiler House Press have recovered. Harris published nearly twenty inventive and eclectic novels between 1961 and 1993, nearly all out of print now. This one, his second, is advertised as a kind of existential story of one man slipping into the identity of another—and it is, fascinatingly so—but (spoiler!) it takes half of a meaty book to get there, after an equally compelling hundred-plus pages of a gritty below-decks sailor's tale that could have been written by B. Traven. It's the messiness of its disparate parts, and Harris's unwillingness to stick to the story you think he's going to tell, that makes this such a compelling and thought-provoking yarn. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1713577099754-HVFFJ8T984OAAYJQI76D/Fletcher_Night.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 15, 2024) The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher is a heartwarming—and heartbreaking—exploration of love in later life and the regrets we have about our younger years. Florrie Butterfield recently lost a leg due to an accident, so uses a wheelchair to get around Babbington Hall, a retirement home in England. After what seems to be a terrible accident at the home, Florrie and her gentleman friend, Stanhope, try to get to the bottom of it. That leads Florrie on a journey of forgiveness—for herself and others. This novel has a similarity to Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club in its lovely depiction of friendships (but without that series’ trademark humor) and left me wanting to get to know both Florrie and Stanhope better. I do hope there’s a sequel. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1713577319464-V1R3CQ89PGVH6JNLE6NI/Bahr_Stag.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 15, 2024) Stag by Dane Bahr By the time he moves from small-town Iowa to the rural Northwest, ex-sheriff Amos Fielding is a widower in his seventies, and he's seen too much of the dark side of the world, some of which you will have seen too, if you read Dane's pitch-black first novel, The Houseboat. Dane was always a chipper fellow when he hosted our monthly Dock Street Salon reading series, as he did before moving up to Bellingham, but, boy, the darkness that's sloshing around his imagination! Plenty of it fills this book, haunting Fielding's attempt at retirement with a serial killer at work and a local lawman strangely disinclined to do his job. It turns out western Washington is no country for old men either. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1713577334874-CQ310CTPRAT0TSETWGUY/Higgins_Eddie.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 15, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #112 The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins Friends are one thing Eddie Coyle doesn't have. He talks to a lot of guys—this book is made of talking—but every conversation is a wary exchange, negotiated sometimes in half-spoken ways and sometimes with brutal directness. Why is this book, which Elmore Leonard and Dennis Lehane agree is the greatest crime novel, not even better known? Maybe because its brilliant but sometimes unforgiving reliance on the ambiguities of conversation makes it closer to Dubliners than The Firm. Maybe because Eddie's life of driving up and down the outer freeways of New England and getting drunk at Bruins games carries none of the dark glamour of the best-known crime story of its era, The Godfather. But oh, this book, and all its talk, is still a marvel, fifty years on. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1713577356824-VLBQWBS7FCSI5PZP9H6S/Alexander_Thingamajig.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (April 15, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #100 The Thingamajig by Rilla Alexander What word do you use when you can't remember the name for something? Thingamajig? Doohickey? Whatchamacallit? Whozeewhatsit? Rilla Alexander has a hoot of a time with all those madeup words we all seem to use and with the nonsense words other languages have invented for the same fuzzy meaning, which are all silly-sounding enough that this will make a wonderfully goofy read-aloud, especially for kids who are just waking up to the wonders of words and things. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1712364086609-K9TROC2N749J9BBGB364/Towles_Table.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 1, 2024) Table for Two by Amor Towles I loved The Lincoln Highway and adored A Gentleman in Moscow, so when the advance copy of Amor Towles’ new Table for Two, consisting of six short stories and one novella, arrived in the bookstore, I snatched it up before anyone else could. Once again, I found myself in love with his writing. Towles is so good at making you care deeply about people doing the tiniest of everyday things: standing in a line, casually chatting with others at the airport or in a bar, the quiet moments that make up a marriage. If I told you that a 37-page story about a man waiting in line was one of the most deeply human and touching things I’ve ever read, would you believe me? If you’ve read Towles’ previous books, you would. Before reading the novella "Eve in Hollywood," I first had to read his debut novel, Rules of Civility, which I had somehow neglected to do. Towles had previously written a short story based on Evelyn Ross (Eve to her friends), a major character from that book, but so many people clamored for more that he finally expanded it to more than 200 pages. Eve is the strongest of women who shows up for her friends when they need her most, and I dearly hope that Towles will find more to say about her in the years to come. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1712364104882-AJXIV6RZ1L7MN4DG7PRP/Sante_Heard.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 1, 2024) I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante About three years ago, Sante, a writer in her mid-60s known until then as Luc, sent to a few dozen close friends a piece of writing titled "Lucy," a tender, exact, joyful, and terrified confession and declaration that she, feeling "something liquefy in the core of my body," was ready to take a step she had dreamed of (when she allowed herself to) for nearly her whole life: to publicly transition to being a woman. It's a choice not uncommon now, but Sante brings to it the wisdom and regret and exhilaration of a decision made late in life, as well as the wry, frank, chiseled style that has long made her one of my favorite writers. She tells this story in parallel: the cracking of her egg, as the trans phrase goes, in the present alongside a memoir of a bohemian life in which almost anything felt possible, except what she most wanted. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1712364127578-JQAAINJXWRN85QWU01YC/Ishida_Sashiko.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (April 1, 2024) Sashiko's Stitches by Sanae Ishida Sashiko's Stitches is a new picture book from local favorite Sanae Ishida (Little Kunoichi: The Ninja Girl). Sashiko is a little girl with overwhelming fears and worries. One day, her mother teaches her about a style of decorative traditional Japanese stitching also called sashiko, which was originally used to repair fishermen's clothes. As Sashiko begins stitching her fears onto fabric, they weigh less on her heart. This sweet book about using your artistic expression to manage anxiety is brought to life with Ishida's beautiful watercolor illustrations. I'm looking forward to trying sashiko myself! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1712364232587-G0Y2678Y8E23ZMOR86E3/Morrison_Bluest.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 1, 2024) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The literary highlight of my year so far came from a writer I thought I knew well already. I had read (and loved) many of Morrison's novels, but when I learned that she narrates the audio versions of some of her best-known books, I took that chance to catch up with one I'd missed, her debut. And my god, what a debut, and what an experience to hear it in the author's voice, recorded decades after she wrote it. The precision of her language, the surprises of her choices at every turn (which only feel inevitable after she has made them), her persistence in fully inhabiting each of her characters, even the most reprehensible: all of these are heightened by the resonance and sheer delight of Morrison's reading. A revelation! —Tom Order the audiobook of The Bluest Eye from our partners at Libro.fm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1711222298560-VXQTECA5KB9X29PM56TN/Everett_James.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 18, 2024) James by Percival Everett Mark Twain famously began Huckleberry Finn by declaring, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." You get the feeling Twain and Percival Everett might have gotten along fine. Everett has made a career out of upending narratives and skewering literary expectations; by his standards, Everett plays this one, a retelling of Twain's classic from Jim's perspective, pretty straight; plenty is upended (Jim reads Voltaire on the sly, and joins a real-life minstrel troupe), but there might be a moral or two in it, and some dead-serious philosophy-in-action. It'll make you want to read Huck Finn again; it's so good it'll also make you want to read James again. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1711222313652-FBFT66ZERXK9ZJPCFZGQ/Jarman_Burn.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 18, 2024) Burn Man by Mark Anthony Jarman Whenever I am championing Jarman's "funny, cluttered, driven" novel, Salvage King, Ya!—I sometimes feel that I am its only champion, though it deserves many more—I say something to the effect of, "But he's better known for his stories." And here those stories are, 21 of them gloriously collected from four decades of writing. It is an intense experience to read them all in a row, because they are each so intensely packed. The comparisons to two of Jarman's heroes (and mine), Denis Johnson and Barry Hannah, are inevitable, for their funny, fragmented brilliance, their simmering (often more than simmering) violence, and their portraits of men (usually) at the fraying ends of various ropes. You won't find much more firepower per square inch in any other book this year. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1711222328317-PCU3R3MWNUDYEM1T2JBK/Ritter_Woman.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 18, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #111 A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter In 1933, Christiane Ritter, an Austrian artist, told her husband, who had spent the last few years living off the land on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, that she wanted to join him. And so she does, spending the full, dark winter in a tiny hut with her husband and a young Norwegian friend, who admitted later he was looking forward to watching her lose her mind. She keeps her sanity, grounded by her good humor and the constant tasks required to survive, but it's as if she found a whole new mind in that year, broadened by the isolation and the fierce elements. It's a spare and beautiful book, bright in its vision against the months of darkness it records. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1711222365331-05460R6HMAO5HDYPITL9/Sedaris_Pretty.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 18, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #99 Pretty Ugly by David Sedaris and Ian Falconer David Sedaris is not for everybody, and his picture-book debut, a collaboration with the late Olivia author, Ian Falconer, won't be either. Sedaris takes a familiar story—readers might be reminded of Russell Hoban's wonderful Little Brute Family—and turns it, literally, inside-out. Some readers (and some grown-ups) will likely be disturbed; others might find the wicked horror and odd sweetness just suited to their taste. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1709771835251-7OFDEBJ9CU2GNV0ZO10C/Nolan_Ordinary.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 4, 2024) Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan It opens with the typical hook: a missing child. Tom Hargreaves, newbie tabloid hack, takes the bait and is formulating lurid headlines before he even gets to the scene. He plies the suspect’s family with money, alcohol and fake sympathy, but fails to elicit a tale black and white enough for newsprint. I won’t lie—I was reeled in too. But while Tom’s hopes of a scoop are dashed, readers are served something just as compelling and far more satisfying. Your fingers will itch to flip pages but slow down to absorb Nolan’s assured style and deep insight. Most impressive of all are her characters: ordinary—but very particular—people, who with just a few twitches of fate end up in out-of-the-ordinary circumstances. This remarkable second novel may be small, but it is dense with humanity—real human beings as well as all-embracing compassion. And it’s earned the first spot on my Top Ten of 2024. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1709771936209-RVU8WZZM7MW5XMJH9239/Pittard_We_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (March 4, 2024) We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard I love this (kind of) memoir for satisfying the inappropriate curiosity I so often feel when the relationships of people I actually know end. Pittard spills all of the tea about the demise of her marriage, which culminated in her husband's affair with her toxic best friend. It's a raw and creative account of betrayal with a story structure that includes hypothetical and imagined dialogue as well as remembered conversations. I was up all hours of the night listening to the audiobook (narrated by the author!) and it was an intimate experience: like being on the phone with a friend needing to verbally process the end of life as she knew it. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1709771950645-Y8ORUD1CIOJOGY3HMZ9A/Cooper_Heartbreak.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 4, 2024) Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper Attention all Anglophile WWII buffs: you do not want to miss McNally Editions’ reissue of this fantastic 1950 novel! It’s the life story of a type of Englishman who—although born on January 1, 1900—really belongs to the 1800s, written by a very different type of Englishman who was in almost every room where it happened during the first half of the 20th C. Cooper was a soldier, politician, diplomat, historian, etc., who finally decided to try his hand at fiction and—surprisingly or unsurprisingly—produced this absolute gem. Cunningly crafted, elegantly styled, it’s both delightful and poignant. Now, I know that many of my fellow buffs are also espionage geeks. And while the title and short prologue may clue you into the plot’s set-up, I promise it will not spoil your reading pleasure. Even though I knew where things were heading, this brilliant little book still won the next spot on my 2024 Top Ten list. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1709772369439-K9XCCO3JAIA5B05Y87GR/Earling_Perma.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 4, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #110 Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling Louise White Elk is, like Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady and Antonia Shimerda in My Antonia, the sort of literary heroine whose magnetic allure draws the entire plot of a book around her like iron filings (she's "the girl we had all stood taller for," says one admirer). Does it do her much good to be so desired, and pursued by three flawed suitors? No, quite the opposite, but the same life force that draws these men toward her (and will likely draw you, the reader, as well) carries her (and you) through this story of pain and violence, set during a brutal winter on Montana's Flathead Reservation in the 1940s. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1706386311054-27TAOB6O196LDKH8CE72/Austin_Interesting.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 23, 2024) Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin Emily Austin's debut, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, was easily my favorite book of 2021, so I approached her sophomore novel with excitement as well as trepidation. There's a lot going on in the blurb for this one: a phobia of bald men, a true crime and space obsession, dysfunctional family stuff, queer dating, mental health. Before I started reading I worried it was trying to do too much or that it would be quirky for quirk's sake, but I was quickly reassured by Austin's execution. She crafts a flawed, lovable protagonist in Enid, who is driven by fear and loyalty and a desire to belong. Emily Austin is my favorite voice of the Millennial generation, capturing what it's like to be a mess while trying in earnest to do the best that you can. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1706386325023-YH8DNW8D0CHIQDK6XE4E/Gosse_Father.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 23, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #109 Father and Son by Edmund Gosse A memoir looking back on the author's escape from a fundamentalist childhood was as familiar in Gosse's time (1907) as it is in ours (e.g. Tara Westover's Educated), but the two things that continue to make Father and Son both a moving and a cracking read over a century later are a) the character of his father, Philip, who attempted to reconcile his scientific learning (he was a famous naturalist: a friend of Darwin and the popularizer of the aquarium) with what he saw as the literal truth of Genesis and for whom his son continued to feel great affection despite their break, and b) Gosse's dry wit, which makes this story a delightful as well as a tragic one. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1706386337211-MQGHHVS73EIGELDLBBN3/Mack_Time.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (January 23, 2024) Time to Make Art by Jeff Mack It's time to make art! But the young girl in this picture book has a few questions first. "What should I use to make art?" "Paint" says painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. "Wood" says carver Ellen Neel. "Stone" says an ancient stone sculptor from Teotihuacán. Can art be something you eat? Something useful? Nothing at all? Each famous and lesser-known artist across history answers her questions through the lens of their own art. I loved this diverse introduction to art for a young audience (and I learned a lot too)! (Age 2 and up) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1705181253589-6VAV2VMQ94MZ46INIO7R/Burns_Mercury.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 8, 2024) Mercury by Amy Jo Burns Seventeen-year-old Marley drives into the tiny town of Mercury with her mother, who never lets them settle into a new place for long. But Marley immediately falls in with the Joseph family, as the girlfriend to first one brother, then another, and as a sort of surrogate mother to the whole family. Circumstances keep Marley tied to the town and the Josephs, as everyone simultaneously depends on her for nearly everything in their lives and takes it for granted she’ll always be there. When the Joseph boys’ mother comes to her for help, Marley has to weigh family obligations with what is morally right. It’s a heartbreaking yet also uplifting story of families, love, betrayal, and how we can love people even though we don’t understand their choices. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1705181279651-UYA86CQHCHZC88CRIHA0/Ernaux_Coetzee.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Books of the Week (January 8, 2024) The Young Man by Annie Ernaux The Pole by J.M. Coetzee Sometimes books you read make themselves into pairs, but rarely as neatly as these two did for me: two very slim books, the latest by Nobel laureates who each turned 83 last year, and each told by a woman in middle age about an affair with a man named in the title. From those similarities, though, they become almost opposites: Ernaux's memoir recalls her own affair, proudly hungry, with a man young enough to have been her son, while in Coetzee's novel, a married Spanish woman is pursued, against her bemused reluctance, by a Polish concert pianist old enough to be her father. Each book is spare and exact and insightful enough on its own to set up reverberations inside its tiny space; set next to each other, they echo back and forth almost infinitely. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1705181297659-2TJESX4PZUZ1JKAYTODN/McPhail_Truffle.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (January 8, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #97 Truffle: A Dog (and Cat) Story by David McPhail One thing picture books don't seem to have much of these days is patience. Things have to move, explode, somersault, etc., all in 32 pages, as if the young listeners will be checking their phones if the story doesn't move fast enough. Truffle has only a few more pages than the usual 32, and just a few more words than most, but it takes its time, much like Truffle himself, the best-dressed dog in his village, who has retired to leisure after becoming a dog of some means. His story is a sweet, and surprising, and patient one, and I enjoyed it almost as much as I enjoyed his well-tailored outfits. (Ages 1 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701479407829-QTNCPXM0564ZRRXENC0A/Lynch_Prophet_hc.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 28, 2023) Prophet Song by Paul Lynch When I finished this year’s Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song, I felt that I hadn’t simply read it—I had lived it. The story follows Eilish Stack, a middle-aged working mother who’s trying to maintain the life she knew while a newly-elected Fascist regime cracks down, an insurgency intensifies, and civil war brings Ireland to collapse. Although billed as political dystopia, similar situations have happened before—are happening now—all over the world. Lynch said that he wanted to create a work of “radical empathy” and as Eilish moves through stages of disorientation, anxiety, terror, and grief, his poetic style evokes the physicality of her emotions, compelling you to share them and join her journey. Warning: this book demands an intrepid reader. The trip is harrowing but rewards you with keen insight into humanity and history and maybe even the resolve to help make it never have to happen again. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701500453432-8Q9QU2BT4XCJU965FK4P/Prose_Mystery.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 28, 2023) The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose Fans of Nita Prose’s delightful debut novel The Maid have had to wait almost two years for a sequel, but I’m happy to report it was worth the wait. Molly Gray is now Head Maid at the high-end Regency Grand Hotel, where her exacting attention to detail is put to good use as yet another murder mystery unfolds. But this time, Molly has a connection to the victim that she’s not sure she should reveal. As she uncovers clues to the killer, she once again has to remember her past to understand her present. Just like in the first book, alternating chapters describe more about Molly’s upbringing by her patient, loving Gran. This book is more direct about Molly being on the spectrum, and just how poor she and Gran were. Containing even more emotional heartbreak and healing than The Maid, The Mystery Guest will definitely be on my Top 10 list this year. I just loved it—and I can’t wait for the next sequel. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701500511993-GB099MU2DVDS1O61011X/Brady_Strong.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 28, 2023) Strong Female Character by Fern Brady I was already predisposed to liking Scottish comedian Fern Brady's memoir on account of enjoying the hell out of her presence on Taskmasker (a British comedy panel game show) and her stand-up comedy special, Power & Chaos. Upon learning of her autism diagnosis, I admired her celebrity all the more. And when I found out she'd written a book about living undiagnosed for most of her life? I knew I had to read it, and I'm so glad that I did. As implied by the title Strong Female Character, Brady's account of navigating her neurodivergence in a myriad of contexts—family life, school, relationships, work—is told through a specifically female lens; for example, at sixteen a psychiatrist told Brady she couldn't be autistic because she was making eye contact and had a boyfriend. Now, post-diagnosis, she writes to make sense of her experiences with newfound language and research and the result is candid and funny while many of the anecdotes she shares are vulnerable and heartbreaking. I recommend this regardless of whether it's the first time you've heard of Fern Brady. Even having already read it myself, I'm looking forward to giving the audiobook a listen just so I can hear her tell it again in her own voice. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701500752043-951ITTDQFYL2XPTPQKWF/Kent_NbyE.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 28, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #107 N by E by Rockwell Kent Kent doesn't explain why he set out in a sailboat for Greenland in the summer of 1929, with two much younger men he didn’t know. He leapt at the idea, and even when they steered into catastrophe he never lost his wry, can-do spirit, or the restless curiosity that led him to keep leaving behind his successful artistic career in New York for the most remote parts of the world. For all the fame of Kent's wood-cut illustration style (on display in this lovely book as in a legendary edition of Moby-Dick), he is an equally elegant writer, good-humored and observant, with a Thoreauean taste for turning physical description into metaphor, and thereby into philosophy. And he's at his best, as a storyteller and perhaps even as a sailor, when things go wrong—as they certainly do. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701500825537-HFDSGEKQL8A856HAUMY1/Clanton_Ploof.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 28, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #95 Proof by Ben Clanton and Andy Chou Musser Local kids-book stars Clanton and Musser have teamed up—on both the words and the pictures—for this sturdy and sweet book that takes some of the interactive style of Hervé Tullet's Press Here to fashion a warm and lively friendship with a little cloud named Ploof. By the end of the book you will indeed, as Ploof asks, want to give that blob of moisture and high five and a hug. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1700708323373-KQCK4Y4N7JEEBGYB97ZD/Koh_Liberators.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 14, 2023) The Liberators by E.J. Koh This short and spiky novel spans decades of time, from 1980 to 2014, in both Korea and the west coast of America. Is it a poet's novel? (E.J. Koh is a poet.) Yes, but its beauties can be hard to swallow. It's a what-if story: what if we could flourish outside of history? Or, more particularly, what if these specific characters, four generations of Koreans and Korean Americans, could live without the borders and partitions that their lives have wrapped around, like vines on a trellis? You get glimpses, from Koh's visionary language and their own moments of connection; it's a story whose title is ironic, but not despairingly so. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1700708343047-95IUSR0RZOMWS2D1L4N9/Park_Same.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 14, 2023) Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park Worth the wait. By that I mean both the time since I first read a preview copy of this novel (nine months or so ago) and the time since Ed Park last published one (fifteen years). A prolific magazine profile artist, he hasn't exactly been silent since his dark comedy of office life, Personal Days, appeared, but it's been longer than I'd like since he's allowed himself such an outpouring of fictional creativity. And what an outpouring it is. Over the course of over 500 pages, Park introduces a beleaguered everyman laboring for a corporate tech juggernaut called GLOAT (nobody is sure what that stands for, but it can't be good), and then introduces him to a secret manuscript that reveals either a bizarre conspiracy theory or an illuminating truth involving almost every politician and pop culture character of the last century. Abounding with Pynchonesque paranoia and possibility. Same Bed Different Dreams is a rollicking three-ring circus that brings past, present, and future together under one massive, multicolored tent. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1700708362107-RJMM0W1HN4KPJ4P9TCZ0/Bowen_Girls.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 14, 2023) The Girls by John Bowen This little reissue, originally published in 1986, lured me in with its gorgeous Edward Gorey cover art, and then I couldn't help but stick around. Set in the mid-1970s in the Midlands, it begins with the cozy domestic life of "the girls" Jan and Sue, well-known in the village for their elderflower wine and artisanal cheeses. The two run a quaint shoppe and travel to craft fairs to sell their wares. It's all very cottagecore and relationship goals until Sue grows restless and books herself an extended trip to "find herself" and, meanwhile, Jan finds comfort in the company of a fellow craft fair vendor. However, once Sue is back, the couple find themselves as happy as ever—and expecting a child! I'll admit, at this point, I hesitated to go on, knowing that something must go terribly wrong. After all, the blurb on the back cover boasts murder! Why, I wondered, can't we just have nice things? With trepidation, I continued reading as cozy turned to dark and clever, reminiscent of my favorite Shirley Jackson novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. What a gem! TLDR: Cottagecore. Lesbians. Murder. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1699050829187-SEVGEBY38CUULOZ59GII/Smith_Fraud.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 30, 2023) The Fraud by Zadie Smith The first historical novel in Smith's spectacular career is built from the bones of two true stories from Victorian England: the forgotten literary life of William Harrison Ainsworth, a friend and rival of Dickens, and the once-celebrated Tichborne case, in which a man appeared to claim the fortune of a missing nobleman. But it is really the story of two other true—and usually secondary—figures: Eliza Touchet, Ainsworth's cousin and housekeeper, and Andrew Bogle, a black Jamaican servant who stood as one of the Tichborne claimant's main witnesses. And the real drama comes less from the story's public events, or from Smith's brilliance and language, which spark on every page, than the encounter of these two sensibilities: the thoughtful, liberal, and often brilliant Touchet, who chafes at injustice and the limits to her own freedom as a woman, and the equally thoughtful Bogle, whose life and testimony test the limits of Eliza's sympathies. —Tom (I listened to the audiobook, superbly narrated by the author, via our partners at Libro.fm.) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1699050840586-1FFFKKYG1X1D2WOKKBP4/Chast_Dreaming.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 30, 2023) I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast I’ve heard it said that other peoples’ dreams aren’t interesting, but I’ve never agreed with that! I love hearing about dreams, particularly if they’re Roz Chast’s. In I Must Be Dreaming, the combination of Chast’s imaginative dreams, paired with her expressive and often goofy-looking characters had me in stitches. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1699050861538-UKSK43T0QWRZBKSNFIUF/OGrady_Could.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 30, 2023) I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O'Grady and Steve Pyke What a beautiful book. First published in 1997 and reimagined and republished this year with the cooperation of its two authors, it brings together story and photos to much the same hauntingly evocative effect as John Berger and Jean Mohr's A Fortunate Man (one of my favorite Phinney by Post picks), in this case pairing Pyke's photographs of Ireland and Irish people with O'Grady's novel of the often brutal, but not unjoyous, life of an Irish migrant laboring in England. O'Grady's story is individual—particular labors, a particular love, particular sadness—but made collective by its spare language, its sense of fellow feeling with other migrant workers, and most of all by Pyke's photos, portraits both individual and collective of joy, weariness, hope, and perseverance. I imagine reading this many times, each time letting the words or the pictures take the lead and then returning to the other. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697837434730-MPX1YAIVAV8M3ADV4Z9F/Clowes_Monica.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 16, 2023) Monica by Daniel Clowes How to describe the work of Dan Clowes for those who haven't been reading him for thirty-odd years? Cranky, biting, hilarious, and tender: he often puts his jaw-dropping drafting skills in the service of detailing the most banal varieties of human grotesquerie, and he is both a more sturdily traditional storyteller than most of his fellow indie-comics visionaries and utterly willing to turn his story inside-out on a dime (e.g. the stunning but fully earned twist in this book's final frame). Monica is a mature work in the very best way, full of the perspective of lives lived and dreams found and dashed, and I would say it was the best in his wonderful career, if Ghost World wasn't such a stone-cold masterpiece. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697837453933-Z5M4KQ8KORZPIWUBTVSQ/Zechen_Beijing.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 16, 2023) Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen, translated by Jeremy Tiang and Eric Abrahamsen Muyu and his fellow young bachelors may have moved from the provinces to the massive Chinese capital, but from the rooftop of their single-story building of crowded apartments on Beijing's western outskirts, the city still looks unapproachably distant, like "a tropical rainforest of tall buildings and the glow of neon lights." At night they paste up ads for his uncle's fake ID business; by day they try to sleep and go up on the roof to play cards, drink beer, and share stories about the brutal, lonely, and yearning lives of their fellow migrants, which in the telling of Xu Zechen, through Muyu's eyes, reminded me of nothing so much as the terse violence and fettered humanity of Isaac Babel's Cossack tales. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697407568097-L1WRTQWMM3EPLXOAMI3Z/Bachelder_Dayswork.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 2, 2023) Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel When I say that Dayswork feels like it was written for me, that doesn't mean it wasn't written for you too. Written by a married couple, both writers, it is the story of a married couple, both writers, making their way, as we all did, through the stir-crazy days of the early pandemic, but it's really the story of the heroic and tragic life of Herman Melville, and the death and afterlife of his work in the minds of readers, told through tiny facts from his life and from the century and a half he has remained alive for those who care about him. I'm not sure how to explain that this collection of facts, hung loosely on a story of married life that is hardly a story at all, manages to be the funniest and sweetest and most moving book I've read all year, but it is. I loved it so much. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697407656694-P2IC4EZ6IB3ETG7G470V/Labatut_Maniac.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 2, 2023) The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut Labatut's first novel, When We Cease to Understand the World, was a favorite of the New York Times, Barack Obama, and most important, me. This one is even better than its predecessor. Like the earlier book, The MANIAC can be read as pure truth, but the factual narrative Labatut assembles is as artfully composed and strikes to the heart as powerfully as fiction does. His main protagonist is the polymathic scientific genius John Von Neumann, who fathered most of the important technologies of the 20th century, including the hydrogen bomb and the computer (the novel's title derives from the acronym for one such early device). The range of his accomplishments is vast, but their cumulative effect is terrifyingly amoral. The tantalizing promise of artificial intelligence that Von Neumann pioneers appears in the end more like an existential threat. Nevertheless, one man, filled with a hopeless heroism, defends humanity as bravely as an anonymous protestor facing down a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Altogether unique, The MANIAC is both direct and deep, a novel of astonishing intellectual heft that moved me nearly to tears. It's a masterpiece. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697837471246-DQF0E3MR91UCDDKOBXZ0/Thuy_ru.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 16, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #106 Ru by Kim Thúy Composed of short autobiographical-but-fictional vignettes tracing a life from a Vietnamese childhood during the war to a Malaysian refugee camp to Quebec, there's a crystalline quality to each piece of Thúy's story, as if she's holding it at arm’s length and inspecting it like a jeweler, and under such a distant eye a moment of generosity can seem not much different than one of cruelty; a small pleasure sits next to a vision of horror, poverty alongside wealth, often within the same life. It’s a book of memory as well as of becoming, but one memory is of a waiter she met when she returned to Vietnam as an adult, who, by treating her as a foreigner, no longer Vietnamese, reminded her she can’t possess all her identities at once. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697837493391-3KSNAGSNIOEU0EBLWH8C/Piercey_Grand.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (October 16, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #94 Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball by Rachel Piercey and Freya Hartas Who doesn't love a big book packed with tiny, hand-drawn details? You can play visual detective with your young readers through dozens of tours of the Grand Old Oak, and best of all (with those dozens of tours in mind), this story of the planning and celebration of a birthday bash for a very old tree comes with sprightly, readable rhymes and a philosophical sense of time, as it follows the seasonal cycles of a single year while inviting the awe toward a living being that has seen five hundred of those years. (Ages 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697407599234-BGMNQ3ZV4GJ9Y2FSZ0T6/Raban_Father.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 2, 2023) Father and Son by Jonathan Raban Raban's final book is the story of two journeys: his father's, as a British officer, through the World War II battlefields of Dunkirk, North Africa, and Anzio, and his own, as he recovers from, and adapts to the permanent effects of, a stroke at age 68. It covers much less ground, but Raban's own journey is the more harrowing and compelling of the two, as this famously curious and curmudgeonly writer and traveler, who transplanted himself from Britain to the north slope of Queen Anne Hill in 1990 and spent the rest of his life there, including a dozen semi-immobile years after his stroke, struggles to reclaim his independence. A book full of affection for his daughter and a more distant admiration for his father, it is most of all a testament to the power and endless interest of a life of reading and writing. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697407628833-H3XRSWC23KN8TDIQKJAD/Jakobson_Old.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 2, 2023) Old Enough by Haley Jakobson Friendship is the heart of this coming-of-age campus novel. As Savannah embarks on her sophomore year of college, proudly out as bisexual, she's happy to be making new connections and cultivating community when her childhood best friend Izzie announces her wedding engagement. Sav greets this news with surprise and dread, and it gradually becomes clear she's not simply outgrowing her old friendship; she's grappling with unaddressed trauma from her past involving Izzie's older brother. Jakobson respectfully tends to the issue of sexual assault, with an emphasis on healing, and she manages to infuse Sav's story with plenty of queer joy. It's a quick, big-hearted read that enjoyably captures that young adult era in life where you think you're finally grown and know everything while you're obviously still figuring out who you are and who you want to be. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697241510043-B75LK5O6H7G5UX102A97/Murray_Bee.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 18, 2023) The Bee Sting by Paul Murray The unhappiness of families is a gift to novelists everywhere; the particular unhappiness of the Barnes family, one of the most prominent in a dull town not far from Dublin, is surely made worse by the crash of 2008, but its roots go deeper than that, in bewitchings and betrayals that are unearthed as their family ties unravel and are tightened again. With his capacity to inhabit each family member's hopes and humiliations in turn, you could see Murray as an Irish Jonathan Franzen, but he's a looser stylist, more willing to ride the voices of his characters, although all the time he's orchestrating their drama in an almost old-fashioned, and quite wonderful, way. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697241531765-GOJ7VJK9576MKAOEXX7L/Mahdavian_This.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 18, 2023) This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian "We were in search of adventure. A place we could own land and start a family. The Millennial dream." This Country is a beautifully illustrated story of two artists—a documentary filmmaker and a teacher/cartoonist—who buy six acres of land in remote, central Idaho after being priced out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Instantly, I felt immersed in Navied Mahdavian's new life, where he and his wife are determined to be self-sufficient homesteaders living in a 280-square-foot cabin. The two start out charmingly inexperienced with rural living and hardships, such as weather, which becomes most apparent during their first winter, when they must rely on the helpfulness of neighborly strangers. Unfortunately, as Mahdavian and his wife make great strides toward establishing their home in this place—by reopening a local movie theatre, planting an impressive garden, and conceiving a child—the local culture challenges them with its own traditional ideas of what an American is and should be. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697241549498-BPI7JPMMGTIT5L71O5IG/Athill_Instead.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 18, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #105 Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill I've been waiting for years to make Athill's 1963 memoir a Phinney by Post selection, so as soon as NYRB Classics brought it back into print, I pounced. Athill was a prominent British book editor, and this was the first in a series of memoirs she published in a late-blooming writing career. It's often summed up by a particular tragic incident that happens off-stage (in fact, it hardly happens at all) midway through the book, but really it's the story of Athill coming to understand herself, through years of happiness, great sadness, and happiness again. And what's best about this superb book is the thrillingly crisp but good-humored frankness with which she writes, sparing no one, least of all herself. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1697241562397-TY8GG40RHZCLINVWJ8BT/Warburg_My.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (September 18, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #93 My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat by Sandol Stoddard Warburg, illustrated by Remy Charlip Anyone who has owned a cat knows that you can't really own a cat. Cats, after all, as the boy in this funny and wise and stylish book from 1963 learns, are their own private and personal things and while they might be your friend, they aren't yours. And, by the way, that goes for people too. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1692569771402-3BJYV3BLP42CJJNKUH9S/Erpenbeck_Kairos.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 14, 2023) Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hoffman You could describe Kairos as a Manhattan story—an ill-fated romance between a 50-something man and a teenage girl—or as an allegory for East Germany before, during, and after unification, but neither summary does full justice to this subtle and humane novel. More than anything it is the story of two vivid, individual people caught in time—historical time and their own mismatched, contingent lifetimes—and if their story happens to resonate with the national drama they find themselves part of, as it so brilliantly does, that just adds to its particular, personal depth. It's romantic and a bit austere, it's lovely and brutal, and it's the best novel I've read in quite a while. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1692569794270-GF9LD7APRQI46SEKQHEV/Stephenson_Jazz.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 14, 2023) The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965 by Sam Stephenson There are few moments in the creative history of America as densely potent as the jazz scene in New York City in the late '50s, when you could find Mingus, Monk, Coltrane, Davis, and Evans all gigging—together or separately—on the same night. And there are few windows on that scene as wonderfully illuminating as this one, the distillation of tens of thousands of photos and thousands of hours of tape W. Eugene Smith recorded at his Midtown apartment, an all-night hangout and jam-session spot for musicians and artists and hangers-on for nearly a decade. Stephenson spent almost that long curating those photos and tapes into this beautiful, recently rereleased book, which grounds the highest of art in the dust and debris of everyday life. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1692569812797-V160XYAX8YSGTHIEDNRV/Babb_Lost.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 14, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #104 The Lost Traveler by Sanora Babb This is a first: the first time we've chosen an author twice for our Phinney by Post subscription service. Babb's memoir of her childhood on an unfertile Colorado farm, An Owl on Every Post, has been one of our most popular recent selections, and now we're presenting a book about her teen years, when her dreaming and scheming father tried to support the family as a professional gambler in small-town Kansas. It was published earlier, as fiction, and it's a darker story, but it makes a fascinating pair with An Owl as two portraits of a family struggling to survive together and destined to break apart. And together they reveal Babb as a great 20th-century American writer who is just now finally starting to get her due in the 21st century. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1692569818044-YZJ6UTCKMSE3HKL04TI7/Coombs_All.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery YA Book of the Week (August 14, 2023) All Alone with You by Amelia Diane Coombs Angsty loner Eloise would much rather be spending her time gaming than logging volunteer hours at LifeCare—an elder care service that's at odds with her social anxiety—but that's what her guidance counselor says she has to do if she wants a scholarship to her dream school. Along with fellow volunteer Austin, Eloise resigns herself to weekly visits keeping an old woman company. It's a prospect made much more nerve-wracking (but all the more intriguing) when Eloise learns the old woman in question, Marianne Landis, is the famous former frontwoman of the Laundromats—and that she can be every bit as prickly as Eloise. At first, Eloise is annoyed by Austin's perpetual cheerfulness but eventually she warms to his sunshine-y persona and the two of them become friends outside their shared LifeCare shifts. It's a sweet, slow-burn friendship-turned-romance, and the Seattle setting is fun, with lots of invented locales mixed in with actual places, especially with the music scene tie-ins. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1692569826962-ZOR0NCMBZ3IAMMFZJLCU/Luyken_ABC.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (August 14, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #92 ABC and You and Me by Corinna Luyken There is no shortage of picture books to help little ones learn their ABCs, but there are few that will also get them (and you!) up and moving like this one. The illustrations (by one of our favorite Northwest picture-book artists) of people of all sizes forming all the letters from A to Z are inclusive and ingenious, and nearly realistic! (You'll have to be a pretty advanced yogi to pull off "C" or "F," but it'll be fun to try.) (Age 0 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1690431761289-YSRHXMW6D0SC0MIL6B2T/Murphy_Rocky.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week Rocky Mountain High: A Tale of Boom and Bust in the New Wild West by Finn Murphy If, like me, you loved Murphy's first book, the truck-driving memoir The Long Haul, you might have wondered what he's been doing since he retired from the road. The answer: trying to cash in on the supposed hemp boom in his adopted state of Colorado. First he buys a chunk of farmland, then he spies a niche in processing the plants others are growing, and finally he loses his shirt (or, rather, a big chunk of his retirement funds). But he has a pretty great time along the way—he's a serial entrepreneur who loves the challenge and the chaos of a new venture—and you will too. As in The Long Haul, he's a lively and astute analyst of class in America, and an infectious (but clear-eyed) enthusiast for the stress and thrills of small business, even when that business goes belly up. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1690431782275-M4FJ0E64W8DSNTVRDRE0/Jha_Laughter.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week The Laughter by Sonora Jha As someone who opts to read few books written by straight white men, I'm the kind of reader Dr. Oliver Harding—a 56-year-old white male English professor who fears becoming obsolete and who would definitely make a point of capitalizing White here—would balk at. And yet, I agreed to trust Jha and spend approximately 300 pages inside his head, where I was privy to all his unsavory thoughts and opinions, as well as his inappropriate lust-fueled obsession with a younger female colleague: Ruhaba Khan, a bewitching Pakistani Muslim law professor. I found myself equal parts fascinated and repulsed by Oliver as he ingratiated himself to Ruhaba by way of her 15-year-old French-Muslim nephew, Adil. Set on a Seattle university campus in the days leading up to the 2016 election, The Laughter reads like a modern-day Lolita in academia. It's a masterclass in pacing, tension, and beautiful writing. Wow! —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1690431796312-T1LUER6LYD1913KAQ3ID/George_Village.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George If you loved Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop, as I did, you’ll remember Jean Perdu created his floating bookstore, Literary Apothecary, after reading a life-changing novel about love, written under a pseudonym. George’s new novel, The Little Village of Book Lovers, is that novel, which George says she wrote after many readers asked about that fictitious novel. It’s about all the different kinds of love—romantic, platonic, familial—and one young girl with the gift to see where Love itself touched each person, a mark that only she can see on their lips, shoulder, or perhaps hands. While Love laments that it doesn’t actually control love, because its siblings (such as Fate, Fear, Chance, Death, and Logic), each have their own influences on people, orphaned Marie-Jeanne spends her life using books to bring together people she believes are destined to love each other. The Little Village of Book Lovers will leave you dreaming of a trip to France to find the perfect book and, perhaps, love. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1690431814629-QJ89T10I67ZH91C1CVFC/Gwaltney_Drylongso.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week Phinney by Post Book #103 Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America by John Langston Gwaltney To title this superb oral history, collected in the early '70s and published in 1980, Gwaltney chose a word that means "ordinary," but that also, unlike many terms in black English, has never quite crossed over into general use in American English. The conversations he shares have those same qualities: even though he was an academic anthropologist, Gwaltney came to his speakers not as some neutral outsider but as a friend and a fellow black American, gaining their trust through shared bonds of "kinship and amity." The results are vivid, individual, thoughtful, and frank, self-portraits of solidarity and ingenuity and of weariness and frustration. As one of his respondents puts it, "I have grown to womanhood in a world where the saner you are, the madder you are made to appear." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1690431825506-VYGC8I8TR0CBS7HBDYR8/Bagley_Maurice.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week Phinney by Post Kids Book #91 Maurice by Jessixa Bagley Jessixa Bagley is one of our favorite local children's authors, and her picture books often have a sweetly melancholic tone, which is a perfect match for this story of a Paris musician (a dog, like every other Parisian in her story) and his accordion, which, I imagine, has that same sweetly melancholic tone. It's a story with some sadness but a lot of love, which will fill your own heart the way a sweet and sad song does. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1689382980291-EQ1SI7ZZZP30IE184C0I/Wong_Meet.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong Jane Wong grew up in her family's Chinese restaurant in New Jersey (until her father's gambling obsession drove it into failure); now she's a poet and professor at Western Washington in Bellingham. But this isn't the sort of memoir that draws a bright line between an immigrant, East Coast past and an educated, assimiliated, West Coast future: It twists and turns and digresses and remembers, full of ghosts and ex-boyfriends, of dragon fruit and fish-head soup and Lunchables. And at the heart of it all is Jane's mom, still commuting an hour each way to work the USPS night shift in Jersey, and still sending daily advice from afar. Her daughter's book is a spiky, angry, hungry, silly, sweet love letter to her and a manifesto for her own love of language and her right to use it. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1689382996404-I35NAONUZD8NBRFEWMNF/Berest_Postcard.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week The Postcard by Anne Berest, translated by Tina Cover The postcard arrived, unexplained and unsigned, in 2003, listing just four names: those of Berest's great-grandparents and their two children, who were all murdered in Auschwitz over sixty years before. (A third child, Berest's grandmother, evaded deportation and survived.) Berest uses this real postcard to tell her family's true story as fiction: bohemians and entrepreneurs, eager to assimilate before the war, and, for the survivors after the war, eager—or at least encouraged—to forget. Berest's style in imagining her family's lives reads like a postcard itself, painted in bright, simple strokes, though she doesn't flinch in presenting the brutal facts (familiar but necessary to retell) of their destruction. The more unfamiliar side of the story comes in the second half, when she sifts through the murk of willful postwar forgetfulness to discover the truth of her family and of that mysterious message. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1689383010800-JZKVQ6AKS25RA1DUCBT6/Bedford_Jigsaw.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education by Sybille Bedford Bedford's few novels rarely stray far from the facts of her own history, but with a family like hers, you can understand why. She was raised in the fertile (for a novelist) ground of a family with more culture than money, and spent her childhood shuttled among parents and friends in Germany, London, Italy, and, most memorably, a small town in the South of France. The characters and incidents in this story are too deliciously varied and interesting to list; her character has a genius for befriending her elders, which means she witnesses the messy lives of adults far before she is one herself. Her style is exquisite, and her assessments of others and herself are incisive but generous. With her adolescent perspective, this wonderful book reads like a series of Henry James novellas (this Maisie knows a lot), until her brilliant mother's hunger for morphine turns it into something by Zola. —Tom (I listened to the audiobook, superbly narrated by Sian Thomas, via our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1689383023869-W98QNJOTLECBX1KFPQBY/Mendoza_Need.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse! by George Mendoza and Doris Susan Smith First published in 1981, Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse! was recently re-released for a new generation by the New York Review Children's Collection. The animals flock to architect Ms. Mouse because she knows how to design a home that will suit each of their unique needs. For instance, Cat wants a house with plenty of places to nap, while Rabbit needs room to store his harvest. What would suit Lizard better than a rooftop solarium where he can bask in the sun? Then it's on to designing a recording studio for Spider and an astronomy tower for Owl. Anyone who loves a detailed cross section illustration of a cozy home will need to add this charming classic to their collection. (Ages 1 to 6) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1688195082809-3V6HSUBE2C3GE2ETFXNZ/Finkel_Art.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel I confess: I am mostly untroubled by art crimes, whether thefts or forgeries. I even find them a little charming, mostly victimless, and a kind of art in themselves. And that's surely how Stéphane Breitwieser, a Frenchman who, with his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, pulled off an incredible series of thefts—over 200 in the eight years before he was first caught in 2001—at small museums across Europe, would like to be thought of: as an artist, or rather as a collector of exquisite taste and skill, who stole not for profit but for love. Finkel's account of Breitwieser's crimes is equally skillful, a deliciously detailed account of both his thefts and his pathological drive to continue them beyond any point of reason. He sweeps you up in Breitwieser's audacious capers without ever quite romanticizing him or forgetting the costs of his compulsion. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1688195106365-0S2QE1F0JLJJV35R297L/MacInnes_Absolute.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week Phinney by Post Book #102 Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes Perhaps you know Julien Temple's mostly terrible '80s movie-musical adaptation, or perhaps you know the Jam's wonderful 1981 hit single by the same name. If you grew up in the UK at a certain time, you likely also knew MacInnes's 1958 novel, the source for all of the above, which has never really crossed over to our side of the Atlantic, despite being somewhere between The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road in its teen spirit and love of outsider culture. Our unnamed narrator is 18 and the sweetest pornographer you'll ever meet, an eager, knowing, and infectiously charming tour guide to the youth culture that's taking over postwar London and to the immigrants, queers, and fellow jazzers he considers his people. His sweetness will be tested by the end of his story (by organized attacks by white gangs based on the Notting Hill Riots); whether it survives, or whether it should, I'll leave for you to decide. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1688195116540-V0FKNYTDMHH3LNYFU6CO/Skorpen_Tired.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week Phinney by Post Kids Book #90 We Were Tired of Living in a House by Liesel Moak Skorpen and Doris Burn Generations of Northwest kids have been raised on Doris Burn's classic picture book, Andrew's Meadow, but until recently I didn't know about this other gem of hers. Burn, who lived most of her long life on remote Waldron Island in the San Juans, is just the illustrator for this one, but it's a similarly charming tale of kids making their own creative way in the out of doors, full of her sweetly ramshackle illustrations. (Age 1 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686344745422-8XI6ZAU3M3CVWOXHUWZN/Doctorow_Red.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 5, 2023) Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow wears so many hats—tech activist, anti-corporate theorist, pioneering blogger, tireless Tweeter—that you might forget that he's also a pretty great storyteller. His specialty has been in near-future science fiction like Little Brother, but his newest tale is a California noir set firmly in the world we live in now, in a Bay Area shared by homeless camps and crypto money launderers. Navigating between them is Martin Hench, a charming lone-wolf operator who has made a very good living as a swashbuckling forensic accountant (three words that may never have appeared together before) still on top of his game at age 67, whose latest job brings a giant windfall and a whole lot of trouble. Doctorow giddily weaves his tech expertise and strong opinions into a tight and twisty tale that will almost leave you thinking you know as much as he and his hero do. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686344985444-HYK2KK9XV44HSHTREHCF/Nayler_Mountain_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (June 5, 2023) The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler I meant to read this when it came out last year in hardcover, I swear. It had great reviews and an even better premise—marine biologists of the near future discover that a deep-water octopus species has developed intelligence, language, and culture. This phenomenon obviously must be studied and, humans being what they are, exploited. The book got pushed to the bottom of my pile, though, until the paperback arrived and slapped me in the face with this spectacular cover. Such a fun novel for all kinds of readers: SF fans, thrill riders, nature lovers, science geeks, and you, probably. —James https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686344995939-BHVJQPAJBM33PI661BUT/Chee_Edinburgh.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week Edinburgh by Alexander Chee In the two decades since this debut novel came out, Chee has been ever-present as an essayist, a teacher, and a general literary citizen, but he's only published one other novel (2016's The Queen of Night), and reading this book, with its almost impossibly elegant density of language and its searing emotional content, you can understand why his novels might take time to come into being. Beauty is in many ways its subject (it's the story, at least at first, of Fee, a boy who finds his voice as a choir singer), and also its style, but it also enacts a cycle of trauma, in which abuse, and the anguish it causes, is both repeated and escaped (though not without consequences), in a story that seems both intensely personal and thrillingly mythical. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686343670120-T48L5IJ6YDBATL6QAVON/Hazard_Womb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 22, 2023) Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began by Leah Hazard An excellent companion to Rachel E. Gross's Vagina Obscura and Liz Stromquist's Fruit of Knowledge. With warm, witty writing, thorough research, and inclusive language, journalist-midwife-mother Leah Hazard illuminates the history and science of the uterus throughout its various stages of life. Each chapter's focus feels important, delivering fascinating insight into periods, pregnancy (labor, caesareans, loss), and health (menopause, hysterectomies, uterine transplants!, synthetic wombs). This book left me wanting more in a good way. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686343685311-ZQIC5DAHB8R2R86KEZZ6/Parrott_Ex.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 22, 2023) Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott I’m discovering that, even more than historical fiction, I love reading stories written during the particular era in which they are set. The combination of the author’s first-hand knowledge and the reader’s hindsight makes for a richly layered literary treat. This best-seller was published mere months before the stock market crash of ‘29 and Parrott’s contemporaries no doubt commiserated with the characters’ disillusionment with a mostly theoretical sexual freedom. But as our heroine Patricia learns that endings are also beginnings, I found this unexpectedly moving novel more hopeful than wistful. I also realized that while the 1950s may have spawned “teenagers”, Flappers were the first women to experience a life stage that we now gratefully take for granted: young singlehood. So put on Rhapsody in Blue, mix yourself a gin fizz or four, and soak up the spirit of twenty-somethings in 1920’s NYC. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686343735837-GBCY77IKAEJB7AXALCEZ/Ullman_Close.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week Phinney by Post Book #101 Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents by Ellen Ullman I first read this elegant memoir by a Bay Area software developer when it came out a quarter century ago, at a moment of technological optimism that seems far away now. But the book itself hardly feels dated at all—Ullman foresaw many things (the gig economy, crypto bros), but for the most part she wasn't trying to predict the future, just observing the strange new life she was at the heart of. And her writing has aged well too because of how close to the machine she was: not a literary outsider to the tech world but an engineer herself, hunting for that elusive, elemental satisfaction when the machine finally does what she had been asking it to. It's rare to have someone who loves working with machines so much who is able to tell us why. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1686343750971-3VTM0IWC9WKLZ806JDQ4/Hest_Sometimes.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week Phinney by Post Kids Book #89 Sometimes It's Nice to Be Alone by Amy Hest and Philip C. Stead We here all identify strongly with the young hero of this story, a girl just trying to read a book, or eat a cookie, or do somersaults by herself when a friend shows up. Sometimes it's nice to be alone, but with friends like hers, who each give her the space to continue to be herself while enjoying their companionship, it also can be nice to have someone nearby who understands you. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683941393613-7HTNL8NIGS7F5ILGQCG1/Bauermeister_Two.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 8, 2023) No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister Erica Bauermeister was one of my favorite local authors even before I began working with her daughter-in-law at Phinney Books. The author of The Scent Keeper (one of my favorite novels ever) and House Lessons: Renovating a Life (a memoir that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever remodeled a home) now writes about how a book can deeply affect a disparate group of people in No Two Persons. A young woman spends years writing a novel that she HAD to write, because her soul demanded it. When she sends it out into the world, we see how it changes people in both subtle and profound ways. A literary assistant coping as a new mom, an actor trying to be more than a pretty face, a teenager, an artist, a bookseller, and a host of others interact with the book in different—and meaningful—ways, proving that no two people ever read the exact same book. This beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring book will definitely be in my Top 10 this year. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683941410224-1XXB8HQDEUDV7662705X/Grann_Wager.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 8, 2023) The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann If, like me, your idea of fun is reading stories of others going through almost unfathomable hardship, you can hardly do better than David Grann (the expert nonfiction yarnspinner behind Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z) and the horror-filled tale of the Wager, a British warship sent to attack Spanish treasure ships on the far side of South America. First typhus, then scurvy, then a shipwreck while rounding Cape Horn, which in turn led to murder, cannibalism, mutiny, and—with the help of multiple groups of indigenous locals—the ultimate return to England of a tiny fraction of those who began the voyage. From those survivors' contradictory accounts of misery, betrayal, and survival, Grann has woven a rousing story that doubles as cautionary tale of the folly of imperialism. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683941422646-2XVIHRD2JLOY3TZYYIIC/Zapruder_Story.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 8, 2023) The Story of a Poem by Matthew Zapruder How does a poem get made? If you are looking for a straightforward, IKEA set of instructions, you won't find them here. Zapruder's memoir is, in part, an account of drafting, and redrafting, and redrafting again a poem that becomes almost unrecognizable from its origins, but it is much more about the life in which that redrafting takes place, of a marriage, of his sobriety, of friendships and poetic influences, of our political time, and, especially, of parenting his young autistic son, whose relationship to language is so different—but equally intense—from his own. His poems and his memoir both have an almost disarming and intentional simplicity, as if he's trying to sift his words until he reaches the most basic, and honest, expression. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683076696476-UIPD03H0XO3POIM55K4U/Dederer_Monster.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 24, 2023) Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer We haven't been short of think pieces on the subject of, to borrow the title of Claire Dederer's viral 2017 essay that was one of the seeds of this book, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men," but perhaps that makes a book like this even more necessary. It's the opposite of the quick takes we're used to: she turns her subject over and over, looking at it, and herself, and ourselves—the people who make art and the people who love it—from every angle. It's the first book of hers that likely won't be shelved in "Memoirs," but it's still deeply (and, as always with her writing, appealingly) personal, and ultimately a moving examination of why we love art, and why we keep loving it. I'm tempted to call this the last word on the subject, but her passionately open-ended approach makes clear that there's no such thing. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683076717715-0XUJHUOGSSZF5ENNWEFL/Williams_Secrets.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 24, 2023) Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams "Don't write about your childhood," someone told Lucinda Williams when he heard she was writing this memoir. "Just write about your music." Well, as anyone who loves her music knows—"Child in the backseat 'bout four five years / Lookin' out the window / Little bit of dirt mixed with tears"—you can't have one without the other. Williams does write about her rambling, art-filled childhood, as the daughter of a self-medicating mother and poet father, and also her decades of gigging before her slow-burning career finally took hold, as well as the series of smart-but-troubled men she was drawn to before she found a keeper there too, all with the kind of plain-spoken and tender sense of the past and her own self that will surely evoke her twangy blues chords in the background. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683076727355-P8V74KDY89KXRO06LOE4/Ammons_Sphere.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 24, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #100 Sphere: The Form of a Motion by A.R. Ammons This is one of my very favorite books, but it took me a hundred months to get up the gumption to send it out to our Phinney by Post subscribers. Why? For one thing, it's a book-length poem. For another, it's presented as a single sentence, and it's mostly (but not always) conceptual rather than personal. You might not find a doorway in right away, but when you do, you might get swept away, because the beauty of the book is, as the title hints, in its movement, its turning and swinging from big ideas to small ones, from the galatic to the microscopic, from high-falutin' language to earthy words. There's something welcoming but also breathtaking in the whole performance: as I've sometimes declared, if I have a religion (which I don't) it's this book. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1683076739526-X0NWBM0M1U1DQOYF1PQY/Lui_Frank.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 24, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #88 Meet Frank by Mavis Lui On Frank's home planet of Xob, everybody looks the same: green and boxy. So he sets out to find something different and ends up on a planet full of strange creatures that all look different: ours! What should he do? Put on a disguise to fit in? But the kids he meets are happy to know him as his green, boxy self. Frank is adorable, and so are his new friends. (Age 0 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1681431829381-I19TMF2H04NRXWH5KQIN/Winn_Memoriam.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 10, 2023) In Memoriam by Alice Winn In her assured debut, Winn accomplishes the mission of historical fiction with wide-ranging research, emotional depth, and a dash of derring-do. WWI buffs will recognize details and themes, all presented seamlessly and in powerful ways: the carnage of the Somme seen through the eyes of a German machine-gunner, reproduced newspaper lists of the dead that the reader scans just as anxious civilians did. The heart of the novel is the relationship between two students as one follows the other from boarding school to the trenches. Winn conjures the intensity of teenagers in love and war, yet she knows that—like the soldiers who had periodic rests away from the front—readers need to recuperate too. An interlude set in an officers’ prison camp provides respite by showcasing her humor and storytelling panache. I can’t think of a better introduction (especially for Gen Z—now the same age as the soldiers) to what was once called the War to End All Wars. And I can’t wait to see what Winn does next! —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1681431836857-UY577AGWBN2WJO6EFUTI/Link_White.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 10, 2023) White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link White Cat, Black Dog is Kelly Link's first book since winning a MacArthur "genius" grant in 2018, and it is well worth the wait. The seven short stories in this collection are loosely inspired by fairy tales such as "The Musicians of Bremen" (in "The White Road," a troupe of performers travel across a post-apocalyptic United States) and "Snow-White and Rose-Red" (a graduate student takes over a mysterious house-sitting gig deep in the Vermont woods in "Skinder's Veil"). Link truly is one of the most imaginative writers I've ever read, and White Cat, Black Dog already has a guaranteed spot on my top ten books of 2023 list. Saturated in wonder, these absorbing tales will keep you on the edge of your seat as you're reading and stay in your mind long after you've finished the book. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1681431897993-0DRT2DVERJHJARZ8CJKD/Holten_Language.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 10, 2023) The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten I love, love, love this book. Simply as an anthology of contemporary and classic writing about nature, it's an absolute treasure. It features contributions by Jorge Luis Borges, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Macfarlane, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Richard Powers, Zadie Smith, and sixty more authors voicing their ideas poetically, scientifically, fictionally, and personally. What's even better is that the artist selecting and overseeing this collection, Katie Holten, has allowed them to express themselves in a format never seen before. She's created an alphabet of trees into which she's transliterated every piece—you read them in the sheltering shade of a unique paper forest. OK, maybe that's a touch hyperbolic, but still, it's a sublime effect, gorgeously executed. —James [from the Madison Books newsletter] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1681431911831-G6ETG76WFNR5PNHZKTAB/Portis_LOA.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 10, 2023) Portis: Collected Works by Charles Portis One of the minor pleasures of following American literature is the moment when a former outsider, like Shirley Jackson or Octavia Butler or Philip K. Dick, is ushered into our national pantheon via the tuxedo-like dust jackets and creamy, Bible-thin pages of the Library of America, and it is a sheer delight to me that this month that honor has been granted to the true American weirdo Charles Portis, whose entire output of five novels, plus some true and made-up ephemera, fits into this handsome, compact volume. Turning folks on to the rambling joys of Portis is one of the best parts of my job: I usually start them with The Dog of the South (probably the funniest book I own) and many converts return for more with a zealotry rivaling my own, but now you can just cut out all that back-and-forth and get everything all in one fancy package, and save a few bucks in the meantime. You will not be sorry. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1680306902541-PDBTNMSSXW03X7PEFK1J/Danovich_Henfluence.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 27, 2023) Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them by Tove Danovich Reading Under the Henfluence is a lot like hanging out with your most enthusiastic and knowledgeable chicken-loving friend. You're sure to be entertained and to learn something—even if, like me, you're the crazy chicken person in your own social circle—as Danovich takes you beyond her backyard to a hatchery in Iowa, a national poultry show in Ohio, and even to the island of Kauai, where the ubiquity and beauty of wild chickens reignited my own childlike love for the animals. With passionate reporting in every chapter, and compassion on every page, this book will make you appreciate how long-lived and deeply entrenched the human-chicken relationship is and compel you to consider what our responsibility is to these delightful and often misunderstood birds. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1680306929319-GWBAFE23BL6WNKH1KFAI/Beagin_Swiss.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 27, 2023) Big Swiss by Jen Beagin It's a very good thing if the main character in a novel blurts. It can set all kinds of mayhem in motion. You would think, in Greta's situation—she is a professional transcriber for a sex therapist in a small New York town where everybody knows everyone, and she has fallen in love with one of the patients, whom she has nicknamed, not incorrectly, Big Swiss, by the sound of her voice—she might be more discreet, but she is anything but. Her blurting is your gain, especially when it turns out that Big Swiss, in person, has plenty of her own emotional chaos to spread, since it gives Jen Beagin the chance to spin out one comic riff after another, in a story that piles on plenty of embarrassing entanglements but also turns out to involve more tenderness—and more bees and mini donkeys—than you might expect. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1680306940365-AAYVGIF0SPT1TNBZS80N/Himes_Rage.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 27, 2023) A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes After publishing five novels in the '40s and '50s (and spending eight years in prison in the '30s), Himes finally found a wide audience after he moved to Paris and started writing hard-boiled crime tales beginning with this one. They've become known for the rough-justice Harlem detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Jones, they feature, but in their first appearance the duo is almost overshadowed by a whole host of characters: con men and suckers, gangsters and sweethearts, and preachers and undertakers as wise to a buck as any of them. It's a blood-spattered and delightfully cynical tale, but somewhere in its noir heart you almost believe in its original title, For Love of Imabelle, a tribute to the savviest operator of them all. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1680306988050-B37LH78P3CZ1JBM9HO2P/Dorleans_Our.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 27, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #87 Our Fort by Marie Dorléans, translated by Alyson Waters "The adventure will begin the minute we step through the gate." Three friends make a springtime outing to the modest fort they've built on the other side of a meadow: they get a little lost in the tall grass, they get caught in a surprising storm, and they end the day with cups of dandelion tea. It's a lush, slightly scary, and ultimately sweet story of friendship and the first fruits of independence. (Age 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1678927295744-BRBU4UCELO289WTNY7FV/Jacobsen_Just.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 13, 2023) Just a Mother by Roy Jacobsen, translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw What praise is left for me to shower on Roy Jacobsen? I've called his writing a "document for the ages," said of it that "I don't think I've ever read anything that better touched the essential truth of what it is to be alive," and referred to the small Norwegian island that is his main setting as "the bedrock on which our fiction section is built." The subtle understatement that gives his work such power is evident in the very title of his most recent novel, which again centers on Ingrid Barrøy, now the matriarch of an ever-changing clan. As she and her family cope with the aftermath of a world war and a shift from subsistence to prosperity, Jacobsen traces their progress with expert grace. Every development in their lives arrives so naturally that the reader feels a momentary shock, then a sense of satisfying inevitability. For us at Madison Books, this may be the publishing event of the year. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1678927310939-NE78JVWCWF5YVPSAMJBW/Gross_Vagina_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (March 13, 2023) Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross “The history of medicine was filled with 'fathers'—the father of the C-section, the father of endocrinology, the father of ovariotomy—but, ironically, there were no mothers.” Rachel E. Gross is basically Ms. Frizzle for adults when it comes to exploring female anatomy. Each chapter is a deep-dive into the science, history, and wonder of women's bodies that goes beyond reproductive function. Particularly interesting are the accounts of women scientists and their personal and professional experiences in a male-biased (and let's face it, phallus-obsessed) medical industry, from Dr. Helen O'Connell's discovery that the clitoris as we knew it prior to 1998 was merely the tip of the iceberg and Dr. Patty Brennan's enthusiasm for duck vaginas to Dr. Ghada Hatem's charitable clitoral reconstructions for victims of genital cutting and finally Dr. Marci Bowers' surgical artistry in creating neovaginas for fellow transwomen. Women's healthcare has historically been plagued by ignorance and disinterest, but Vagina Obscura gives me reassurance that we're moving toward a future where, quite the opposite from languishing in obscurity, the female body can finally be not only understood, but respected and celebrated. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1678927315726-LFMQDA6JNWN2QFUM3XJC/Royko_Boss.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 13, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #99 Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko Mayors, even the most powerful, recede in our historical memory almost as quickly as newspaper columnists do, and this compact biography of Chicago's most famous mayor by its most famous newspaperman is not the mega-bestseller it once was. But it still makes for great reading: think of it as a pint-sized companion to Robert Caro's massive The Power Broker, an analysis of how urban power was gathered and—more crucially—held, written while the Boss was still Boss. Like the best newspaper columns, it's a masterpiece of concision and invective, but Royko kept enough perspective on his subject that it remains fresh and relevant over fifty years later, as Chicago decides on its next mayor. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1678927323719-UIIS6L0RI00SPW6R8JEU/ONeill_Moth.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 13, 2023) The Moth Keeper by K. O'Neill There are some graphic novels that use illustration simply to tell a story and others where every panel is a work of art. The Moth Keeper is definitely in the latter category, full of sumptuous oranges and purples to reflect the color palette of its desert setting. I'd highly recommend this new middle-grade graphic novel by Tea Dragon Society series author K. O'Neill to anyone who appreciates a well-built fantasy world and loves to pore over gorgeous illustrations. The book's main character, fox-like Anya, is proud to be the next Moth Keeper of her nocturnal desert village. Her important job is to care for the Moon-Moths that pollinate the village's magical night-blooming tree. But does she have what it takes? You can practically smell the night-blooming flowers wafting off the pages of this beautiful graphic novel. (Ages 8 to 12) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677893770211-IYRUC78QFQ1VVY64BY4D/Zevin_Tomorrow.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 27, 2023) Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin Usually when a book I haven't read takes off into the stratosphere of popularity, I just let it soar and move on to books that could use more care and feeding. But all the raves for Zevin's novel, which came out in July but only in recent months has become the most popular book in our store, tempted me to try it myself (via the audiobook, narrated, just right, baudiobooky Jennifer Kim and Julian Cihi). And, yup, I liked it too! As you may have heard, it's a story of two (really three) friends, whose partnership as "true collaborators" may or may not survive the many obstacles they (and Zevin) put in their own way, and it's also (fascinatingly and convincingly to a mostly non-gamer like me) a story that takes it for granted that video games are at least as creative and as meaningful a form for storytelling as the kind we sell here. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677893954595-VJIFSHVPI7LH3E4L6P4O/Baldwin_Giovanni.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 27, 2023) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Giovanni's room, it turns out, is tiny, squalid, and dark, far from the center of Paris, and without a phone. Our narrator, an American named David, spends just a few months there with his lover Giovanni, but it feels like a lifetime, and in a sense he'll remain there as long as he lives. Baldwin, as a writer and thinker, has been as present as ever in recent years, but It had been decades since I had read his fiction, and Giovanni's Room is beautiful and terrible, an expression of the difficulty of loving between two men in a particular time and place—Paris in the '50s—but also of the difficulty of loving at all. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677894113035-QLWNXX8FU2H1037Z349M/Mulisch_Assault.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 27, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #98 The Assault by Harry Mulisch, translated by Claire Nicolas White The Assault is a war story, but the assault of the title is not, as I'd always imagined, a classic war-movie siege but rather a single incident, with many reverberations, that takes place far from any battlefield. It's also, as Liz first described it to me, a murder mystery, but our main character, Anton Steenwijk, twelve years old when the assault takes place, is the most reluctant detective since Oedipus, spending the following decades, which sweep by in leaps in this short, graceful, hauntingly lonely novel, avoiding the truths that eventually are placed in front of him like fate. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677894177095-FSW98Q0IJH8N3BFUKP1S/Tate_Sweeter.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (February 27, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #86 What's Sweeter by June Tate The pleasures in Tate's debut picture could hardly be simpler—"a letter from a friend," "the soft spot behind a cat's ear"—and what's sweeter than celebrating life's small moments with your small people? But there's something about Tate's pacing, her charmingly imperfect illustrations, and some of her more oddball choices—"a turtle eating a salad"—that elevate her book from mere sugar into a bedtime favorite. (Ages 1 to 4) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1675475447215-TRBP0E7AYNLETPTNM59X/Rose_Love.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 30, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #97 Love's Work by Gillian Rose I think of Love's Work like the small hunk of tungsten I once held, so dense that it immediately sank my hand to the desktop beneath. It's a short book, with few words on each page, but it carries weight. Rose, a philosopher by profession, doesn't waste words, and among the things she doesn't tell you, until halfway through the book, is that she is dying. She's writing with urgency, but you sense that she wrote, and lived, with this clipped, exact intensity her whole life. There are sentences and paragraphs so packed with meaning I'm still sorting them out, but I never lose my faith in the clarity of her intention, or my joy at the force of her thinking, especially about those two central elements, love and death, that give life, and her "desperately mortal" life in particular, its greatest meaning. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1675475459757-WKIB1M3G25VZGEQYTCO7/Hoban_Turtle.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 30, 2023) Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban Turtle Diary has been a favorite book of so many people in my life—and I love Hoban's Frances and Captain Najork books so preposterously much—that I half-felt like I had read it already myself, but, until this month, that was not actually the case. I expected a wry and quiet tale of two lonely people who decide to do something oddly momentous (free sea turtles from a London aquarium), and that is indeed what I got, but no summary and no second-hand report can do justice to the specific strangeness, the specific sadness, and the specific joy of their small adventure, which manages to be thrillingly life-changing and crushingly anticlimactic, all at once. Fans of the modest charms of recent Phinney favorite Leonard and Hungry Paul should pick this up pronto, but expect a few more prickles. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1675475480057-E5ZN8S8B51NVJPKX1XEN/Corbet_Animal.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 30, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #85A Animal Land Where There Are No People by Sybil and Katharine Corbet Are you familiar with the Weedle, which "has such dainty little ways of pulling up potatos"? Or the Boddles, which "screams and eats candles and soap"? (I hope not.) Or the Ding, which "is so happy. It makes a great Hole in the Park." (I hope so!) If not, I recommend you acquire this little book, a collaboration between Sybil Corbet (a four-year-old), who described the animals, and her mother, Katharine, who drew the pictures and whose age at the time is not reported. It was first published in 1897, when children, apparently, were as kookily creative as they are now and at least some mothers could match them, and it was recently reprinted by a great little outfit in Philadelphia named 50 Watts Books. (Age 1 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1675475489451-VMO2SLL534IKNLD7F4H5/Hoban_How_Tom.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 30, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #85B How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake I knew how great Russell Hoban was, and I knew, vaguely, that he had written a kids' book with the thrillingly promising title of How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen. So why did it take me so long to track down a copy? I don't know, but when I finally did, it exceeded even my highest expectations, from the captain's preposterous (but somehow believable) sporting competitions to the spot-on anarchy of Quentin Blake's illustrations. And as for its sequel, A Near Thing for Captain Najork, which we also happily have in stock, all I will say is that it features a jam-powered frog as well as the arm-wrestling exploits of Tom's Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork (she recently married the captain). (Ages 5 to infinity) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674154936991-3RCB2TEYSPDXT954OWC5/Malcolm_Still.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 16, 2023) Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory by Janet Malcolm Having abandoned an earlier attempt at an autobiography, out of her journalist's frustration with the slipperiness of memory, Malcolm, the longtime New Yorker writer who died in 2021, left behind this fragmentary memoir instead, built around the memories (and the gaps) evoked by a series of everyday family photos. Famously unsparing and elegant in her profiles (like the deliciously ruthless In the Freud Archives and The Journalist and the Murderer), she is much the same when writing about her family, Czech emigrés who barely escaped the Holocaust, and their mostly emigré friends. She's wittily rigorous in her assessment of their faults and charms, and of the limits of what she can recall. She reveals herself too, but only up to a point, cheekily withholding at times in a way she never would have in describing one of her reporting subjects. It's wonderful, and leaves you wanting more. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674154945941-U6PCKX3ZGIBO5T08QNM9/Sherriff_Hopkins.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 16, 2023) The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff I’m fine with all sorts of grim reading material but apocalypse stories are just TOO stressful. That said, if it’s set in an English village and written by the author of The Fortnight in September, I’ll give it a go! When Sherriff wrote this “cosy catastrophe” in 1939, with war looming, it reflected the anxieties of its readers. But an intriguing foreword (do not skip!) sets the groundwork for something more far-reaching. The literary device also defuses any unbearable dread. You know the worst has happened and can relax and enjoy what follows: the titular manuscript, in which Edward Hopkins records his experiences from the time he learns of the moon’s imminent collision with the earth until he can no longer hold a pen. He’s a bit of a pompous fool and an amateur poultry breeder, all of which provide regular doses of humor to take the edge off his eerie tale. But in the end, his apprehension of the Cataclysm and its repercussions transforms him into an endearing and enduring Everyman. It's the first book that I know will be in my top 10 books of 2023. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674154952685-WAY61CG47MWRT9C0NAEZ/Tsumura_There.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (January 16, 2023) There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura Post-burnout, a 36-year-old woman moves back in with her parents and attempts to find employment that won't demand so much of her. With the help of an agency, she tries on five different menial jobs, from surveillance to copywriting the fun facts printed on cracker packages. In an optimistic twist on the trope of the soul-sucking day job, no matter how mundane the position, our protagonist can't help but become emotionally invested in her work ... and brush up against the familiar feeling of overwhelm, which leads her on to the next. As a member of the Burnout Generation, I found this book to be boring (in the best possible way), quietly funny and strange, and deeply relatable. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674154983500-D0C2FM4WAN0HIJPJ5X55/Raffles_Unconformities.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (January 16, 2023) The Book of Unconformities by Hugh Raffles How do you describe a book as singular as this one? Writing in the wake of family tragedy—the sudden deaths of two sisters—Raffles, a British anthropologist living in New York City, is drawn to the solidity and stability of geology and geologic time. But even there he finds fissures and discontinuities, visiting a series of evocative locations from upper Manhattan to the remote Arctic and tracing the ways human history has, often tragically, built itself around the more patient, but still moving, history of stones. If you love the way writers like W.G. Sebald and Robert Macfarlane connect the personal to the strange vastness of our world, you will gladly follow Raffles on his journeys (which, unlike Sebald's, are thoroughly footnoted). —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1673059071077-XR5ONLFKPQXKA6NZY9SB/Pinckney_Come.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 2, 2023) Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan by Darryl Pinckney In 1973, as a Columbia undergraduate, Pinckney talked his way into Elizabeth Hardwick's writing class, and—at least for the decade and a half covered by this wonderful book—he never left. Nearly 40 years her junior, this aspiring writer from a middle-class black family in Indiana became her student, protégé, friend, and confidant, and a part of the brainy, gossipy world that swirled around the New York Review of Books, while his pals his age, like Luc (later Lucy) Sante, Jim Jarmusch, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, were creating their own scene downtown. His memoir is a tender and sharply observed tribute to Hardwick's fierce brilliance and a stylish journal of his messy and ambitious young life as a reader and writer. It's hard to imagine a book better engineered to my particular obsessions than this one, but its beauty and wisdom are also what made it my favorite book of the year. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1673059084811-I559RS5BC4ZMMNBICMYA/Warner_Beautiful.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 2, 2023) Phinney by Post Book #95 Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay by William W. Warner Warner, an administrator at the Smithsonian Institution, was nearly sixty when he published this book, his first. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977, and has never been out of print since. It's a graceful and curious book about ingenuity, both of the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay (they are nearly all men in his telling), who have to divine the yearly and daily patterns of the bay to draw a living out of the water, and of their quarry: the blue crab, which occupies the same iconic position in that estuary as the salmon does in ours. And like the salmon, the crab, and the industry built around it, has been in decline, but Warner wrote in a time of relative plenitude, which reads now as a warning, and an expression of lost joy. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1673059098031-PJWA7ICL6UD50TU9GA0S/Kuo_Luminous.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 2, 2023) Phinney by Post Kids Book #84 Luminous: Living Things That Light Up the Night by Julia Kuo It's a rare kids nonfiction book that is well-written and beautifully illustrated enough to make a bedtime book that kids and grownups will both enjoy, but Seattle's Kuo achieves a lovely balance between fact and imagination with her, well, luminous illustrations and her two strands of text, one simple and evocative and suitable for any age and one denser with data about her undersea subjects, perfect for older, info-hungry kids. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747505145-9JBYCRWXN9Q2FK3LPZLF/Ohman_Body.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 14, 2022) Body Grammar by Jules Ohman Sometimes, though rarely, I will read a book and feel like I'm watching a movie as I read. Reflecting on this beautiful funny sweet melancholy moving book, I experienced something rarer still: feeling like the story I read was a life I got to live, among characters who felt like real people. Lou had planned to stay in Portland post-graduation, but after a freak accident that was "the worst thing that's ever happened to her" she changes her mind, finally giving into modeling recruiters who have been hounding her for years. While she's catapulted into this new, glittering career and world—which gave me satisfying America's Next Top Model vibes—she's reckoning with questions of who she is and what she wants, the girl and friends she left behind, and the trauma that put her on her current path. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747499247-2PGCXOAGMPZERQ8CT3QT/Dawidoff_Other.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 14, 2022) The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City by Nicholas Dawidoff It's a too-familiar American story: a city—New Haven, Connecticut, in this case—divided by race, a young black man falsely imprisoned. To it, Dawidoff, who was raised in the city and who has written bestsellers on baseball, country music, and his own family, brings an understanding of the forces that have made this story familiar but, most valuably, eight years of patient reporting that make this story—of the murder of a 70-year-old black man, who came to this northern city in the Great Migration, and the coerced confession of a teenager who spent nine years in prison before being exonerated—personal and movingly particular. It's a tale of injustice far more than justice, and of a young man who finds himself in prison, and who has to find himself again outside of it. It's a book dense with the regrets and the small victories of lives forged in conditions of fleeting opportunity and daily violence. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747513813-HZ9UDWR9FU21PU44OZ1G/Hornby_DIckens.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 14, 2022) Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby As a teenager in the ’80s, the music—the very existence—of Prince had a profound effect on me. Purple Rain (the movie, as well as the album) totally blew my mind. Seeing him in concert in 1985 was a highlight of my life (as was visiting his home and studio Paisley Park in Minnesota this past summer). So when a preview copy of this slim volume by Nick Hornby came into the store, I snatched it up before anybody else could. Hornby—a super fan of both Prince and Charles Dickens—makes some convincing arguments about parallels between the two men, despite the fact they weren’t alive at the same time. Hornby delves into details of their early lives, relationships with women, ambitions, and how they approached the business end of their work. It’s a fun book that made me want to listen to Prince’s music on repeat—and possibly pick up a copy of Oliver Twist. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747524557-O7GVR6M75RVYQYXV48PB/Clowes_Complete.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (November 14, 2022) The Complete Eightball 1-18 by Daniel Clowes Welcome to my 1990s, which you can now purchase in a single package for $49.95. I came to Eightball midway through its run, walking down to Fallout Comics to catch up on an early issue or—happy day!—find a new one in the rack, for $2 or $3 of my hard-earned grad-student stipend. Three decades later (!), it's as glorious as ever, full of creepy nightmares, bitter invective, grotesque weirdos, and possibly the greatest lettering in the history of human communication. Ghost World, first serialized here, is justifiably recognized as Clowes's masterpiece, but seeing it in its original setting, alongside one-off gags, comics self-satire, and other nearly-as-good long-form tales, makes it even more miraculous. This might be my desert-island book, if it didn't make me feel so bad about people that I'd never want to return to society. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747546410-VPQF3F1YM6OXF2VFBDUX/Tsujimura_Lonely.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 31, 2022) Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Philip Gabriel I picked up Lonely Castle in the Mirror knowing nothing beyond the back-cover copy, and I think that's the best way to approach this puzzle of a fantasy novel. Thirteen-year-old Kokoro spends her days alone in her room, too traumatized to return to junior high after a bad experience with the other students. When her mirror lights up one day, she discovers it's a portal to a mysterious castle. Six other junior high students have also been called to the castle and assigned a quest: to find the key to a room that will grant the finder one wish. This very special book twists and turns and had pierced me through the heart by the end. If you want to cry your eyes out (in a good way), read this book! Fans of The House in the Cerulean Sea will find similar themes of connection and friendship here. While we have Lonely Castle in the Mirror shelved in our adult fantasy/sci-fi section in the store, I'd also recommend it for young adult and even middle grade readers. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747553514-8XHZ6KMA2S7Q7FG0ZE1C/McCracken_Hero.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 31, 2022) The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken You might read this little book, as I did, loving almost every page, and not be sure at the end what actually happened. What happens, more or less, is the narrator—this is not a memoir, she says, but it 99% is—visits London, a city she had recently visited with her late mother, and walks around by herself and remembers—is reminded of—her marvelous, stubborn, private, outgoing, tiny, generous, misshapen, funny, opinionated, brilliant mother. It's a book of adjectives more than story, and as if in tribute to its hero, just about every sentence in the book is odd and beautiful. And if, when you get to the end of the book, you don't quite know what happened, do what I'm doing (with even more pleasure than the first time): read it again. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747571157-NLQ7XD64RCDF8NGJIRH1/Baker_Young.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 31, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #94 Young Man with a Horn by Dorothy Baker If you've ever seen the 1950 Kirk Douglas movie based on this book, please forget that you did: the book is so much better. It's the story of a rootless, almost anonymous boy who finds himself in music—a white boy, specifically, who finds himself in the black musical tradition of jazz, though the book manages to avoid many of the clichés such stories have made familiar. Like Beth Harmon on the chessboard in Walter Tevis's The Queen's Gambit, Rick Martin is an orphan driven to perfect a talent that seems to fall out of the sky, and like Tevis, Baker builds her story, and Martin's half-inarticulate interior life, from the simplest of language. It's a moving and spacious portrait of passionate (and destructive) creativity, and of friendship too, between RIck and his other true love: his fellow players. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1668747580021-AUMHE5B5H95V6UXMDA0C/Blackall_Farmhouse.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 31, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #82 Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall The ruined farmhouse on a property Sophie Blackall moved to in upstate New York could not have fallen into better hands than the Caldecott-winning author of Hello Lighthouse. Layering actual materials—wallpaper, old dresses—she found in the ruins, research into the family that had lived there for generations, and her own imagination, she has created a portrait of a place, and a family, over time that feels like an immediate classic. (Age 1 and up) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1666397603695-0NT29RWYR4RWKQV12O5W/Rodgers_Shy.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 17, 2022) Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green You might know the late Mary Rodgers as the author of the kidlit classic Freaky Friday, or as the composer of the musical Once Upon a Mattress (her one big hit in a long career of trying), or—her most double-edged claim to fame—as the daughter of the composer of big hit after big hit, Richard Rodgers. But after reading Shy, you'll know her as the most entertainingly dishy memoirist you can imagine. From an early age she knew everybody, from (of course) Oscar ("Ockie") Hammerstein to Mae West to her longtime boss Leonard Bernstein to her longtime best pal Stephen Sondheim, and she tells you exactly what she thought about each one of them—and, equally hilariously and unsparingly, about herself as well. ("Reader, I slept with him," is a frequent refrain.) And along with the delicious dish, you get a fascinating portrait of a woman building a creative career and constructing a life in the shadow, and the gilded cage, of fame. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1666397609629-ZW7P37AEQUV1JM59CIZ4/Chatagnier_Singer.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 17, 2022) Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier is not a sci-fi novel, despite the presence of crop circles and the fact that scientists of Earth have been communicating with Mars for nearly a century. Instead, this is a novel about loneliness, choices, and love (of people, but mainly of math). When four MIT grad students believe that one of them has finally solved the most recent (yet three-decades-old) mathematical proof that beings on Mars carved into the red planet’s surface, they embark on an epic road trip to Arizona to carve their answer into the Earth. When Mars answers, one of the four—brilliant mathematician Crystal Singer—disappears, driven by her obsession to understand Mars’s latest proof. Her boyfriend struggles to understand her state of mind and the choices she made. This beautifully written debut novel is a love letter to science and exploration, and will change the way you look at the stars—and possibly those you love. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1666397615660-K3OXL58AYOQVTYSWBWFU/Gavino_Career.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 17, 2022) A Career in Books by Kate Gavino A Career in Books is a real treat: a substantial graphic novel full of wisdom, heart, and humor. The story centers on three best friends, fresh out of college and living together in New York. Each roommate is struggling with a different aspect of navigating the publishing industry as a young Asian American woman. Nina is the go-getter editorial assistant at a large publishing house, whose ambitions often exceed the reality of an entry-level position. Silvia works for a privately funded one-woman publisher, but dreams of writing her own book. Meanwhile, music-loving Shirin has a position at a university press, but isn’t even sure if working in publishing is what she wants to do. Meeting their neighbor, a nonagenarian Booker Prize–winning author whose books have mostly gone out of print, changes the course of each woman’s life. Author Kate Gavino has drawn on her own experience working as an editorial assistant to fully flesh out this story and its characters. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1666397991620-28WGS3S7YN8TVYUKDTVU/Cather_Shadows.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 17, 2022) Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather This work of historical fiction, set in Quebec in 1697-98, is a quiet charmer. By that time, the early, renowned explorers, fur traders, and missionaries were passing away and their deeds spun into the lore of the 100-years-young French colony. Instead, the story focuses on the town apothecary and his young daughter, arrived from Paris eight years earlier. Their home is an oasis of European comfort but the highlights of their year—a moonlit picnic with a sea captain’s talking parrot and unpacking a crèche from across the ocean—reflect both the New and Old Worlds. The family’s experience echoes that of Cather’s other pioneers, and more faintly, today’s immigrants. While reading, I felt like we’ve almost come full circle: the next chapter is when we resettle to other planets or galaxies! The novel opens and closes in October, and painterly renderings of autumn at that latitude—the golden foliage, gray rock, and silver mist—bookend a feel-good yet thoughtful tale that’s perfect as winter closes in. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1665185874923-SQ72J46RWOE7Z209F7BZ/DeWitt_English.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 3, 2022) The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt This little book is a delight every bit as scrumptious—though perhaps not quite as sweet—as the slices of Wayne Thiebaud cake on its cover. Helen DeWitt is, for my money, the most brilliant novelist going right now, and she puts all of her talents—for inhabiting people whose genius doesn't fit the world, for finding just the right word (no matter the language), and for inserting her stiletto into the fattiest parts of corporate culture—to work in this marvelously constructed story of a young woman raised to certain standards, which she finds useful when her life takes a sudden turn. It's one of the first set of New DIrections' yummy new line of Storybooks—slim volumes to be read in one sitting—and it's been flying from hand to hand among our staff and in my family ever since we got it. It's that kind of book. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1665185895754-GBTPHKK0Z1G2RRYHTCTX/Guerriero_Simple.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 3, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #94 A Simple Story: The Last Malambo by Leila Guerriero What is there to say about a story as simple as this one? "This is the story of a man who took part in a dance contest," its first line declares, and that's what it is: a short portrait, told in the plainest of language, of the National Malambo Competition in the small Argentinian town of Laborde, and of one charismatic competitor, Rodolfo González Alcántara. Roldolfo has little to say—he lets his dancing, which expresses a thrilling passion while abiding by the strict rules of the Malabo, speak for him—and Guerriero follows his lead, practicing an austere style that, through its very restraint, somehow evokes the furious yearning of her subject. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1665186052664-FB8TP4B4MPSKRYRSMW53/Kestrel_Five_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Paperback of the Week (October 3, 2022) Five Decembers by James Kestrel For a fat book that covers half a decade (as the title implies), Five Decembers moves at the speed of a drag-race sprint. Published by the self-conscious throwback wizards at Hard Case Crime, it's a throwback of sorts too, a stripped-down, hard-boiled World War II tale, but with a bit more heart than the coldest tales of Hammett and Cain. Joe McGrady is a Honolulu cop, and the first December of the story is 1941, so you might think you know where the story is going, but his war years are spent on a goose chase of his own, leading him into a lonely obsession that, if you're like me, you'll spend a few late nights staying up to get to the thrilling end of. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1665186056248-W7SJNSKKZG4ZL37XYD9I/Cherrix_Good.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 3, 2022) Good Night, Little Bookstore by Amy Cherrix and E.B. Goodale Book lovers everywhere will adore this sweet picture book in the rhyming style of Goodnight Moon. We travel around a cozy bookstore saying goodnight to the bookstore cat, customers' forgotten items, and other familiar bookshop sights. Eagle-eyed readers will enjoy scanning the shelves for clever covers based on real books. Charming illustrations and text would make this a lovely gift for any child or bookish adult. (Age 1 and up) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1663877304274-4DKDIOCMB2639HVG5WPA/Laskey_Happy.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 19, 2022) So Happy for You by Celia Laskey As a newlywed who showed a screening of the horror comedy Ready or Not at my wedding reception, I couldn't read this one fast enough. Set in a dystopian near future where the wedding industrial complex has gotten even more out of control thanks to government involvement, the pressure for women to marry and stay married has skyrocketed. To this end, wedding charms have been gaining in popularity, from sage and garlic bouquets and 100-foot-long bridal trains to stranger and much more dubious options. In So Happy for You, Robin, a 34-year-old lesbian, reluctantly becomes maid of honor to marriage-obsessed Ellie, and it's no surprise that by the time the wedding weekend finally arrives Robin's loud opinions and lack of filter are clashing with Ellie's increasing desperation for everything to go her way. Ridiculous and darkly funny, it was wild to see what lengths these two were willing to go to. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1663877311841-ABE35DNHXWEQRE45D5BS/Barker_Caledonia.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 19, 2022) O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker While reading O Caledonia, I thought an apt subtitle would be: Portrait of the Spinster as a Young Girl, even though our protagonist is found murdered—at age 16—on the first page. Janet definitely has the quirks and qualities which—in her upper-class, 1950s milieu—brand her as a potential spinster. But it was more that I was reminded of some British women who often wrote about that demographic so cruelly expanded by WW1. Barker’s intelligence has the micro/macroscopic focus of Sylvia Townsend Warner—Janet could have been her generation’s Lolly Willowes! And her hilarious grasp of human peculiararity reminds me of Elizabeth Taylor. There’s even a whiff of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm in the ramshackle family castle and its weirdest residents. Despite these echoes, the book is as singularly bewitching as its heroine. And don’t fear that its opening portends mystery and tragedy. Just as Janet refuses to conform, her story breaks all bonds of literary expectation. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1663877315987-38H40HGA2II6D5KUV9Z0/Yum_Twins.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (September 19, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #81 The Twins' Blanket by Hyewon Yum Two twin girls, one blanket, which they've shared since they were babies. But now they are five, and ready for their own beds. Who gets the blanket? This lovely picture book is twice as old as the girls now, but I'm not sure that many readers know about it (except for twins, perhaps). I think it's a classic—for anyone, twins or not—about the frustration and love with the one you're closest to. (Age 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1660939792617-L6BZ57JA62SCDSBPBPKI/Hamid_Last.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 15, 2022) The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” Kafkaesque from its opening line, Hamid's novel feels simultaneously fantastical and familiar. In this world, everyone's white skin turns to dark, inevitably, though not all at once, and people react accordingly: confusion, denial, anxiety, conspiracy, violence. This beautiful book feels incredibly timely, with parallels to pandemic life and our nation's continued reckoning with the injustices of systemic racism. Through Anders and Oona, Hamid shows us, intimately, and with rather hypnotic prose, how people are transformed by experience, made different by context, not only as they transition from white to black but as their lives change in other, perhaps more predictable, ways. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1660939811556-8T8HZN90F6ONSV015HCX/Armfield_WIves.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 15, 2022) Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield Think: Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, but sapphic and romantic. Leah returns home to her wife, Miri, from a deep-sea research mission that was only supposed to last three weeks. But after six agonizing months of absence, the Leah who has returned is as mysterious to Miri as the circumstances that kept her away. Foreboding and beautifully written, answers are divulged like slow drips of water from a leaking faucet. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1660939826466-ZXKZQNP63M7LGXEWYPEW/Suyin_Winter.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 15, 2022) Winter Love by Han Suyin In her long and well-traveled life, Han Suyin, the physician daughter of a Chinese father and a Belgian mother, wrote mostly about Asia, but in 1955 she published this very British gem of a novel, telling, with exquisite precision, the story of a love affair between two medical students in wartime London. Mara, already married, is glamorous amid the drab rationing; Bettina, known as "Red," the narrator, is "mousy" by her own description, but driven and attractive in her own way. The writing is breathtaking in its exactness and in its sudden revelations of beauty and doom, in an affair brutally corralled not only by the social enforcement of who could love each other, but by one character's inability to love at all. —Tom [My enjoyment of the audiobook—available from our partners at Libro.fm—was heightened by the equally precise narration by Lucy Scholes, who, wonderfully, is also the editor at McNally Editions who has done so much to bring neglected women writers back into print.] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1660939837942-NE7WTQZD281L1FUN2UPW/Oziewicz_Feelings.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (August 15, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #80 What Feelings Do When No One's Looking by Tina Oziewicz, illustrated by Aleksandra Zajac, translated by Jennifer Croft "Courage," "Hate," "Longing," "Trust": I don't whether these feelings translate exactly from their Polish equivalents, but, judging from the irrepressible and distinctive personalities of Aleksandra Zajac's drawings and Tina Oziewicz's concise and evocative descriptions—"Calm pets a dog," "Nostalgia sniffs a scarf"—you and your small readers will likely recognize them in yourself and all around you. (Ages 1 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659587212244-2VPMJ9IFEAWSZBT7I93V/Reang_Ma.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 1, 2022) Ma and Me: A Memoir by Putsata Reang Reang was her mother's youngest, with a special bond founded between them when she barely survived their escape from the war and the coming genocide in Cambodia in her mother's arms in 1975. But once they settled in Oregon, Put became the most restless of her children, eventually traveling the world as a journalist (at the Seattle Times among many other places) and finally marrying an American woman, which her mother couldn't bear. Reang's memoir is a compelling story, told with both humor and pain, of their bond and their break, of the duty to family and heritage that Reang often embraces at the same time that she claims her independence, and of two fiercely loving and tireless women carrying the weight of tradition and trauma. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659587223122-M4ULJDAN14W7E74ZHF59/Barrett_Homesickness.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 1, 2022) Homesickness by Colin Barrett One of the challenges for a writer of short stories is to resist the tidiness that their compact form seems to demand, and evoke the full messiness of life while still telling a tale. Messy is something that Barrett is especially good at. His stories, set mostly in County Mayo, a place of towns and farms where everybody, for better or worse, knows each other, are stories to be sure, with.a twist here and an epiphany there, but what makes them so wonderful is everything in between: the banter, the indirection, the texture of daily life, the weary knowingness of people so familiar to each other that they might have stopped paying attention to who they really are. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659587232621-FGX7A8QXEUDCFF02YE3R/Murray_Proud.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 1, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #91 Proud Shoes by Pauli Murray Murray's life story is a remarkable one, as an often behind-the-scenes influence on the Civil Rights Movement, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women, and one of the first women ordained as an Episcopal priest. But Proud Shoes, written in the '50s when barriers to her race and gender made it hard, despite her sparkling qualifications, to earn a living, is the story of the people that came before her, two in particular: her grandfather, who grew up in a free-black community near Philadelphia but chose to settle in the South after fighting for the Union, and her grandmother, the half-acknowledged daughter of a white man and a woman enslaved by his family. It's a complex, and indeed proud, legacy, told equally with the sly wit of family gossip and the earnestness of her grandfather's idealism. It's a great American story. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659156183133-HLPUJWGB8L6B7O9KJHNL/Yong_Immense.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 18, 2022) An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong If many of our favorite recent nature books celebrate the complex and often surprising intelligences of particular organisms—trees, mushrooms, octopuses, birds—Yong's new book is like a sense-by-sense encyclopedia of such wonders, altering and expanding our understanding of the world around us by showing it through the eyes, ears, noses, and many far stranger instruments of dozens of the animals we share the planet with. From the hundred primitive eyes a scallop uses to scan its surroundings, to the star-nosed mole's fingerlike appendage, to the bumblebees that detect not only ultraviolet markings on flowers invisible to us but also their electrical fields, Yong (who somehow wrote this book while also being the Atlantic's Pulitzer-winning COVID correspondent) does indeed make the world seem immense, full of patterns and languages we can't sense, and which our noisy, bright civilization often unwittingly obliterates. Your eyes (and ears and nose, etc.) will widen in appreciation on every page. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659156201824-VEQGX44WL20QRBZJ135K/Haushofer_Wall.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 18, 2022) The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside I made the mistake of beginning The Wall on the first day of a trip, and throughout the week my mind was constantly drawn back to thinking about the book and wondering what was going to happen next. On a visit to a cabin in Austria, our protagonist wakes to find an unbreakable invisible wall separating her from the town and countryside beyond. This may sound like a sci-fi plot, but the wall is merely a device in a quiet tale of isolation and survival. If she wants to live, the narrator will have to push her strength and wits to the limits. Though originally written in 1963 (and translated from German), The Wall feels timeless. This is a book that I will keep turning over in my head for a long time and sharing with anyone looking for a recommendation. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659156211704-87B6B0PN6XN055QJX326/Wahl_Little.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (July 18, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #79 Little Witch Hazel: A Year in the Forest by Phoebe Wahl Little Witch Hazel's year starts with spring, but its four seasonal tales circle 'round and can be read in any direction. The Bellingham-based Wahl's lush and cheery illustrations are quickly making her a picture-book star, and they are a perfect match for her nurturing, inclusive, weird, and funny tales, which, in this case, might be what you'd get if you transplanted Frog and Toad to a Northwest forest commune. (Age 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1657219202607-XPO24EFX5O22DIMYQ0RY/Calhoun_Also.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 4, 2022) Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun This is my favorite kind of non-fiction book—a failure. Which is to say that it isn't a biography of the influential mid-century poet Frank O'Hara, although it's full of biographical detail and wise analysis of his life and work. It also doesn't offer definitive answers about the fraught relationship between distant fathers and their underappreciated offspring, although it provides a perfect example in the form of the uneasy rapport between art critic Peter Schjeldahl and his dutiful, accomplished daughter, Ada Calhoun. It does succeed brilliantly at bringing these elements together, as the author relates her attempts to resuscitate the project her father abandoned almost fifty years ago. It sent me back to O'Hara's Lunch Poems, and to Schjeldahl's collection Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, and it made me glad that failures of one kind can be triumphs on other terms. Brava, Ada. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1657219214028-TZQ4EHEBJES5KF0QMIHS/Beal_Sandfuture.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New-ish Book of the Week (July 4, 2022) Sandfuture by Justin Beal I picked up this book (at New York's McNally Jackson bookstore) because it didn't look like anything else on the shelf, and inside it doesn't read like anything else either. Mostly, it's a biography of the Seattle-born architect Minoru Yamasaki, known to us as the designer of what is now the Pacific Science Center but best-known to the world for two since-destroyed structures: the Pruitt-Igoe public housing in St. Louis and the World Trade Center. Around and through Yamasaki's courageous, tireless, sometimes tragic life, Beal—an artist and, by the evidence of this first book, a writer—threads erudite but approachable meditations on architectural failure and success, on the flooding of Hurricane Sandy, on his wife's migraines, on the health of cities and buildings, and more. My brain was working, happily, on every page. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1657219219581-OQSJFH3R0LVI8M98H0GB/Hill_Pigeons.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New-ish Book of the Week (July 4, 2022) Men Who Feed Pigeons by Selima Hill You just need to pick up this book of poetry, Hill's sixteenth or so collection, to see what it is and whether you might like it. The poems are tiny—two or four or six lines long—grouped in series about particular men, or kinds of men, some loved, some hated or feared, many both. They are delightfully direct, sometimes disturbing, and often disarmingly hilarious, in a way I can only compare to Dorothy Parker, or maybe Phyllis Diller. To give you an idea, here's an entire poem, called "My Life as a Pair of Crocs": "I try to look both earnest and adorable / like surgeons' crocs before they're sprayed with blood." I like these poems a lot. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1655942146257-MWP99XVKN3193WCLBUFX/Govinden_Diary.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 20, 2022) Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden My glib line on this novel is, "Like Rachel Cusk, if she liked people," but that doesn't really do this book (or the great Cusk) justice. Like Cusk, Govinden, a British novelist hardly known over here, places his narrative in the uneasy but alluring conversational space between people, but what his story (built from the unpromising bones of a master filmmaker presenting his latest picture at a European festival) reminds me most of, in its generosity, its easy-going, wide-ranging intellect, and its savvy and immersive celebration of creative work, is The Conversations, the wonderful dialogue between the writer Michael Ondaatje and the film editor Walter Murch. I was swept away by this brilliant and humane little book—it's my favorite novel of the year so far. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1655942154283-5068TS5EVS4E58Y342DC/Ozeki_Form_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (June 20, 2022) The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki Told from dual perspectives—from Benny and from "the Book" itself—young Benny's story begins when his father is killed in a senseless accident and he begins hearing the voices of inanimate objects. Much to his dismay, his mother, Annabelle, finds comfort in collecting random items to excess, and the situation soon spirals out of control. However, Benny takes refuge in the library, where things are mostly quiet. Ozeki's latest novel is a compassionate exploration of mental health and our attachment to things; her authorial voice is wise and warm, and like a good meditation, it invites you to slow down and pay attention. This book made me feel validated as a book hoarder and observer of the universe. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1655942165862-GHHJE1SVYZ0001QBKV61/Bandyopadhyay_Aranyak.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 20, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #90 Aranyak: Of the Forest by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay Satarchayan, the narrator of this autobiographical novel first published in India in the late '30s, is not your usual hero: he reminds me of the naive Captain Delano through whose wide, half-seeing eyes Melville’s ironic masterpiece “Benito Cereno” is told. And his story, of being sent from the metropolis of Calcutta to manage the remote, forested estates of a friend's family, is a fairly shapeless one, built on anecdotes rather than a traditional narrative. But those wide eyes make for a compelling story nevertheless, as he recalls, with a melancholy hunger, the natural beauty of the jungle and the people who wrest an unfathomably meager living out of it, even as he fulfills his assignment to clear the forests for development and thereby destroy the things he has come to love. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1655942174796-YCXQYGU7D3URYPMB32AC/Fan_Lizzy.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (June 20, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #78 Lizzy and the Cloud by the Fan Brothers Taking a cloud home is more complicated than you might think: you have to make sure to water it (but not too much!), be ready for surprise downpours or even thunderstorm tantrums, and give them all the room they need, even when they grow. The last turns out to be the hardest of all for Lizzy in this lovely and poignant story about taking care and letting go, illustrated with all the exquisite beauty we've come to expect from Terry and Eric Fan. (Ages 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654897967467-8Q9VZF07F05YV6QH63TQ/OReilly_Mammy.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 6, 2022) Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Seamas O'Reilly If you noticed me laughing out loud on my walk home in the last week or so, I was probably listening to this new memoir, which, despite being about the death of O'Reilly's mother when he was five, against the backdrop of the violent Troubles in their Northern Irish city of Derry, also manages to be about dinosaurs, his goofy and loving father, the largest and best-documented home-taped VHS archive in the known universe, and growing up the ninth of eleven children in an Ireland where families didn't get that large any more. Only after finishing did I realize that O'Reilly first found fame with his viral Twitter thread about meeting the President of Ireland while on ketamine, which, in its nerdy embrace of life's absurd embarrassments, turned out to be an excellent preview of how warm, charming, and, yes, laugh-out-loud funny his first book would become. —Tom (download the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654898179040-8J6DESHBFN9F5D0LF806/Newman_Men.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 6, 2022) The Men by Sandra Newman In 2019, Sandra Newman published a novel, The Heavens, that landed on my year's best list, a book that "asks profound questions about what kind of world we want to live in and what lengths we'll go to change it." She's asking those questions again, with more insistence, in The Men, which is a virtual lock for this year's best list. It posits an inexplicable disaster in which all men (everyone with a Y chromosome, that is) vanish overnight, not a wholly original trope, but one that Newman handles expertly—she has anticipated and resolved with satisfaction whatever doubts one may have about that premise. Her dystopia is as sharply described and gripping as classics by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel, but it advances beyond those works before all is said and done, taking a turn into literary territory that feels altogether new. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654898195897-OIL761QSVYUCNOSBUR6A/Vandermeer_Annihilation.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 6, 2022) Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer VanderMeer has created such an atmospheric and foreboding landscape in Area X, and I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into it by the beauty and mystery there. Instead of seizing up with dread or shouting at our protagonist, the biologist of the twelfth expedition, to stop, turn around, and go back when encountering the strange and horrifying, I was eager to stay on her heels and inside of her head. I love a good slow burn and unreliable narrator, particularly when I can tell that even if I don't know exactly what's going on—and especially if the protagonist doesn't—I'm certain the author does. While I'm more than satisfied with Annihilation as a standalone novel, I'm excited to dive into the next installment, to venture further into Area X and embrace more of what I don't and can't know. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654898205950-VVWM4ZNT9F2FT71PRXD3/Coombs_Exactly.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (June 6, 2022) Exactly Where You Need to Be by Amelia Diane Coombs Sometimes I pick up a book and I just know we're going to get along. This sweet YA novel ticked so many of my boxes. Positive mental health rep? Check. A post-graduation road trip with surprising diversions along the way? Check. A supportive best-friendship founded on shared love for a murder podcast? Check and check. There's also a swoony friends-to-lovers romance. But what I loved most about this big-hearted, adventurous summer romp was the powerful message at its core: that having OCD like Florie (or anxiety like me!) doesn't mean you have to live a small, sheltered life. Venturing outside of your comfort zone is how you grow. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1653526543470-0BJLNBHO0NTIEU3XGHNI/Straub_This.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 23, 2022) This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub I was already a fan of Emma Straub’s fiction before I picked up This Time Tomorrow, but now I’m a superfan. This time-travel fantasy was pitch perfect: sweet without being cloying, sad without being a tear-jerker, detailed without being too detailed. My words don’t do the book justice. But know that this book is a homage to living out your high school fantasies, a love letter to the '90s in New York City, and a deep dive into a stellar father-daughter relationship. As soon as I finished, I loaned this novel to a friend, who handed it back to me a week later and said, “You were right, this was perfect.” —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1653526550996-T4U35WKT0M8Q20D43IVP/Stromquist_Fruit.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 23, 2022) Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Strömquist, translated by Melissa Bowers This punchy work of graphic nonfiction reads like the best of stand-up comedy in its presentation of the feminist history of "the female genitalia." It highlights the absurd and infuriating; for instance, the actual size of the clitoris wasn't discovered until 1998! Filled with delightful illustrations and fun facts (that are admittedly not always super fun in content but always entertaining in delivery), this book is every bit as humorous as it is educational. I learned so much about how religion, science, and language have shaped our understanding of sex and gender and bodies—and not all of it is infuriating! A good bit is actually encouraging and empowering. Have you ever heard of "menstruation envy"? Neither had I! Everyone should read this. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1653526556512-312C1QGZN412W5B8CQWO/Levine_Canada.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 23, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #89 Canada Made Me by Norman Levine This travelogue of three months Levine, a Canadian expat who had migrated semi-permanently to England, spent tramping across his native land in 1956 proved so unpopular in Canada it took two decades to find a publisher there. And you can see why: Levine has no time for postwar boosterism and, perennially short of money himself, is drawn to failures, to the rough country's shabby boardinghouses and sour beer halls, with a plain-spoken spirit of observation that might remind you of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. A book like this stands or falls on what it sees, and for that quality alone I found it a thrilling page-turner. I kept wanting to see what he would see next. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1653526560733-6LRHSFUS38TJRYJ2Z0SI/LloydJones_Tiny.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (May 23, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #77 Tiny Cedric by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Rowboat Watkins In the land of unintended consquences, when a pint-sized king banishes everyone taller than him from his castle the result is: a castle full of babies! The result for the reader is that what starts out as a fable about petulant tyranny turns into a tale of chaotic adorableness, as even this grumpy despot learns to love. Your littlest readers will likely enjoy the chaos, as well as the sweet ending. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1652855080525-YJLR5JZW0HQXW971S7FF/Kaplan_Story.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 9, 2022) The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan Engaging and informative from the first page, The Story of Jane details the experiences of many women involved with Chicago's underground abortion service in the years leading up to Roe v. Wade. These accounts are as inspiring as they are cautionary, full of hard work and determination as well as great personal and legal risk. This book feels woefully relevant at present, with the flaws in America's healthcare system exposed and stretched by the pandemic and the Supreme Court's recently leaked abortion opinion draft. The members of Jane went beyond the necessity of providing referrals and abortions; they counseled the women who sought services, empowering and educating them so that they could make the most informed decisions about their own bodies. Yet, it surprised me when Jane didn't consider Roe vs. Wade to be an unequivocal victory; I hadn't realized the law's limitations: the way it fails to center women, and uterus-having persons, as Jane envisioned by continuing to focus on the rights of physicians, viewing patients as objects rather than subjects of medical treatment. Absolutely eye-opening. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1652855089025-KIN669MZ16NUOZ67SVEV/Jonas_Vladimir.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 9, 2022) Vladimir by Julia May Jonas With romance novels replacing their Fabio-licious covers with cute cartoony illustrations, it's refreshing to see Vladimir stepping boldly, winkingly, into the void. And the winking continues inside. As our story begins, our narrator, self-described as an "oldish white woman in her late fifties," has the title character, a hot young English department hire with a hot new novel and an even younger wife, tied up and asleep in a chair, where she can admire his beauty undisturbed. From there, Jonas spins out a tale of campus adultery that is both familiar and slyly subversive, thoroughly witty and almost as cheeky as its cover and opening promise. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1652855097070-6THIQW5NOP319M9W4NTR/Ravn_Employees.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 9, 2022) The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken Where are you, in this little novel? From its subtitle, you can tell you are in the next century, and from the description on the back (and, slowly, from the reports within) you learn you are in a spaceship on a planet that isn't Earth. The book is built of short, oblique statements made by the ship's crew—some human, some humanoid—and from them you can build the bones of a story about the increasingly disastrous events that unfold there, but what is far more striking is the strange tenderness they evoke, on both sides of the human/nonhuman divide. When I came to the last statement I turned back to the beginning and read them again, in part out of the (pleasurable) mystery their incompleteness evokes, in part to experience again the odd and delicate emotions they stir up. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1652855102905-LCD1TQVXEYM8ISMX0CAO/Wyndham_Midwich.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 9, 2022) The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham I tend to avoid sci-fi, but when I heard that John Wyndham—a grandparent of the genre—had written a novel considered an example of “cozy catastrophe,” well, resistance was futile. Along with the English village setting, the characters, dialogue, and sensibility of The Midwich Cuckoos definitely qualify as cozy, but the author referred to his work as “logical fantasy.“ It’s less about plot (which is spare but well-built) than the questions it raises. Published in 1957, the story evokes the preoccupations of a community just freed from the threat of Fascism, and now deep in the Cold War. Alas, the conundrums posed are ones western democracies are still pondering. Modern Library has just reissued The Midwich Cuckoos and four other Wyndham novels (all with creepy-cool covers and intros by contemporary writers) and I can’t wait to read more of these brainy entertainments. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1651536874905-TTRZ6MLV3Y2I51NPMV9H/Griffith_Spear.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 25, 2022) Spear by Nicola Griffith For those of us fans of Hild, Griffith's beloved historical epic set in early Britain, who can't wait until its sequel, Menewood, arrives next spring, this little adventure is the ideal appetizer to hold us until the main course arrives. Set a world much like Hild but embracing the magic of the Arthurian legends that grew from the same era, Spear is a lively and delightfully queer tale of love, adventure, and swordplay that uses the mythic traditions of Camelot, as well as the everyday details of life in medieval Britain, to imagine a young woman full of life and fire. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1651536989457-W4MHQUU9EEAZRAP2IQK0/Bloom_In.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 25, 2022) In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom When Amy Bloom's husband, a vigorous ex-jock architect in his mid-60s, learned he had Alzheimer's, he knew immediately he wanted to end his life well before full dementia could have its own way. Doing so legally, as he and Bloom learned, remains nearly impossible in America in his situation, but In Love is the story of how they were able to, a how-to as well as an elegy written with the wit, honesty, and character insight readers will know from Bloom's brilliant fiction. Bloom writes like a messier (she would say more Jewish) Ann Patchett, with a voice that brings her full humor and worldly competence to bear on a dilemma that confounds (but ultimately affirms) both qualities. It's a beautiful and necessary little book. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1651536997381-EXFAT30VXVKH5SHOP9R2/Dick_They.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 25, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #88 They by Kay Dick For a book with a premise (and a cover!) as darkly chilling as this one's—a dystopian England in which art, and those who make it, are destroyed by roving mobs and vague official authorities—They is certainly full of light and beauty and friendship. Largely unnoticed when it came out in 1977 and largely forgotten since (before its recent reissue by the new McNally Editions), Dick's slim novel unfolds as a series of episodes in which the unnamed and ungendered narrator (to whom the title applies as it does to the anonymous mobs) visits artistic friends as they evade, with varying success, the encroaching threats. The writing is sharp and evocative; the mood is both heartening and horrifying. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1651537008128-10FCRXZH7BMNF5OQTFPC/Young_Emile.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (April 25, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #76 Emile and the Field by Kevin Young and Chioma Ebinama Poets, with their gifts for compression, rhythm, and (sometimes even these days) rhyme, would seem like natural picture-book writers, and Young, the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the new director of the Smithsonian's African American museum, sure is. In his debut for kids he captures the lonely wonder of a curious child in nature with a spare, slyly rhythmic beauty that, along with Ebinama's warmly pensive watercolors, make his Emile a sweet successor to Ezra Jack Keats's Peter, both of them making their angels in the snow. (Age 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1649976448576-6BMH7SZ4M2VQLW72WPQM/Garmus_Lessons.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 11, 2022) Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Elizabeth Zott is my new hero. As a scientist in the 1960s, she has to contend with ingrained sexism not just in the world in general, but especially in the world of science, where her male colleagues routinely ask for her input yet never give her credit. Those same men relentlessly comment on her looks (yes, Zott rhymes with hot); then they fire her for being unmarried and pregnant. So, what does she do? She somehow stumbles into hosting a daytime cooking show on a local TV station. But she doesn’t pander to her audience of housewives. Oh, no. Instead, she teaches them science (using only the scientific words for, say, salt and vinegar, and explaining how different types of chemical bonds work in baking). And along the way, she ushers in a nationwide revolution of women standing up for themselves and their brains and their future. Throw in intense personal loss, a dog that understands and responds to hundreds of words (that dog deserves his own book, so I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel!), and a daughter who is beyond precocious, and you get a novel that is smart, funny, heartbreaking, maddening, and inspiring. And one that I just can’t stop thinking about. In fact, it’s my favorite novel from the past year. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1649976459643-9LKKEFSZMB4UAWVKIGJQ/Graville_Writer.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 11, 2022) Writer in a Life Vest: Essays from the Salish Sea by Iris Graville From 2018-2019 Iris Graville served as the first writer-in-residence aboard the Washington State Ferries, spending a couple days a week writing on the route that travels between Lopez, Orcas, Shaw, and San Juan islands. The subtitle for her book Writer in a Life Vest: Essays from the Salish Sea is quite literal, as much of the book was either written on the water or inspired by Graville's residency. These entries span the gamut of subject matters, from the story of a ukulele jam aboard the ferry to poetry to an imaginary interview with Rachel Carson and Greta Thunberg. Graville's main focus is the health of the Salish Sea's ecosystem, including the plight of the orcas (I particularly enjoyed "O is for Orca: An Alphabetical Excursion through Orca Whale Characteristics"). Writer in a Life Vest is a love letter to the beautiful place we call home. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1649976473720-VOTTBU1H87GBRIKYQ1WK/Jacobsen_Eyes.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 11, 2022) Eyes of the Rigel by Roy Jacobsen Those of you (and there are many) who've encountered the previous volumes of the Barrøy Chronicles, The Unseen or White Shadow, will not need me to say anything about this new book other than It's here! Come buy it and read it! For those of you who aren't yet familiar with Roy Jacobsen's stories of the indefatigable Ingrid Barrøy and her clan: They're here! Come buy them and read them! Set during the middle decades of the 20th century and centered on a remote Norwegian island occupied by fishers and farmers, they're written with the terse directness of Hemingway (but without any of his outdated machismo), tracing the development of an entire society on an intimate, individual scale. A child opens her eyes to a life wider than her traditional family circle, a young woman feels the ripples of a world war lapping against her shore, and now a new mother must cope with aftermath of a conflict that's divided her nation. Jacobsen's novels are absolute bedrock for Madison Books, foundation stones on which our fiction collection is built. I said of the first of them that "I don't think I've ever read anything that better touched the essential truth of what it is to be alive," and that assessment has only been reinforced with each new release. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1649976478743-CLMCYM1AWDNG3BOKEXKR/OBrien_Third.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 11, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #86 The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien I might express the strangeness of this novel by saying that the extensive footnotes about a misguided thinker named de Selby, who believed, among other things, that night is caused by "accumulations of 'black air,'" are the least strange thing about it. This story of a murder in the Irish countryside, and also of a box of money, and many bicycles, and more than three policemen, and possibly more than three dimensions, is both one of the funniest and one of the most disturbing books I've read, and also one of my very favorites. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1649976484350-4P1HVNGZXELW2D5DYRK9/Goodman_Shame.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 11, 2022) The Shame by Makenna Goodman Comparison is the thief of this artistic, anti-capitalist, homesteading young mother's joy when she starts comparing the mundanity of her own lived life in rural Vermont to the highlight reel of her NYC-dwelling doppelganger's digital one. I love a good existential crisis, and Alma's inner monologuing is golden, filled with angst and humor and wisdom. Quick and intense, The Shame is just as all-consuming as the feeling of shame itself. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648700161212-89ON0866FOU38VYEYDXD/Brown_You.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 28, 2022) You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe by Rebecca Brown In the season of her life when she is gathering her work, Brown has brought together occasional essays she wrote for the Stranger in the previous decade into a little book of wonderful and moving coherence. In four essays, "Spring," "Summer," "Fall," and "Winter," she moves lightly from myth to memoir to Melville to the Monkees, evoking the traditional annual rhythms of life, death, and rebirth but also those times when you fall out of step with the seasons. It's both deeply personal and deeply communal, and possibly just the kind of stories you need to believe too, as the sap of springtime starts to rise. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648700170058-QW1FT3XP990FL1OCF9S2/Holtby_South.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 28, 2022) South Riding by Winifred Holtby Here’s the pitch: a soap opera about local government with hints of Middlemarch and Peyton Place. Well. You’d forgive a publisher for taking a pass, but this 1937 novel was an instant bestseller, adapted for film and TV, and has never been out of print (though it's not always easy to find in the U.S.). The secret ingredient is the author herself. Holtby was a native of Yorkshire (location of the fictional South Riding) and a well-known progressive journalist-activist. Chapter by chapter, she moves from the Shacks to Maythorpe Hall, focusing on residents who are never entirely heroic or evil or foolish. The marquee romance may echo the Janes (Eyre/Austen), but Holtby was an expert on the plot twist. As she was writing, she knew she was dying of kidney disease—her most tender portrayals are characters who share that fateful perspective. Her final novel is often called a “beloved classic” because in both challenging and comforting herself, Holtby did the same for generations of readers. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648700177600-N63D1R8EXJHXGLRFEH4K/Keefe_Hughes.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Audiobooks of the Week (March 28, 2022) Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup by Evan Hughes My reading (and listening) usually jumps from subject to subject and style to style, but when I recently finished The Hard Sell, Hughes's thorough evisceration of the executives behind Insys Therapeutics, a (briefly) billion-dollar pharma startup built on the aggressive marketing of a single addictive pain drug, I wanted to stay with the subject, and immediately followed it with Keefe's rightfully acclaimed account. The Hard Sell is compelling and infuriating, but Empire of Pain is a masterpiece, a patient and rich profile of three generations of Sacklers, full of brilliance, ambition, and greed, in which Oxycontin, the pill that made them billions while leading many thousands to addiction and death, doesn't appear until halfway through the tale. A riveting and authoritative new classic in one of my very favorite genres, white-collar true crime. —Tom [Order the audio downloads of Empire of Pain and The Hard Sell from our partners at Libro.fm] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648700182750-UZMYRJ9Q7O9NP1PG9HS1/Haydu_Lawless.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (March 28, 2022) Lawless Spaces by Corey Ann Haydu Corey Ann Haydu is one of my favorite YA authors, and I eagerly snagged an advance copy of this novel-in-verse as soon as I laid eyes on it. In Lawless Spaces, Mimi, fifteen-turning-sixteen, grapples with her self-image and her responsibility to represent herself as the right kind of girl. She has the sort of body people feel entitled to comment on, and sometimes just entitled to, full stop. It's the same body her mother had, and her mother before her. When she turns sixteen, Mimi's mother gifts her a journal to write in; it's a family tradition—or perhaps a family curse. In writing her own nuanced experience for herself instead of writing captions on photos to an impersonal and sometimes cruel internet following, Mimi begins to uncover and investigate her own hurt. In reading the stories of the women who came before her, she unearths generations of trauma: written down but left unspoken. This gorgeously complex story kept me up reading all night—dare I say, like a teenager?—and made me ache, cry, and hope. (14 and up) —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648081336775-W90CXCZ685ZI0BOQH4A1/Mason_Sorrow.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (March 14, 2022) Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason I'm often skeptical when new books I haven't read yet are compared to books and media I've already consumed and loved; I've too often been disappointed before by promises unfulfilled. That said, I've seen Sorrow and Bliss compared to Sally Rooney's Normal People, Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, and Fleabag and I give these comparisons an emphatic nod. It is smart, funny, and sad without being depressing. Martha is wonderfully self-aware and woefully self-sabotaging as she muddles through life with an undiagnosed mental illness that affects everyone who loves her, particularly her husband and sister, but herself most of all. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648081362737-8CN2LA2FZQ7MSNOS45UE/Maillart_Schwarzenbach.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Books of the Week (March 14, 2022) Phinney by Post Books #87 The Cruel Way: Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939 by Ella K. Maillart All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey by Annemarie Schwarzenbach The story is so good it took two people to tell it. In the summer of 1939, with war on the horizon, two women, seasoned journalists and travelers, decided to drive themselves from the mountains of Switzerland to the mountains of Afghanistan, looking for an alternative culture to the corruptions of Europe, or just a change in their own lives. The books they wrote about their journey are fascinating, partial, and much better when read together: Schwarzenbach's dispatches (collected long after her early death) are compact and philosophical, while Maillart's account overflows with context and judgment, both historial and personal, including the morphine addiction of her traveling partner and the tension and affection between them (none of which Schwarzenbach mentions). Together, they make a compelling portrait of two intrepid women, and their encounters with traditional cultures in the middle of change. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1648081646375-20A7LEIKRA6L1FKDWGGO/Forsythe_Mina.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (March 14, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #75 Mina by Matthew Forsythe As soon as Mina came into the store, we knew we'd have to send it to our Phinney by Post Kids subscribers. Forsythe's lush illustration and the deadpan humor of his story of a worried mouse daughter and her sweet but overly trusting dad combine into what will surely be one of our favorite picture books of the year, and not only for its mid-story punchline, which makes me laugh every time I turn back to it: "The problem," says the doctor mouse, "is that these squirrels are definitely cats." (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1644523887911-YOTLPNNV6AD1RXPX9MDO/Taylor_Palfrey.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (February 7, 2022) Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor Within a few paragraphs, I knew I was in good hands. The hands of a writer at the top of her game, exhibiting perfect control without apparent effort. The story is set in late-1960’s London and follows the still estimable Laura Palfrey (we assume she was once estimable from her handful of memories of married life in Burma) as she settles into the Claremont Hotel as one of its elderly residential guests. Her routine livens up when, on one of her forays outside, she befriends Ludo Myers, a would-be writer the same age as her grandson. The humor—understated zingers, “bits” of comedy gold—is perfectly balanced with a tone of, I won’t say sadness, but an acceptance of the fact that one’s way of life has died and one is merely waiting to follow. I don’t think I truly understood the term “bittersweet” until I finished the last paragraph. Elizabeth Taylor is my new literary crush and I plan to read one of her novels each month, like savoring treats from a box of exquisite chocolates. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1644523872017-M00F3VADN3P7RDLAOPG8/Fu_Lesser.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 7, 2022) Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu It’s rare that I find a book of short stories that really works for me, but when an advance copy of this collection showed up with local author Kim Fu’s name on it, I had a good feeling. I was lucky enough to attend two different readings where Fu performed new work: first, at Hugo House, and again, here at Phinney Books. I was struck by her voice and imagination, both of which translate beautifully to the page. Each of the twelve stories is well-written, wonderfully surreal, and distinct. I felt particularly moved by the stories that explore the consequences of possible near-future technologies—"Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867," "Time Cubes," and "Twenty Hours" (think: Black Mirror, but infused with more hope and curiosity than cynicism and dread)—and the ones that read like modern creature myths: "June Bugs" and "Bridezilla." It’s hard to pick a favorite, and that makes it all the easier to recommend. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1644523878746-25GU4FS6NQLJXGRP1I2N/Gramont_Christie.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 7, 2022) The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont I love to read novels about libraries, bookstores, or authors, especially if there’s a kernel of historical truth in there. Nina de Gramont’s new novel, The Christie Affair, imagines what really happened when Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926. After a massive manhunt across England, Christie reappeared in a hotel, claiming she didn’t remember what happened. The Christie Affair imagines that time from the point of view of her husband’s mistress. Why did his mistress, who didn’t love Archie, put in motion a plan that took years to see to fruition, to steal him away from Agatha? And what exactly happened to Agatha in those 11 days? Did she really not remember, or was she simply trying to reclaim her life? The best novels find a way to make every character sympathetic in some way, to help the reader understand why they made less than honorable choices, and I found myself alternately rooting for different characters throughout the book. The book left a deep impression on me, still echoing months later. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1644523893317-Q8RUYC73K5Y6KI97S14D/Borch-Jacobsen_Freud.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (February 7, 2022) Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen I was first drawn to this under-the-radar book by its cover, with its fascinatingly odd photo of Sergius Pankejeff, the patient Freud called the "Wolf Man," as a child, and by its premise: short portraits of 38 men and women who underwent psychoanalysis with the Great Man. Freud's greatness has been questioned for decades, but few critiques could be as quietly devastating as this one, made all the more effective by the deadpan style with which Borch-Jacobsen, a longtime Freud scholar and UW professor, wields his scalpel. He gives little time to Freud's famous (and apparently fanciful) case histories of his patients, instead telling their life stories in a way that nearly always reveals the utter failure of Freud's treatment. An incomplete but merciless portrait of Dr. Freud, it doubles as an intriguing view into the hothouse of wealthy Jewish Vienna at the turn of the previous century. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643355852545-TXKRCCH3Y5IE4Z0TJX7V/Labatut_When.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 24, 2022) When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West In the relative quiet at the end of the year I caught up with one of the most acclaimed books of 2021 (including by James at Madison Books when it came out in October). I suspected it would be right up my alley, and indeed it was. In chapters that read at first like essays and then increasingly like fiction, Labatut elegantly traces the lives and ideas of some of the 20th century's most prominent physicists and mathematicians. But those elegant tales lead again and again into horror, both in the personal lives of these obsessive thinkers, which span the most murderous decades of the century, and in the consequences of their ideas. Reading of their struggles to push the margins of our comprehension, you feel like you are standing at the edge of the abyss that faced one of his subjects, the German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild, who, while dying at the front in World War I, madly solved equations that led to an unthinkable conclusion: the existence of black holes. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643355871774-1LK9SEQN49DPAYHE0FVL/Jesse_Pin.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 24, 2022) A Pin to See the Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse There’s a literary True Crime wave cresting in 2022 and it is Meta: teeming with books of all types that dissect our long obsession with the genre. Centuries before Penny Dreadfuls were condemned for corrupting Victorian youth, Executioner’s Tales were providing grim titillation. In the modern era, True Crime began using the lenses of psychology and sociology to focus on the “why” of a crime. And by replacing moralizing with “science,” it became horribly easy to see oneself as the victim or—gulp—the accused. In this 1934 novel based on an infamous 1922 murder case, crack storytelling and rich historical detail reanimate accused murderer Julia Almond and the rigidly patriarchal middle-class milieu which incubated the deadly act. Her tale gains intensity as the scene shifts to the courts and those same prejudices pervert justice and compound the crime. Long out-of-print, this cult classic has just been reissued in the British Library Women Writers series and is recommended for those who can’t get enough period crime series from the BBC. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643355883064-WK5S7VOONGIVVVOGDSA5/Hart_Act.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 24, 2022) Phinney by Post Book #85 Act One: An Autobiography by Moss Hart There's a reason that Act One, a massive bestseller when it came out in 1959, is still beloved by theater kids everywhere as the great Broadway memoir. Hart himself was as stage-struck as they come, and his story of how he rose, through lucky breaks and setbacks, from poverty in the Bronx to hit plays and major prizes, is charming, funny, and as brilliantly observed and constructed as any script he wrote. But you don't have to be a theater kid to love it: the book's final third especially, the story of his first Broadway production, is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that shows just how much sweat, anxiety, and ingenuity goes into putting on even the fizziest of farces. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643355891421-VHH95HETT16NZ6GV26HW/Gauld_Little.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 24, 2022) Phinney by Post Kids Book #73 The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld One of the best things a fairy tale can do is take a bizarre premise and make it seem natural, following wherever its strange rules lead. What would happen, for example, if a childless royal couple had two children made out of wood? In the hands of Gauld, who you may know from his Snooty Bookshop postcard set, the result is a tale told with all the lightness, heart, and adventure you could hope for in 32 pages. (Age 2 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1642202916170-1YNDLVXJCKSB9JEMR2PA/Attenberg_Came.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 10, 2022) I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg I could not stop reading Jami Attenberg’s new memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You, and that is exactly how I like to read books. I read this one, in its entirety, on Boxing Day. I loved Jami’s honest voice, how she owns that she came into this world to be a writer. I didn’t even mind that this book is a memoir in essays, with no overarching narrative storyline. But it’s not the arc I was reading for: I read for Jami’s descriptive writing and her compelling, strong voice. As soon as I finished, I went out and purchased her latest novel. This book is perfect for people who love memoirs, or Lily King's novel Writers & Lovers, and I won’t be surprised if this one ends up on my 2022 top ten list (even though I cheated and read it at the end of 2021). —Nancy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1642202925585-NEI95XVNTDNFRE1OHOPX/Prose_Maid.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 10, 2022) The Maids by Nita Prose For fans of 2018’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, I give you The Maid by Nita Prose. Protagonist Molly Gray is also ... different. She’s exceedingly good at her job as a maid at the high-end Regency Grand Hotel, where her daily goal is to return each room to “a state of perfection.” But she sees the world as very black and white. To the reader, she’s clearly on the spectrum, although most of her co-workers just think she’s kind of weird. That outsider status makes her an easy target for being taken advantage of by so-called friends, as she gets sucked into a murder mystery at the hotel. But, as in Eleanor Oliphant, there is so much more to Molly than what co-workers and hotel guests see on the surface. And as Molly slowly reveals her back story, the reader is soon rooting for her story’s ending to be perfection. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1642202943229-5UW1FW6GRZXUQKZHWRQW/Fung_Living.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (January 10, 2022) Living with Viola by Rosena Fung We can all use a reminder to be gentle with ourselves, and Living with Viola by Rosena Fung showcases this in a beautifully illustrated middle grade graphic novel. Lovable sixth-grader Livy Tong struggles with social pressure, friends, and the negative voice in her head (personified in the imaginary character Viola). Perfect for fans of Raina Telgemeier and Victoria Jamieson, Living with Viola is a great kid-friendly message about living with and managing anxiety. (Ages 8 to 12) —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1639693571529-CO65B5ZJ4YGZPMEDWB2W/Keegan_Small.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 13, 2021) Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan The only thing more impressive than an author conjuring a realistic world and three-dimensional characters from thin air is when they manage to do so in only 114 pages. Let's peer for a moment into the snowglobe world Claire Keegan has created in Small Things Like These. We're in a rural town in 1985 Ireland, where coal merchant Bill Furlong and his wife Eileen are stretching their meager finances to provide a happy Christmas for their five daughters. The festive touchstones of the season are all present: snow, lights, baking, choirs singing carols, but the book focuses on Bill's personal revelations about his family and the community. In just a few words, Keegan so beautifully depicts this setting and the completely real character of Bill that I was far from ready to say goodbye after a mere 114 pages. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1639693592042-4Y6JVPMUOUNSC8OK3TDL/Hunt_Radical.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 13, 2021) The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood by Tristram Hunt Josiah Wedgwood might be remembered best now as a venerable fine-china tradename and, perhaps, as Charles Darwin's grandfather, but in his tirelessly eventful life he put himself at the center of a rapidly changing England, as one of the leading entrepreneurs of the Industrial Revolution, as well as a free-thinking supporter of abolition and the French Revolution (even as he built his ceramics business by catering to aristocratic luxury tastemakers). Hunt captures the man's energy and charm, with a museum curator's particular eye for both the engineering and marketing brilliance that made him the Steve Jobs of his day and made Wedgwood one of the first global brands. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1639693598797-CPO9ZSR6KSBPIDJVPH27/Conde_Tituba.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (December 13, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #84 I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox Even during their own lives, the women, men, and children entangled in the Salem witch trials were caught between reality and the imagination, and as their lives have been further mythologized since, the one with perhaps the least measure of reality is Tituba, the slave accused of witchcraft about whom little is known, not even whether she was Native American or African. Into that space leaps the Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé, imagining a life both tragic and joyful for Tituba, in which her time in Salem—no more tragic than the rest of her days but far less joyful—is a forgettable interlude compared to her time before and after on her home island of Barbados. It is, as Tituba says, a "bitter, bitter story," but Condé, much like her hero, is a high-spirited, life-loving, sharp-elbowed storyteller. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1639693607021-3FM02K45CEEJLXT7WS7T/Morstad_Time.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (December 13, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #70 Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad Does the cover of Time Is a Flower make you think of an early '80s jazzercise VHS tape, or a late '70s Gail Sheehy bestseller? Open it anyway, and you'll find a wonderfully evocative and open-ended appreciation of one of the most basic, but most mysterious, elements of our lives: time, whether it moves slowly or quickly, whether it makes your hair grow or a mountain turn, gradually, into a pebble. It's one of my favorite picture books of the year. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638739635678-WUAFU0OKW6LR67K24E7M/Groff_Matrix.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 15, 2021) Matrix by Lauren Groff The story of Matrix kept reminding me, strangely, of its fellow National Book Award finalist, Laird Hunt's Zorrie, which also compresses the full scope of a woman's life, cloistered and full of work and longing, into the space of a short, lyrical novel. But Groff's Marie is not a modest farmer in rural Indiana but an ambitious abbess in 12th-century England, who is both a visionary writer (based in that respect on the poet Marie de France, of whose life little is known) and a brilliantly competent administrator, who transforms her visions into a powerful, fortified, all-female institution whose ever-growing prosperity both protects her subjects and endangers them. As a portrait of admirable, ancient power, I was reminded of another superb novel, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638739644978-7EN4VFAIA8WTCBGTSGQG/Maerz_Alright_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Paperback of the Week (November 15, 2021) Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused by Melissa Maerz I should say first that Dazed and Confused is one of those movies that went straight into my bloodstream when I first saw it and has never left, a miracle of ensemble acting and pitch-perfect attention to detail. If you at all agree, you will likely devour Maerz's oral history, which quotes nearly everyone involved in its production to recreate how this odd miracle—a teen stoner comedy that can hold its own with the best of Altman and Renoir—happened. The answer comes, in part, from Linklater's stubborn and sometimes devious vision, but also from the people he brought together to inhabit and enlarge that vision. Some became stars, and some, for reasons tragic or inevitable or intentional, didn't, but there's a sense among all of them that, for one day at this fictional Texas high school, they all shone equally. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638739662472-3BINWQMW3OG96Q7YLCQF/Babb_Owl.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 15, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #83 An Owl on Every Post by Sanora Babb When she was six, in 1913, Babb's father brought their family from their Oklahoma town to an isolated homestead in eastern Colorado, a sod house dug out of a dry land, with the nearest water two miles away. "This place is like a grave," he says when they arrive, and he's not far off. Their time there is often grim, with failed crops, desperate loneliness, and the meagerest of rare pleasures. But somehow, Babb, without shorting their misery, or romanticizing it either, makes of those years something quietly magical, through her attention to place and personality, to the wonders of this strange, inhospitable terrain and the people who manage to survive it. It's a beautiful book about coming of age on the very edge of existence. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638739670961-2IQV10T0N7YWM1E5ABHA/Mann_Camping.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 15, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #71 The Camping Trip by Jennifer K. Mann It may not be the best time of year for camping, but Mann's picture book, a recent winner of the Washington State Book Award, is a warm, funny, and relatable story of just what its title says, young Ernestine's first camping trip, away from her home and her dad. Filled with the pleasures of planning, packing, and camaraderie, as well as the manageable anxieties of a night in the dark far from familiar comforts, Mann's friendly ink-and-collage illustrations will offer welcome recognition to young camping veterans and an appealingly approachable adventure to Ernestine's fellow neophytes. (Age 3 to 6) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992772751-OWY5B0PTSYDKTLEND3SR/Lish_War.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 1, 2021) The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish There are few writers whose every book I know I'll read, but, two books in, Atticus Lish is one of them. His debut novel, Preparations for the Next Life, grabs your lapels with its story of two people at the desperate edge of American life, and his second holds on just as hard. His short sentences come at you with a declarative velocity, and his characters push themselves with a similar urgency, even when they are stuck, churning and feeling like they are getting nowhere, like Corey Goltz, the teenage son of a single, ailing mom on the outskirts of Boston, trying to find a father figure and a foothold in a cruel world. If this book had a smell, it would be a gym mat after a long day of mixed martial arts training sessions. Luckily, it doesn't, but you may find yourself needing a shower, or a long, brooding walk, after it's done. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992781752-P9IL5S60621IDI8VF5QE/Shopsin_Laser.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 1, 2021) LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin As much as I liked The War for Gloria (see above), when I finished it I needed an antidote, and this sweet little book was the perfect prescription. When I say that it's a novel about an Apple repair shop in Manhattan in the 1990s, I mean that is exactly what it is about. No love story, no grand metaphors or broad social commentary. But like Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Shopsin's wonderful memoir about her family's Greenwich Village diner, it's a funny, heartening portrait of a small business that, while it lasts, operates as a refuge both for honest, creative work and for a city's misfits. It may make you pine for the lost art of printer repair. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992795845-CWJ6Q39OAKTUVXDI9GQ4/Fulford_Photo.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 1, 2021) Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph by Jason Fulford Admirers of Tamara Shopsin (see above) are likely aware that Jason Fulford is her husband and collaborator, a photographer and fellow designer who shares her sideways view of things, a viewpoint in full evidence in his latest book, which gives new meaning to the term "photographic negative." Many books will tell you what photos to take, but few will consider what not to take. But this isn't a book of strict rules: he's gathered alphabetical entries from dozens of fellow artists about subjects they try not to shoot, for ethical ("People Praying") or aesthetic ("Anything at 1 P.M.") reasons, or from boredom ("Men with Snakes") or anxiety ("Faces") or disgust ("Feet"). One avoids "Asking Permission," another photos taken "Without Asking Permission." It's a loose and challenging book of personal, idiosyncratic choices that will provoke you to think about any creative choice you might be faced with. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992719179-YIM0C0VUHIF48Q54OAPP/Durkee_Last_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 18, 2021) The Last Taxi Driver by Lee Durkee Have you ever, from desperation or inertia, had a job so terrible that, perhaps most terribly, caught you in a trap of service and subsistence that left you no choice but to wake up and do it again? Lou drives a cab in northern Mississippi, shuttling the poor and rich and sick and drunk between bars and lousy motels and detox facilities and emergency rooms and fast-food jobs for a charismatically vindictive and chiseling boss, tempering his road rage with doses of Bill Hicks and Buddhism and pining over the one time he got to teach Shakespeare to frat boys before getting fired. Full of incidents so grimly bizarre they must have come from Durkee's own time behind the wheel, The Last Taxi Driver is a bitterly funny tour of the American underbelly, led by a guide as beset by demons as any of his passengers. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992733017-2TMB363M18Z6XI1NQ5Y1/Ozeki_Book.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 18, 2021) The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki Annabelle and her son Benny have a lot to deal with, emotionally and otherwise. Her hold on her job is tenuous while her accumulating piles of stuff have a choking grip on their household; he's suffering the usual teenage indignities, compounded by voices in his head that definitely aren't normal; and they're both suffering the loss of Kenji, the easygoing husband and father who used to glue the cracks in their small family together. Author Ozeki lets each of them tell their own tale, binding them back together in heartwarming fashion with a wonderfully accessible metafictional conceit: allowing her book to speak for itself." —James [from the Madison Books newsletter] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992743602-JPN2JH42SEH61EKWSU7V/Sherriff_Fortnight.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 18, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #82 The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff The story of this lovely novel is simple: will the Stevenses, a lower-middle-class family of five from the outskirts of London, enjoy their holidays? It's no small matter: their two weeks at the seaside are the highlight of their somewhat drab and dutiful lives, and require for their success all the foresight and organization of a military campaign. Do they succeed? Well, I hope I won't give the game away entirely by saying that this 1931 novel, recently brought back into print, has joined The Women in Black and Leonard and Hungry Paul as our favorite recommendations for readers looking for heartening and delightful books about life's most modest, but hard-won, victories. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1635992752428-P6K50DBG71P07AUKPSK8/Sima_Hardley.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (October 18, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids #70 Hardly Haunted by Jessie Sima Cobwebs? Check. Creaky doors? Check. Squeaky stairs, rattling pipes, flickering lights? Check, check, and check. What house wants to be haunted, because who would want to live in a haunted house? Well, this lonely house learns, reluctantly, to embrace its nature, but will it find someone willing to make it a home? (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633562356969-JS4R9M3C0ZS63WNXEN05/Franzen_Crossroads.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 4, 2021) Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen Of all the things a novelist can do, Jonathan Franzen is among the best at one of the most important: creating full, human characters who make terrible decisions, again and again. In Crossroads, those characters are the Hildebrandts, a family of six in suburban Chicago in December 1971, each of them vivid and flawed, thwarted by their own essence but capable, possibly, of change. A suburban Christian youth group (which gives the novel its name) may not sound like a promising subject for a 592-page novel, but in Franzen's hands it's rich and fertile ground, not just for satire but for a fully populated world of actions and consequences that left me looking forward to the rest of the trilogy that Franzen has said will follow. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633562483455-6W5Y2INVJEYH6R0872AZ/Ghosts_Monsters.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New and Old Books of the Week (October 4, 2021) Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of Ghost Stories by Sarah Perry, Max Porter, et al. These Our Monsters: The English Heritage Book of New Folktale, Myth, and Legend by Sarah Hall, Paul Kingsnorth, et al. This is the time of year when we seek out stories to touch something primitive in us—we want to revisit the things that scared us years ago, and dig up those that have scared people through the ages. Most of all, we crave the sensation of fear, whether it’s a shiver or a gasp or—for me—a queasiness that signals dread. To satisfy this perennial hunger, English Heritage (the organization that oversees nationally important sites) commissioned two anthologies. In one, top-notch authors crafted ghost stories in historic settings; in the other, they fashioned tales around figures of legend. Time periods, styles, and messages vary, but all triggered that peculiar feeling in the pit of my stomach. They also gave me an itchy Google-finger. But instead of typing in a search box, I merely flipped to the enlightening endnotes. Both books are the perfect package for any combination of: History Buff, Anglophile, Chill-seeker. Warning: You can try to savor these sixteen stories, but you might end up gobbling them like that bag of fun-size Snickers I imagined was for the trick-or-treaters. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633562572368-LBY9S24MARXW7EDX72EN/Wells_Murderbot12.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Books of the Week (October 4, 2021) All Systems Red and Artificial Condition by Martha Wells After multiple customer recommendations for Wells's Murderbot Diaries series, I finally jumped in, and after two books I'm hooked. The books' slim size (most of them just 160 quick-turning pages) give a hint of Wells's great gift: her lightness of touch, which manages to drop you into a fascinating future world—and introduce you to a particularly fascinating main character—with just a few deft strokes. Your guide is a manufactured, near-human security android—a Murderbot, as it calls itself with typical grim humor—which has quietly gone rogue by hacking its own control system. There's plenty of action, and a gradually unfurling plot, but the best attraction is the bot itself, a drily funny and affectingly earnest and awkward machine (imagine Marvin the Paranoid Android, but with the Terminator's combat skills) that would really rather be bingeing on downloaded entertainment serials but feels obligated, by ethics and curiosity, to get to the bottom of a deepening mystery. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633408776712-1D5V032O1QW1ASGFDQP5/Jones_Palmares.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 20, 2021) Palmares by Gayl Jones Jones's first novel in two decades reads like a story that has been marinating at least that long. Set in late-17th-century Brazil, with a historical community of escaped slaves as its title and central idea, Palmares is the story of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who takes her freedom, but it has none of the linear structure we might associate with such a story. In keeping with the complex and fluid racial conditions of colonial Brazil, Almeyda's path is meandering and deeply episodic, as faces come in and out of her life and return, as she waits passively and often silently and then, when possible, takes action. Jones doesn't hold the hand of her reader, but she offers the greater gift of immersing you in a time and place utterly unlike ours, but full of its echoes. It's a one-of-a-kind visionary journey. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633408801098-P11XCR2VOT4Z9OC84L42/Jarre_Distant.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 20, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #81 Distant Fathers by Marina Jarre, translated by Ann Goldstein Jarre was always an outsider: raised speaking German in Latvia, where her Jewish father was killed by the Nazis in 1941, she learned Italian after she moved to her mother's country but spoke French at home within their minority religious community of Waldensians. And from this memoir, which came out in Italian in 1987 but was just translated into English this year, you feel as though she even felt an outsider to herself and her own history, which she holds and examines at arm's-length distance in a brilliant style that might remind you of Phinney favorite Annie Ernaux. She doesn't trust her own memories, but she knows they are all she has. She turns them over in her mind, and from sentence to sentence you have no idea where she will turn next, and you feel that she doesn’t either. It's quite thrilling. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633408828719-FKHR9VKPVPPMMV6OEYIM/Clammer_Insignificance.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 20, 2021) Insignificance by James Clammer The blurb for this describes it as "a plumber's Mrs. Dalloway," which I think is just about right. It's a beautifully handled interior monologue of a fictional tradesman's day, and the narrative intimacy Clammer achieves alone makes this a fascinating novel. His hero's day is not an ordinary one, though, which makes the book's title all the more ironic. Our noble plumber is unexpectedly confronted by his long-estranged son and must relive the crisis that nearly destroyed his marriage and family, making for an altogether thrilling read. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1633408847656-2P0WA33WERN7FZ0SFIBY/Baek_Moon.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (September 20, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #69 Moon Pops by Heena Baek, translated by Jieun Kiaer In her 40s, Baek has already become the first Korean to win the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Award, and with Moon Pops, her first book in English, it's easy to see why. For her illustrations, she builds intricate and evocative dioramas that make each page feel almost three-dimensional, and her story, about a melting moon turned into popsicles on a hot night, is equally ingenious. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1630240265378-SLT9UN2CBDDQV0D1PKDO/Offutt_Killing.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 23, 2021) The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt It's rare that I read everything a writer publishes—I tend to sample more widely—but I come back to Offutt every time, because I know I'm in good hands and because I'm compelled to let everyone else know what a thoroughly enjoyable and modestly masterful writer he is. The Killing Hills is advertised as his "first crime novel," but it's of a piece with his previous book, the wonderful Country Dark: a young man comes home from war to Kentucky and puts his skills, and his country know-how, to use in righting wrongs. In this book, it's as if Offutt has written a Lee Child novel, with an almost superhumanly savvy, two-fisted hero, but grounded it in the local details and drama of the Appalachian hollers he knows so well. It's a brisk, refreshing drink, straight from a mountain spring. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1630240109073-ZX8AZM2XN54KWW4ZTDFF/Sun_Goodbye.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 23, 2021) Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations by Jonny Sun I am often in the process of reading multiple books at once. The trick to this, I think, is to pick books that are different enough from each other: light vs. heavy, fiction vs. nonfiction, long vs. short. Some books are hearty meals. This book is a satisfying snack, especially if you’re one for emotional comfort eating—er, reading. Sun’s bite-sized, bittersweet essays about productivity, anxiety, plants, and family are an excellent excuse to sit down and slow down, to indulge in the wistful and melancholy for a few minutes a few times a day. I finished Goodbye, Again feeling thoughtful and calm ... and contemplating whether it would be wise to adopt another houseplant. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1630240121314-09B82S73MVFD7MVT391Q/Feito_Mrs.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 23, 2021) Mrs. March by Virginia Feito Holy moly, this is quite a novel! It's like watching a train wreck; you can’t stop it, you know it's going to be awful, yet you can’t look away. Mrs. March, as she is called throughout, is “in her head” once she hears that her well-known author husband, whose work she never bothers to read, has based a character in his latest book on her. The trouble is that character is a “whore,” as Mrs. March can only whisper to herself. All of the childhood trauma that she’s managed to bury is brought back to the surface by this trigger, upending her sheltered, privileged, structured New York City life. To watch her devolve is disturbing, yet strangely fascinating. This is an amazing character study. —Cindy (from the Madison Books newsletter) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1628960760589-2YRKJSAAR98OOWP1G54D/Thompson_Beeswing.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 9, 2021) Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967-1975 by Richard Thompson I've often flattered myself that my love for the music of Thompson and his formative band, Fairport Convention, is some obscure passion, but it's clear at any show you go to that his fans are legion, and they (like me) will find many rewards in his first memoir, written with the late Scott Timberg. Parading neither the cryptic dodges of Dylan's Chronicles or the dishiness of Keith Richards's Life, Beeswing is, like its author, straightforward, drily funny, and self-deprecating, while being honest as well about the ambition behind his and his teenage bandmates' invention of British folk rock, as they came of age in the intense, crowded years in the wake of Dylan and the Beatles. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1628960771642-OA7OCWMP6YYOT60YRTXL/Richards_Nights.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 9, 2021) Phinney by Post Book #80 Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards One thing that's especially hard to do in a small town is change your life. Everyone knows who you are, and sometimes they don't like it when you try not to be who you're supposed to be. Joe Walsh is giant of a man, a mechanical genius whose bad back keeps him from working, and, for most of his life, a colossal drinker, which he would not like to be any more. His story is at the heart of Nights Below Station Street, but he's surrounded by family and friends who seem equally frustrated at how hard it is not to be who they are, all described with the warm but unsentimental humor that makes it easy to understand why Richards's many novels about the Miramichi region of New Brunswick have made him a major figure in Canada, even though few readers south of the border have been lucky enough to discover him. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1628960781806-AECG1BRBG00YA7PWLLBV/Prahin_Ship.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (August 9, 2021) Phinney by Post Kids Book #68 Ship in a Bottle by Andrew Prahin Cat and Mouse live in the same house, and things are good, with a few exceptions. Mouse wants to eat gingersnaps, and Cat wants to eat Mouse. Mouse wants to lie in the sun, and so does Cat. After eating Mouse, that is. So Mouse loads up the ship-in-a-bottle on the mantel with gingersnaps, rolls out the window into the river, and sets sail for a new place to live. She encounters storms, gingersnap-stealing seagulls, and stomach-rumbling hunger before settling into a quiet home, surrounded by new friends. Plot summary isn't the way to appreciate a picture book, of course. Author-artist Prahin's perfectly simple story achieves its greatest impact through some of the clearest, most colorful, and loveliest images I've seen in a while. (Ages 2 to 7) —James (from the Madison Books newsletter; we love this one too!) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627511733014-KLUF618VNBBQMX5YPHJ4/Taylor_Filthy.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 26, 2021) Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor Anyone who loved Taylor's debut novel from last year, Real Life (as I did), will feel right at home in the stories in his first collection, which also mostly feature young graduate students in the Midwest. But that's not to say you'll feel comfortable there, because Taylor makes a specialty of discomfort, of putting his characters in the most excruciatingly awkward and revealing situations. Sometimes it's their willingness to go along with what others want of them that puts them there, sometimes it's their own unruly desires (and often it's both), but you know that when his characters are being pushed messily beyond whatever conception they had of themselves (or you had of them), then Taylor has you right where he wants you. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627511742983-R96MJDG4DRTDXA1ZAC1A/McIlvanney_Laidlaw.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 26, 2021) Laidlaw by William McIlvanney Even if you only occasionally visit the crime genre, you’re acquainted with the depressive, philosophical, highly capable but unconventional police detective. But that vast brotherhood springs from a few common ancestors. When award-winning Scottish novelist McIlvanney turned to crime-writing in the 1970s, he created Jack Laidlaw—a man so dour even his best friends find him too much to take sometimes—and became the patriarch of Tartan Noir. And while Mcilvanney may not be the originator of hard-boiled banter, he was one of its most fluent practitioners. In a story set among the gangsters and wanna-bes of working-class Glasgow, there is only one scene of physical violence. Action unfolds through conversation—each discussion an improvisation with the brutal finesse of a prize fight. Recommended for fans of Benjamin Black and Dennis Lehane. —Liz P.S. Laidlaw is the first of a trilogy so revered by McIlvanney’s literary descendants that bestseller Ian Rankin has completed a Laidlaw prequel that McIlvanney left unfinished, coming this fall. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627511761357-AILZMMC0MJ3LCQDHC9OX/Goldfarb_Eager_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery Paperback Book of the Week (July 26, 2021) Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb I didn't need much convincing to read a book about those chubby, flat-tailed rodents: their industrious ingenuity has always made them among the most appealing of animals. But what Goldfarb does in his entertaining survey of the history and the current state of human-beaver relations is make a hard-to-refute case that these squat gnawers are one of the most crucial natural engineers we have, and adding them to an ecologically damaged landscape can often be the most efficient way to bring balance back to nature. This is not one of those books that reveals the hidden intelligence of an unsung animal—we know how smart beavers are! Rather, it shows, via profiles of Beaver Believers across the world, how smart we could be if we just let them do their job. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627512166850-Q5AJSMHD8EX9DALI6XLY/Cohen_Netanyahus.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 12, 2021) The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen Yes, those Netanyahus—sort of! The Netanyahus is, on its face, a novel about Ruben Blum, an economic historian and, as the story takes place at the end of the 1950s, the only Jewish professor at small-town Corbin College. And for its first half it is a more-or-less-well-behaved campus comedy of Jewish assimilation and petty academic maneuvering. Then Benzion Netanyahu, a possible professorial hire who Blum, as a fellow Jew, has been asked to host and vouch for, arrives with his wife and three incredibly badly behaved children, including 11-year-old Benjamin, and chaos, to say the least, ensues. Or, to put it in Philip Roth terms, a book that read like Goodbye, Columbus suddenly turns into Portnoy's Complaint. Is this an authentic portrait of a "very famous" Jewish family? (Cohen claims he based it on an actual incident.) An allegory of some kind? An impish goad? All I know is it was entertaining, funny, and provocative, and I might need to read it another time or two to decide. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1730508756199-U80OEC26L1WHOQOM0VQY/Coates_Message.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1730508788079-UJEDY9OXMHYELX8WTI5Z/Garner_Bach_pb.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1730508899625-RNKEIRGAAOIBFF2VW7SQ/Mersal_Enayat.jpg Newsletter 2021 Gallery http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2020-top-10-gallery-1 daily 0.75 2021-11-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995527927-H3UKZEMM9JVU635AYF01/Beard_Festival.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995527927-H3UKZEMM9JVU635AYF01/Beard_Festival.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995553397-6NVDZVAAKYFFG9FIRIM1/Cusk_Second.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Second Place by Rachel Cusk https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995733138-OD05HG3IZV5NLR0JU9QG/Hardwick_Sleepless.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995566161-YJNL5ZGUNK3OOTAA0G7W/Hunt_Zorrie.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Zorrie by Laird Hunt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995594584-S9PTN1I17NPO45J2TGTW/McMurtry_Leaving.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995764789-OUZ04VEFVXKI10LX8N9L/McPhee_Pine.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Pine Barrens by John McPhee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995695661-HOCQHHSKPNBWY9N866W3/Nova_Good.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Good Son by Craig Nova https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995645784-O247ELROMNH65MKL7L77/Proust_Swann_Davis.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995750047-ZMAO7YDRU70X99Y7QK3Y/Radtke_Seek.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637997220065-0IN94TGK96UEPWLRNW1D/Snijders_Night.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery Night Train: Very Short Stories by A.J. Snijders https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637995666912-L4JREULXT1CDJ6BA0O8W/Villavicencio_Undocumented.jpg Kim 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2021-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998447904-D2Q1XQ9NJSKVY54K8KW8/Edwards_Ebenezer.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998447904-D2Q1XQ9NJSKVY54K8KW8/Edwards_Ebenezer.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998465180-4Y9G07SBX9CIJZTKWEEL/Gibbon_Sunset.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon I was that weirdo who adored every book I had to read in high school. Now, I’m that weirdo who seeks out the books teenagers in other countries have to read. And that’s how I discovered why Sunset Song was voted "the best Scottish book of all time.” Set in a northeastern hamlet called Kinraddie during the first two decades of the 20th century, it recounts the coming-of-age of bookish crofter’s daughter Chris Guthrie, and the passing-of-an-era of unmechanized farming. While Gibbon doesn’t write in dialect, he seeds his lilting prose with an abundance of Scots words so that you feel like you’re learning a new language by living among its speakers. (I checked my work with the glossary at the back.) Being significantly older than a teenager, I thought I knew how the story would unspool, but it twisted and untwisted my heart right up to the end. Sunset Song is rooted in a specific time and place but yields timeless, universal enjoyment. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998211800-4N3SLMUMARS28291F75U/Gibbons_Cold.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998252985-DLPR47SSBOCDLK5FJ9KZ/Jenkins_Tortoise.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998272877-CUDQM1MKTGJ5TKF6Z1V3/Kennedy_Feast.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Feast by Margaret Kennedy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998436277-7EHQPASLV5OEWNPBBVO4/Kennedy_Where.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery Where Stands a Winged Sentry by Margaret Kennedy When it comes to the British Home Front during WWII, the Blitz gets all the attention. As a Blitz-Lit lover myself, I won’t deny its historical dazzle. But having just finished this diary, kept during the summer after Dunkirk—when Brits reasonably thought they could be invaded and even lose the war—I see why the “quiet” can be just as fascinating as the “storm.” A published historian, as well as a famous novelist at the time, Kennedy had a keen sense for detail, dialogue, and geopolitics. But she was also a mother to three children, and she discovered that the qualities that make her diary so compelling were not as practical as the staunch sentiments of her less “imaginative” fellow citizens. Her account has eerie echoes of the year we just endured: she penetrates the amorphous dread that arises when nothing too extraordinary is happening except History-with-a-capital-H. (And she manages to be really funny too.) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998290190-ODAIBY9RFREHABLXPPKN/Shibli_Minor.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery Minor Detail by Adania Shibli https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998361785-SUQENAJGSY5WNPBNZYIQ/Roth_Radetsky.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998414540-5FMBI2ISB7FJG3I3P5GM/Roth_What.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 by Joseph Roth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1637998231721-VFMWG6RV474RWEMSSY22/Perry_Eight.jpg Liz 2021 Top 10 Gallery Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories by Sarah Perry et al. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2021-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-11-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000385793-MTH4DTBGIOJATZUDBHZ2/Alderton_Ghosts.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Ghosts by Dolly Alderton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000385793-MTH4DTBGIOJATZUDBHZ2/Alderton_Ghosts.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Ghosts by Dolly Alderton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000401181-WKR8J7V82X68YA93Z2KA/Cho_Tastes.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000360537-3P8D161VU5454UL62QE6/Hanff_Q.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000369953-OCOJKHYO0IZVK1L8BBOK/Hoban_Turtle.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000410563-FANAOC6U7RQEX789EFWS/Keegan_Small.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000392229-E7OSAOJFQLBJ3PVPV9SK/Kendi_Four.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000323122-HB8FLRR7EUBU14JH5YWS/North_Outlawed.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Outlawed by Anna North https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000352353-FD9ACNPML4MDCE8BTVQT/Sedaris_Carnival.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020) by David Sedaris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000377481-BYP7YOLMWCG5L435FS2V/Shapiro_Carol.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Carol and the Pickle Toad by Esme Shapiro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638000705301-T7FYS50W7OW6Y50Y950P/Zauner_Crying.jpg Haley 2021 Top 10 Gallery Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2021-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299655314-EV2R6DK3QPSOR6P8NBU7/Austin_Everyone.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin This book had me at "Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death." I was fully prepared from that one-sentence summary to love this novel, but I hadn't anticipated how much I would identify with Gilda's character (and her neuroses); reading her story was sort of like looking at the worst-case scenario version of myself on paper, which could have easily been terrible, but instead was strangely cathartic. Through Gilda's stream of consciousness, Austin captures what it is to be anxious and depressed and flailing in a way that is darkly funny and emotionally honest and leads us to some surprising and dubious places. It's like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but with actual young adults instead of teens. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299655314-EV2R6DK3QPSOR6P8NBU7/Austin_Everyone.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin This book had me at "Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death." I was fully prepared from that one-sentence summary to love this novel, but I hadn't anticipated how much I would identify with Gilda's character (and her neuroses); reading her story was sort of like looking at the worst-case scenario version of myself on paper, which could have easily been terrible, but instead was strangely cathartic. Through Gilda's stream of consciousness, Austin captures what it is to be anxious and depressed and flailing in a way that is darkly funny and emotionally honest and leads us to some surprising and dubious places. It's like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but with actual young adults instead of teens. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299629212-MT9QUO8F8EA7HP6DHITB/Ditlevsen_Copehagen.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299715951-R75DL15I6ARY7V2SCU7S/Doughty_Smoke_pb.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299613357-MMCFB1BFGD60AT7Z33AI/Odell_How_pb.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299816793-6CN6QQJW7690J30KL89E/Ostertag_Girl.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag This gorgeous graphic novel is a cute sapphic interspecies romance that is at turns silly, sweet, and serious. After a near-drowning, Morgan (a human) is saved by Keltie (a selkie). Believing Keltie to be a literal dream girl, Morgan takes the opportunity to make out with her; Keltie, however, is quite real, and she believes what she shared with Morgan was true love's kiss. They enter into a relationship in which Morgan makes classic mistakes that many teenagers make when swept up in a new romance, except her motivation for disappearing on friends and family is less that she's obsessed with this cute girl she gets to kiss (though that's definitely part of it) and more that her sexuality is a secret she'd planned to keep until college. Her relationship with Keltie proves to be a difficult secret to keep, because Keltie isn't exactly subtle or convincingly human or knowledgeable about LGBTQI+ issues. But "Sometimes you have to let your life get messy. That's how you get to the good parts." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299729042-J0G95QHG32JQWQD2O4WT/Polzin_Brood.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Brood by Jackie Polzin "Life is the ongoing effort to live. Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not." As a person who aspires to one day keep my own backyard chickens, I was delighted by this little novel about an unnamed woman who becomes mother to a flock of four hens in rural Minnesota. Polzin's writing is spare but so specific in its attention to detail that I forgot, more than once, I wasn't reading a memoir, or sitting outside, observing the meanderings of actual flesh-and-blood chickens. But Brood is about so much more than the precarious business of raising chickens. It's a meditation on life—expectations, transitions, grief—and reading it felt like a hug after a hard year. P.S. I am team Gloria. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299827535-ZIM6U1M99H2WPARZWSPS/Smyth_Falling.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Falling in Love Montage by Ciara Smyth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299668377-4PEVAOHO31D9XXR74F0V/Sun_Goodbye.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Goodbye, Again by Jonny Sun I am often in the process of reading multiple books at once. The trick to this, I think, is to pick books that are different enough from each other: light vs. heavy, fiction vs. nonfiction, long vs. short. Some books are hearty meals. This book is a satisfying snack, especially if you’re one for emotional comfort eating—er, reading. Sun’s bite-sized, bittersweet essays about productivity, anxiety, plants, and family are an excellent excuse to sit down and slow down, to indulge in the wistful and melancholy for a few minutes a few times a day. I finished Goodbye, Again feeling thoughtful and calm ... and contemplating whether it would be wise to adopt another houseplant. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299598253-4VVPAK8E6KGY8HQ5OECR/Unsworth_Grown_pb.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Grown Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth From the outside, 35-year-old Jenny McLaine appears to be a successful adult. She owns her house, has a cool writing job in London, a few good friends, and up until recently she lived with her famous photographer boyfriend. Her inner monologue quickly shatters this illusion of put togetherness, revealing Jenny to be neurotic, self-obsessed, and needy; she can’t put down her phone and cares exceedingly about being “liked” on social media to the detriment of her real world relationships. Grown Ups is a satirical portrait of the elder millennial that is messy, tender, and hilarious. Go ahead: put your phone down, pick it up! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638299642840-761JFQPVJ32EGHFCC54F/Wein_Code.jpg Anika 2021 Top 10 Gallery Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein If not for World War II, and their roles in it, Queenie of Scotland and Maddie of Manchester would likely have never met, which would be a shame, because their fierce love and dynamic talents make them a sensational team. Each is doing her part for the British War Effort: Queenie “Verity” as an interrogator, and Maddie “Kittyhawk” as a pilot. But their mission to Nazi-occupied France goes awry, forcing Maddie to crash land the plane and Queenie to parachute out, only to be arrested by the Gestapo. “Verity” must reveal the details of their assignment or face execution. Code Name Verity is a vivid and brazen story about love and loyalty. It’s deeply researched, profoundly painful, and perfectly exemplifies how a made-up story might reveal a deeper truth. I only wish I’d read it sooner. (Age 14 and up) http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2021-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-11-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300825503-ED9OVQ324ILUOWFOMDQ2/Barclay_Find.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Find You First by Linwood Barclay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300825503-ED9OVQ324ILUOWFOMDQ2/Barclay_Find.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Find You First by Linwood Barclay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300934000-B3J961TPOU3OHYWX9HK9/Brosh_Solutions.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300980448-RTB4RZIP0DGEXC7KPF9Q/Brosh_Hyperbole.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300920042-TX3MOE0ZCEB0E13065QY/Christie_Rehearsals.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Rehearsals by Annette Christie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300811327-WD141ONSETAM1AGLVVMK/Feeney_His.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery His & Hers by Alice Feeney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300790502-7ES9X4YCSLBKSVZ5FSJS/Harper_Lost_pb.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Lost Man by Jane Harper https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300738562-VPCIW07OJHJB8ME24PC2/King_Folly.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Folly by Laurie R. King https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300713490-2QK1857K0T4GT2I7ER8U/Kubica_Local.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300704915-O07WIMS8A42KHNPVL4JG/Lester_Riviera.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Riviera House by Natasha Lester https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300802867-EMX6IZA9S709AINZU37B/Lippman_Dream.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Dream Girl by Laura Lippman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638300909635-0XLSBRJUTBB4BP9ZEN8P/Weir_Hail.jpg Doree 2021 Top 10 Gallery Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2021-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-11-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301993193-Y21K1KP9DYWRBIET0PN7/Bowler_No.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301993193-Y21K1KP9DYWRBIET0PN7/Bowler_No.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301982787-M7HX9GPW70SLUZ5ZATP8/Davies_Lie.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301914888-MK6K0D4Z8SNJIPL1WTCS/Haig_Midnight.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Midnight Library by Matt Haig https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301865283-RKMOPHG9L1KK7UZE4YID/Mason_Sorrow.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638302027757-8TELC7Y4ALWLHOGL5283/Moore_Long.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery Long Bright River by Liz Moore https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301959672-Q5EY3PJ6RN6501P2CH1I/Penny_Madness.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638302017536-ZWHH01XYJ7Q8NB6YE6S5/Rooney_Beautiful.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638302004522-OJI0F5PY2W7BYD0ZAWIM/Ruhl_Smile.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301973787-NBKK7Q2L63C8R1OX3H5K/Sale_Lets.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery Let’s Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638301940603-W2S2ZDW7FY2CB71C7XMU/Strout_Oh.jpg Nancy 2021 Top 10 Gallery Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2021-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2021-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303297206-DRCRWDP2UOG4B9XHD88B/Beard_Festival.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard Jo Ann Beard doesn't write—or at least publish—a lot, but, boy, when she does... She's in her mid-sixties, and this is just her third book; her first, The Boys of My Youth, made her a bit of a cult hero in the rather uncultish world of essay writing. I am a card-carrying member of that cult (it was a Phinney by Post selection a few years ago), so when I say that her new book, Festival Days, is as good as that one, please understand that makes it the best new book I've read this year. Why are these essays (and two pieces she calls "stories") so heart-flutteringly good? There is her tender, clear-eyed intimacy with mortality (most of the stories concern the dying and the dead); there is the equally tender, lively presence of animals (dogs, mostly) through nearly every story. But most of all it is the structure of these stories, subtly ricocheting and reverberating between mourning and laughter, between memory and the moment, that gives them the fullness that only the most observed and felt life ever achieves. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303297206-DRCRWDP2UOG4B9XHD88B/Beard_Festival.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard Jo Ann Beard doesn't write—or at least publish—a lot, but, boy, when she does... She's in her mid-sixties, and this is just her third book; her first, The Boys of My Youth, made her a bit of a cult hero in the rather uncultish world of essay writing. I am a card-carrying member of that cult (it was a Phinney by Post selection a few years ago), so when I say that her new book, Festival Days, is as good as that one, please understand that makes it the best new book I've read this year. Why are these essays (and two pieces she calls "stories") so heart-flutteringly good? There is her tender, clear-eyed intimacy with mortality (most of the stories concern the dying and the dead); there is the equally tender, lively presence of animals (dogs, mostly) through nearly every story. But most of all it is the structure of these stories, subtly ricocheting and reverberating between mourning and laughter, between memory and the moment, that gives them the fullness that only the most observed and felt life ever achieves. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303088990-AEYJ4XSE5A8CFR8GPVXW/Forna_Devil.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Devil That Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna One of our favorite novels to recommend in recent years has been Happiness, Forna's story of two people meeting in London: Jean, an American woman in her 40s, and Attila, a wonderfully appealing Ghanaian man in his 60s. After reading this memoir, I couldn't help imagining that Attila is an idealized portrait of the man Forna's father might have lived to become. The Devil That Danced on the Water recounts Forna's earliest years, as she is shuttled between Sierra Leone and Scotland, the homelands of her father and mother, while her idealistic physician father rises in the government of his newly independent nation and is then destroyed as it falls into dictatorship. It's a tender, fascinating, and brilliantly observed story that seamlessly weaves together her child's perspective with the often terrible knowledge of later experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303341797-JOKMVW1N52CN7CCG6CHN/Franzen_Crossroads.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen Of all the things a novelist can do, Jonathan Franzen is among the best at one of the most important: creating full, human characters who make terrible decisions, again and again. In Crossroads, those characters are the Hildebrandts, a family of six in suburban Chicago in December 1971, each of them vivid and flawed, thwarted by their own essence but capable, possibly, of change. A suburban Christian youth group (which gives the novel its name) may not sound like a promising subject for a 592-page novel, but in Franzen's hands it's rich and fertile ground, not just for satire but for a fully populated world of actions and consequences that left me looking forward to the rest of the trilogy that Franzen has said will follow. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303409908-ZNG5XYSML3D1GOBPEWUD/Highsmith_Diaries.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks, 1941-1995 by Patricia Highsmith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303133792-IKFNJVEG5779CZUU2QGX/Hunt_Zorrie.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Zorrie by Laird Hunt Zorrie is a short novel about a full life. Not full in the usual way we think of for a character in fiction: travel, romances, adventure, public achievements. Zorrie Underwood's life, covering most of the 20th century, was so tied to the soil of her patch of rural Indiana that a few months spent working in Illinois as a young woman remained an exotic memory for years after. Mostly she worked, hard, and loved, patiently, with her curiosity and appreciation of the world around her burbling along at a low simmer. This little gem will remind readers of Marilynne Robinson and Kent Haruf and (for me especially) of Brad Watson's lovely Miss Jane, as it reminds us of the passions that can grow, and be sustained for decades, in a quiet mind and a laboring body. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303257162-A3WDMNVJ7KXA1L3HFD2L/Jarre_Distant.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Distant Fathers by Marina Jarre, translated by Ann Goldstein Jarre was always an outsider: raised speaking German in Latvia, where her Jewish father was killed by the Nazis in 1941, she learned Italian after she moved to her mother's country but spoke French at home within their minority religious community of Waldensians. And from this memoir, which came out in Italian in 1987 but was just translated into English this year, you feel as though she even felt an outsider to herself and her own history, which she holds and examines at arm's-length distance in a brilliant style that might remind you of Phinney favorite Annie Ernaux. She doesn't trust her own memories, but she knows they are all she has. She turns them over in her mind, and from sentence to sentence you have no idea where she will turn next, and you feel that she doesn’t either. It's quite thrilling. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303359584-55953LUMI79CUVSE8O83/Jones_Palmares.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery Palmares by Gayl Jones Jones's first novel in two decades reads like a story that has been marinating at least that long. Set in late-17th-century Brazil, with a historical community of escaped slaves as its title and central idea, Palmares is the story of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who takes her freedom, but it has none of the linear structure we might associate with such a story. In keeping with the complex and fluid racial conditions of colonial Brazil, Almeyda's path is meandering and deeply episodic, as faces come in and out of her life and return, as she waits passively and often silently and then, when possible, takes action. Jones doesn't hold the hand of her reader, but she offers the greater gift of immersing you in a time and place utterly unlike ours, but full of its echoes. It's a one-of-a-kind visionary journey. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303375490-N690VIIYMZ6L4GMFADBJ/Lish_War.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish There are few writers whose every book I know I'll read, but, two books in, Atticus Lish is one of them. His debut novel, Preparations for the Next Life, grabs your lapels with its story of two people at the desperate edge of American life, and his second holds on just as hard. His short sentences come at you with a declarative velocity, and his characters push themselves with a similar urgency, even when they are stuck, churning and feeling like they are getting nowhere, like Corey Goltz, the teenage son of a single, ailing mom on the outskirts of Boston, trying to find a father figure and a foothold in a cruel world. If this book had a smell, it would be a gym mat after a long day of mixed martial arts training sessions. Luckily, it doesn't, but you may find yourself needing a shower, or a long, brooding walk, after it's done. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303438671-OMQIY23OXJTKSCU5AFX6/Momaday_Names.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Names: A Memoir by N. Scott Momaday A review quoted on the back of The Names calls it "a Native American version of Roots," an obvious comparison at the time (both books came out in 1976, and Roots was an immediate blockbuster) for an American story of non-white ancestry, but that's about where the similarities end. There is ancestry in The Names, but, unlike Roots, it is equally the story of an individual consciousness, of a writer coming to understand the world. The story has a forward movement to it, from his forebears to his own coming of age, but it is hardly linear, as Momaday circles back through memory, his own and his ancestors', to construct his own imagination. His "I" is often a "we," but it is no less concrete for that, full of a wonder that's grounded in the details of personality and place and that makes his well-observed existence seem like a miracle. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303324940-51278NZ0ZCAM0JUBGLHB/Offutt_Killing.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt It's rare that I read everything a writer publishes—I tend to sample more widely—but I come back to Offutt every time, because I know I'm in good hands and because I'm compelled to let everyone else know what a thoroughly enjoyable and modestly masterful writer he is. The Killing Hills is advertised as his "first crime novel," but it's of a piece with his previous book, the wonderful Country Dark: a young man comes home from war to Kentucky and puts his skills, and his country know-how, to use in righting wrongs. In this book, it's as if Offutt has written a Lee Child novel, with an almost superhumanly savvy, two-fisted hero, but grounded it in the local details and drama of the Appalachian hollers he knows so well. It's a brisk, refreshing drink, straight from a mountain spring. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303077662-I7OSFTX670QOB5H1G3JG/Saunders_Swim.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders George Saunders is one of the best short-story writers around—he blew out the doors of the genre back in the '90s and has not rested since—and if you've seen him speak or read his interviews you'll know that he's also one of the wisest givers of advice on the craft and creative process of fiction writing, so it's no surprise that this book is a treat. Based on a class he taught at Syracuse for two decades, it includes seven stories by 19th-century Russian masters (including three by Chekhov, among them the exquisite "Gooseberries," the source of his title), each followed by Saunders's modest, funny, and thoroughly insightful analysis of both the technical and—dare I say it—moral details that make them tick. It's obviously a book for writers, including some exercises at the back that I, who hate writing exercises, might actually try, but it's equally a book for readers, especially those for whom stepping back and examining how art is made just adds to the wonder of its creation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1638303391758-W0JM8MFN2DIJDYRQSRR6/Shopsin_Laser.jpg Tom 2021 Top 10 Gallery LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin As much as I liked The War for Gloria (see above), when I finished it I needed an antidote, and this sweet little book was the perfect prescription. When I say that it's a novel about an Apple repair shop in Manhattan in the 1990s, I mean that is exactly what it is about. No love story, no grand metaphors or broad social commentary. But like Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Shopsin's wonderful memoir about her family's Greenwich Village diner, it's a funny, heartening portrait of a small business that, while it lasts, operates as a refuge both for honest, creative work and for a city's misfits. It may make you pine for the lost art of printer repair. http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2022-11-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446044361-MDWCY84RWF4675HYZSQO/Au_Cold.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446044361-MDWCY84RWF4675HYZSQO/Au_Cold.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669445875560-QD3MYQRDJRY78D89YXZI/Beaton_Ducks.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669445828176-QJBODJORY57C8KASA38X/Bloom_In.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446302770-A6LKLNNQZEP4OO3RAVBP/DeWitt_English.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446286915-QFQLT3IKKW4AXZFMDOXR/Frazier_Gone.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Gone to New York: Adventures in the City by Ian Frazier https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669445898271-IIOTG32C42MP7F6L96B5/Gluck_Winter.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems by Louise Glück https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669445945359-4147A96HPC78COEII823/Nors_Wild.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Wild Swims: Stories by Dorthe Nors https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446244297-RUM3QH4IJDMSH1R61WKS/Ruefle_Dunce.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Dunce by Mary Ruefle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446088353-FTQS464KPURL4MXM29WX/Scanlan_Kick.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669445998569-YUS2W9DBHRJR4URPA1FB/Schulz_Lost_pb.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Lost and Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446464713-17JD9E19EPW0SLJE3SQ1/Trevor_Last.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery Last Stories by William Trevor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669446378433-TS5UGNKWUOX6X1OV1ABJ/Williams_This.jpg Kim 2022 Top 10 Gallery This Is Happiness by Niall Williams http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2022-11-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448141732-V9EBLJNQEZBK0ZGM1FPA/Melchor_Paradais.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Paradais by Fernanda Melchor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448141732-V9EBLJNQEZBK0ZGM1FPA/Melchor_Paradais.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Paradais by Fernanda Melchor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448244732-AZIJURUPNDFEV2HEYGMG/Pym_Quartet.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448268616-BAN4NQ64YYL6445LJNEW/Cather_Shadows.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather This work of historical fiction, set in Quebec in 1697-98, is a quiet charmer. By that time, the early, renowned explorers, fur traders, and missionaries were passing away and their deeds spun into the lore of the 100-years-young French colony. Instead, the story focuses on the town apothecary and his young daughter, arrived from Paris eight years earlier. Their home is an oasis of European comfort but the highlights of their year—a moonlit picnic with a sea captain’s talking parrot and unpacking a crèche from across the ocean—reflect both the New and Old Worlds. The family’s experience echoes that of Cather’s other pioneers, and more faintly, today’s immigrants. While reading, I felt like we’ve almost come full circle: the next chapter is when we resettle to other planets or galaxies! The novel opens and closes in October, and painterly renderings of autumn at that latitude—the golden foliage, gray rock, and silver mist—bookend a feel-good yet thoughtful tale that’s perfect as winter closes in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448290990-O7DSYLVKWOHK6BLFRVLE/Barker_Caledonia.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker While reading O Caledonia, I thought an apt subtitle would be: Portrait of the Spinster as a Young Girl, even though our protagonist is found murdered—at age 16—on the first page. Janet definitely has the quirks and qualities which—in her upper-class, 1950s milieu—brand her as a potential spinster. But it was more that I was reminded of some British women who often wrote about that demographic so cruelly expanded by WW1. Barker’s intelligence has the micro/macroscopic focus of Sylvia Townsend Warner—Janet could have been her generation’s Lolly Willowes! And her hilarious grasp of human peculiararity reminds me of Elizabeth Taylor. There’s even a whiff of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm in the ramshackle family castle and its weirdest residents. Despite these echoes, the book is as singularly bewitching as its heroine. And don’t fear that its opening portends mystery and tragedy. Just as Janet refuses to conform, her story breaks all bonds of literary expectation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448305563-3MT15KQZ08ZBPKOJAN5H/Riley_Phantoms.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448321164-3VVJO4QY96HQTGIPXQ7I/Holtby_South.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery South Riding by Winifred Holtby Here’s the pitch: a soap opera about local government with hints of Middlemarch and Peyton Place. Well. You’d forgive a publisher for taking a pass, but this 1937 novel was an instant bestseller, adapted for film and TV, and has never been out of print (though it's not always easy to find in the U.S.). The secret ingredient is the author herself. Holtby was a native of Yorkshire (location of the fictional South Riding) and a well-known progressive journalist-activist. Chapter by chapter, she moves from the Shacks to Maythorpe Hall, focusing on residents who are never entirely heroic or evil or foolish. The marquee romance may echo the Janes (Eyre/Austen), but Holtby was an expert on the plot twist. As she was writing, she knew she was dying of kidney disease—her most tender portrayals are characters who share that fateful perspective. Her final novel is often called a “beloved classic” because in both challenging and comforting herself, Holtby did the same for generations of readers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448341008-R40GTSTDORTGK7UDP10C/Taylor_Palfrey.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor Within a few paragraphs, I knew I was in good hands. The hands of a writer at the top of her game, exhibiting perfect control without apparent effort. The story is set in late-1960’s London and follows the still estimable Laura Palfrey (we assume she was once estimable from her handful of memories of married life in Burma) as she settles into the Claremont Hotel as one of its elderly residential guests. Her routine livens up when, on one of her forays outside, she befriends Ludo Myers, a would-be writer the same age as her grandson. The humor—understated zingers, “bits” of comedy gold—is perfectly balanced with a tone of, I won’t say sadness, but an acceptance of the fact that one’s way of life has died and one is merely waiting to follow. I don’t think I truly understood the term “bittersweet” until I finished the last paragraph. Elizabeth Taylor is my new literary crush and I plan to read one of her novels each month, like savoring treats from a box of exquisite chocolates. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448459024-I7GAAE98OQ7CFOMH2INA/Orwell_Wigan.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448588445-ZWH6XXC77UDEHFRTDR0C/Sassoon_Fox.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (Memoirs of George Sherston #1) by Siegfried Sassoon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448601668-H4ZNQUUM9JB5BQSQVYO2/Sassoon_Infantry.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (Memoirs of George Sherston #2) by Siegfried Sassoon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448616437-RIOW3JLT2Y7O05DYR01L/Sassoon_Sherston.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Sherston’s Progress (Memoirs of George Sherston #3) by Siegfried Sassoon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1669448677348-6XI2FO806XO1WCGXNBIH/Ypi_Free.jpg Liz 2022 Top 10 Gallery Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-11-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018912434-0R103XI4XTOB3DA6GTQQ/Beal_Sandfuture.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Sandfuture by Justin Beal I picked up this book (at New York's McNally Jackson bookstore) because it didn't look like anything else on the shelf, and inside it doesn't read like anything else either. Mostly, it's a biography of the Seattle-born architect Minoru Yamasaki, known to us as the designer of what is now the Pacific Science Center but best-known to the world for two since-destroyed structures: the Pruitt-Igoe public housing in St. Louis and the World Trade Center. Around and through Yamasaki's courageous, tireless, sometimes tragic life, Beal—an artist and, by the evidence of this first book, a writer—threads erudite but approachable meditations on architectural failure and success, on the flooding of Hurricane Sandy, on his wife's migraines, on the health of cities and buildings, and more. My brain was working, happily, on every page. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018912434-0R103XI4XTOB3DA6GTQQ/Beal_Sandfuture.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Sandfuture by Justin Beal I picked up this book (at New York's McNally Jackson bookstore) because it didn't look like anything else on the shelf, and inside it doesn't read like anything else either. Mostly, it's a biography of the Seattle-born architect Minoru Yamasaki, known to us as the designer of what is now the Pacific Science Center but best-known to the world for two since-destroyed structures: the Pruitt-Igoe public housing in St. Louis and the World Trade Center. Around and through Yamasaki's courageous, tireless, sometimes tragic life, Beal—an artist and, by the evidence of this first book, a writer—threads erudite but approachable meditations on architectural failure and success, on the flooding of Hurricane Sandy, on his wife's migraines, on the health of cities and buildings, and more. My brain was working, happily, on every page. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018653376-N0MI2WREM871ESX7K2RX/Beaton_Ducks.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton While Kate Beaton was first creating the goofily hilarious history comics that made Hark! A Vagrant such a hoot, her day job was in the oil fields of Alberta, trying to make money quickly, like so many of her fellow Canadians from the Maritimes, where well-paying jobs were few and far between. Now she looks back on those years in an epic graphic memoir in which her humor is subdued but not her powers of observation of the boredom, isolation, and low-key brutality—and the humanity—of working as a young woman in the masculine world of resource extraction. It's a quietly harrowing and sometimes heartening (and sometimes funny!) portrait of a place rarely seen. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018466516-AZ3DM37EOFX10PF3XLZ7/Bloom_In.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom When Amy Bloom's husband, a vigorous ex-jock architect in his mid-60s, learned he had Alzheimer's, he knew immediately he wanted to end his life well before full dementia could have its own way. Doing so legally, as he and Bloom learned, remains nearly impossible in America in his situation, but In Love is the story of how they were able to, a how-to as well as an elegy written with the wit, honesty, and character insight readers will know from Bloom's brilliant fiction. Bloom writes like a messier (she would say more Jewish) Ann Patchett, with a voice that brings her full humor and worldly competence to bear on a dilemma that confounds (but ultimately affirms) both qualities. It's a beautiful and necessary little book. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018498376-X51C2Q2MG1H949KLGHIU/DeWitt_English.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt This little book is a delight every bit as scrumptious—though perhaps not quite as sweet—as the slices of Wayne Thiebaud cake on its cover. Helen DeWitt is, for my money, the most brilliant novelist going right now, and she puts all of her talents—for inhabiting people whose genius doesn't fit the world, for finding just the right word (no matter the language), and for inserting her stiletto into the fattiest parts of corporate culture—to work in this marvelously constructed story of a young woman raised to certain standards, which she finds useful when her life takes a sudden turn. It's one of the first set of New DIrections' yummy new line of Storybooks—slim volumes to be read in one sitting—and it's been flying from hand to hand among our staff and in my family ever since we got it. It's that kind of book. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018479918-IXMVC8Y7EEPHTY7B02W5/Govinden_Diary.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden My glib line on this novel is, "Like Rachel Cusk, if she liked people," but that doesn't really do this book (or the great Cusk) justice. Like Cusk, Govinden, a British novelist hardly known over here, places his narrative in the uneasy but alluring conversational space between people, but what his story (built from the unpromising bones of a master filmmaker presenting his latest picture at a European festival) reminds me most of, in its generosity, its easy-going, wide-ranging intellect, and its savvy and immersive celebration of creative work, is The Conversations, the wonderful dialogue between the writer Michael Ondaatje and the film editor Walter Murch. I was swept away by this brilliant and humane little book—it's my favorite novel of the year so far. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018897676-MB6UX1KX5I0K3Q92ZJ0V/Holtby_South.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery South Riding by Winifred Hotly https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018454745-KOJRMQYLC7U3YNVKZEWA/Keefe_Empire_pb.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe My reading (and listening) usually jumps from subject to subject and style to style, but when I recently finished Evan Hughes’s The Hard Sell, a thorough evisceration of the executives behind Insys Therapeutics, a (briefly) billion-dollar pharma startup built on the aggressive marketing of a single addictive pain drug, I wanted to stay with the subject, and immediately followed it with Keefe's rightfully acclaimed account. The Hard Sell is compelling and infuriating, but Empire of Pain is a masterpiece, a patient and rich profile of three generations of Sacklers, full of brilliance, ambition, and greed, in which Oxycontin, the pill that made them billions while leading many thousands to addiction and death, doesn't appear until halfway through the tale. A riveting and authoritative new classic in one of my very favorite genres, white-collar true crime. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018690989-UJJ8LVT9FZFU0EGKL9B9/Kestrel_Five.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Five Decembers by James Kestrel For a fat book that covers half a decade (as the title implies), Five Decembers moves at the speed of a drag-race sprint. Published by the self-conscious throwback wizards at Hard Case Crime, it's a throwback of sorts too, a stripped-down, hard-boiled World War II tale, but with a bit more heart than the coldest tales of Hammett and Cain. Joe McGrady is a Honolulu cop, and the first December of the story is 1941, so you might think you know where the story is going, but his war years are spent on a goose chase of his own, leading him into a lonely obsession that, if you're like me, you'll spend a few late nights staying up to get to the thrilling end of. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018870688-ZTYXQNR4CYAXBCLWWXAU/Pinckney_Come.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan by Darryl Pinckney In 1973, as a Columbia undergraduate, Pinckney talked his way into Elizabeth Hardwick's writing class, and—at least for the decade and a half covered by this wonderful book—he never left. Nearly 40 years her junior, this aspiring writer from a middle-class black family in Indiana became her student, protégé, friend, and confidant, and a part of the brainy, gossipy world that swirled around the New York Review of Books, while his pals his age, like Luc (later Lucy) Sante, Jim Jarmusch, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, were creating their own scene downtown. His memoir is a tender and sharply observed tribute to Hardwick's fierce brilliance and a stylish journal of his messy and ambitious young life as a reader and writer. It's hard to imagine a book better engineered to my particular obsessions than this one, but its beauty and wisdom are also what made it my favorite book of the year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018883873-Y3O9Y3BUZ5TIPHYLHC4H/Reang_Ma.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Ma and Me: A Memoir by Putsata Reang Reang was her mother's youngest, with a special bond founded between them when she barely survived their escape from the war and the coming genocide in Cambodia in her mother's arms in 1975. But once they settled in Oregon, Put became the most restless of her children, eventually traveling the world as a journalist (at the Seattle Times among many other places) and finally marrying an American woman, which her mother couldn't bear. Reang's memoir is a compelling story, told with both humor and pain, of their bond and their break, of the duty to family and heritage that Reang often embraces at the same time that she claims her independence, and of two fiercely loving and tireless women carrying the weight of tradition and trauma. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018678510-PAQM75REUBF6VROFD6C1/Rodgers_Shy.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green You might know the late Mary Rodgers as the author of the kidlit classic Freaky Friday, or as the composer of the musical Once Upon a Mattress (her one big hit in a long career of trying), or—her most double-edged claim to fame—as the daughter of the composer of big hit after big hit, Richard Rodgers. But after reading Shy, you'll know her as the most entertainingly dishy memoirist you can imagine. From an early age she knew everybody, from (of course) Oscar ("Ockie") Hammerstein to Mae West to her longtime boss Leonard Bernstein to her longtime best pal Stephen Sondheim, and she tells you exactly what she thought about each one of them—and, equally hilariously and unsparingly, about herself as well. ("Reader, I slept with him," is a frequent refrain.) And along with the delicious dish, you get a fascinating portrait of a woman building a creative career and constructing a life in the shadow, and the gilded cage, of fame. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670018519431-PZH7UWA5W4QK0UDLYJJO/Suyin_Winter.jpg Tom 2022 Top 10 Gallery Winter Love by Han Suyin In her long and well-traveled life, Han Suyin, the physician daughter of a Chinese father and a Belgian mother, wrote mostly about Asia, but in 1955 she published this very British gem of a novel, telling, with exquisite precision, the story of a love affair between two medical students in wartime London. Mara, already married, is glamorous amid the drab rationing; Bettina, known as "Red," the narrator, is "mousy" by her own description, but driven and attractive in her own way. The writing is breathtaking in its exactness and in its sudden revelations of beauty and doom, in an affair brutally corralled not only by the social enforcement of who could love each other, but by one character's inability to love at all. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2022-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021371363-DRU4P8BNA8MXE50S0HRV/Baldree_Legends.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021371363-DRU4P8BNA8MXE50S0HRV/Baldree_Legends.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021497478-K4ZWLJRISZ1AMHR7JEQC/Blackall_Things.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Things to Look Forward To: 52 Large and Small Joys for Today and Every Day by Sophie Blackall https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021452589-K0HOWTSJ6RS1YJY74B4N/Erdrich_Sentence.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Sentence by Louise Erdrich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021548797-JVHOEHQ7K7AMSY8YTYCI/Faulkner_Nest.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery My Nest of Silence by Matt Faulkner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021536577-JOB7U7XLI1WJNPYYRDM1/Gavino_Career.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery A Career in Books by Kate Gavino A Career in Books is a real treat: a substantial graphic novel full of wisdom, heart, and humor. The story centers on three best friends, fresh out of college and living together in New York. Each roommate is struggling with a different aspect of navigating the publishing industry as a young Asian American woman. Nina is the go-getter editorial assistant at a large publishing house, whose ambitions often exceed the reality of an entry-level position. Silvia works for a privately funded one-woman publisher, but dreams of writing her own book. Meanwhile, music-loving Shirin has a position at a university press, but isn’t even sure if working in publishing is what she wants to do. Meeting their neighbor, a nonagenarian Booker Prize–winning author whose books have mostly gone out of print, changes the course of each woman’s life. Author Kate Gavino has drawn on her own experience working as an editorial assistant to fully flesh out this story and its characters. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021509370-LZKR9L73L9BQYBV712CN/Halliday_Otherlands.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021413286-FB0F4N3C6VFDWUX188BU/Haushofer_Wall.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside I made the mistake of beginning The Wall on the first day of a trip, and throughout the week my mind was constantly drawn back to thinking about the book and wondering what was going to happen next. On a visit to a cabin in Austria, our protagonist wakes to find an unbreakable invisible wall separating her from the town and countryside beyond. This may sound like a sci-fi plot, but the wall is merely a device in a quiet tale of isolation and survival. If she wants to live, the narrator will have to push her strength and wits to the limits. Though originally written in 1963 (and translated from German), The Wall feels timeless. This is a book that I will keep turning over in my head for a long time and sharing with anyone looking for a recommendation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021523825-MTLVPVW8OZC16JR5POQA/Keegan_Foster.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Foster by Claire Keegan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021562089-DA2D1ERPFX8T4NSMLUCL/Richardson_Bachelor.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast by Bill Richardson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670021473774-GN6J5QJEC4X436Q3SX3L/Tsujimura_Lonely.jpg Haley 2022 Top 10 Gallery Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Philip Gabriel I picked up Lonely Castle in the Mirror knowing nothing beyond the back-cover copy, and I think that's the best way to approach this puzzle of a fantasy novel. Thirteen-yea- old Kokoro spends her days alone in her room, too traumatized to return to junior high after a bad experience with the other students. When her mirror lights up one day, she discovers it's a portal to a mysterious castle. Six other junior high students have also been called to the castle and assigned a quest: to find the key to a room that will grant the finder one wish. This very special book twists and turns and had pierced me through the heart by the end. If you want to cry your eyes out (in a good way), read this book! Fans of The House in the Cerulean Sea will find similar themes of connection and friendship here. While we have Lonely Castle in the Mirror shelved in our adult fantasy/sci-fi section in the store, I'd also recommend it for young adult and even middle grade readers. http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2022-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050448834-UMSQK5MVB89LH2J8UMAO/Elhillo_Girls.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Girls That Never Die: Poems by Safia Elhillo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050448834-UMSQK5MVB89LH2J8UMAO/Elhillo_Girls.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Girls That Never Die: Poems by Safia Elhillo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050511084-2ZHWAWPPY03LGSB9E7NF/Ewing_Fine.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Fine: A Comic About Gender By Rhea Ewing Looking for something to read after Maia Kobabe's award-winning graphic memoir, Gender Queer? Fine is a beautifully diverse and nuanced collection of 56 illustrated interviews that explore gender and expression. There is so much good stuff to dig into here, with sections on masculinity/femininity, hormones, language, relationships, bathrooms, and building community. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Ewing asks questions we should all be exploring. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050581305-GXHOB3EER672HCKSWWO1/Fu_Lesser.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu It’s rare that I find a book of short stories that really works for me, but when an advance copy of this collection showed up with local author Kim Fu’s name on it, I had a good feeling. I was lucky enough to attend two different readings where Fu performed new work: first, at Hugo House, and again, here at Phinney Books. I was struck by her voice and imagination, both of which translate beautifully to the page. Each of the twelve stories is well-written, wonderfully surreal, and distinct. I felt particularly moved by the stories that explore the consequences of possible near-future technologies—"Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867," "Time Cubes," and "Twenty Hours" (think: Black Mirror, but infused with more hope and curiosity than cynicism and dread)—and the ones that read like modern creature myths: "June Bugs" and "Bridezilla." It’s hard to pick a favorite, and that makes it all the easier to recommend. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050525603-7P8RJJ05BYT7CMRZQJ10/Hamid_Last.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” Kafkaesque from its opening line, Hamid's novel feels simultaneously fantastical and familiar. In this world, everyone's white skin turns to dark, inevitably, though not all at once, and people react accordingly: confusion, denial, anxiety, conspiracy, violence. This beautiful book feels incredibly timely, with parallels to pandemic life and our nation's continued reckoning with the injustices of systemic racism. Through Anders and Oona, Hamid shows us, intimately, and with rather hypnotic prose, how people are transformed by experience, made different by context, not only as they transition from white to black but as their lives change in other, perhaps more predictable, ways. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050497973-GQYVY2YP0AVXC9MQYM93/Hauser_Crane.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by C.J. Hauser https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050485710-G02KVID9W4PRJA2L9HFN/Montell_Wordslut.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Monte https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050473592-UAVXUBKSQBNZ37NY6GF2/Ohman_Body.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Body Grammar by Jules Ohman Sometimes, though rarely, I will read a book and feel like I'm watching a movie as I read. Reflecting on this beautiful funny sweet melancholy moving book, I experienced something rarer still: feeling like the story I read was a life I got to live, among characters who felt like real people. Lou had planned to stay in Portland post-graduation, but after a freak accident that was "the worst thing that's ever happened to her" she changes her mind, finally giving into modeling recruiters who have been hounding her for years. While she's catapulted into this new, glittering career and world—which gave me satisfying America's Next Top Model vibes—she's reckoning with questions of who she is and what she wants, the girl and friends she left behind, and the trauma that put her on her current path. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050461856-D8ZYV8DAJP0DM5GI8RNS/Saedi_Miss.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery I Miss You, I Hate This by Sara Said https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050557808-H96MRA3M77CMNLGZ1EJ3/Stromquist_Fruit.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Strömquist, translated by Melissa Bowers This punchy work of graphic nonfiction reads like the best of stand-up comedy in its presentation of the feminist history of "the female genitalia." It highlights the absurd and infuriating; for instance, the actual size of the clitoris wasn't discovered until 1998! Filled with delightful illustrations and fun facts (that are admittedly not always super fun in content but always entertaining in delivery), this book is every bit as humorous as it is educational. I learned so much about how religion, science, and language have shaped our understanding of sex and gender and bodies—and not all of it is infuriating! A good bit is actually encouraging and empowering. Have you ever heard of "menstruation envy"? Neither had I! Everyone should read this. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670050541796-U25OBEU0P8IJUH6RX37Y/Vandermeer_Annihilation.jpg Anika 2022 Top 10 Gallery Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer VanderMeer has created such an atmospheric and foreboding landscape in Area X, and I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into it by the beauty and mystery there. Instead of seizing up with dread or shouting at our protagonist, the biologist of the twelfth expedition, to stop, turn around, and go back when encountering the strange and horrifying, I was eager to stay on her heels and inside of her head. I love a good slow burn and unreliable narrator, particularly when I can tell that even if I don't know exactly what's going on—and especially if the protagonist doesn't—I'm certain the author does. While I'm more than satisfied with Annihilation as a standalone novel, I'm excited to dive into the next installment, to venture further into Area X and embrace more of what I don't and can't know. http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2022-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051329659-Q3CVVMJXDGFROWJFF7SH/Chatagnier_Singer.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier is not a sci-fi novel, despite the presence of crop circles and the fact that scientists of Earth have been communicating with Mars for nearly a century. Instead, this is a novel about loneliness, choices, and love (of people, but mainly of math). When four MIT grad students believe that one of them has finally solved the most recent (yet three-decades-old) mathematical proof that beings on Mars carved into the red planet’s surface, they embark on an epic road trip to Arizona to carve their answer into the Earth. When Mars answers, one of the four—brilliant mathematician Crystal Singer—disappears, driven by her obsession to understand Mars’s latest proof. Her boyfriend struggles to understand her state of mind and the choices she made. This beautifully written debut novel is a love letter to science and exploration, and will change the way you look at the stars—and possibly those you love. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051329659-Q3CVVMJXDGFROWJFF7SH/Chatagnier_Singer.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier is not a sci-fi novel, despite the presence of crop circles and the fact that scientists of Earth have been communicating with Mars for nearly a century. Instead, this is a novel about loneliness, choices, and love (of people, but mainly of math). When four MIT grad students believe that one of them has finally solved the most recent (yet three-decades-old) mathematical proof that beings on Mars carved into the red planet’s surface, they embark on an epic road trip to Arizona to carve their answer into the Earth. When Mars answers, one of the four—brilliant mathematician Crystal Singer—disappears, driven by her obsession to understand Mars’s latest proof. Her boyfriend struggles to understand her state of mind and the choices she made. This beautifully written debut novel is a love letter to science and exploration, and will change the way you look at the stars—and possibly those you love. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051301745-1QPZCM70YDGK5VUH52HY/Cross_Pope.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051247621-N3VQRNSUFMGH8ELFMTPC/Gramont_Christie.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont I love to read novels about libraries, bookstores, or authors, especially if there’s a kernel of historical truth in there. Nina de Gramont’s new novel, The Christie Affair, imagines what really happened when Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926. After a massive manhunt across England, Christie reappeared in a hotel, claiming she didn’t remember what happened. The Christie Affair imagines that time from the point of view of her husband’s mistress. Why did his mistress, who didn’t love Archie, put in motion a plan that took years to see to fruition, to steal him away from Agatha? And what exactly happened to Agatha in those 11 days? Did she really not remember, or was she simply trying to reclaim her life? The best novels find a way to make every character sympathetic in some way, to help the reader understand why they made less than honorable choices, and I found myself alternately rooting for different characters throughout the book. The book left a deep impression on me, still echoing months later. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051284628-AQRKEEV0XCMYHD01KJSU/Feeney_Daisy.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051199924-E6WLJI48K6KNX7UONC68/Garmus_Lessons.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Elizabeth Zott is my new hero. As a scientist in the 1960s, she has to contend with ingrained sexism not just in the world in general, but especially in the world of science, where her male colleagues routinely ask for her input yet never give her credit. Those same men relentlessly comment on her looks (yes, Zott rhymes with hot); then they fire her for being unmarried and pregnant. So, what does she do? She somehow stumbles into hosting a daytime cooking show on a local TV station. But she doesn’t pander to her audience of housewives. Oh, no. Instead, she teaches them science (using only the scientific words for, say, salt and vinegar, and explaining how different types of chemical bonds work in baking). And along the way, she ushers in a nationwide revolution of women standing up for themselves and their brains and their future. Throw in intense personal loss, a dog that understands and responds to hundreds of words (that dog deserves his own book, so I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel!), and a daughter who is beyond precocious, and you get a novel that is smart, funny, heartbreaking, maddening, and inspiring. And one that I just can’t stop thinking about. In fact, it’s my favorite novel from the past year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051314634-T2SZWO0FSWL0XM9YB0ZX/Haig_Midnight.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Midnight Library by Matt Haig https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051345654-ZX9K66LVHL4X2KK2CZ10/Tellier_Anomaly.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051219808-GWMCSXHIJFU16SKOQUDB/Penny_World.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051233815-YN43Z73KSU6J0BO2FC0T/Prose_Maid.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Maids by Nita Prose For fans of 2018’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, I give you The Maid by Nita Prose. Protagonist Molly Gray is also ... different. She’s exceedingly good at her job as a maid at the high-end Regency Grand Hotel, where her daily goal is to return each room to “a state of perfection.” But she sees the world as very black and white. To the reader, she’s clearly on the spectrum, although most of her co-workers just think she’s kind of weird. That outsider status makes her an easy target for being taken advantage of by so-called friends, as she gets sucked into a murder mystery at the hotel. But, as in Eleanor Oliphant, there is so much more to Molly than what co-workers and hotel guests see on the surface. And as Molly slowly reveals her back story, the reader is soon rooting for her story’s ending to be perfection. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670051419517-51RMGR86227NH5S1BKB5/Towles_Gentleman_pb.jpg Doree 2022 Top 10 Gallery A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2022-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2022-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052360497-WUCE7O50G5LHZM7KKNZY/Bloom_In.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052360497-WUCE7O50G5LHZM7KKNZY/Bloom_In.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052404017-M0MG9OHRLJVICOCD219I/Calhoun_Also.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052543156-D5ZDZ292EA6CKS7V06GC/Delaney_Heart.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052339528-VUIYX287U6FLAWUQZK4P/Garmus_Lessons.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Grams https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052444773-UYFB7ZS37FY8MSB15H2X/Hauser_Crane.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by C.J. Hauser https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052430162-5LJYPLTT3V0D2YRQFGPV/Limon_Hurting.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery The Hurting Kind: Poems by Ada Limon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052137179-1PNUSANR7KRIMFGRF63W/Morton_Tasha.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery Tasha: A Son’s Memoir by Brian Morton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052474349-ZK818EL8BCT7N0OMBYUH/Nietfeld_Acceptance.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery Acceptance: A Memoir by Emi Nietfeld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052384027-DUV3VEQ1RDV6LLJFRYBE/Polley_Run.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670103673892-LW6AFO9H2KT5293MZF5H/Straub_This.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1670052280633-FAQWXEISMVDQRYTE165Q/Strout_Lucy.jpg Nancy 2022 Top 10 Gallery Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2022-gallery daily 0.75 2023-01-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466908432-MVLEQIXG0FVGODJKD2JB/Chang_Trees.jpg Kim Unread 2022 The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466908432-MVLEQIXG0FVGODJKD2JB/Chang_Trees.jpg Kim Unread 2022 The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467019201-Q4QLM6D3J5EIK3HBDU3F/Delaney_Heart.jpg Kim Unread 2022 A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467036030-6TM0MKQYR5H0R980UQOJ/Haushofer_Wall.jpg Kim Unread 2022 The Wall by Marlen Haushofer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466998476-POO0MH8E8GPJAJRS7BWL/Holtby_South.jpg Kim Unread 2022 South Riding by Winifred Holtby https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466935753-578G4J8M6HO0TTWHR9JL/Ives_Life.jpg Kim Unread 2022 Life Is Everywhere by Lucy Ives https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466948755-S3P5MFN8KRF7IKNFAOM9/Kennedy_Trespasses.jpg Kim Unread 2022 Trespasses by Louise Kennedy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466959221-RQY6VH3GVE14T58XPHAI/Louis_Battles.jpg Kim Unread 2022 A Woman’s Battles and Transformations by Edouard Louis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466969764-0XJHW4RPEF9OKYXSXN7T/Mortimer_Maps.jpg Kim Unread 2022 Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466977860-0Z2V4EVR1TLA05Q4MP3E/Wilson_Now.jpg Kim Unread 2022 Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672466986118-KMMPDLQMP8ZB85MSIE2A/Yagi_Diary.jpg Kim Unread 2022 Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-unread-2022-gallery daily 0.75 2023-01-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467639548-78Q9Q8FZSO2BETRIKKBY/Burkeman_Weeks.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467639548-78Q9Q8FZSO2BETRIKKBY/Burkeman_Weeks.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467725639-ZWNY78HJRWWOPPM8TQCL/Cain_Bittersweet.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467648866-LV3CZSOTYXT635Z8T7XB/Gross_Vagina.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467656966-QJTFC9AKDIAFYZM3QA11/Hendrix_Best.jpg Anika Unread 2022 My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467667262-XEEXCRL0EB4DJC12SH66/Lin_Magic.jpg Anika Unread 2022 A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467679666-X4U8JUNQ7GKOV3PSC3BB/McCurdy_Glad.jpg Anika Unread 2022 I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467688576-54YM8TJXHSGJ9O1ZY0ON/Montell_Cultish.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467755607-JWY18ZA4MA3T49BK9Q3Q/Polley_Run.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467696442-30W3I60EK5XBOETWWHHB/Schwartz_Sappho.jpg Anika Unread 2022 After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672467707137-ECQOU5WC1Z8U41NTFRRX/Winter_Sedating.jpg Anika Unread 2022 Sedating Elaine by Dawn Winter http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2022-gallery daily 0.75 2023-01-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594060811-PJBNFELISCGQVLC66BZI/Boston_Wave.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War Edited by Anne Boston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594060811-PJBNFELISCGQVLC66BZI/Boston_Wave.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War Edited by Anne Boston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594068774-DS26DMBLYG2ATB59DBNP/Cowles_Looking.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Looking for Trouble: The Classic Memoir of a Trailblazing War Correspondent by Virginia Cowles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594481965-L5DRRECE54XZ0MKZYQJL/Haushofer_Wall.jpg Liz Unread 2022 The Wall by Marlen Haushofer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594079065-Z2Y46DADS3L6W420PLR7/Hazzard_Transit.jpg Liz Unread 2022 The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594089909-U745ANLG65OHY00JCCZ3/Heyer_Venetia.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Venetia by Georgette Heyer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594100222-IVTUQE3KSXP8NU56C44W/Kukafka_Notes.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594252177-88KHT63JXUFA40HX1QED/Louis_Woman.jpg Liz Unread 2022 A Woman’s Battles and Transformations by Edouard Louis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594113428-E4YUX2AKLGFLS524XG08/Moss_Fell.jpg Liz Unread 2022 The Fell Sarah Moss https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594123931-ZXAPK4GIKJXXBJHPSDGV/Wyndham_Trouble.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Trouble with Lichens by John Wyndham https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672594728474-GWEJFPPNPK2UCA0V9LBS/Young_Mole.jpg Liz Unread 2022 Miss Mole by E.H. Young http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-unread-2022-gallery daily 0.75 2023-01-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595419197-7L9XUS1M1JV6JDCPHRE1/Aoki_Light.jpg Haley Unread 2022 Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595419197-7L9XUS1M1JV6JDCPHRE1/Aoki_Light.jpg Haley Unread 2022 Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595506385-9D8IUWURCJ0YYA6312D3/Canas_Hacienda.jpg Haley Unread 2022 The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595515562-IUOLEHRACDBLMYPA46K6/Corbett_12.jpg Haley Unread 2022 12 Birds to Save Your Life: Nature’s Lessons in Happiness by Charlie Corbett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595555189-ZZQ95G0UAGNL6FNUA97V/Faloyin_Africa.jpg Haley Unread 2022 Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595575978-52400M91QUV9SEGWUKZ7/Huynh_Fortunes.jpg Haley Unread 2022 The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595589799-942FM7Z50R069NFT2VP7/Lavender_Rosen.jpg Haley Unread 2022 Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595602022-XACPVCD0BAEEYBM1F5XG/Nichols_Knock.jpg Haley Unread 2022 Knock, Turn by Jeb Roy Nichols https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595612160-WKJNDCNB8SK1EL4AN82S/Rogers_This.jpg Haley Unread 2022 This Is What It Sounds LIke: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595644037-OFE1F8FQ0ACWBSXBTYD6/Shinkai_She.jpg Haley Unread 2022 She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672595654949-3STXYBXOM7UDJPRX45QD/Warga_Rover.jpg Haley Unread 2022 A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2022-gallery daily 0.75 2023-01-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634223720-HOW70UNIMNMGRG7KH9X5/Calhoun_Also.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634223720-HOW70UNIMNMGRG7KH9X5/Calhoun_Also.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634080945-IWGBVFIX0TS41VQVNC1L/Charnas_Dilla.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634094091-V0LS1HOPRURA6DF32Q4F/Cowie_Freedom.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Freedom’s Dominion: An Epic of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634106724-Z4Q2G2F2KL6S60E1ONP8/Dark_Fellowship.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634118389-QQRS9BOSS3FYZBGKIVIA/Fosse_Septology.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Septology, I-VII by Jon Fosse https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634134732-SK7DC1G1AWW3O95FR5R5/Lasley_Sea.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Sea State: A Memoir by Tabitha Lasley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634159355-DRA9M7DPS5C0929IEZ8S/Milch_Life.jpg Tom Unread 2022 Life’s Work: A Memoir by David Milch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634351798-20FJRJORYTL40OWWMFXC/Samatar_White.jpg Tom Unread 2022 The White Mosque: A Memoir by Sofia Samara https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634174559-8D1V3L26HJSYX0VT1YLU/Serpell_Furrows.jpg Tom Unread 2022 The Furrows by Namwali Serpell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672634199273-ICDPFB9II9UQT50YYEA7/Turson_Backstreets.jpg Tom Unread 2022 The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang by Perhat Tucson http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-unread-2022-gallery daily 0.75 2023-01-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724099392-KQAEXKFZU8LJIR1VKLD9/Backman_Winners.jpg Doree Unread 2022 The Winners by Fredrik Backman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724099392-KQAEXKFZU8LJIR1VKLD9/Backman_Winners.jpg Doree Unread 2022 The Winners by Fredrik Backman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724125294-9ANBTMB3EN384IPGKH62/Bono_Surrender.jpg Doree Unread 2022 Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724067690-1IDKWUZ2A8NCX8335NG0/DeWitt_English.jpg Doree Unread 2022 The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724084365-AYA93BAGM630M934SR6W/Hession_Leonard_pb.jpg Doree Unread 2022 Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724112573-WE2QAYUOTZX1L7LAKPM7/Munroe_What2.jpg Doree Unread 2022 What If? 2 by Randall Munroe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724137742-U5FGQR639V0Y9RGM5SCQ/Obama_Light.jpg Doree Unread 2022 The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724012779-04UY18RBV503IH1FD4TD/Rickman_Madly.jpg Doree Unread 2022 Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman by Alan Rickman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724022883-3RAU43KKYRBP32LS8CLH/Serle_Italian.jpg Doree Unread 2022 One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724054751-0IFTAD8HMX5TYPGN6KRI/Sherriff_Fortnight.jpg Doree Unread 2022 The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1672724033800-FPLGBS8VHIUZ285VR032/Zauner_Crying.jpg Doree Unread 2022 Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2023-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-12-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553344167-7JR78ATECYNDHQPOR1GU/Bauermeister_Two.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister No Two Persons is about the transformative power of stories and the ways that a book can become so much more than just a book. In the case of this novel, that book is titled Theo, and Bauermeister reveals the magic fiction can wield through the perspectives of its author and nine distinct readers with beautiful, empathetic writing and masterful storytelling. Read it, but don't just read it. Share it with a book-loving friend. Discuss it with a book club. Read it again (I promise you it stands up to a second read). Let it be a precious reminder that just because something is made-up doesn't mean it isn't meaningful and true. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553344167-7JR78ATECYNDHQPOR1GU/Bauermeister_Two.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister No Two Persons is about the transformative power of stories and the ways that a book can become so much more than just a book. In the case of this novel, that book is titled Theo, and Bauermeister reveals the magic fiction can wield through the perspectives of its author and nine distinct readers with beautiful, empathetic writing and masterful storytelling. Read it, but don't just read it. Share it with a book-loving friend. Discuss it with a book club. Read it again (I promise you it stands up to a second read). Let it be a precious reminder that just because something is made-up doesn't mean it isn't meaningful and true. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553288524-30WXS7PD9T4I65GY3OTL/Bowen_Girls.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Girls by John Bowen This little reissue, originally published in 1986, lured me in with its gorgeous Edward Gorey cover art, and then I couldn't help but stick around. Set in the mid-1970s in the Midlands, it begins with the cozy domestic life of "the girls" Jan and Sue, well-known in the village for their elderflower wine and artisanal cheeses. The two run a quaint shoppe and travel to craft fairs to sell their wares. It's all very cottagecore and relationship goals until Sue grows restless and books herself an extended trip to "find herself" and, meanwhile, Jan finds comfort in the company of a fellow craft fair vendor. However, once Sue is back, the couple find themselves as happy as ever—and expecting a child! I'll admit, at this point, I hesitated to go on, knowing that something must go terribly wrong. After all, the blurb on the back cover boasts murder! Why, I wondered, can't we just have nice things? With trepidation, I continued reading as cozy turned to dark and clever, reminiscent of my favorite Shirley Jackson novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle. What a gem! TLDR: Cottagecore. Lesbians. Murder. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553265384-YMG71S4QY4OYW9OU3Q52/Brady_Strong.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery Strong Female Character by Fern Brady I was already predisposed to liking Scottish comedian Fern Brady's memoir on account of enjoying the hell out of her presence on Taskmasker (a British comedy panel game show) and her stand-up comedy special, Power & Chaos. Upon learning of her autism diagnosis, I admired her celebrity all the more. And when I found out she'd written a book about living undiagnosed for most of her life? I knew I had to read it, and I'm so glad that I did. As implied by the title Strong Female Character, Brady's account of navigating her neurodivergence in a myriad of contexts—family life, school, relationships, work—is told through a specifically female lens; for example, at sixteen a psychiatrist told Brady she couldn't be autistic because she was making eye contact and had a boyfriend. Now, post-diagnosis, she writes to make sense of her experiences with newfound language and research and the result is candid and funny while many of the anecdotes she shares are vulnerable and heartbreaking. I recommend this regardless of whether it's the first time you've heard of Fern Brady. Even having already read it myself, I'm looking forward to giving the audiobook a listen just so I can hear her tell it again in her own voice. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553384137-35RTP6BMRSSCNH43XD7Q/Danovich_Henfluence.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them by Tove Danovich Reading Under the Henfluence is a lot like hanging out with your most enthusiastic and knowledgeable chicken-loving friend. You're sure to be entertained and to learn something—even if, like me, you're the crazy chicken person in your own social circle—as Danovich takes you beyond her backyard to a hatchery in Iowa, a national poultry show in Ohio, and even to the island of Kauai, where the ubiquity and beauty of wild chickens reignited my own childlike love for the animals. With passionate reporting in every chapter, and compassion on every page, this book will make you appreciate how long-lived and deeply entrenched the human-chicken relationship is and compel you to consider what our responsibility is to these delightful and often misunderstood birds. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553436260-C99ROW5NQ9CBQGMGJF1P/DeMulder_Ephemera.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery Ephemera by Sierra DeMulder https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553400227-8RX1SATZZQPJO18TEJQ4/Gross_Vagina_pb.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross “The history of medicine was filled with 'fathers'—the father of the C-section, the father of endocrinology, the father of ovariotomy—but, ironically, there were no mothers.” Rachel E. Gross is basically Ms. Frizzle for adults when it comes to exploring female anatomy. Each chapter is a deep-dive into the science, history, and wonder of women's bodies that goes beyond reproductive function. Particularly interesting are the accounts of women scientists and their personal and professional experiences in a male-biased (and let's face it, phallus-obsessed) medical industry, from Dr. Helen O'Connell's discovery that the clitoris as we knew it prior to 1998 was merely the tip of the iceberg and Dr. Patty Brennan's enthusiasm for duck vaginas to Dr. Ghada Hatem's charitable clitoral reconstructions for victims of genital cutting and finally Dr. Marci Bowers' surgical artistry in creating neovaginas for fellow transwomen. Women's healthcare has historically been plagued by ignorance and disinterest, but Vagina Obscura gives me reassurance that we're moving toward a future where, quite the opposite from languishing in obscurity, the female body can finally be not only understood, but respected and celebrated. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553367796-NW5FA8UC7DBPFEQ53FAP/Henry_Funny.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553301600-WUALN23Q58YO395JLSGP/Jakobson_Old.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery Old Enough by Haley Jakobson Friendship is the heart of this coming-of-age campus novel. As Savannah embarks on her sophomore year of college, proudly out as bisexual, she's happy to be making new connections and cultivating community when her childhood best friend Izzie announces her wedding engagement. Sav greets this news with surprise and dread, and it gradually becomes clear she's not simply outgrowing her old friendship; she's grappling with unaddressed trauma from her past involving Izzie's older brother. Jakobson respectfully tends to the issue of sexual assault, with an emphasis on healing, and she manages to infuse Sav's story with plenty of queer joy. It's a quick, big-hearted read that enjoyably captures that young adult era in life where you think you're finally grown and know everything while you're obviously still figuring out who you are and who you want to be. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553357606-6DN7MYRJJ4VRY73SEGVE/Jha_Laughter.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Laughter by Sonora Jha As someone who opts to read few books written by straight white men, I'm the kind of reader Dr. Oliver Harding—a 56-year-old white male English professor who fears becoming obsolete and who would definitely make a point of capitalizing White here—would balk at. And yet, I agreed to trust Jha and spend approximately 300 pages inside his head, where I was privy to all his unsavory thoughts and opinions, as well as his inappropriate lust-fueled obsession with a younger female colleague: Ruhaba Khan, a bewitching Pakistani Muslim law professor. I found myself equal parts fascinated and repulsed by Oliver as he ingratiated himself to Ruhaba by way of her 15-year-old French-Muslim nephew, Adil. Set on a Seattle university campus in the days leading up to the 2016 election, The Laughter reads like a modern-day Lolita in academia. It's a masterclass in pacing, tension, and beautiful writing. Wow! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553321177-3YQ40HSRSST0630TITW6/Mahdavian_This.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian "We were in search of adventure. A place we could own land and start a family. The Millennial dream." This Country is a beautifully illustrated story of two artists—a documentary filmmaker and a teacher/cartoonist—who buy six acres of land in remote, central Idaho after being priced out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Instantly, I felt immersed in Navied Mahdavian's new life, where he and his wife are determined to be self-sufficient homesteaders living in a 280-square-foot cabin. The two start out charmingly inexperienced with rural living and hardships, such as weather, which becomes most apparent during their first winter, when they must rely on the helpfulness of neighborly strangers. Unfortunately, as Mahdavian and his wife make great strides toward establishing their home in this place—by reopening a local movie theatre, planting an impressive garden, and conceiving a child—the local culture challenges them with its own traditional ideas of what an American is and should be. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701553425801-1I1XKNUMQ7KUL9YGJELZ/Tsumura_There.jpg Anika 2023 Top 10 Gallery There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura Post-burnout, a 36-year-old woman moves back in with her parents and attempts to find employment that won't demand so much of her. With the help of an agency, she tries on five different menial jobs, from surveillance to copywriting the fun facts printed on cracker packages. In an optimistic twist on the trope of the soul-sucking day job, no matter how mundane the position, our protagonist can't help but become emotionally invested in her work ... and brush up against the familiar feeling of overwhelm, which leads her on to the next. As a member of the Burnout Generation, I found this book to be boring (in the best possible way), quietly funny and strange, and deeply relatable. http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2023-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649420236-EKJ66VC9DY8PMF8EFYPM/Bauermeister_Two.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister Erica Bauermeister was one of my favorite local authors even before I began working with her daughter-in-law at Phinney Books. The author of The Scent Keeper (one of my favorite novels ever) and House Lessons: Renovating a Life (a memoir that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever remodeled a home) now writes about how a book can deeply affect a disparate group of people in No Two Persons. A young woman spends years writing a novel that she HAD to write, because her soul demanded it. When she sends it out into the world, we see how it changes people in both subtle and profound ways. A literary assistant coping as a new mom, an actor trying to be more than a pretty face, a teenager, an artist, a bookseller, and a host of others interact with the book in different—and meaningful—ways, proving that no two people ever read the exact same book. This beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring book will definitely be in my Top 10 this year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649420236-EKJ66VC9DY8PMF8EFYPM/Bauermeister_Two.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister Erica Bauermeister was one of my favorite local authors even before I began working with her daughter-in-law at Phinney Books. The author of The Scent Keeper (one of my favorite novels ever) and House Lessons: Renovating a Life (a memoir that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever remodeled a home) now writes about how a book can deeply affect a disparate group of people in No Two Persons. A young woman spends years writing a novel that she HAD to write, because her soul demanded it. When she sends it out into the world, we see how it changes people in both subtle and profound ways. A literary assistant coping as a new mom, an actor trying to be more than a pretty face, a teenager, an artist, a bookseller, and a host of others interact with the book in different—and meaningful—ways, proving that no two people ever read the exact same book. This beautiful, heartbreaking, inspiring book will definitely be in my Top 10 this year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649534036-IC9K7HF678OLJIOKPXH0/George_Little.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649507824-SS5VYV9AKX87PQBN8002/Harper_Exiles.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery Exiles by Jane Harper https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649558108-GDSMIQ1BSHJ3R5ZLQCSL/Jane_Earth.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery On Earth as It Is on Television by Emily Jane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651232723-NTK36HINK1JB8BSOTR2N/Kraus_Whalefall.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery Whalefall by Daniel Kraus https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649574818-6XPS9M61Q0V46GJJMAO7/Kuang_Yellowface.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery Yellowface by R.F. Kuang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649522197-WINEDKGCSJC2EPD9NXKN/McAllister_Wrong.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649620053-4BAAMOXCDFTSYI413VY3/Osman_Last.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649636095-ARIEIWNW34R74WCT8CZE/Prose_Mystery.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose Fans of Nita Prose’s delightful debut novel The Maid have had to wait almost two years for a sequel, but I’m happy to report it was worth the wait. Molly Gray is now Head Maid at the high-end Regency Grand Hotel, where her exacting attention to detail is put to good use as yet another murder mystery unfolds. But this time, Molly has a connection to the victim that she’s not sure she should reveal. As she uncovers clues to the killer, she once again has to remember her past to understand her present. Just like in the first book, alternating chapters describe more about Molly’s upbringing by her patient, loving Gran. This book is more direct about Molly being on the spectrum, and just how poor she and Gran were. Containing even more emotional heartbreak and healing than The Maid, The Mystery Guest will definitely be on my Top 10 list this year. I just loved it—and I can’t wait for the next sequel. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701649592876-YEM6BUOEZRDRFR3K5UO1/Wangtechawat_Moon.jpg Doree 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Moon Represents My Heart by Pim Wangtechawat http://www.phinneybooks.com/new-gallery-4 daily 0.75 2023-12-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651562189-2FUZK0JA2SMMU5JD50XU/Hanff_Letter.jpeg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery Letter from New York by Helene Hanff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651562189-2FUZK0JA2SMMU5JD50XU/Hanff_Letter.jpeg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery Letter from New York by Helene Hanff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651576511-XYY4SB07SXIP5OBYD6KU/Thirkell_Brandons.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Brandons by Angela Thirkell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651596689-AT79QVSCAO720TW59G8M/Wahl_Diary.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery Phoebe’s Diary by Phoebe Wahl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651625233-QE6CLP81U1TL8KDH9XOA/Grann_Wager.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Wager by David Grann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651644159-EB7H315LG6ACLAVRHSE2/Sherriff_Hopkins.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651659673-EQUUOL8YJUAES3Y0G0TG/Link_White_pb.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651689240-LAS8JHFYEP4F13HXYFHO/Henry_Book.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery Book Lovers by Emily Henry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701651702567-48WJZOCOU24NL87NXXPT/Monsef_Once.jpg Haley 2023 Top 10 Gallery Once There Was by Kiyash Monsef http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-2023-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-12-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652604104-GA9N59WRM4YME4KQKPBZ/Baker_Cassandra.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652604104-GA9N59WRM4YME4KQKPBZ/Baker_Cassandra.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652675725-7KPPOYYHZXLDD94NN95H/Blondel_641.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery The 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Philippe Blondel, translated by Alison Anderson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652530273-GYLPLAUQVRBBRJF5PWKG/Bruton_Blue.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652623534-UMU3XF6H3D5UG90XO8SY/Clair_Rattlebone.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Rattlebone by Maxine Clair https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652550378-4XUTXS5017GYSVHZLKRX/Davis_Our.jpeg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Other Strangers: Stories by Lydia Davis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652760946-CJ9OAJ9QTB37V9D8BN3I/Dederer_Monster.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652581337-QD2FUR3IAE7EQZPHVSXW/Erpenbeck_Kairos.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652698077-4JDOCUN3FLPQTXHRBC8S/Ma_Bliss_pb.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Bliss Montage by Ling Ma https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652733086-HBV5Z690WNTOQ6JI919V/Malcolm_Still.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory by Janet Malcolm https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652653240-IO6Q93G8JN2IH0NJFEVK/Patchett_Tom.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery Tom Lake by Ann Patchett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652823387-7VPFPY00J8R92YZ0F85K/Ruefle_Book.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Book by Mary Ruefle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701652844291-1OCE0LREJW0SA1VVIBBP/Viren_Name.jpg Kim 2023 Top 10 Gallery To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories by Sarah Viren http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2023-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762324945-HJ618YU56H537OJDLKCT/Boston_Wave.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War edited by Anne Boston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762324945-HJ618YU56H537OJDLKCT/Boston_Wave.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War edited by Anne Boston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762284034-Y8CMJHFAZ61ABOB27U69/Brooke_Lord.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762398724-4O0UKWR2UST3CQWBBY8G/Freedland_Escape.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762230457-RMZSLQRKPIMF2YY8BE3M/Howard_Light.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Light Years (Cazalet Chronicles #1) by Elizabeth Jane Howard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762245581-UW633CGHSXHW2IXWKOBI/Howard_Marking.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Marking Time (Cazalet Chronicles #2) by Elizabeth Jane Howard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762257987-0BKIG0DH4QFIVF2MP7QZ/Howard_Confusion.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Confusion (Cazalet Chronicles #3) by Elizabeth Jane Howard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762268916-5FV89WOU7GY84C8OTSOW/Howard_Casting.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Casting Off (Cazalet Chronicles #4) by Elizabeth Jane Howard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762366761-MC389QYZC5G2TUQUHBOI/Kruger_Broken.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Broken House: Growing Up Under Hitler by Horst Krüger https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762304917-94MNJLY7OPXRMMPRKHQ0/Lynch_Prophet_hc.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Prophet Song by Paul Lynch When I finished this year’s Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song, I felt that I hadn’t simply read it—I had lived it. The story follows Eilish Stack, a middle-aged working mother who’s trying to maintain the life she knew while a newly-elected Fascist regime cracks down, an insurgency intensifies, and civil war brings Ireland to collapse. Although billed as political dystopia, similar situations have happened before—are happening now—all over the world. Lynch said that he wanted to create a work of “radical empathy” and as Eilish moves through stages of disorientation, anxiety, terror, and grief, his poetic style evokes the physicality of her emotions, compelling you to share them and join her journey. Warning: this book demands an intrepid reader. The trip is harrowing but rewards you with keen insight into humanity and history and maybe even the resolve to help make it never have to happen again. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762340368-LX6USJQIFS3WL7BI4M98/Parrott_Ex.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott I’m discovering that, even more than historical fiction, I love reading stories written during the particular era in which they are set. The combination of the author’s first-hand knowledge and the reader’s hindsight makes for a richly layered literary treat. This best-seller was published mere months before the stock market crash of ‘29 and Parrott’s contemporaries no doubt commiserated with the characters’ disillusionment with a mostly theoretical sexual freedom. But as our heroine Patricia learns that endings are also beginnings, I found this unexpectedly moving novel more hopeful than wistful. I also realized that while the 1950s may have spawned “teenagers”, Flappers were the first women to experience a life stage that we now gratefully take for granted: young singlehood. So put on Rhapsody in Blue, mix yourself a gin fizz or four, and soak up the spirit of twenty-somethings in 1920’s NYC. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762314702-5JEOF9CS1GUP403ECYIZ/Richards_High.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery High Street by J.M. Richards and Eric Ravilious https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762382723-DWYOF4OUU3Y4X6ADGNMO/Sherriff_Hopkins.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff I’m fine with all sorts of grim reading material but apocalypse stories are just TOO stressful. That said, if it’s set in an English village and written by the author of The Fortnight in September, I’ll give it a go! When Sherriff wrote this “cosy catastrophe” in 1939, with war looming, it reflected the anxieties of its readers. But an intriguing foreword (do not skip!) sets the groundwork for something more far-reaching. The literary device also defuses any unbearable dread. You know the worst has happened and can relax and enjoy what follows: the titular manuscript, in which Edward Hopkins records his experiences from the time he learns of the moon’s imminent collision with the earth until he can no longer hold a pen. He’s a bit of a pompous fool and an amateur poultry breeder, all of which provide regular doses of humor to take the edge off his eerie tale. But in the end, his apprehension of the Cataclysm and its repercussions transforms him into an endearing and enduring Everyman. It's the first book that I know will be in my top 10 books of 2023. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701762356941-6JH6QT4JL5TS130CX2C7/Winn_Memoriam.jpg Liz 2023 Top 10 Gallery In Memoriam by Alice Winn In her assured debut, Winn accomplishes the mission of historical fiction with wide-ranging research, emotional depth, and a dash of derring-do. WWI buffs will recognize details and themes, all presented seamlessly and in powerful ways: the carnage of the Somme seen through the eyes of a German machine-gunner, reproduced newspaper lists of the dead that the reader scans just as anxious civilians did. The heart of the novel is the relationship between two students as one follows the other from boarding school to the trenches. Winn conjures the intensity of teenagers in love and war, yet she knows that—like the soldiers who had periodic rests away from the front—readers need to recuperate too. An interlude set in an officers’ prison camp provides respite by showcasing her humor and storytelling panache. I can’t think of a better introduction (especially for Gen Z—now the same age as the soldiers) to what was once called the War to End All Wars. And I can’t wait to see what Winn does next! http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2023-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763299623-FZEP9AL81EQ4ZW3E4GCI/Barnhill_When.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763299623-FZEP9AL81EQ4ZW3E4GCI/Barnhill_When.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763329818-HFQ4W8O8M7ZFBT1RA6OC/Chambers_Psalm.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763269454-7O125TDNEYVD9MMEFIY1/Hay_Snow.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery Snow Road Station by Elizabeth Hay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763356342-SOTE7ZMYDBHG9KD8ZQUF/ODonoghue_Rachel.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763283232-4WV6UQRNLEVI0B8A6RJZ/Shamsie_Best.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763340705-IL0R0MKGEF9VXVKXLEJN/Sittenfeld_Romantic.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763387821-03ZSNT5ZUGA5UUJS1Z2M/Smith_You.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763367673-YYI6ERTXZ7B8DO21NYLW/Weiner_Breakaway.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763314715-723X92R8RTN8NQCATL5C/Zapruder_Story.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery Story of a Poem by Matthew Zapruder https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763422347-G9R9XX1CN7JJLOAYFMTT/Zevin_Tomorrow.jpg Nancy 2023 Top 10 Gallery Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2023-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2023-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764058851-QNOSVMXIMEEOQTA8IN1O/Bachelder_Dayswork.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel When I say that Dayswork feels like it was written for me, that doesn't mean it wasn't written for you too. Written by a married couple, both writers, it is the story of a married couple, both writers, making their way, as we all did, through the stir-crazy days of the early pandemic, but it's really the story of the heroic and tragic life of Herman Melville, and the death and afterlife of his work in the minds of readers, told through tiny facts from his life and from the century and a half he has remained alive for those who care about him. I'm not sure how to explain that this collection of facts, hung loosely on a story of married life that is hardly a story at all, manages to be the funniest and sweetest and most moving book I've read all year, but it is. I loved it so much. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764058851-QNOSVMXIMEEOQTA8IN1O/Bachelder_Dayswork.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel When I say that Dayswork feels like it was written for me, that doesn't mean it wasn't written for you too. Written by a married couple, both writers, it is the story of a married couple, both writers, making their way, as we all did, through the stir-crazy days of the early pandemic, but it's really the story of the heroic and tragic life of Herman Melville, and the death and afterlife of his work in the minds of readers, told through tiny facts from his life and from the century and a half he has remained alive for those who care about him. I'm not sure how to explain that this collection of facts, hung loosely on a story of married life that is hardly a story at all, manages to be the funniest and sweetest and most moving book I've read all year, but it is. I loved it so much. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763976184-YVVVFPC89MTB7P76DOZ2/Bedford_Jigsaw.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford Bedford's few novels rarely stray far from the facts of her own history, but with a family like hers, you can understand why. She was raised in the fertile (for a novelist) ground of a family with more culture than money, and spent her childhood shuttled among parents and friends in Germany, London, Italy, and, most memorably, a small town in the South of France. The characters and incidents in this story are too deliciously varied and interesting to list; her character has a genius for befriending her elders, which means she witnesses the messy lives of adults far before she is one herself. Her style is exquisite, and her assessments of others and herself are incisive but generous. With her adolescent perspective, this wonderful book reads like a series of Henry James novellas (this Maisie knows a lot), until her brilliant mother's hunger for morphine turns it into something by Zola. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764204924-5AEI2Y6J3ZJ316XWIBDT/Blexbolex_Magicians.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Magicians by Blexbolex, translated by Karin Snelson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764078796-T0UIBPEN0HHBB4CNYGRB/Clowes_Monica.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Monica by Daniel Clowes How to describe the work of Dan Clowes for those who haven't been reading him for thirty-odd years? Cranky, biting, hilarious, and tender: he often puts his jaw-dropping drafting skills in the service of detailing the most banal varieties of human grotesquerie, and he is both a more sturdily traditional storyteller than most of his fellow indie-comics visionaries and utterly willing to turn his story inside-out on a dime (e.g. the stunning but fully earned twist in this book's final frame). Monica is a mature work in the very best way, full of the perspective of lives lived and dreams found and dashed, and I would say it was the best in his wonderful career, if Ghost World wasn't such a stone-cold masterpiece. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763918895-4IKIMAEQ86CD0R2C39BF/Dederer_Monster.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer We haven't been short of think pieces on the subject of, to borrow the title of Claire Dederer's viral 2017 essay that was one of the seeds of this book, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men," but perhaps that makes a book like this even more necessary. It's the opposite of the quick takes we're used to: she turns her subject over and over, looking at it, and herself, and ourselves—the people who make art and the people who love it—from every angle. It's the first book of hers that likely won't be shelved in "Memoirs," but it's still deeply (and, as always with her writing, appealingly) personal, and ultimately a moving examination of why we love art, and why we keep loving it. I'm tempted to call this the last word on the subject, but her passionately open-ended approach makes clear that there's no such thing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764000334-VTY8YMD95C8V7EFOW4NV/Erpenbeck_Kairos.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann You could describe Kairos as a Manhattan story—an ill-fated romance between a 50-something man and a teenage girl—or as an allegory for East Germany before, during, and after unification, but neither summary does full justice to this subtle and humane novel. More than anything it is the story of two vivid, individual people caught in time—historical time and their own mismatched, contingent lifetimes—and if their story happens to resonate with the national drama they find themselves part of, as it so brilliantly does, that just adds to its particular, personal depth. It's romantic and a bit austere, it's lovely and brutal, and it's the best novel I've read in quite a while. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763876643-V962K2O8POMRM0FR4Z34/Grann_Wager.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann If, like me, your idea of fun is reading stories of others going through almost unfathomable hardship, you can hardly do better than David Grann (the expert nonfiction yarnspinner behind Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z) and the horror-filled tale of the Wager, a British warship sent to attack Spanish treasure ships on the far side of South America. First typhus, then scurvy, then a shipwreck while rounding Cape Horn, which in turn led to murder, cannibalism, mutiny, and—with the help of multiple groups of indigenous locals—the ultimate return to England of a tiny fraction of those who began the voyage. From those survivors' contradictory accounts of misery, betrayal, and survival, Grann has woven a rousing story that doubles as cautionary tale of the folly of imperialism. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763900310-R8H1KC8FOKI8W0MG7KCP/Gwaltney_Drylongso.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America by John Langston Gwaltney To title this superb oral history, collected in the early '70s and published in 1980, Gwaltney chose a word that means "ordinary," but that also, unlike many terms in black English, has never quite crossed over into general use in American English. The conversations he shares have those same qualities: even though he was an academic anthropologist, Gwaltney came to his speakers not as some neutral outsider but as a friend and a fellow black American, gaining their trust through shared bonds of "kinship and amity." The results are vivid, individual, thoughtful, and frank, self-portraits of solidarity and ingenuity and of weariness and frustration. As one of his respondents puts it, "I have grown to womanhood in a world where the saner you are, the madder you are made to appear." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764031680-D16L7RYWYX69LHB73OWC/Murray_Bee.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Bee Sting by Paul Murray The unhappiness of families is a gift to novelists everywhere; the particular unhappiness of the Barnes family, one of the most prominent in a dull town not far from Dublin, is surely made worse by the crash of 2008, but its roots go deeper than that, in bewitchings and betrayals that are unearthed as their family ties unravel and are tightened again. With his capacity to inhabit each family member's hopes and humiliations in turn, you could see Murray as an Irish Jonathan Franzen, but he's a looser stylist, more willing to ride the voices of his characters, although all the time he's orchestrating their drama in an almost old-fashioned, and quite wonderful, way. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764175191-04XR3YC52LWW6BMB68OM/OGrady_Could.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O'Grady and Steve Pyke What a beautiful book. First published in 1997 and reimagined and republished this year with the cooperation of its two authors, it brings together story and photos to much the same hauntingly evocative effect as John Berger and Jean Mohr's A Fortunate Man (one of my favorite Phinney by Post picks), in this case pairing Pyke's photographs of Ireland and Irish people with O'Grady's novel of the often brutal, but not unjoyous, life of an Irish migrant laboring in England. O'Grady's story is individual—particular labors, a particular love, particular sadness—but made collective by its spare language, its sense of fellow feeling with other migrant workers, and most of all by Pyke's photos, portraits both individual and collective of joy, weariness, hope, and perseverance. I imagine reading this many times, each time letting the words or the pictures take the lead and then returning to the other. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701764146892-9L0TEO2ZPVUVX83GCFHV/Smith_Fraud.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery The Fraud by Zadie Smith The first historical novel in Smith's spectacular career is built from the bones of two true stories from Victorian England: the forgotten literary life of William Harrison Ainsworth, a friend and rival of Dickens, and the once-celebrated Tichborne case, in which a man appeared to claim the fortune of a missing nobleman. But it is really the story of two other true—and usually secondary—figures: Eliza Touchet, Ainsworth's cousin and housekeeper, and Andrew Bogle, a black Jamaican servant who stood as one of the Tichborne claimant's main witnesses. And the real drama comes less from the story's public events, or from Smith's brilliance and language, which spark on every page, than the encounter of these two sensibilities: the thoughtful, liberal, and often brilliant Touchet, who chafes at injustice and the limits to her own freedom as a woman, and the equally thoughtful Bogle, whose life and testimony test the limits of Eliza's sympathies. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1701763953733-OGKXU57HY4CTYIY6PKX0/Wong_Meet.jpg Tom 2023 Top 10 Gallery Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong Jane Wong grew up in her family's Chinese restaurant in New Jersey (until her father's gambling obsession drove it into failure); now she's a poet and professor at Western Washington in Bellingham. But this isn't the sort of memoir that draws a bright line between an immigrant, East Coast past and an educated, assimiliated, West Coast future: It twists and turns and digresses and remembers, full of ghosts and ex-boyfriends, of dragon fruit and fish-head soup and Lunchables. And at the heart of it all is Jane's mom, still commuting an hour each way to work the USPS night shift in Jersey, and still sending daily advice from afar. Her daughter's book is a spiky, angry, hungry, silly, sweet love letter to her and a manifesto for her own love of language and her right to use it. http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-unread-2023-gallery daily 0.75 2024-01-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785271938-G1PHPSV9MSYYO9J7J3B2/Adjei_Chain.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785271938-G1PHPSV9MSYYO9J7J3B2/Adjei_Chain.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785396955-4HETN9QFIQTHLVQ6J8HJ/Bayron_Youre.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785312615-FJG3PJAX3RYUA5J238NL/Goldhammer_Still.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea by Catherine Goldhammer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785417992-G38ERRS5L3IH8C9J9WXE/Guzman_Never.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery I Never Thought of It That Way by Monica Guzman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785344798-1UDHRWFZHDIF7UX3T2NH/Goldhammer_Still.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery Reproduction by Louisa Hall https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785363454-KFSIOHCA4EABL7UPKC1O/Nwabineli_Someday.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785288679-Y937LJ5BHKUEV2ZM1K8N/Pittard_We.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785301831-GJ3IT7VFZZ84RP3TSZGQ/Vallese_Came.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror edited by Joe Vallese https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785408055-TYL7ETY3XHAV8AYSDO7P/Young_Unmaking.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785379751-5OB3NCXZ6A68PHYT14S9/Zambreno_Light.jpg Anika Unread 2023 Gallery The Light Room: On Art and Care by Kate Zambreno http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2023-gallery daily 0.75 2024-01-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785885444-RDVJJBVRCXSR1WCGX8WR/Bowen_Girls.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery The Girls by John Bowen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785885444-RDVJJBVRCXSR1WCGX8WR/Bowen_Girls.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery The Girls by John Bowen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786253147-D3DEZLDC5DMBBCZ6RGMD/Cather_Death.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786274381-UEN6KPAPNL1MTNHVW4JM/Dale_Sheep.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery Sheep’s Clothing by Celia Dale https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786205142-B7LOUXXTCDJWGKBY0VC5/Evangelista_Some.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country by Patricia Evangelista https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785920885-G5AV0II8ARHMLP1CTLZU/Garner_Bach.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786287178-PT5L6XL0BTYCLQ9SCW7H/Howard_Change.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785902164-BR5AXF2N173BPBLCV0CH/Keegan_So.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786231976-D9ZRPZTUBQU26J2JAZRK/Rulfo_Pedro.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704785951087-DYQQQ24KOP85S4GXEQE7/Sittenfeld_Romantic.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786188316-T1DRO73H9HR9SXCFRI4T/Tonks_Halt.jpg Liz Unread 2023 Gallery The Halt During the Chase by Rosemary Tonks http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-unread-2023-gallery daily 0.75 2024-01-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704788081170-V7LWNUM0S6AFQPKBK7SK/Bernstein_Study.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704788081170-V7LWNUM0S6AFQPKBK7SK/Bernstein_Study.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704788115416-SJFFVB1Z9NS63YS821TL/Briggs_Long.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery The Long Form by Kate Briggs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843139110-F5T9TS0WRRN99B0LLEFM/Butler_Molly.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Molly by Blake Butler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704787955964-XQCCFMP7F1JBHKC9ZR1U/Griffith_Three.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffiths https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704787607787-VZ2XOHESPXW1YUH2R3B4/Jackson_France.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain by Julian Jackson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786785016-LU5TGIYTH1X3K21USO9J/Klein_Doppelganger.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704787316134-UQSP0HZD73NRHM77TXIU/Martin_Armada.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Armada: The Spanish Enterprise and England’s Deliverance in 1588 by Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704786849392-SH8WPITSNTKEGBPBPNYD/McBride_Heaven.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704788036818-V51VVCE58DIE8BF95PEI/Rosen_Best.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704787884683-RDOY4DKB5Q3S8H49MJ1E/Samatar_Tone.jpg Tom Unread 2023 Gallery Tone by Sofia Samara and Kate Zambreno http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-unread-2023-gallery daily 0.75 2024-01-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843538764-004D73FT3VTCQ81LKMNS/Bachelder_Dayswork.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843538764-004D73FT3VTCQ81LKMNS/Bachelder_Dayswork.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843591749-T6ZU3YJIW09K26442T4F/Bohannon_Eve.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843476616-LMMX1DZSIGCHDN09KS3K/Briggs_Long.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery The Long Form by Kate Briggs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843525371-XJDK4H7J0EU8CARC91UH/Cumming_Thunderclap.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843513553-0TKK713A6JH9BHUQSV90/Coetzee_Pole.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery The Pole by J.M. Coetzee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843625796-XGWSZ6Z3QCJ76SPL9L7O/Grann_Wager.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843501600-O32YN4NPR3JPIPXSYVFT/Mahdavian_This.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843611311-JXBV9TDEAQOHC0URK1YO/McBride_Heaven.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704843678211-NHZ4ALGB2P571YYU69RV/Nunez_Vulnerables.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704844050822-KECNWI1AAWCRS8GHADW2/OGrady_Could.jpg Kim Unread 2023 Gallery I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pike http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-unread-2023-gallery daily 0.75 2024-01-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845476747-JT1CMYPZZJTLF1PFQZ2A/Carl_Soul.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Soul Jar: Thirty-one Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors edited by Annie Carl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845476747-JT1CMYPZZJTLF1PFQZ2A/Carl_Soul.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Soul Jar: Thirty-one Fantastical Tales by Disabled Authors edited by Annie Carl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845493399-Y5W6K0AJD3PK72AK307B/Edwards_Final.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845615265-LV8ZJL7QAT4NMLGAGZ7S/Hawk_Never.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845414796-YNAADAZRQXCJ93Y05QH6/Keegan_So.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845431280-VVAYUJR1QOY1QM2VAPJK/Mahoney_Dolls.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl by Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845508132-C3UVB3KDWOG1HO92PQVL/Petry_Miss.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Miss Muriel and Other Stories by Ann Petry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845636828-O2485BNDUSP4A2DLHWQW/Renkl_Comfort.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845455002-TJV5XR82PEYUSH024EWZ/Richardson_Democracy.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845547879-1WLBOAKHAQ45NEA4I22Y/Sevigny_Brave.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the History of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1704845529253-6MCWP0NT48XZ8XRI7RUY/Shaw_Bookseller.jpg Haley Unread 2023 Gallery A Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw http://www.phinneybooks.com/kim-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434608258-1TJHUF2X3Z79U4GIHFUW/Alikavazovic_Like.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Like a Sky Inside by Jakuta Alikavazovic, translated by Daniel Levin Becker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434608258-1TJHUF2X3Z79U4GIHFUW/Alikavazovic_Like.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Like a Sky Inside by Jakuta Alikavazovic, translated by Daniel Levin Becker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434601305-XUOHQYHA4FV7RSBL1YR2/Bruton_Blue.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Blue Postcards by Douglas Bruton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434508142-AKFL3BB08QCNF943BV7U/Hazzard_Transit_Peng.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434498590-9QHQ129FF33KR0CVHZYD/McMurtry_Lonesome.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434573304-R9IBXO8U1CTHTO54P37A/Proust_Swann_Davis.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434551599-VVURWLBEUVNXG7K25UWY/Scanlan_Aug.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Aug 9— Fog by Kathryn Scanlan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434523240-QNTUERU2LQN444VTWJQW/Shopsin_Arbitrary_pb.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434585472-QM05YGFH3CW3LJ1D8JNJ/Snijders_Night.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Night Train by A.L. Snijders, translated by Lydia Davis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434485033-PC0D8ZU9S1A29HHN65Q2/Williams_Stoner.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Stoner by John Williams https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718434536915-JM288M2IRMWIGN7OOA3H/Winik_Glen.jpg Kim 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Wink http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778734761-AFASUN4J8L24G1WF1QUO/Alexievich_Unwomanly.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778734761-AFASUN4J8L24G1WF1QUO/Alexievich_Unwomanly.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778751412-NHFQ4J75CCI0C3NFQCEK/Bell_All.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778768520-Y668B4BJ3792B11NO95Y/Ditlevsen_Copehagen.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778800292-G8G0DXR2SLJ9XVJGYL0Y/Faviell_Chelsea.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778816991-QPKVQ761QUMECRHJ63FT/Kennedy_Where.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Where Stands a Winged Sentry by Margaret Kennedy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778833320-X2BNM06WSMY50POKC3WQ/Michon_Winter.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Winter Mythologies and Abbots by Pierre Michon, translated by Ann Jefferson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778877541-CAKJ40LZI5ZRDO156160/Roth_Radetzky_Neugroschel.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, translated by Michael Hofmann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778929319-DOSFMH43V1ZKJBHDZNZ5/StJohn_Women_US.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778951070-S2OQR9R59YTRSSFEN7B3/Taylor_Palfrey.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Mrs. Palfrey in the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718778976528-ATHJV6X19ATFCH2CFM9J/Warner_Corner.jpg Liz 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779402970-TGFQ0RJ0BXMRFHZZ2NNF/Austin_Everyone.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779402970-TGFQ0RJ0BXMRFHZZ2NNF/Austin_Everyone.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779425821-0K5YG6K6SDBCYK76HXFV/Butler_Sower.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779440500-BHHFMEE5O5XY7BXYL4GV/Danforth_Miseducation.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779466024-RIGD8LFZTKTCKMN5XP5C/Foer_Eating.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran For https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779483125-FJKR83MK28IZC23T1VR7/Ishiguro_Never.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779504791-K5QFMQZ55RM6IK63DCBJ/Limon_Bright.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Bright Dead Things by Ada Simon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779524322-PJOGNT0K5CFE25J9A193/OFarrell_Am_pb.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779555882-E5KNG3OTJOHTFMZN36E2/Stromquist_Fruit.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Stromquist https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779579426-10SNLPLS3YQG7JGDHSML/Valente_Circum.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1718779595360-VZRSH53NT8V7Q1JX0RUG/Wein_Code.jpg Anika 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363581462-X1QTR36ZAKOHQNG31D7F/Davies_Lie_pb.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363581462-X1QTR36ZAKOHQNG31D7F/Davies_Lie_pb.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363603808-5FX5YYV94FMMVJ55HUSC/Gottlieb_Maybe.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363631544-GKJY9U0PN5PBCUU3QIIN/Hay_Snow_pb.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Snow Road Station by Elizabeth Hay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363644513-Z6N58FWW1N6TVHOBEZ6T/Limon_Bright.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363660305-AW9Z77NRMKFYDW7JVNO1/Link_Love.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Book of Love by Kelly Link https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363679068-6W28YC4S7IYS1YAT32M8/Miller_Know_pb.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Know My Name by Chanel Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363695148-O7BRG9LZET6C9DU4DS2H/Moore_Long.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Long Bright River by Liz Moore https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363714228-RIH31X12VO8RQD3XQTYF/Sale_Lets_pb.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Let's Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363733802-FF7NODDKBBDU5X49SCP1/Strout_Lucy_pb.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719363955108-KIQS8VYVLOFWPA3EUD1V/Tamaki_They.jpg Nancy 10 Year Top 10 Gallery They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364057166-5T2LLFW5H4AW0JBC1AG2/Baldree_Legends.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Legends & Lattes by Travis Balder https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364057166-5T2LLFW5H4AW0JBC1AG2/Baldree_Legends.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Legends & Lattes by Travis Balder https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364074911-WLB9CCJ8HLYYCBIC7TWM/Bechdel_Essential.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364093032-0NO3NZH7IJNV6MRYNYHR/Branch_Martha.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Martha's Vineyard—Isle of Dreams by Susan Branch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364105953-ZQ3SBHMU6UMH0DIHZEGU/Hanff_Q.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364119773-HYD8943YBTL0WP92UH35/Jones_Howl.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364134674-7CEU3ZE5OZYIJVQGLJ4S/Kimmerer_Braiding.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364148302-TQRANHS8V0TD4KNJ637D/Nordstrom_Genius.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom by Ursula Nordstrom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364162562-U0VWWOQJ6YS95UOTFW9R/Petry_Street.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Street by Ann Petry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364180414-TJSD3MIW1STKP4SEVJAL/Wahl_Diary.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Phoebe's Diary by Phoebe Wahl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719364404292-L9VB9BGTXO76IA21N5QB/Zei_Alki.jpg Haley 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Wildcat Behind Glass by Alki Lei http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375715185-S3PRN75H32UUSPKLIPMR/DeWitt_English.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375715185-S3PRN75H32UUSPKLIPMR/DeWitt_English.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375737477-DGTOBVJYL2ZZLQDJI2IY/Ernaux_Girl.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery A Girl's Story by Annie Ernaux https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375755262-VI99NBXXEEJ6BGZIHR2C/Ferris_Monsters.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 by Emil Ferris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375775843-RCQ48KOT4PSZ1PFH4J82/Flanagan_Narrow.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375787450-GI5IUB42XDGPF92GMPCV/July_Fours.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery All Fours by Miranda July https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375801286-X70MGPKQ14RX8P51B8HY/Keefe_Empire_pb.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375818477-A6NJJXOSYWL8MPHE4O77/Li_Dear_pb.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375829789-DLSTK5AKN9OLIE2GDQKJ/Macdonald_Hawk_pb.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375846731-0YR92BA7UFEOZS2GYKDV/Segal_Her.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Her First American by Lore Legal https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719375859530-07EI4H9EORSO7SVPOCB0/Vesaas_Ice.jpg Tom 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-10-year-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-06-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376085838-ZK2G7U2GT348W10RXIM3/Backman_Anxious_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Anxious People by Fredrik Backman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376085838-ZK2G7U2GT348W10RXIM3/Backman_Anxious_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Anxious People by Fredrik Backman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376100621-A1LDNR1HWCY2NEQ5AMOC/Cline_Ready_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Ready Player One by Ernest Cline https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376113136-E3U4R7FL0C3EYHSWDMOX/Foley_Guest_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Guest List by Lucy Foley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376127397-A48VGXPMRTR1X6TG7Q2X/Garmus_Lessons.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376181473-TQ6SOMH6Y1AFME7HUUTV/George_Little_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376395612-EA4KZ3FXZ9KG6R0FPXLV/Kraus_Whalefall.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Whalefall by Daniel Kraus https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376409499-6LUBJ2I2EUMRDG7OEDCP/Penny_World_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376422284-PGXOFAUHDI7QL3P3T27A/Prose_Maid_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery The Maid by Nita Prose https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376437826-CPYAEW1MOEESY4IFNRUR/Towles_Gentleman_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1719376455119-YO09E0DI24H5MHG6VGAY/Westover_Educated_pb.jpg Doree 10 Year Top 10 Gallery Educated by Tara Westover http://www.phinneybooks.com/newsletter-2024-gallery daily 0.75 2026-03-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1774637949270-7I4HSUSS0LF9GIW4NKYX/DeMarcken_Lasts.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (March 23, 2026) It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken A bizarre and beautiful take on the zombie story, where our narrator is the zombie. She is grieving her former life, including her own name and the love of her life; while her human memories have largely eroded, her human feelings persist. She travels west across a post-apocalyptic landscape with a dead crow tucked inside her chest cavity, longing to remember, as she's literally falling apart (the novel begins with the loss of her arm). Driven by character and language, I read this novella like it was a disorienting, funny, melancholic dream of a poem, moving me to consider what it means to be human and alive and mortal. I'll be thinking about this one for a good, long while. "How small or altered or distant must a part of us be before it stops being part of us? Does it ever?" —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1774637949270-7I4HSUSS0LF9GIW4NKYX/DeMarcken_Lasts.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (March 23, 2026) It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken A bizarre and beautiful take on the zombie story, where our narrator is the zombie. She is grieving her former life, including her own name and the love of her life; while her human memories have largely eroded, her human feelings persist. She travels west across a post-apocalyptic landscape with a dead crow tucked inside her chest cavity, longing to remember, as she's literally falling apart (the novel begins with the loss of her arm). Driven by character and language, I read this novella like it was a disorienting, funny, melancholic dream of a poem, moving me to consider what it means to be human and alive and mortal. I'll be thinking about this one for a good, long while. "How small or altered or distant must a part of us be before it stops being part of us? Does it ever?" —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1774637954906-ZPE6FQJPQN8JB4NZJGH3/Russell_Dark_pb.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 23, 2026) My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell “It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.” Reading My Dark Vanessa felt like my skin was shrinking—like I was suddenly not enough to cover my body. There was no room in me for everything this book held. Sharply written and compelling with so much purpose, it’s a hard book to read and a harder one to put down. Chilling, heartbreaking, and hopeful, My Dark Vanessa is one of those books I’ll find myself thinking about forever. And Kate Elizabeth Russell is one of those authors who’s writing I’ll always pick up. —Shane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1774637965482-1Y720I5Y0AS9M04VLZ89/Weesner_Car.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 23, 2026) Phinney by Post Book #134 The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner In a usual crime story, the consequences of a crime, if there are any, descend in a heap at the end, as justice is (or isn't) served. In this novel, an autobiographical debut from 1972, the consequences are the story. Alex Housman, the teenage title character, is joyriding without much joy as the story opens, and he's caught soon after and left in a dim, probationary limbo, discovering those consequences as he goes. It's riveting, because Alex is such a vivid, changeable character, and because Weesner, a former teen car thief himself, tells his story with a clear-eyed tenderness that might remind you of previous Phinney by Post picks like A Kestrel for a Knave and The Queen's Gambit. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1774637977770-922DQC67MXSNSTBPQ4DE/Jenkins_Bike.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 23, 2026) Phinney by Post Kids Book #122 A Big Day for Bike by Emily Jenkins and Brian Karas Bike is nervous for her first day as a rental bicycle. What if no one wants a ride? Her fears are soon put to rest as her busy day begins. She takes a baker to Pike Place Market, a dad and baby to the aquarium, a tourist to the Space Needle, and even gets to carry a puppy in her basket. Up steep hills, across Volunteer Park, and past a Japanese garden, Bike keeps meeting new people and zooming around Seattle all day. Whew! The book ends with a page of tips for safe biking. Seattle-area youngsters may enjoy playing "I spy" with the familiar locations in the illustrations. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1773433633362-NHXM685TBI67KUUVU3I0/Howarth_Heap.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 9, 2026) Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth “My god, to be nothing but a flicker of light.” I am learning that there is nothing so devastating as a Chloe Michelle Howarth novel. Shrouded in the fog of a family’s shame, the O’Leary siblings descend on their new home in the small town of Ballycrea. For the start of a new life, old names are buried with small lies—they come not from Kilmarra, but a different town, made-up but real enough—their griefs dulled blunt, sad but palpable. Believable. And in the embrace of the welcoming Betty and Bill Nevan, they will unravel under hope, guilt, and obsession. A haunting follow-up to her debut novel, Sunburn, Heap Earth Upon It is a tragedy in four siblings. —Shane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1773433636955-TDZOHN0LHY9KJNGJQXO5/Hale_Cave.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 9, 2026) Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks by Benjamin Hale I didn't know where this book was headed when I started, and I sure didn't expect where it would end up. Hale grew up in Colorado, but his family is from, and has largely remained, in the steep hills of Arkansas, and in 2001, his six-year-old cousin disappeared during a family hike in those hills. Hale recounts that dramatic tale, which prompted a massive search and rescue operation, but then takes a leap to tell a darker but eerily similar story from the same mountains twenty years before. Hale's curiosity, both as a storyteller and a moral inquirer, and his investment in both stories make this a far more tender, subtle, and personal story than the usual true-crime tale. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1773433641907-WX5B7894MLPNZ53OYDLS/Bronte_Wuthering_MTI.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 9, 2026) Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” I’m not ashamed to say that I was moved to finally read Wuthering Heights in large part because of its (incredibly camp) movie tie-in cover. But it’s what was inside that kept me. Emily Brontë’s only novel is an enduring gothic melodrama of love and cruelty. Of man-made monsters and cycles of abuse. The characters are enormous, their lives play like theater tragedies contained on the small stage of the moors from Thrushcross Grange to Wuthering Heights, and among it all is possibly the greatest literary villain yet written. And while I feel (somewhat strongly) that the (miscast) Elordi and Robbie’s love-locked visage is a reading-experience enhancer, I’m sure any edition will do just fine. —Shane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1773433668460-G6BAB9MJRRQLENKE579G/Peach_Thick.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 9, 2026) Phinney by Post Book #133 Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood by Hilary Peach Peach starts you right in the middle of the action—in a massive shipyard outside Victoria, B.C.—and never leaves. "Opinions are less interesting to me than actions," she finally says, late in the book, and by that time you understand: she cares less about explaining how an experimental poet and arts administrator like her ended up with a Boilermakers Union card and two decades as an industrial welder under her belt than showing, with a graceful, straightforward, and often drily funny storytelling style, what it's like to learn a difficult trade and navigate a mostly-male workplace. It's a revelation. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1773433649521-DJYSLHI0LQ0GKDOZBQ3F/Finison_Plenty.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 9, 2026) Phinney by Post Kids Book #122 Plenty of Pancakes by Carrie Finison, illustrated by Brianne Farley Opossum Topsy plans to prepare a pancake feast to welcome her bear friend LouAnn out of hibernation. But each time she plates a steaming stack of tender and crispy pancakes, they disappear as soon as her back is turned! Who is ruining LouAnn's party? Topsy will need help from her friends to save the day and prepare a tasty breakfast fit for a hungry bear. This rhyming picture book will leave you craving pancakes! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1769202905533-HQELJN5NQNF8CHHMNA7O/Austin_Is.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 19, 2026) Is This a Cry for Help? by Emily Austin To preface, this is the fourth glowing review of an Emily Austin novel I've had the pleasure of writing in the past five years. Yes, I'm a fan. Yes, she's a favorite. In this one, our protagonist Darcy has just returned to her library job after taking medical leave for a mental-health crisis triggered by the death of her ex-boyfriend. She continues to navigate guilt and grief during her return to work, which is complicated by the absence of her wife, Joy—who is away helping her newly postpartum sister—and the vendetta of a local right-wing newspaperman who is rallying like-minded community members to protest with his claims that the library has devolved into "a godless sex hole." Is This a Cry for Help? is a big-hearted hug for everyone who has suffered the consequences of compulsory heterosexuality. It's also a love letter to libraries, which offer a safe space for so many, and a reminder of the importance of protecting your peace. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1769202911686-TBQ9WSCFULAU14EE9AQM/Anderson_King.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 19, 2026) King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson The American perception of the Iranian Revolution started, for many, with the seizing of the American embassy in Tehran in November 1979. That's where this book ends. The apparently sudden collapse of the Shah of Iran's 38-year reign surprised nearly everyone—including many who helped topple him—but Anderson recounts with wry detail the particular ignorance of two participants: the pampered Shah, isolated by yes-men, and the entire American establishment, led by Nixon and Kissinger and then Carter and Brzezinski, who, drunk on oil, military revenues, and the Cold War, clung to the Shah's ship as it went down. His story is least complete—aside from the fascinating figure of the Westernized Khomeini confidant Ebrahim Yazdi—in its portrait of the third crucial element: the revolutionaries themselves, a portrait relevant once again as their own reign—now longer than the Shah's—is faced with another wave of revolutionary upheaval in the streets. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1769202918468-MWJ2GI741DURA0W8Q6ZJ/Tergit_Effingers.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 19, 2026) Effingers by Gabriele Tergit, translated by Sophie Duvernoy The first book I finished this year—published in Germany in 1951 but recently translated into English by NYRB Classics—does two things at once. It immersed me so deeply in pre-WWII, bourgeois Jewish Berlin that each time I stopped reading I had to mentally swim back to the surface of my real life. But while down there, I was chilled by reflections of recent history in the United States. It’s a brick of a book physically, but broken into short chapters and with casualness and humor, the story breezes by. We meet four generations of two intertwined families and watch the material and personal details of their lives—as well as the zeitgeist—mutate over seven decades. It was oddly consoling to be reminded that while historical specifics never repeat, Change, and an individual’s uncertainty in the face of it, is constant. It seems that everyone, to varying degrees, has lived in unprecedented times. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1769202924239-AH6YXUDGHAO8GAG22N5V/Coltellaci_Night.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (January 19, 2026) The Night Giant by Lorenzo Coltellaci, illustrated by Lorenzo Sangió This imaginative picture book is set in a small village where the legend of a "night giant" causes speculation and rumors among the residents. Is it the mischievous giant who stacks the park benches like building blocks, swaps roofs, and uses cars as roller skates? Some say he lives in the flaming center of the earth. Some say he becomes a mountain range during the day. This sweet story perfectly melds beauty, mystery, and playfulness. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1766874577533-U00EODV7YFBODFJFY6FG/NoiseCat_Survived.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 15, 2025) We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat On one hand, this is, like many memoirs, the story of a curious, ambitious child and a flawed, fascinating parent. The son of a white American mother and a father—a brilliant, larger-than-life, and often absent artist—from the Canim Lake Indian Reservation in British Columbia, NoiseCat was raised largely in the Bay Area but with close ties to his father's family and heritage, which he continued to cultivate not only by reconciling and reckoning with his dad's trickster legacy but by working as a reporter across Indian country. The result, in his first book, is a bit of a hybrid, half Dreams from My Father and half Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, at once intensely personal and nearly encyclopedic in his first-hand profiles of Indian successes and struggles from North Carolina to Quebec to Washington, D.C., making clear that for this young writer there is no separating the personal and the communal. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1766874581739-4A0QXF0G109JZSGIE372/Shanbhag_Sakina.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 15, 2025) Sakina's Kiss by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath Perur Shanbhag's debut here, Ghachar Ghochar, was one of the first novels written in Kannada, a language spoken by tens of millions in southwestern India, to be translated into English. His second, also translated by Perur, carries off the difficult feat of telling a dramatic story of personal and political turmoil from the perspective of a complacent, almost clueless, almost always cowardly main character, Venkat, who has tried to piece together an urban, bourgeois life with the advice from his ashamedly beloved self-help books. Through his timid eyes, and the often-offscreen rebellions of his young-adult daughter, you get glimpses of what is required to challenge betrayal and injustice, and what is required to pretend they don't exist. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1766874584561-IX8SSEH4Y6HEJBN3DBC9/Fenton_Cyan.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (December 15, 2025) Cyan Magenta Yellow Black by Kevin Fenton I was charmed into reading this novel by its first pages, in which a self-sabotaging former ad exec revels in the slushy city beauty of a Minnesota December as he trudges to his weekly group therapy appointment: "These perforations of the self were more important to us than they were to most people.... We loved the world because it was not us." The story that follows—of failure, friendship, and slow-won personal growth—keeps to the promise of that ramshackle charm, most winningly when Duane, its ad-man semi-hero, is waxing eloquent about his lifelong love for the commercial craft—not the art—of graphic design, of the satisfaction of making a witty, beautiful thing in the midst of a "half-assed, first draft, mumbling, misunderstood, shy, staticky, and often stupid world." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1766874588188-OL1C6ZGZXL7EVCU96TPE/Fisher_Home_Classic.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (December 15, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #132 The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher The arrival of full shelves of Persephone Books was one of the highlights of our year, so it seemed appropriate to close 2025 by choosing a Persephone book—in one of their slightly less expensive but still disarmingly handsome "Classic" editions—as our December Phinney by Post selection. The Home-Maker, a bestseller from the '20s, builds a wonderfully human story from its then- (and maybe still) provocative premise: what if a married couple realized that the wife was better—and happier—working outside the home, and the husband better—and happier—at home with the children? What is on the surface a realist novel of small-town American life becomes a kind of science fiction: a utopian thought experiment, and a moving one, for its awareness of how radically it challenged the rules of its (and, in some ways, our) society. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1766874591617-LCC44BHNJ5QONKJAO9LQ/Sterer_Banana.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (December 15, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #120 If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone by Gideon Sterer and Emily Hughes "If you make a call on a banana phone, who will answer?" The boy in this picture book finds out when he strikes up a long-distance friendship with a gorilla. Emily Hughes's soft-looking illustrations show the boy and the gorilla as they learn about each other and compare their lives. The repetition of "if..." may remind readers of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie—and like that forty-year-old classic, If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone also has an enduring quality. Perfect for a cozy read-aloud! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1765057937314-UYP2KEUQO60K20R5U4KC/Jane_American.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 17, 2025) American Werewolves by Emily Jane Emily Jane’s first novel was about aliens, her second about sea monsters, and her third is about, as the title makes clear, werewolves. In each of her books, Jane uses supernatural beings to fully plumb the depths of what it means to be human and part of a community. American Werewolves is completely bonkers, in the best possible way. Shane, a young and successful venture capitalist, is invited to join his firm’s partnership ranks, which comes with privileges such as raw, bloody steaks and chasing prey through the woods. He meets a young woman whose roommate was viciously murdered in what looks like an animal attack. The two join forces and ... well, I won’t give any more away, but let’s just say American Werewolves provides a savage yet very funny perspective on wealth disparity in America, and how we can’t outrun our ancestors. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1765057948169-6FL6Z8I6CTYGOJUJ38U1/Carmon_Unbearable.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 17, 2025) Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon I read this twice in two weeks. As soon as I finished the audiobook version, I knew I had to get my hands on a physical copy. The second reading demanded that I underline sentences, paragraphs, and sometimes nearly full pages. Carmon combines the intimate personal narratives of five women navigating pregnancy in modern, post-Roe America with research into the history of obstetrics and the legislation and criminalization of pregnant (and, ugh, pre-pregnant) bodies. This book exposes how the political and personal can intersect to devastating effect when it comes to fertility, abortion, and pregnancy. Maggie, Hali, Christine, Alison, and Yoshica's lived experiences serve to illuminate specific ways the legal and medical systems can and do fail individuals across the country, from rural Alabama to New York City. As I read and reflected on the suffering and resiliency found in these pages, and on the need for more compassionate, patient-centered care, I was reminded of another book I read and loved that inspired rage and awe: The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service. I highly recommend both. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1765057975035-O537DGY1M04P0DVHOEJA/Greenwell_Bad.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 17, 2025) Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell Local newspapers, retail chains like Toys R Us, rural hospitals, affordable housing: all things that are being driven from our landscape by impersonal but inevitable market forces, right? The winds may already be against these institutions, but Greenwell—who saw her own publication, Deadspin, similarly dismantled—argues that their true destroyer has been private equity, a giant loophole in American capitalism that has created a class of billionaires through a nearly risk-free system that allows takeover specialists to borrow against the companies they hoover up and book massive profits even when the companies fail. It's an infuriating story, given a sliver of hope through her portraits of four workers who have found meaning in activism against their predators. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1765057984075-ODRD4ZFGBG2K9I6S7WV0/Baker_U.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 17, 2025) Phinney by Post #131 U and I: A True Story by Nicholson Baker Thank goodness for strange, little books. This one, almost 25 years old already (!) [Ed.: now almost 35], may not be for everyone, but if you have the smallest bit of fascination with how one writer thinks about another, you too might love this book, in which Baker, a young writer sometimes compared—not least by himself—to the great John Updike, holds up for examination his own fascination with the master the way you might look with wonderment on a large toenail you've just clipped off. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1765058027239-1JQF2FNUIH9PEDDU776C/Gottwald_Buzz.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (November 17, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #119 Buzz! Boom! Bang! by Benjamin Gottwald The concept of Buzz! Boom! Bang! is simple: look at each page and make the noise you think the illustration would sound like. But once you start to "clip clop," "boink," and "hiss," you may find yourself laughing out loud! Blowing bubbles in lemonade or a yawn might be easy, but what sounds would you make for the more unusual pictures like a pig jumping on a trampoline, autumn leaves falling, or a paper airplane? Bold and goofy illustrations add to the fun for all ages. This wordless picture book will never read the same way twice! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066205259-K2GUQVKVNBM5RK1R9G8F/Kane_Fonseca.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 3, 2025) Fonseca by Jessica Francis Kane The public drama of Penelope Fitzgerald's life came late, as she burst into literary fame in her sixties after years of poverty and quiet desperation. She mined those private years for much of her fiction, but she never wrote about, and hardly documented, one strange episode: her trip with her young son to Mexico in the rash hope of an inheritance from distant relatives there. From this gap in her story Kane has rather boldly fashioned her own novel, speculating on Fitzgerald's inner life and on the odd expat milieu she might have found there (including the painters Edward and Jo Hopper), and tapping into the subtle humor and human yearning that make Fitzgerald's own novels so quietly compelling. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066218955-OH6MMFSZCLJSWFK1R963/Biggs_Life.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (November 3, 2025) A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs “Even if a book is about everything else, it is never not about the life the writer lived.” Memoir meets biography meets literary criticism in this heartfelt bibliomemoir (and yes, I was delighted to learn there's a specific word for this genre-blending). In the wake of her divorce and in the midst of losing her mother, Oxford-educated author Joanna Biggs turns to literature for comfort, wisdom, and guidance; the result is this impressive collection of essays, where she examines the lives and works of eight great women writers (Biggs herself is one of the nine promised in the title). I've admittedly only read the works of some of the included writers, but I found that this in no way diminished my enjoyment of the book; in fact, I adore Biggs's conversational, confessional tone as she spills tea about these women's personal lives and reveals much about her own as she seeks to build a life she's proud of. The cherry on top is the reading list I finished with; I feel rallied to reach for classics I've overlooked (there are spoilers if you read for plot!) and to revisit the ones I've loved before. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066228426-16NN0ZN1E1B0JS4SRFIQ/Crawford_Log.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 3, 2025) Log of the S.S. the Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford I remain intrigued that the same person wrote the plain-spoken farmer's memoir, A Garlic Testament, that was our January Phinney by Post pick this year and this brilliant piece of weirdo fiction, but I'm as much intrigued by the connections between them as by their differences. The Log was published in 1972, just when Crawford and his wife, Rosemary (to whom the book is dedicated), started their farm, and you can imagine he wrote it as a sort of fever dream (or nightmare) of what they had gotten themselves into, and perhaps of his own impulse to create and control. It's a tale, told by the Mrs of the title, of a grand folly and an often disastrous marriage, of a giant ocean-going barge that becomes an unmoored world unto itself, presided over by the bearded, often brutal Unguentine, who mutely fancies himself an Adam—or even a Yahweh—reigning over his isolated, chaotically self-sufficient garden. It's a short book, but a crazy trip. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066222891-VHSA6MZ6MN6JZ9XRDPKU/Babbitt_Tuck_graphic.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids Book of the Week (November 3, 2025) Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel by Natalie Babbitt, adapted and illustrated by K. Woodman-Maynard Tuck Everlasting is one of my top ten favorite books of all-time, so it's hardly surprising that this beautiful illustrated adaptation will be one of my top ten reads of the year. The original tells the story of eleven-year-old Winnie Foster, who runs away to a nearby wood in pursuit of adventure and finds it in the form of the immortal Tuck family, who drank from the wood's enchanted spring nearly a century before. Woodman-Maynard's gorgeous watercolor vision captures and enhances what I loved about the original: the restless and languid feel of a childhood summer, the thoughtful conversations about mortality, and that ending. A timeless treasure. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1760733363471-UB9NAJA497B9XPLCGQEW/Roy_Mother.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 14, 2025) Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy In the wake of the fame granted by her bestselling, Booker-winning debut novel, The God of Small Things, Roy has mostly turned her writing to political reporting and activism. But the death of her mother, a larger-than-life figure who left her feckless husband and built an acclaimed school from the sheer force of her will while cascading a constant stream of insults toward her own children, drove Roy to tell the story of her own life. It's dramatic, funny, thoughtful, and more earthily practical than her lush fiction—especially when narrated in her own drily witty voice in the audiobook. As domineering as "Mrs. Roy" was (she commanded her children to call her the same name her other students used)—"my shelter and my storm," her daughter says—Arundhati herself is an equally forceful figure, making her way out of that storm and then reckoning with the surprising dangers of her own fame and fortune. It's marvelous. —Tom [Download the very enjoyable audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm] https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1760733372861-CLELDMIXKV5V9FTLWS9X/Carr_Steeple.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 14, 2025) How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup by J.L. Carr J.L. Carr, in addition to writing the exquisite little novel A Month in the Country, which ensorcelled our staff last year, wrote a number of other little novels, and even published them himself, in oddball editions which are still available. As a fan of English football, I first tried this irresistibly titled tale, and while it doesn't quite carry the breathtaking weight of beauty and nostalgia of his famous book, I found it delightful: a self-consciously preposterous yarn that is more a fond satire of English village life than a sporting drama. And reading it in this small-batch package, with Carr's kooky illustrations and his handwritten note admitting how unlikely his story is, just adds to its sweet, wistful pleasure. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1760733379288-T2UYGU1A3Y9RSQFLW74E/Roth_Flight.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 14, 2025) Flight Without End by Joseph Roth I am slowly catching up with the genius of Joseph Roth. After the multigenerational sweep of his masterpiece, The Radetzky March, this little novel reads like a minor chamber piece, but in some ways it burrowed under my skin more deeply. It's the story, such as it is, of a certain Franz Tunda—a bourgeois young Austrian officer, engaged to a suitable bride, whose life goes thoroughly sideways when he is taken as a prisoner of war and escapes to a new identity in Siberia. Possessed by a strangely indifferent restlessness, he finds himself a Soviet revolutionary, then a husband in Baku, and finally a sponger and a vagrant in Vienna and Paris: a perfectly modern man, and an utterly "superfluous" one. It's an oddly unsettling, and often drily hilarious, story. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1760733385224-HJHISIN3RKP3XB3UQARJ/Emshwiller_Moon.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 14, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #130 Moon Songs: The Selected Stories of Carol Emshwiller by Carol Emshwiller Over the more than five decades spanned by this lovingly curated collection, Carol Emshwiller held to something distinctly Emshwillerian in the stories she invented: out of the most straightforward language and a deceptively calm sensibility grew the strangest of tales. Though they were all published in science fiction magazines, there's hardly a spaceship to be found; instead there are animals, some familiar, some not (like the green, scaly, house-filling thing in "Creature"), and humans, who, even when their cruelest impulses are being suggested, still have something gentle, and gently funny, about them. A friend and peer of Le Guin and Grace Paley, Emshwiller's warm but unsettling fables have spawned a whole generation of followers from Kelly Link to Carmen Maria Machado. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1760733392613-B3XJKSHDCC6QID3AS8LI/Lies_Cat.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (October 14, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #118 Cat Nap by Brian Lies In Cat Nap, a sleepy kitten follows a mouse into a Metropolitan Museum of Art poster. From there, the chase is on, through ancient Egyptian carvings, Mexican ceramics, a medieval prayer book, and more. How will Kitten find his way home again? The solution may sound familiar to any cat owner! I loved the attention to detail, with author Brian Lies basing each piece Kitten interacts with on a real work of art. The end of the book includes a spread showing how Lies created all the art for the illustrations by hand—that includes making his own stained glass and woodcarving! In a digital world, it's especially impressive to see this level of craftsmanship. The book ends with a message to readers encouraging them to try a new skill too. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1759530889217-T85G1EQA1G4MZTNBGGV6/Mann_Art.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 30, 2025) Art Work: On the Creative Life by Sally Mann There's something about the particular eloquence of Sally Mann's photographs—their locality, their intimacy, and the sense you get of her as not merely a silent, reserved observer but a real participant in her compositions—that makes it unsurprising she is such a good writer too. The first evidence was her 2011 memoir, Hold Still, a National Book Award finalist; the second is this book, which she thought she'd never write until she found herself jotting chapter headings. It's presented as an artistic self-help book, and it reminded me of my favorite in that genre, Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, in its attention to both the practical and passionate sides of long-term art-making. But Mann is such a personal artist, and such a natural storyteller, that inevitably this is another memoir of sorts, adding to her life story and revisiting her obsessions with place and family and the joys and the grind of creation. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1759530900760-38C6OT32YTR44SYRDYYN/Greenblatt_Dark.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (September 30, 2025) Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt The short and eventful life of Christopher Marlowe—at least what we know of it—would have provided enough drama for one of his own tumultuous plays, or one by his one-time collaborator William Shakespeare. The son of a cobbler, raised by ambition and education to the near-gentlemanly status of poet and playwright, he was likely a spy in Queen Elizabeth's service, possibly an avowed atheist (a capital crime at the time), and certainly murdered with a dagger at the age of 29. The few actual documents of Marlowe's life make this lively biography inevitably a tissue of "likelys" and "might haves," but if Marlowe himself remains a cipher, Greenblatt's unmatched understanding of the era makes it a fascinating portrait of a time more than a man, showing how a backwater culture, stalked by plague and intense political repression, whose most popular entertainment was bear-baiting, could suddenly produce the greatest flowering of dramatic art in our language, —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1759531143545-3EZF8RLJC96RI61ACUPQ/Godden_China.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 30, 2025) China Court by Rumer Godden It has all the ingredients for my ideal comfort read: a family tree, a house with a name, and a story that spans at least a century. As one plotline unfolds over two weeks in 1960, tales of earlier generations of Quins are interleaved in a particular, if not exactly chronological, way. (The family tree comes in handy.) I was gobbling up the rich historical detail of manners, fashion, decor, etc., and flipping pages to discover the circumstances of doomed romances and twisted hopes, absolutely confident that there would be—not just a happy ending—an euphoric one! But the final chapter was distinctly UNcomfortable—a curveball that I couldn’t integrate with my expectations except by reading it in a cynical and prurient way. Then I read the introduction (I never read them first) and began to reconsider. Godden is too talented to have written unintentionally, and she understands storytelling’s power to enchant. I concluded that she was breaking her own spell to remind readers of the painful truth she had been hinting at all along. And that the only thing better than a comfort read is one that—in the end—makes you think. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1759531153434-T9VUYBIOM5SSYABIX3S0/Moody_Coming.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (September 30, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #129 Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody Although she worked alongside civil rights legends like Bob Moses and Medgar Evers, you won't find Moody's name in the indexes of the big histories of the movement, and her memoir doesn't follow the arc of progress those histories trace. It's a story of frustration as much as success, of exhaustion as much as exhilaration. It's a view, not from above the ocean waves, but from inside the churn of the surf, where you can't tell if you are moving forward or backward, up or down. But it's a moving and rousing story nevertheless, as Moody, from early childhood, chafes against nearly everything in her poor rural upbringing, fights for her education and earning power, and finds a purpose—even if an often thwarted one—in political action and community. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1759531188833-FVAK3PEYH8NXGJ9W1RR1/Borando_Short.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (September 30, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #117 Short Stories by Silvia Borando Silvia Borando's Short Stories is flash fiction for kids. Each of these eleven cheeky stories is just a few sentences long, with the simple illustrations adding to the visual gags. Night falls while a snail waits for a centipede to put on their shoes. A hedgehog ruins a birthday party. A snake finds a great new outfit in a pair of socks. Fans of Remy Charlip's dark humor will enjoy this picture book. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755905223395-814MSFO37845OP1CX7AD/Shepherd_Art.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 18, 2025) The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson The Art of a Lie is my favorite book of 2025 so far! I was drawn in by the main character's eighteenth-century confectionery shop and treated to a page-turner full of more twists and turns than a Hitchcock film. Historical fiction can be hit-or-miss for me, based on how real the setting feels, but in The Art of a Lie, Shepherd-Robinson completely transports her readers into a well-researched 1749 London world. Learning so much about daily life and customs during this time period was a highlight, but the storyline also constantly kept me on my toes—even gasping with surprise at several parts. I'd tell you more of the plot, but I think it's best to go into this book with no prior knowledge, like I did. Check it out if you enjoy history, mystery, or just a well-told story. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755905428243-YG9IKG1KJT8LUQDW42L9/Elmhirst_Marriage.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (August 18, 2025) A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst "117 Days Adrift!" read the headlines, as well as the title of the book that Maurice and Maralyn Bailey published soon after being rescued from the raft they survived on when their sailboat was wrecked by a whale near the Galapagos in 1973. Actually it was 118 days, but Elmhirst is less interested in doing any correcting of the record of their well-documented adventure than, as her title implies, in painting a portrait of two singular people who twinned their lives together, before, during, and after the ordeal that made them temporarily famous. Maurice was obsessive and misanthropic, Maralyn was optimistic and capable; together their insular partnership reminded me, oddly, of the couple at the heart of another recent nonfiction favorite, Michael Finkel's The Art Thief. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755905229932-VFS40VFZTQH0MK7RHRFE/Rukeyser_Willard.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 18, 2025) Willard Gibbs: The Whole Is Simpler than Its Parts by Muriel Rukeyser This hefty, beautiful, and mysterious book tempted me from across the store for months, and when I finally had the time to sit down with it, it turned out to be all of those things: hefty, beautiful, and still mysterious. The first book in Maria Popova's new Marginalian imprint for the excellent McNally Jackson Books, it's a biography (of sorts) of the 19th-century scientist Willard Gibbs, first published in 1942 by the poet Muriel Rukeyser. Gibbs was a titan—Rukeyser, not outlandishly, counts him as one of the four great Americans of his time, along with Lincoln, Whitman, and Melville—but largely unknown then and still so now, even as his ideas, in their brilliant connection and abstraction across mathematics, physics, and chemistry, laid the foundation for much of what the 20th century discovered. "A modest man," in Rukeyser's words, "living and dying in the space of three New Haven blocks," his life story is almost vacant, so she makes it a biography of an entire age, of industrial and social transformation and of brainy, searching peers like William James and Henry Adams. It is a dense, lyrical, fascinating book, full of science that largely flew over my head and cultural history as wise as any I've read. That Rukeyser wrote it all by the time she was 29 is astounding, and makes me even more curious about her than about her elusive subject. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755905236898-S9GCWXKFDTNVYXFOPOK4/Guibert_Friend.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (August 18, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #128 To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Hervé Guibert, translated by Linda Coverdale Some writers, faced with the prospect of an early death, respond, at least on the page, with a kind of grace, a generous, expansive clarity, colored, even purified, by the urgency of their awareness of the mortality we all share. In this novel/memoir (one of a half-dozen books he wrote in a frenzy after being diagnosed with AIDS—a death sentence at the time—in the late '80s), Guibert is neither gracious nor generous. He is, mostly and unrepentantly, a jerk. His book, though, crackles with life, with comedy as well as tragedy, with the swerves of a mind struggling to comprehend his predicament and to find the words to express it. His sentences are often cascades of indecision, of biting, gossipy asides, of awkward physical details, of anger and once in a while even affection. I don’t claim that his bitterness carries any more truth than the grace found by other writers, but neither would I say that it carries any less.—Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755905241209-JU361BZCPQQXZRHZLBAT/Jackson_Sleeper.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (August 18, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #116 The Sleeper Train by Mick Jackson and Baljinder Kaur Aboard the Indian sleeper train, everyone is getting ready for bed. But one little girl is too excited to sleep. She thinks it might help to try to remember all the places she has slept in the past, like the beach, her grandparents' house, or a tent in the countryside. This gentle bedtime book feels like a classic. I particularly loved Baljinder Kaur's wonderfully detailed art, which takes readers into a magical dreamland of colors and patterns. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029577189-8WH2TDE78C2CT3TK44CX/Esperanza_Detained.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 28, 2025) Detained by D. Esperanza and Gerardo Ivan Morales D. Esperanza's story is a perfect example of how the personal is political. Thirteen-year-old Esperanza could not have anticipated that his first journal would become this memoir, just as he could not have foreseen the circumstances—the deaths of his caregivers—that forced him and his young cousins from Honduras and Guatemala to the United States. Unfortunately, the hundreds of perilous miles the four boys traversed over the course of four months was not the worst of it; Esperanza and his cousins were detained and separated at the border; he was then held in detention for the next five months while waiting to be reunited with his parents in Tennessee. Written with tremendous tenacity and foresight, Detained reveals the inhumanity and senselessness of U.S. immigration policies. Much like Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, this should be required reading. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029591692-ZYLCC53695N06QC9AV78/Shteyngart_Vera.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 28, 2025) Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart A light touch in fiction can be the hardest to master. Gary Shteyngart has always been overloaded with talent, especially with a kind of manic clairvoyance that sees about six months ahead of whenever he is writing, as in hilariously unsettling novels like Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story, but in Vera, the brainy, striving tween hero of his new novel, he might have found his most fluid and comfortable voice. Watching the adults around her, especially her semi-hapless Russian-emigre intellectual dad and her blue-blood adoptive mother, she tries on words for size—"merely rich," "classic trope"—and tries to make sense of the secrets they seem to hide. It makes for a story at once sweet and sharp and always zippily entertaining, haunted by an AI-enforced white nationalism that has only accelerated here since he wrote this a year ago but also full of what Vera would probably put scare quotes around, like so many of the terms she's learning to use: "heart." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029604242-TUH4YJJ2B8IGRDLNJPB2/Drexler_Smithereens.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 28, 2025) To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler I had never heard of Rosalyn Drexler before I opened this novel, published in 1972 and reissued this year as the first book from the cool new imprint Hagfish, but she seems like a heck of a woman. Mostly a painter who made her own way through the fist-fighters of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art (the book’s cover painting is hers), she also has written plays and a dozen or so books in her 98 years (including the novelization of Rocky!), and, like her character Rosa Rubinsky, was for a time a pro wrestler on the sleazy, pre-TV circuit. Writing may have been second to painting for her, but whoa, she can write: To Smithereens is a raunchy, ratty tale that reads a little like The Queen's Gambit seen through the eyes of R. Crumb, and then seen again through the eyes of a savvy, seen-it-all feminist. It's satirical but surprisingly humane toward even its creepiest characters, and best of all, Drexler has a deliciously spot-on ear for the way people talk and think. I loved it. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029183002-YFL8CUAZB6C3H6SLT3I9/Howarth_Sunburn_US.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 7, 2025) Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth “Now is the time between birth and slaughter. Another Summer has arrived.” Summer has come to Crossmore, and Lucy is waiting for some anything to happen. She’s waiting to love her best friend, Martin, the way she’s supposed to. Waiting, for her friend Susannah to notice her the way she burns to be. Sunburn is the fragile-volatile-inertia of young queer love coming of age in rural Ireland. Chloe Michelle Howarth’s prose is enthralling, the village of Crossmore feels like the edge of the world—suffocating and inescapable under the weight of its expectation and tradition. Lucy’s crisis of self is so well explored it was, at times, as difficult to keep reading as it was to put down. Sunburn is an agonizing debut, and the best book I read last summer. —Shane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029258442-E0BYI1V1RUXC1R03PSC2/DeKretser_Theory.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (July 7, 2025) Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser Recently I sifted through our new releases in search of—well, I wasn't sure. A certain kind of book I knew I needed without quite knowing what it was. And this little novel, I realized almost as soon as I picked it up, was it. Can I describe it now? I'm still not sure, but what comes to mind first is "restlessly intelligent." An Australian woman from Sri Lanka studies Virginia Woolf in grad school, and has an irrationally possessive affair with a young man who is, mostly, seeing someone else. It's a story very much about what the title says—the gap, the friction, between theory and practice—but really it's about the grit and the thought of this particular life, looked back on from afar. If you liked Claire Dederer's Monsters (and I know many of you did), you'll find a fictional companion here, somewhat in subject but certainly in that shared restless intelligence. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029353048-2HS8LDYKREKM9NOWIWOU/Ross_Picture.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (July 7, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #127 Picture by Lillian Ross Among the many high points of John Huston's film career, from The Maltese Falcon through Prizzi's Honor, his 1951 adaptation of The Red Badge of Courage would hardly rate a footnote if not for this, one of the great books on Hollywood, and one of the great hanging-out books in general. Ross, who wrote for the New Yorker over seven decades, embodied two of its great virtues here: patience and style. She hung out, with incredible fly-on-the-wall access, for a year and a half as the movie was made (and then butchered by the studio), filling her notebook with the comedy and the small tragedies, the charisma and the obsequies, the excesses and the petty finances of making a movie at that exact moment. It is a treat. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1755029462735-K73MTMW0ZL90BPUYBUZM/Alves_Owls.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (July 7, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #115 Time for Bed, Little Owls! by Katja Alves and Andrea Stegmaier, translated by Polly Lawson Mama Owl unexpectedly needs to leave home, but whooo will help put her ten little owls to bed? Readers get the chance to play babysitter by showing the mischievous little owls how to hop and flap to bed, singing them a bedtime song, helping them brush their beaks, and more. For once, kids are on the other side of the bedtime routine and this interactive picture book will have everyone settling down for sleep with the little owls. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751065323489-VANZB8HZBVK8C345YSDD/Macfarlane_River.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 17, 2025) Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane If rivers can die—we've all seen that they can—shouldn't that also mean that rivers are alive? Macfarlane's newest book is his most pointedly provocative, adding an activist's urgency to his usual, miraculous attention to nature, love for language, and charismatic generosity toward the best of his fellow humans. In this participatory study of living waterways, almost giddy with hope and the possibility of despair, you'll meet four river systems, in the cloudforests of Ecuador, the polluted flatlands of India, the wild, yet-undammed reaches of Quebec, and Macfarlane's home territory of Cambridge, and you'll also get to know some of the larger-than-life people who love and try to protect them. In a time when we pay particular attention to pronouns, you'll note the one he insists on using for each river: not "it," but "who." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751065332779-R4EG69A6532HJRJF87CZ/Walter_So.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 17, 2025) So Far Gone by Jess Walter There are a lot of folks in the Northwest who want to get away from it all. One of them is Rhys Kinnick, an ex-journalist who pissed off his family, chucked out his smartphone, and disappeared into the woods north of Spokane. But he's drawn back into the world by the surprise arrival of two grandchildren on his front porch, and what follows is an adventure that brings the heart and ramshackle humor of Charles Portis (and Jess Walter, for that matter) to some of the most seemingly intractable madnesses of our times. (True Portisheads will appreciate a side character named Sheriff Glen Campbell, a nod (I assume!) to the star of the film version of Norwood.) As Rhys tries to rebuild a family fractured by conspiracy theories, Christian-militia nationalism, and his own stubborn knuckleheadedness, we get just the kind of story—part comedy, part thriller, part raccoon expose—that we all might need right now. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751065343668-QJKKORMZS9IDVD2JV9NA/Powell_Edisto.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 17, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #126 Edisto by Padgett Powell Some writers have such fun with our shared language—stretching it, wandering down its more neglected byways, reveling in its regionalisms—that it makes you wonder why so many of their peers are content to stay buttoned up. When Padgett Powell lets loose, his style is always grounded in the spoken word, in particular in the way people talk in the coastal lowcountry of South Carolina, the setting for this debut novel of a teenage white boy and the various authorities he tries to learn from and/or avoid. Does he learn? Does he come-of-age, as the name of this genre implies is almost inevitable? Well, sure, but not in the ways he expects, and not in ways that eclipse our sheer pleasure in hanging out during his unsettled, in-between years. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751065355494-YDNW8DLTUBGEYZAM1CY9/Stead_Anything.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (June 17, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #114 Anything by Rebecca Stead and Gracey Zhang The young protagonist in Anything tells us she can wish for very hard things—a rainbow in her room or the biggest slice of pizza in the whole world! But wishes (or "anythings," as she calls them) only go so far when you've just moved into a new apartment that doesn't feel like home. The girl's father has a few tricks up his sleeve to make her wishes come true and help the two of them create new memories. This is Newbery winner Rebecca Stead's first picture book and she writes for a younger audience with the same emotional intelligence that she brings to her middle-grade books. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1750106975966-GINUSGUUA5S8DB0NU4A5/Dinniman_Dungeon.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (June 3, 2025) Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt DInniman In Dungeon Crawler Carl, Carl’s world collapses. Literally. Every interior on Earth with a roof is collapsed and absorbed into the 18-Level World Dungeon. Part Hunger Games, part role-playing game, The Dungeon is an episodic intergalactic reality show with impossible odds. Dinniman has a clear understanding of what makes action readable and an impressive ability to bring a character to life. And beneath the very foot-enthusiastic game host A.I. and the ultra charismatic talking cat, Dungeon Crawler Carl is about humanity—finding and keeping it under a system that exploits and commodifies. It is the funnest, most engaging series I’ve ever read—and it all starts here: “You will not break me." —Shane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1750106990585-W85RKM6GABQBIDHOET2Z/Painter_One.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (June 3, 2025) One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes I hesitate to use an overworked booksellers’ phrase, but I can’t get around the fact that this 1947 novel epitomizes the “rediscovered gem.” It’s a 170-page story about a woman, a family, and a village on one radiant summer day a year after the end of WWII. Panter-Downes is a meticulous craftsperson and her descriptions are charmingly apt. Sheep run with the “rapid little steps of elderly ladies trying to catch a bus," two matrons of different classes wage an undeclared war, “pitting the sniff delicate against the sniff insolent”—and the written world is visible, audible. Her wistful, but not mournful, rumination on the ways war reshaped the English caste system makes the book veddy, veddy British, but I shared the uneasiness of those who had just come through an ordeal personally unscathed but unable to regain their balance. While light and compact, this book holds hints of the weighty vastness of history and time. Read savoringly. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1750107004168-QH05HEDQX1JG45RHI49X/Mann_Heat2.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Audio Book of the Week (June 3, 2025) Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner, read by Peter Giles Heat is not my own favorite Michael Mann film—I'll take The Insider or Thief—but thirty years after it pitted Pacino against DeNiro as mirror-image cop and robber, it might be his most beloved. A movie sequel is finally on the way, but Mann loves the story so much that a few years back he (with crime-novelist collaborator Gardiner) published this epic before-and-after tale, which had mostly slipped past my radar until I heard raves about the audiobook. And what a ride it is: Peter Giles reads Mann's staccato, operatic prose with a gravelly, borderline-campy intensity that makes you feel like you are listening to a nineteen-hour monster truck show promo. And I mean that in a good way. To use some favorite Mann adjectives, it's electric, it's lethal, it's jacked. —Tom (Order the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1750107033657-RLLAKSS4T1P6ZW2ZHP20/Shyne_Repeat.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (June 3, 2025) You and Me on Repeat by Mary Shyne Would you prefer never to relive your awkward teen fumbling again, or would you jump at the chance to repeat those misspent moments again and again until you finally perfect connecting with the person you were meant to be with? If the latter scenario appeals to you, dive into the Groundhog Day-style time loops of Mary Shyne's debut graphic novel, in which high-schoolers Chris O'Brien and Alicia Ochoa detour through countless graduation day scenarios that bring their old, fractured friendship to a new, well-earned, and sweetly nerdy conclusion that plays with the malleability of identity and the tenacity of romance. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1748047783136-NENGO0B289H4LQG7HP76/Knapp_Names.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 19, 2025) The Names by Florence Knapp Have you ever wondered who you might be with a different name? Have you ever grappled with the decision of what to name your own child, knowing it's something they'll have to carry the rest of their life? Cora meant to name her infant son after her husband, Dr. Gordon Atkin, but she feels a pull to defy him as Gordon is also her abuser. The Names explores the ripple effects of familial trauma hinging on this singular decision. Three names (Bear, Julian, and Gordon) give way to three timelines that span the next thirty-five years asking, what if? and sighing, if only. This devastatingly well-executed debut (how is this a debut?!) is worth the buzz. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1748047791408-IGS0BU81WLDUV5RHOZXA/Backman_Friends.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (May 19, 2025) My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith Every novel that Fredrik Backman writes immediately becomes my favorite. There is simply no one better at illustrating the human experience of love and friendship. In his latest, My Friends, he reminds us how deep childhood friendships can be, and how regrets can haunt you years later. A group of teenagers spends a transformational summer together, riding bikes, swimming, surviving trauma, lifting each other up while the world tries to tear them down. One of them puts all of these experiences and emotions into a painting that will later set the art world on fire. Years later, we learn in flashbacks what happened to each of these children. I cried, sad tears and happy tears, and am now inspired to reach out to some of my childhood friends to thank them for helping make me the person I am today. —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1748047797053-AHB8DQ6ZWGD4P9738PFQ/Shearn_Dear.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (May 19, 2025) Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn Told in a modern epistolary form that includes emails, texts, and social media posts, Dear Edna Sloane is a delight. With the ambition and earnestness of an MFA graduate who's landed a dream-adjacent job as an editorial assistant in New York City, Seth Edwards has tasked himself with tracking down an all-but-forgotten author, Edna Sloane, in hopes that doing so might launch his own career. Sloane's literary star burned bright in the 1980s with the publication of her instant and enduring classic, An Infinity of Traces, but she mysteriously disappeared from the public eye at the height of its success. The personal and professional correspondences that emerge are often filled with creativity-fueled existential angst and literary snark, and they all work together to tell the story of an evolving industry and culture. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1748047800670-5GMPJMAZY4JZTR1AX35H/Guillermoprieto_Samba.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (May 19, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #125 Samba by Alma Guillermoprieto Some of you might recall an earlier Phinney by Post pick, A Simple Story, by Leila Guerriero, about a dance contest in Argentina. Though it's a story about another dance contest in South America (during Carnival in Rio), Samba could hardly be more different. No one could ever call it simple, for one thing: into its 244 pages Guillermoprieto crams many dozens of characters and much of the political, economic, and racial history of Brazil, a history that the samba schools of Carnival often themselves enact in their chaotic, choreographed performances, in which the segregated classes and races of Brazilian society mix wildly for a moment but continue to define themselves against each other. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1748047806010-BPNFW638DOFKZOPBX1TG/Pantaleo_Music.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (May 19, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids #113 And There Was Music by Marta Pantaleo "When you listen to music, your heart changes rhythm. Can you hear it?" asks And There Was Music. This picture book is bursting with many types of song, including a brass band in New Orleans, Irish folk music, flamenco, didgeridoo, and even astronaut Wang Yaping playing a guzheng (Chinese zither) on the International Space Station! Simple text describes how music can move us, connect us with others, recall memories, and much more, while vibrant illustrations celebrate the beautiful ways music rings out around the globe. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1746051972068-V75XQJCQ1F9JCFT2DSJ1/Werner_Frog.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 21, 2025) The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner, translated by Michael Hofmann We pay attention to Michael Hofmann's translations here, not only for his skill in turning German into English (e.g., Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March and Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos) but for his taste in the books he chooses to translate. So when, in the introduction to this book, he described Werner, a Swiss novelist I hadn't heard of before, as "exquisitely addictive," as "swift," "bleak," and "deadly," well, I had to keep reading. And I acquired an appetite for Werner too, which likely won't be satisfied with this one book. The story is slight, alternating between the voices of a lapsed, disgraced pastor and his late dairy-farmer father, who refuses to forgive his son even in death, but it's the voices that are the pull, grouchy rants worthy of Thomas Bernhard or Michel Houellebecq that are somehow refreshing and even humane in their flaws and fury. I don't remember when bitter misanthropy has made me so glad to be alive. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1746051981716-N1BHBAJ94L7DZFB873KX/Ross_Playworld.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 21, 2025) Playworld by Adam Ross The biographical fallacy—the assumption that fiction comes directly from the author's own life—is full of dangers, but nevertheless I was not at all surprised to learn that Adam Ross was a child actor and champion wrestler in his New York youth, much like Griffin Hurt, the main character of his new, long-in-the-making novel. The sheer density of knowledge and understanding about his particular life, in that particular time and place, feel like they could come from nowhere but experience: this is a book that feels lived. Recounting a tumultuous and transformative year in Griffin's young life, dominated by the adults who use him to work out their own needs in the style of the Carter/Reagan era, it has the bagginess of life, of details included only because they happened, but the intensity of it too. It's immersed in the details of its time and it's a throwback in style too, an old-fashioned coming-of-age story that makes you feel you have grown up with Griffin too. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1746051991581-Q6FXM44J00VXGT1VT3RA/Hines_Kestrel.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (April 21, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #124 A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines This little novel has always been hard to find in the U.S., but it's been a staple of school reading lists in England ever since it came out in 1968—and for good reason, as it's the sort of story, of a neglected, bullied boy in a poor mining town who comes alive when he learns to train a hawk, that you could imagine sparking life in young readers just as the hawk does for young Billy. It's a lovely, melancholy story (as is Ken Loach's faithful and equally lovely film version, Kes), and of course anyone who adored Helen Macdonald's memoir, H Is for Hawk, as much as I did will delight to return to the strangely compelling partnership between wild bird and human hand. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1746051997175-2QI274VSD9UVW93ZWEE4/Clanton_Papilio.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (April 21, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids #112 Papilio by Ben Clanton, Corey R. Tabor, and Andy Chou Musser If you stopped by the store earlier this spring, you may have noticed our amazing front window celebrating Papilio, a new picture book by the three-author team of Ben Clanton (Narwhal and Jelly series), Cory R. Tabor (Fox series), and Andy Chou Musser (Ploof and Science Explorers series). The three local artists each tell the story of one segment of a butterfly's life: Clanton depicts Papilio as a caterpillar finding her footing (and food); Tabor covers her precarious chrysalis days (did you know caterpillars dissolve and turn to goo?); and in Chou Musser's segment, Papilio is a beautiful black swallowtail learning to fly. The book ends with a fascinating "flutter of facts" about caterpillars/butterflies and the story of how the authors collaborated on this cute and funny story. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1744327872985-PQ4IQU4O7PZ5PJWF5ALF/Pattee_Tilt.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 7, 2025) Tilt by Emma Pattee Suddenly, the Big One—the catastrophic earthquake predicted to ravage the PNW in the next half century—is no longer a matter of What If but of What Now? Annie is nine months pregnant in IKEA stressing about a crib purchase when it happens. The narrative alternates between the present-day disaster and ruminations on the past with an eye to the immediate and uncertain future. Annie addresses her baby-to-be as she sets out on an odyssey across the ruined city of Portland, OR, to reunite with her husband. Propulsive in plot and rich in story, Tilt deftly articulates so much about motherhood and humanity, survival and strength. As a fellow Millennial and anxious new parent, I related deeply to Annie and felt myself with her every aching step of her journey, devoted and unwilling to put the book down until we reached the final page together. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1744327883928-W7T9NZRJ8L71V2YEQ1CZ/Szalay_Flesh.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 7, 2025) Flesh by David Szalay If the first thing you think when you finish a book is, “How did he do that!?”, you can be sure the author has pulled off something remarkable. I’ve long admired Szalay’s style and enjoyed his previous novels, but in his latest, the medium somehow IS the message. With spare, straightforward prose, and dialogue laconic in the extreme, Szalay portrays István, from age 15 to about 65. What he undergoes during that half-century is out-of-the ordinary, yet his story is, at bottom, about our common human experience. Physical and emotional, personal and geopolitical, it examines our bodies’ interface between our inner selves and the outer world. While Szalay has a quietly goofy humor that just tickled me, he also brought me to tears. But it wasn’t distress I was feeling, it was catharsis. And I realized that’s exactly what I’ve been needing these days. —Liz P.S. I know it’s early, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Flesh was a Booker nominee. It’s definitely going to be on my personal 2025 Top Ten. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1744327900787-GEBICK64BKZL0VWWM3CZ/Akkad_One.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 7, 2025) One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad To say that this book began as a tweet—a single sentence posted in late October 2023, a little longer than what became its title but the same in spirit—is not to belittle it, but to capture the power of its focused eloquence. El Akkad, author of the provocative near-future novel, American War, expanded on that sentence in this nonfiction memoir/polemic not with the usual back-and-forth of Middle East historical blame but by tracing his own path: from a childhood in Egypt, Qatar, and Canada to an adult decision to become a citizen of the United States. It was a path driven in part by opportunity and the appeal of a more open society, but now, after two decades of reporting on empire and the unrelenting evidence of the destruction of Gaza, his understanding of the hypocrisy of the West and its indifference to the suffering of others becomes almost a koan of anger and anguish, tempered only slightly by the hope that there will be a future that might, at some point, see it for what it was. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1744327908730-YM10TOWA5PG3G158XX14/Wynn-Williams_Careless.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 7, 2025) Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams Despite (or because of) Meta's clumsy efforts to suppress this Facebook insider's expose, it has received a flurry of coverage, focused, unsurprisingly, on its more sleazily scandalous tales. If that's what you're looking for—a sort of nonfiction White Lotus about bad behavior in Four Seasons suites—you'll find plenty of it, but don't let that obscure that this might be one of the sharpest, most revealing accounts of the perversity of modern power you can find. Wynn-Williams is an excellent storyteller, her path from idealism to disgust is credible, and her intimate view of these instant billionaires—insular, hypocritical, cluelessly conniving, obsessed with insatiable growth and personal power, and carelessly destructive in true Tom and Daisy Buchanan style—is damning. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1744327919169-69FTNPOREBVSW4SMYKZD/Dalton_Raising.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (April 7, 2025) Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton "There was a time when I knew nothing about hares and gave them little thought," Chloe Dalton writes in Raising Hare. That changes when Dalton rescues a baby hare (called a leveret) near her English countryside home. As her habits shift to accommodate the little wild creature, its presence gradually awakens her to the natural world outside. This beautifully written and moving memoir will fill you with wonder and reverence. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in animals or nature. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1742860875477-7NE74524R2KKK6JQE57K/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 24, 2025) The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir by Neko Case "What makes you think you're so important that someone should listen to you?" It's the question Neko Case has been asked—and even worse, asked herself—her whole life, born into a spectacularly neglected childhood ("raised by two dogs and a space heater") and bounced around the rural Northwest until she found her people and her voice in the Tacoma punk scene. If you love her singing and her songwriting, it's inconceivable you won't love this starkly beautiful book, but even if you've never heard her (you should!) you'll likely never forget the childhood she recalls and the person she became. It's my favorite book I've read so far this year—easily. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1742861350426-WRRQRCRD37AMEWOIJ1RX/Kennedy_Secret.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 24, 2025) The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story by Pagan Kennedy This short book took a long time to come together. Kennedy, a star of the zine movement in her twenties, had become a design columnist at the NYT, writing about everyday inventions, when one invention—and its little-known inventor—became her obsession: the rape kit, a simple, transformative technology created in a very unlikely place (the '70s Chicago police department). Credited to a man, it was actually the brainchild of a woman, the tireless, fascinatingly complicated, and biographically elusive activist Marty Goddard, and Kennedy's search for the facts of Goddard's life and her subtle, wide-ranging, and often deeply personal analysis of forensics and justice for the crime of rape make this single tale into a compelling American story. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1742861471263-23RJTI3VN2ZXC6NEXP7W/Mayer_They.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 24, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #123 They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945 by Milton Mayer When I finally picked up this book from 1955 about the 1930s, I can't deny I had current events in mind. We look for echoes in history, to see how a society—or part of a society—could embrace authoritarianism, but what struck me most about this story was how specific it was. The most familiar elements of Nazi history—the atrocities and the leaders—are at a distance here; instead we have the story of ten "little men" (their own description) in a small German city, told by Mayer, an American reporter (and a Jew, which he never revealed to his subjects), who slowly got to know these "friends," a term that gathers a sharp edge of irony and even disgust, especially as he learns that few, if any, of them regret what they had been a part of. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1742861568445-TQW0REI4BV0QQHT40E9N/Liang_Jessica.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Young Adult Book of the Week (March 24, 2025) I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang I Am Not Jessica Chen is a haunting portrait of social pressure and academic burnout. When Jenna Chen's wish to become her golden child cousin literally comes true, she's initially elated. She finds herself aglow in a constant stream of positive attention, praise, and validation. Being Jessica Chen is so intoxicating to Jenna that when she discovers her own body is missing as well as her cousin's consciousness, her primary concern is keeping up the charade. Even when little by little, reality starts to crack through the surreal glamour of Jessica Chen's life, Jenna can't help but prefer it to her suffocatingly average one. It's only when Jenna discovers that the memory of her very existence is corroding—first, in the self-portraits she painted for an upcoming art show and then in the minds of the people who loved her best—she begins to comprehend what she stands to lose instead of gain. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1742861698274-XGBQIEK4AK5DI47L92MD/Awan_Every.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 24, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #111 Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan Young Mabel has a very important appointment every Monday morning. Her sister thinks it's boring, her mom thinks it's cute, and her dad thinks it's funny. But to Mabel, watching the garbage truck rumble up the street and dump the trash cans is the best thing in the world. This is a book for all those kids who can relate to the glorious excitement of watching the garbage truck! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1741303597671-9K634O55JPAE6X9YA49Z/image-asset.jpeg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 3, 2025) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito Jane Eyre meets Shirley Jackson (think: We Have Always Lived in the Castle) in this Victorian horror-comedy. In the movie in my mind, Tim Burton is the director. Upon arriving at Ensor House, the new governess informs the reader with casual cruelty that, "It is early fall, the cold is beginning to descend, and in three months everyone in this house will be dead." This before she, the servants, her employers, or the spoiled children have even been introduced! Miss Winifred Notty (wink) is an antiheroine molded by time and circumstance. It is her head we dwell inside, privy to her disturbing history and irreverent musings. We observe as she feigns politeness and maliciously complies to do her duties. We witness how each member of the household is their own particular brand of horrible, spurring on the Darkness that resides in her. This nasty novella doesn't spare innocents or shy away from on-the-page violence and gore, culminating in a deliciously macabre finale. It is a fantasy of female rage and wickedness, and boy, is it fun. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1741303800796-0HL6T5KBQ5GSDSFFMN4Q/Jane_Here.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (March 3, 2025) Here Beside the Rising Tide by Emily Jane Emily Jane’s very funny debut novel, On Earth as It Is on Television, was one of my favorite books two years ago, and I frequently recommend it to people who want something hilarious yet also poignant about what it means to be human (despite the fact that it’s about aliens). Her follow-up, Here Beside the Rising Tide, is in a similar vein, as there’s something maybe alien-like out in the water off Pearl Island, the childhood home of 10-year-old Jenni. She spends a glorious summer with a kid named Timmy who loves carnivals and swimming and general kid stuff just like her and isn’t in a hurry to grow up. But then Timmy disappears into the water…and somehow reappears 30 years later, still 10 years old, while Jenni is going through a divorce, trying to finish the latest in her successful romance novel series, renovating her late mother’s home, letting her kids eat way too much sugar, and flirting with a hunky contractor who may or may not be flirting back. Meanwhile, Timmy tries to get her to help him save the world. As a solo parent with far too much on her plate this summer, how can she say no to her old friend? —Doree https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1741304113393-IVA9CLUJYCQR7CRBG4M9/Howard_Light.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (March 3, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #122 The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard Does your heart race with anticipated pleasure when you see not only a list of characters but a family tree on the first pages of a fat novel? If so, prepare to luxuriate, as this is just the first of five volumes in Howard's Cazalet Chronicle (all published after her 65th birthday, late in a glamorous literary life that sometimes overshadowed her writing). The large cast consists of the Cazalets, a family wealthy from the timber trade, and their similarly sized staff of servants, and it's Howard's special genius to be able to inhabit them all (the children especially, in all their fussiness, intelligence, and ignorant charm). What delights me more than anything is the vivid texture of how people lived, how they planned and prepared their meals, picked out their dresses, and arranged their adulteries. This volume is set in the late '30s, as WWII approaches—I look forward to following them, with the series, for two decades more. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1741304128713-MEZFL2JHNBSSEDG7CRTU/Clark_Needed.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (March 3, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #110 We Needed a You by M.H. Clark and Olivia Holden We Needed a You is my new go-to baby shower recommendation. This delightfully sweet picture book features soft and colorful artwork and gentle text describing all the beautiful things in the world ("there were treats made for sharing and savoring," "cats in the windows, blackberries to eat") but ultimately something was missing, the parents tell the child. We needed a you! A great way to remind little ones they are loved. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1737769542516-7QOGC55E0V0GLO66VKYP/Austin_Rats.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (January 20, 2025) We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin As I've come to expect from Emily Austin's previous two novels, the beating heart of We Could Be Rats lies in its deeply flawed but lovable characters. However, where we were given the singular perspective of Gilda (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead) and Enid (Interesting Facts About Space), in this one we get the perspectives of two sisters: Sigrid and Margit. And where Gilda and Enid grappled with profound anxiety, Sigrid struggles with suicidal ideation. Sigrid's older sister Margit is a university student working toward a conventionally attractive future, while Sigrid is a queer high school dropout working at Dollar Pal. At 20, Sigrid is grieving her childhood, having become disillusioned with adulthood, her small, conservative hometown, and her dysfunctional family of origin; the novel opens with her penning her suicide letter. Sigrid's hopeful Margit will eventually edit it for her, making it more palatable for their parents and relatives. She writes, "I'm worried my death might bum you out, so I want to leave you with something to cheer you up." All that follows is strange and tender and dark and imaginative and sad and funny. I'll read anything this woman writes. —Anika https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1737769558995-AQ3K0JTGKCCV9IKFIQT3/Young_Ghost.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (January 20, 2025) Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay by Jeff Young Imagine a book about post-war Liverpool that takes 90 pages to even mention the Beatles (and then only to say his mum was sad when they broke up). Young loves—has always loved—his home city, but the gods of his north England are the intensely local memory films of Terence Davies and the inscrutable pugnacity of Mark E. Smith and the Fall. He started walking its streets and back alleys and stairwells in the late '50s with his mum and granddad, and he's walked them ever since, open at all times to the sounds and sights and smells around him, but especially to the memories, his own and others, of Victorian smoke, Blitz bomb sites, and urban-planning delusions, of dockworkers and punks, of stale pints of brown and mild. It's a personal memory book that makes you understand what it means to love a living city, and all its ghosts. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1737769573115-KMQN3YT2HMJQ8A36EG6W/Crawford_Garlic.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 20, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #121 A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm by Stanley Crawford Only when Stanley Crawford died a year ago, at age 86, did I realize that the same person was the author of two very different books that had long intrigued me: the notoriously weird experimental novel from 1972, Log of the S.S. Mrs Unguentine, and this much more straightforward memoir of garlic farming, published twenty years later. And so, intrigued, I finally read both. Mrs Unguentine is indeed fascinatingly weird (I'll say more when it's rereleased later this year), but I loved A Garlic Testament. It is a romance of sorts, built around the dream of remote self-sufficiency, on the small farm in the mountains outside Santa Fe that Crawford and his wife Rose Mary operated for fifty years, which also allowed him quieter winters for writing. But the true beauty of his story, as Crawford knows, is not their isolation, but their many connections: with friends and family who help with the work, with neighbors who share their scarce water resources, and with the people who buy their bulbs and flowers. In this, it reminds me of the best thing about running a neighborhood bookstore. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1737769588669-E1YG0NKL8ZB31ZDNDECK/Takeuchi_All.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (January 20, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #109 All in a Year by Chihiro Takeuchi This picture book colorfully illustrates a year in the life of the five-member Tanaka family, following them through holidays, milestones, meals, and seasons. Chihiro Takeuchi's detailed papercut illustrations provide plenty to look at on each page (my favorite background character is the neighborhood lady with the pet alligator). A great introduction to the rhythm of the seasons for young readers. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1736466512812-MVQ58L4FPJKUANMW5JUG/OBrien_Everything.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New-ish Book of the Week (January 6, 2025) Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi I love oral history and I love speculative fiction so I grabbed this as soon as I saw the title. But after reading the author and publisher profiles, I started to doubt that it would be an immersive imaginative experience. I was right—this is creatively packaged polemic. And I loved it! Hard-core lefty activists and people who thought the CHOP was romantic will find vindication and wish-fulfillment. But if you’re like me, and cafeteria meals, talk therapy, and dance parties are not your idea of utopia, you can still have a blast mentally debating the interviewees and pondering how history is produced. Contrary to the title, this book acts less as history and more as commemoration. Isn't it a bit ominous that we don’t hear from a single disgruntled communard? Once again, it’s history written by the victors. —Liz P.S. I was sympathetic to a lot of the ideas but found the worldwide governmental collapse much more convincing than the ensuing worldwide organic communization. But it was an invigorating start to my reading for the year that is, alas, here. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1736466525411-VRSWR7Y3POJAQPIH5P3I/Cercas_Salamis.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (January 6, 2025) Phinney by Post Book #120 Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, translated by Anne McLean At the center of this novel is a single, inexplicable incident from the end of the Spanish Civil War, when an unknown Republican soldier caught a leader of the right-wing Falange escaping a Republican firing squad but then walked away, sparing his life. Writing six decades later, Cercas frames his own investigation into this mystery with a tale at once goofy, sad, and movingly sweet that transformed Spanish history and literature (the novel sold millions there and broke a national silence about the war and its aftermath). For an American reader like me, it captures the horror, the poignancy, and the bewildered humor of what it's like to live through, and outlive, history. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1736466538006-IY9AZGZWML40OG9ID12C/MacKay_Frostfire.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (January 6, 2025) Phinney by Post Kids Book #108 Frostfire by Elly MacKay Fox sisters Celeste and Miriam explore a sparkling winter wonderland in this cozy picture book. Older sister Miriam tells Celeste all about snow dragons—they collect "diamond dust," breathe frostfire, and pretend to be snowbanks. But are snow dragons actually real? Elly MacKay's beautiful papercut photo-illustrations make winter look dreamy and magical. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733012214602-GLTH4Y5UILHTQH4BWQJO/Flanagan_Question.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 26, 2024) Question 7 by Richard Flanagan One of the first books I reviewed for this newsletter was Richard Flanagan's novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which soon after won the Booker Prize and remains one of the best books I've read in the last decade. Somewhat inexplicably, I've hardly read him since, but his new book must have been what I was waiting for: it's every bit as good. A memoir (if you can call it that) rather than a novel, it returns to the same source as The Narrow Road (his father's harrowing time as a Japanese prisoner during World War II), but in this book that memory, beginning with the moral question of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima (which Flanagan is sure saved his father's life), sets off a chain reaction of its own, from H.G. Wells to physicist Leo Szilard to the near-destruction of Aboriginal Tasmania (Flanagan's home) to his own near-death experience in his 20s. It's a book of deep seriousness worn lightly, and one worthy of a lifetime's thought and experience. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733012234915-SJ6G7C42HO2IVJRXLFXR/Burns_Final.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 26, 2024) Final Cut by Charles Burns I returned to another author of an all-time favorite this month. I often name Charles Burns''s 2005 graphic novel, Black Hole, a jet-dark story of a disease sweeping through '70s teens, as my favorite Seattle book, but I've never found another book of his that wove a spell like that one. This new one, set in a similar place and time, is a smaller story, without the majestic scope (or the granular weirdness) of Black Hole, but it's a very good one, an almost simple tale of looking and wanting so much you lose sight of what you were looking at (if you ever really had it in the first place), made concrete, yet again, by the meticulous strangeness of Burns's inky-black lines. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733012248480-RRGU3IZ2R8H5RRXZQBLR/VanHalen_Brothers.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 26, 2024) Brothers by Alex Van Halen Two mixed-race immigrant kids, who spoke Dutch until they moved to California when they were nine and seven, where they won citywide competitions in classical piano. That may not be your image of the origin story of the kings of party rock, but that's where Van Halen began, with two music-loving brothers who decided they'd rather be rock stars, and met a flamboyant egomaniac named Dave Roth who wanted to be a star even more. Despite all their partying (which he hardly regrets), drummer Alex's memoir (as you might sense from the cover) is in part an elegy for his late brother Ed, the guitar virtuoso, and also for their band at its most combatively creative. For all the drama their stardom kicked up, the brothers (like their Dutch father) were music professionals above all, and while Alex might settle a few scores here, he's mostly sober (and insightful) about those intoxicating years. As he says about the bandmate he hardly speaks to now, "we never fought better with anyone than Dave." —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731614967898-1S6WS2Z7C5B62E5K1JUU/Vora_Big.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (November 12, 2024) Big Vegan Flavor by Nisha Vora Unless you have your own test kitchen, reviewing a new, 600-page cookbook can only be a partial exercise, but after using Big Vegan Flavor for the last two months as a part-time, non-expert cook in a mostly vegan household I can say that it has been a slam-dunk success every time. Vietnamese Rice Noodle Bowls with Crispy Tofu & Mushrooms? Yes! Lemony Pasta with Sausage & Broccoli? Yum! Cheesy Herb Bread Pudding with Caramelized Leeks? Delish! Braised Carrots & Chickpeas with Dill Gremolata? Our handwritten note on this page: "So. Damn. Good." The flavors are indeed big, the recipes are straightfoward, and we're just getting started. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731614818418-THA3IPHLXHV3K0MTARTB/Oppen_Meaning.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (November 12, 2024) Phinney by Post Book #119 Meaning a Life by Mary Oppen Mary Colby and George Oppen met in a college poetry class in Corvallis in 1926; they spent a night together, for which Mary was expelled, but by then they had chosen to leave their pasts behind to share a life full of "conversation, ideas, poetry, peers." In the 50 years that followed, they found all of those, as well as hoboing, art-making, sailing, donkeys and horses and dogs, war, the Communist Party, parenthood (after many lost attempts), labor and labor organizing, exile (both chosen and not—they spent many blacklisted years in Mexico) and return. Mary's account of their shared life—in her first book, published in her 70th year—is told with deliberate, simple eloquence, and it's a pleasure and a provocation to read of lives lived with such originality and courage. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731614830500-R6BW462894DCJNEIHRL8/Hippely_Draw.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (November 12, 2024) I Know How to Draw an Owl by Hilary Horder Hippely and Matt James I Know How to Draw an Owl is my favorite picture book of 2024. Beautiful and heart-wrenching, yet as quiet as an owl gliding through the trees, it depicts a serious issue with subtlety and sensitivity. Belle and her mom have been sleeping in their car in a forested park. It's scary being in a strange new place, but one night Belle finds comfort in the huge eyes of a majestic owl who seems to be welcoming them. Through minimal text that packs a punch, local author Hilary Horder Hippely has crafted a meaningful book that stays with you for a long time. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731019419614-E9PADNI6BCRXI5XN95XC/Garner_Bach_pb.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 29, 2024) The Children's Bach by Helen Garner This book reminded me of the 1983 movie, The Big Chill, but with more nuance and an off-beat soundtrack (and an Australian setting). Published just a year later, it’s also about college classmates from the sixties whose orbits recross in the eighties. But while the film is smugly (says a smug Gen X-er) focused on Boomers’ disillusionment, Garner seems to see the era not as a failed revolution but a nudging open of the doors of convention. After graduating, paterfamilias Patrick and spiky-haired, loft-dweller Elizabeth made different life choices, but Garner never judges, only observes. In fact, she shows us characters through each other’s eyes—with only brief glimpses into their thoughts—making them less knowable, but more alive because of that. I adore Garner’s realism because it’s spare and straightforward and then she’ll throw in a fillip of particularity—a physical detail, a line of dialogue—that almost shifts the tone from fiction to documentary. Garner is a national literary treasure in her native Australia and she deserves a higher profile here. And YOU, Discerning Reader, deserve to be introduced to her unique style and sensibility. —Liz https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731614843792-LUY71GHY39LLI2DPKXVD/Wells_Little.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Kids' Book of the Week (November 12, 2024) Phinney by Post Kids Book #107 The Little Chefs by Rosemary Wells Anyone who has ever had a kitchen mishap will wish they had the Little Chefs on speed dial after reading this creative picture book. The next time your cookies burn or your soup is tasteless, look for a tiny phone hidden somewhere in your kitchen (every kitchen has one) with a direct line to the tropical hangout of the Little Chefs. This quirky book includes three separate young protagonists' tales of culinary woe. Each time disaster strikes, these miniature cooks and bakers swoop in to dry tears and save the day with their cooking expertise. Perfect timing for the holiday season! —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731019390159-8KXQYSPJ4QHFRZ2YXQJE/Coates_Message.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 29, 2024) The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates What began as a book about the craft and politics of writing—addressed to his Howard University students, as his bestseller Between the World and Me was written to his son—became something else as Coates, following his own dictum to make writing concrete by reporting, was changed by the three places he visited: Senegal, in his first trip to the African continent; South Carolina, where a high school teacher put her job on the line to teach one of his books; and Palestine. That third section, the longest, has rightfully received all the attention, and not only because of the ongoing war. It's there that Coates is most engaged, and most confounded, by witnessing Israel's systemic subjugation of its Palestinian subjects, seeing its echoes of American Jim Crow, and realizing how little of that story had reached American eyes. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731019435258-X823CNUAZTPHMDIU9ZPM/Mersal_Enayat.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery New Book of the Week (October 29, 2024) Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger When Mersal, a young Egyptian literary scholar, encountered the novel Love and Silence by chance at a Cairo bookshop, she was drawn to the book's beauty and strangeness, but also to the author, the nearly anonymous Enayat al-Zayyat, who had killed herself at age 27, thinking her only novel would never be published. Mersal's years-long search for answers about her life, a kind of Egyptian Quest for Corvo, ends up as much a portrait of a time as of its still-elusive subject: the revolutionary era of Nasser, the Golden Age of Egyptian cinema, and a woman struggling against traditional culture and artistic isolation, who still can speak through pages she never knew would be published. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731019447296-TT6HQN87M34JI0EVNXJ4/Wardany_Sleep.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Newish Book of the Week (October 29, 2024) The Book of Sleep by Haytham El Wardany, translated by Robin Moger (yes, the same translator as Traces of Enayat) Forget space, or the dark depths of the oceans: the true unexplored human frontier is the third of our lives we spend suspended in the strange netherworld of sleep. For all the talk of dreams, how little has been written of those hours! This slim book, by an Egyptian writer who lives in Berlin, grants that world its inaccessibility—the "neglected excess that everyone knows about and no one speaks of"—but speaks of it nevertheless, in lovely, exact, mind-broadening philosophical vignettes that make it one of my favorite discoveries of the year, and the one I'm likely to keep by my bedside for years to come. —Tom https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731019762467-DKF0ZRPK6G1FTZ7RCXKS/Walker_How.jpg Newsletter 2024 Gallery Old Book of the Week (October 29, 2024) Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Berkeley, has made the one-third netherworld of sleep his life's work, and when you're a reader in his hands, it's hard not to be convinced there's nothing more important to understand than this hallucinatory, death-like interlude that nearly every living organism requires to survive. As he shows, citing study after study of recent research, we don't merely rest during sleep: we repair, we organize, we create, we restock, in our brains and in every cell of our bodies. And, crucially, too few of us (this writer included) give sleep the one-third of our time it deserves—Walker cites insufficient sleep as a contributor not just to exhaustion but to everything from depression to cancer to Alzheimer's. It made for great bedtime reading, except that I felt guilty for not putting it down and letting sleep do its good work. —Tom http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733518973736-S80U5JMFZAU7I0VZ7YAI/Alderton_Good.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery Good Material by Dolly Alderton Your first clue that this romantic comedy is a break-up story is the list that kicks it off: Reasons Why It's Good I'm Not with Jen. Here begins Andy's obsessive wallowing. To be fair, he deserves a good wallow; he was blindsided when Jen ended their relationship with little explanation after four years. At thirty-five, Andy's a struggling comedian who's not always emotionally mature but who is self-aware enough of his toxic traits so as not to be totally intolerable. He copes with the break-up by leaning on his friends (many of them married with kids, almost none of them single), drinking copiously at the pub, phoning it in at his gigs, rebounding with a twenty-three-year-old Gen Z'er, and diving down the rabbit hole of nostalgia again and again. It would be easy to find him exhausting if he weren't written with such levity, but I found him so damn likable and sympathetic even while thinking, you've got to get it together, dude! And then there's Jen's side of the story, which adds a new dimension to Andy's, highlighting problems you (and perhaps Andy) didn't know they had, which is infuriating as well as illuminating because while it takes two people to have a relationship, it only takes one to end it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733518973736-S80U5JMFZAU7I0VZ7YAI/Alderton_Good.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery Good Material by Dolly Alderton Your first clue that this romantic comedy is a break-up story is the list that kicks it off: Reasons Why It's Good I'm Not with Jen. Here begins Andy's obsessive wallowing. To be fair, he deserves a good wallow; he was blindsided when Jen ended their relationship with little explanation after four years. At thirty-five, Andy's a struggling comedian who's not always emotionally mature but who is self-aware enough of his toxic traits so as not to be totally intolerable. He copes with the break-up by leaning on his friends (many of them married with kids, almost none of them single), drinking copiously at the pub, phoning it in at his gigs, rebounding with a twenty-three-year-old Gen Z'er, and diving down the rabbit hole of nostalgia again and again. It would be easy to find him exhausting if he weren't written with such levity, but I found him so damn likable and sympathetic even while thinking, you've got to get it together, dude! And then there's Jen's side of the story, which adds a new dimension to Andy's, highlighting problems you (and perhaps Andy) didn't know they had, which is infuriating as well as illuminating because while it takes two people to have a relationship, it only takes one to end it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733518984652-P7PHP3TN5UH1R6SJ8335/Anderson_Unmothers.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733518994482-TMFHBCXABDMT252TVC9L/Arnett_Teeth_pb.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery With Teeth by Kristen Arnett https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519003668-E2CRVEJC55N2RF9A6AJD/Butler_Talents.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519013379-FIAY5NUNJ00019P69AWW/Foer_Weather.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519025646-05YTP5SGD8RP4YIR4G9L/Gabbert_Any.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery Any Person Is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519034725-ZYTYL69TI47XZH0YAPGO/Goldhammer_Still.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea by Catherine Goldhammer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519044336-Q3EYMQ4I71MDPTUMICGD/Klein_Show.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood by Jessi Klein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519056557-IAS90K8C7UEOD519W9AQ/Pittard_We_pb.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind Of] by Hannah Pittard I love this (kind of) memoir for satisfying the inappropriate curiosity I so often feel when the relationships of people I actually know end. Pittard spills all of the tea about the demise of her marriage, which culminated in her husband's affair with her toxic best friend. It's a raw and creative account of betrayal with a story structure that includes hypothetical and imagined dialogue as well as remembered conversations. I was up all hours of the night listening to the audiobook (narrated by the author!) and it was an intimate experience: like being on the phone with a friend needing to verbally process the end of life as she knew it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519586155-3BDAXLW8KJEYRGSRED0Z/Thorpe_Margo.jpg Anika 2024 Top 10 Gallery Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe A young woman unexpectedly becomes a young mother after an affair with her English professor. As a broke college drop-out with a newborn, Margo's running out of rent money and employment options. She turns to her estranged father--famous in the world of pro wrestling--and OnlyFans in a messy, hilarious, and human attempt at building a life. I especially appreciate the way Margo takes control of her own narrative, partly accomplished by switching between first and third person in the telling of her story. As Margo puts it, "It's true that writing in third person helps me. It is so much easier to have sympathy for the Margo who existed back then rather than try to explain how and why I did all the things that I did." There's a great deal of nuance for all the quirk of this novel. For every penis-as-a-Pokemon description, there's a deeper insight into the work involved in sex work. I'm so very here for it. http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519690224-0Q3KCGW1PI7KUFX6GKA5/Bradley_Ministry.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519690224-0Q3KCGW1PI7KUFX6GKA5/Bradley_Ministry.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519710480-1SIUPX8HUOTV2IN40IO4/Burns_Mercury.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery Mercury by Amy Jo Burns Seventeen-year-old Marley drives into the tiny town of Mercury with her mother, who never lets them settle into a new place for long. But Marley immediately falls in with the Joseph family, as the girlfriend to first one brother, then another, and as a sort of surrogate mother to the whole family. Circumstances keep Marley tied to the town and the Josephs, as everyone simultaneously depends on her for nearly everything in their lives and takes it for granted she’ll always be there. When the Joseph boys’ mother comes to her for help, Marley has to weigh family obligations with what is morally right. It’s a heartbreaking yet also uplifting story of families, love, betrayal, and how we can love people even though we don’t understand their choices. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519738832-6H4TSIZ6Q3NMNLBNSR77/Hunter_French.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Hunter by Tana French https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519902450-906HXIASCW7AHOT26L1T/Gramazio_Husbands.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Husbands by Holly Gramazio https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519924554-UOYXMIHP5QYFMTH74CYJ/Hallett_Examiner.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Examiner by Janice Hallett Six students of various ages and backgrounds all sign up for a new master's level art class at a university in England. The senior art tutor needs this class to work so it can be added to the university's curriculum going forward. But frictions arise almost right away, and we soon realize there's an undercurrent of...something...but we don't know what. Hallett's novels are always told through snippets of emails, texts, instant messages, etc., which slowly reveal that not everyone or everything is as it seems. I loved two of her previous books, The Appeal and The Mysterious Case of the Apperton Angels, so I assumed I would like this one as well, but I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the ending, and how Hallett managed to weave together all the different threads. I'm pretty sure I scared my cats when I loudly exclaimed as the endgame was finally revealed. As a master of misdirection, this is Hallett’s best book yet. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519984373-JLH2XMOITMGV59UMUG9W/Kirby_Soldier.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy For every mother everywhere, this book is a primal scream of new motherhood. The schizophrenic nature of those early days—when you're bursting with love for this little creature, but also dying inside from exhaustion and trying to figure out who you are in the world now—is brought to acute life as a mother recounts those early years as a bedtime story for her son. With a strained marriage to a clueless husband who doesn’t understand what his wife now does all day, her inability to concentrate on work, a lack of people she feels she can connect with, and the feeling that anyone—literally ANYONE—would be a better mother than her, every mother I know will feel SEEN by this novel. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733520012566-LQ9N5UVGQ7ZYH0DCJZ69/Nelson_When.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson I didn’t realize this was a Young Adult novel when I first picked it up, but I was immediately sucked into this gorgeous, multi-generational tale of a Northern California family that has more than its share of secrets. Told in fairy tales, diary entries, notes, and straight prose from each character’s point of view, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. The three children in the Fall family—19-year-old violin virtuoso and human wrecking ball Wynton; heartbreakingly gorgeous and seemingly perfect 17-year-old Miles; and ghost-seeing 12-year-old Dizzy, who sees only the best in everyone—have all been lost since their father left when their mother was pregnant with Dizzy. When they each have an encounter with a mysterious, rainbow-haired young woman, they think that somehow she’s the key to their happiness. But first there is A LOT of complicated family history to unpack. As a reminder that we never truly know everything our loved ones have gone through, this novel will almost certainly be in my Top 10 this year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733520127557-UACOR53I5Y2TZKEPN486/Osman_We.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery We Solve Murders by Richard Osman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733520167772-WKABN02N31ENSJWV1LBG/Towles_Table.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles I loved The Lincoln Highway and adored A Gentleman in Moscow, so when the advance copy of Amor Towles’ new Table for Two, consisting of six short stories and one novella, arrived in the bookstore, I snatched it up before anyone else could. Once again, I found myself in love with his writing. Towles is so good at making you care deeply about people doing the tiniest of everyday things: standing in a line, casually chatting with others at the airport or in a bar, the quiet moments that make up a marriage. If I told you that a 37-page story about a man waiting in line was one of the most deeply human and touching things I’ve ever read, would you believe me? If you’ve read Towles’ previous books, you would. Before reading the novella "Eve in Hollywood," I first had to read his debut novel, Rules of Civility, which I had somehow neglected to do. Towles had previously written a short story based on Evelyn Ross (Eve to her friends), a major character from that book, but so many people clamored for more that he finally expanded it to more than 200 pages. Eve is the strongest of women who shows up for her friends when they need her most, and I dearly hope that Towles will find more to say about her in the years to come. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733519828975-K0SBU5V5XR4OYQTWXBLL/Williams_Husbands.jpg Doree 2024 Top 10 Gallery Husbands and Lovers by Beatriz Williams My favorite historical fiction author, Beatriz Williams, is back with her 16th book (not counting her collaborations with fellow authors Karen White and Lauren Willig), all but one of which have interconnected storylines (although you don’t have to have read any of her other books to read this one). A minor character in one book will become a main character in a later book; settings may pop up more than once but separated by decades. Husbands & Lovers is the third book set on New York’s Winthrop Island, this time focusing on Mallory and her teenage son, who needs a new kidney. Mallory reconnects with her former best friend Monk, now a world-famous musician, after ghosting him years before. Alternating chapters introduce us to Hannah, a Hungarian immigrant with a tragic past who becomes a British diplomat's wife in 1950s Cairo. As the connective threads between the two timelines slowly unfurl, we understand how both Mallory and Hannah did what they felt they had to do to save the people they loved the most. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521397166-N7F7V82GT6V848NID6KH/Bradley_Ministry.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley What happens when an author crushes on a real-life 19th-century polar explorer's photograph? The resulting obsession developed into The Ministry of Time, a book for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to talk to someone who lived long ago. The protagonist works for a government program that has time-traveled a sampling of humans from different years of the past to 21st-century Britain. She's assigned to live with and monitor Commander Graham Gore, kidnapped from an arctic expedition in 1847 (think Mr. Darcy plopped into the modern age). This was such a fun read and I enjoyed the thought experiment of how people from different eras would react to the peculiarities of our time period. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521397166-N7F7V82GT6V848NID6KH/Bradley_Ministry.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley What happens when an author crushes on a real-life 19th-century polar explorer's photograph? The resulting obsession developed into The Ministry of Time, a book for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to talk to someone who lived long ago. The protagonist works for a government program that has time-traveled a sampling of humans from different years of the past to 21st-century Britain. She's assigned to live with and monitor Commander Graham Gore, kidnapped from an arctic expedition in 1847 (think Mr. Darcy plopped into the modern age). This was such a fun read and I enjoyed the thought experiment of how people from different eras would react to the peculiarities of our time period. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521409865-PSQX19VZKRUMQ9073HT6/Day_Mona.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painting, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity by Nicholas Day https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521420021-1M3SYIQXIGHY9BW3SB70/Gramazio_Husbands.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery Husbands by Holly Gramazio https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521430393-P3PTWVWFQJ4SR9GKSI4L/Jungeon_Hundred.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun, translated by Jung Yewon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521442907-GT5DG1PKDI3WT0RGM96I/Lieu_Manicurist.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir by Susan Lieu Part family saga, part mystery, The Manicurist's Daughter grips you right from the beginning and doesn't let go. Local author Susan Lieu was determined to publish this memoir when she was thirty-eight, the same age her mother was when she mysteriously died from plastic surgery gone wrong. Lieu's tenacious mother had been the rock that held their extended Vietnamese family together. With no understanding of the circumstances and a family who refused to discuss what happened, Lieu's search for healing over the years led her from a cult to spirit channelling to a one-woman show about her mother. This absorbing and propulsive memoir is a must-read! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521458814-GA6ZJVG6WD9V84WPC76S/Ritter_Woman.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521473429-1OQ6DRUDEVA0GZ7MCK2O/Vishny_Night.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery Night Owls by A.R. Vishnu https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521489537-NNNL0PUHP32YISO7SBHF/Waldman_Help.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733521500930-2C01ST5G7XN1HWJQQQDE/Wohlleben_Graphic.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Hidden Life of Trees: A Graphic Adaptation by Peter Wohlleben, Fred Bernard, and Benjamin Flao https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522015225-MZG9ZBMWFP8BGB6OVVOU/Zei_Alki.jpg Haley 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Wildcat Behind Glass by Alki Zei, translated by Karen Emmerich If you're an adult who doesn't usually read middle-grade books, I highly recommend you give this one a try! Set in 1936, and originally published in Greek in 1963, this beautifully written book has just been re-released in a newly translated edition. Seven-year-old Melia and her older sister Myrto love the stories their grown-up cousin Niko tells them about the adventures of the stuffed wildcat displayed in their family's sitting room. When the girls' carefree summer is disrupted by a new authoritarian regime, suddenly there are secrets to keep and the adults are acting strangely. Even the wildcat is part of the intrigue. Will the new political landscape drive the family apart? The Wildcat Behind Glass poignantly captures a place in time through a child's eyes. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-picture-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522099913-3L2IHO6DYNGGKP5RHFCF/Denitskaya_Star.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery A Star Shines Through by Anna Desnitskaya https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522099913-3L2IHO6DYNGGKP5RHFCF/Denitskaya_Star.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery A Star Shines Through by Anna Desnitskaya https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522111330-RBPPWULIWM2MIGALFXPJ/Docherty_Someone.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery Someone Just Like You by Helen Docherty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522217175-897NQBXK25SGL39CCLTF/Fang_Human.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang Three big-eyed, blue-skinned creatures crash their vehicle at Mr. and Mrs. Li's farm. But they are definitely human, or so they say. You can tell because one makes business, one plays sportsball, and one wears hat. This laugh-out-loud picture book is about helping strangers, no matter how strange. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522237992-WXMW5ZN72G065ZPXCOTQ/Hippely_Draw.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery I Know How to Draw an Owl by Hillary Horder Hippely, illustrated by Matt James I Know How to Draw an Owl is my favorite picture book of 2024. Beautiful and heart-wrenching, yet as quiet as an owl gliding through the trees, it depicts a serious issue with subtlety and sensitivity. Belle and her mom have been sleeping in their car in a forested park. It's scary being in a strange new place, but one night Belle finds comfort in the huge eyes of a majestic owl who seems to be welcoming them. Through minimal text that packs a punch, local author Hilary Horder Hippely has crafted a meaningful book that stays with you for a long time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522257266-3AM7A93NS7HJI6JEZ9VY/Laan_John.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery John the Skeleton by Triinu Laan, illustrated by Marja-Liisa Plats, translated by Adam Cullen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522274770-IPXFS95SJ2VUI9XJIQUG/Latham_Mistakes.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Mistakes That Made Us: Confessions from Twenty Poets edited by Irene Latham and Charles Waters, illustrated by Merce Lopez https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522291891-EOUNLNPYHT3XFDYH220N/Nayeri_Drawn.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery Drawn Onward by Daniel Nayeri, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522310990-BMB3B2UQXW6Z6M92YN3A/Sala_If.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery If You Run Out of Words by Felicita Sala After a long phone call one day, author/illustrator Felicita Sala's daughter asked her, “Mum, what if you talk so much that you run out of words, and then there won’t be any left for me?” Her daughter's worry developed into a picture book where a little girl asks her father the same question. Dad is ready with an answer: "I'd have to go pay a visit to the Elves' Word Factory." But what if he gets lost in the woods? The father answers his daughter's questions by weaving one fantastical scenario after another as he tucks her into bed. Sala's rich and vibrantly colored illustrations make this a beautiful bedtime book to share. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522339881-ONSWV40O3WF264L56008/Shapiro_Roy.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery Roy Is Not a Dog by Esme Shapiro and Daniel Newell Kaufman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733522356291-15S0X55BY9KCZO2XWW2C/Zoboli_Lepron.jpg Haley Picture 2024 Top 10 Gallery Mr. Lepron’s Mystery Soup by Giovanna Zoboli and Mariachiara Di Giorgio http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523367094-EBY80AMQMC6VHLQOHGRY/Anderson_Tirra.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523367094-EBY80AMQMC6VHLQOHGRY/Anderson_Tirra.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523384306-3QWFMGGZ7L9SVPO1P3G0/Appelfeld_Story.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Story of a Life by Aharon Appelfeld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523397350-8QOMO45K9OB0YTKETHR2/Colwin_Family.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523484076-SU91LTWMKKFRF3SMFB7P/Cooper_Heartbreak.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper Attention all Anglophile WWII buffs: you do not want to miss McNally Editions’ reissue of this fantastic 1950 novel! It’s the life story of a type of Englishman who—although born on January 1, 1900—really belongs to the 1800s, written by a very different type of Englishman who was in almost every room where it happened during the first half of the 20th C. Cooper was a soldier, politician, diplomat, historian, etc., who finally decided to try his hand at fiction and—surprisingly or unsurprisingly—produced this absolute gem. Cunningly crafted, elegantly styled, it’s both delightful and poignant. Now, I know that many of my fellow buffs are also espionage geeks. And while the title and short prologue may clue you into the plot’s set-up, I promise it will not spoil your reading pleasure. Even though I knew where things were heading, this brilliant little book still won the next spot on my 2024 Top Ten list. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523544569-SFJP8SF18V6FVPJ7DH85/Garner_Bach_pb.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner This book reminded me of the 1983 movie, The Big Chill, but with more nuance and an off-beat soundtrack (and an Australian setting). Published just a year later, it’s also about college classmates from the sixties whose orbits recross in the eighties. But while the film is smugly (says a smug Gen X-er) focused on Boomers’ disillusionment, Garner seems to see the era not as a failed revolution but a nudging open of the doors of convention. After graduating, paterfamilias Patrick and spiky-haired, loft-dweller Elizabeth made different life choices, but Garner never judges, only observes. In fact, she shows us characters through each other’s eyes—with only brief glimpses into their thoughts—making them less knowable, but more alive because of that. I adore Garner’s realism because it’s spare and straightforward and then she’ll throw in a fillip of particularity—a physical detail, a line of dialogue—that almost shifts the tone from fiction to documentary. Garner is a national literary treasure in her native Australia and she deserves a higher profile here. And YOU, Discerning Reader, deserve to be introduced to her unique style and sensibility. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523578726-465I4F075TBKBYL5ZW11/Highsmith_Talented.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523601591-D7OSI1GQVRAWYSP3BI1Q/Jameson_Journey.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Journey from the North by Storm Jameson I don’t often read memoirs but this reissue of two volumes by British writer Storm Jameson falls smack dab in the middle of my current literary sweet spot. Born in the small coastal town of Whitby, Jameson was a young adult during WWI, middle-aged during WWII, and so perfectly placed to watch the transformation of Britain from an empire to a European nation. The journey of the title is her move from the Yorkshire middle class to a kind of meritocratic world citizenry. Her prodigious energy of mind and body kept her continually moving house, traveling abroad, writing and speaking for political causes, all while producing a novel a year. Those books are mostly (deservedly?) out of print. But this one, recollections from her Victorian childhood though her Cold War seventies, is so alive with personality and insight that I couldn’t stop turning its 800+ pages—except when she described an emotion, a vista, or an idea so felicitously that I had to sit back and simply admire. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523617477-1IAMUXJECP01IGGKTU33/Kruimink_Astraea.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Astraea by Kate Kruimink https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523637887-P9LPRV9RVKRI4K9C8SUF/Nolan_Ordinary.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan It opens with the typical hook: a missing child. Tom Hargreaves, newbie tabloid hack, takes the bait and is formulating lurid headlines before he even gets to the scene. He plies the suspect’s family with money, alcohol and fake sympathy, but fails to elicit a tale black and white enough for newsprint. I won’t lie—I was reeled in too. But while Tom’s hopes of a scoop are dashed, readers are served something just as compelling and far more satisfying. Your fingers will itch to flip pages but slow down to absorb Nolan’s assured style and deep insight. Most impressive of all are her characters: ordinary—but very particular—people, who with just a few twitches of fate end up in out-of-the-ordinary circumstances. This remarkable second novel may be small, but it is dense with humanity—real human beings as well as all-embracing compassion. And it’s earned the first spot on my Top Ten of 2024. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733523667695-PSWYF66MM6Z7SQYKC94G/Schlee_Rhine.jpg Liz 2024 Top 10 Gallery Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee Reading the latest offering from McNally Editions, you might think it’s a reissue of a slim Victorian classic. It’s actually a historical novel that was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize. Schlee not only sets her story in 1851; she seems to transform herself into a lady scribbler of that era. She allows no anachronisms of ideology or tone, understanding that she only has to record women’s daily lives and her modern readers will feel her feminist points more powerfully for having been shown and not told. Even her sly humor is exactly what you would expect a snarky spinster to indulge in with plausible deniability. Schlee’s writing is precisely calibrated to convey the nuances that carry so much meaning in a repressive atmosphere and her characters—both women and men—are believably (de)formed by the strictures of their times. And she so shrewdly dropped hints to convince me I knew how the story would end, that I was doubly wowed for having been misled. http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606087823-7C8L1F3HP94X8KMWIBXU/Bastone_Ready.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Ready or Not by Cara Bastone https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606087823-7C8L1F3HP94X8KMWIBXU/Bastone_Ready.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Ready or Not by Cara Bastone https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606102774-1DVFIMEBCWLWQGM1BJWP/Bolstad_Windfall.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her by Erika Bolstad https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606123652-85B30AUYE3GDRH1IXL4X/Erdrich_Mighty.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606139472-ICH1AZLYMLKXVKA5AGHR/Harvey_Orbital_pb.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Orbital by Samantha Harvey https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606156185-OP2LHTR5ELQUUAZYYCCN/July_Fours.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery All Fours by Miranda July https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606171322-2YD2ULPFLZGQUJEBKNS4/Lameris_Blade.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Blade by Blade by Danusha Lameris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606187518-ZDIR4BSJ4EG1GVVLTF2D/Link_Love.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Book of Love by Kelly Link https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606198513-1ONEKI383NT3WL13HR7W/Lombardo_Same.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606218200-319LC2TTTXAYHT5QX686/McBride_Heaven.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606230170-ULUHIJBT4UZPA3589FS1/Rowell_Slow.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606238868-HGCW6VAXCGV37GWO0W4B/Wang_Chemistry.jpg Nancy 2024 Top 10 Gallery Chemistry by Weike Wang http://www.phinneybooks.com/shane-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606537943-AC6LDQ0VZBOGVQRO09V4/Bardugo_Hell.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606537943-AC6LDQ0VZBOGVQRO09V4/Bardugo_Hell.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606548624-TUKHUF59LYW25M2Y9HTY/Flasar_Necktie.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flasar, translated by Sheila Dickie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606561873-OO9KN3Z7ZCW96XQKMWOK/Howarth_Sunburn.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606574143-Q1WTPN2MYOV6FEEAE6F7/Jakobson_Old_pb.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Old Enough by Haley Jakobson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606584995-1ZCCRMDC4POELKO7BFDL/Lacroix_How.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606596122-FUXKCCDVSBJRFOFR0NBO/LaPointe_Thunder.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha LaPointe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606607880-I55WL89ZST5YX4DJF6FK/Miller_Batman.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606625202-7K2GZWQT3T9CEEGH0034/McGlue_Ottessa_pb.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606643516-GEFYU6CX6QMUBN0A20DS/Rooney_Intermezzo.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Intermezzo by Sally Rooney https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733606659078-WPMIJC5OKG18S6JFPO6T/Thrash_Rainbow.jpg Shane 2024 Top 10 Gallery Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2024-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2024-12-07 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607125771-H00BT6OB3M915MDD1MTP/Blitzer_Everyone.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer The story of migration from Central America to the United States over the past few decades—especially in the last decade—is almost unutterably complex, and the misery driving it, and the misery further caused by the border's cruelty, are almost unutterable as well. But Blitzer makes a coherent and moving story out of this history, both by tracing the larger political forces across the region and by finding personal stories inextricable from those politics, especially of those, like Juan Romagoza, a Salvadoran health worker who is tortured by his home government, escapes north to work as an activist and clinician in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and returns home to continue his work, who find they can only respond to the crisis with labor and love. In the world Blitzer describes—our world—borders are everything, and are at the same time constantly blurred by the human connections made across them. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607125771-H00BT6OB3M915MDD1MTP/Blitzer_Everyone.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer The story of migration from Central America to the United States over the past few decades—especially in the last decade—is almost unutterably complex, and the misery driving it, and the misery further caused by the border's cruelty, are almost unutterable as well. But Blitzer makes a coherent and moving story out of this history, both by tracing the larger political forces across the region and by finding personal stories inextricable from those politics, especially of those, like Juan Romagoza, a Salvadoran health worker who is tortured by his home government, escapes north to work as an activist and clinician in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and returns home to continue his work, who find they can only respond to the crisis with labor and love. In the world Blitzer describes—our world—borders are everything, and are at the same time constantly blurred by the human connections made across them. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607138248-Z1TO7AL753UY7VB11DCM/Brunk_Question.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery A Question of Value: Stories from the Life of an Auctioneer by Robert Brunk In an ideal world, every person would write a book like this near the end of their career, summing up their life's work with anecdotes, some funny, some wistful and even regretful, that capture the philosophy-in-action of a profession and a passion. But not everyone is as quietly stylish a writer as Brunk, who became an auctioneer in mid-life and built one of the most prominent auction houses in the South, nor has everyone had the good fortune to find a calling that matched his curiosity so well. His tales are about people as well as pieces, presented with some of the value-drama that makes Antiques Roadshow so watchable, but with a real tenderness for his clients and the history their objects represent. His book reminded me most of Thomas Lynch's lovely The Undertaking, both in his similar plain-spoken understanding of life and in the recurring presence of death in these stories of inheriting and letting go. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607155759-C8GISZF7TIUDY7D2JPLZ/Wardany_Sleep.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Book of Sleep by Haytham El Wardany, translated by Robin Moger Forget space, or the dark depths of the oceans: the true unexplored human frontier is the third of our lives we spend suspended in the strange netherworld of sleep. For all the talk of dreams, how little has been written of those hours! This slim book, by an Egyptian writer who lives in Berlin, grants that world its inaccessibility—the "neglected excess that everyone knows about and no one speaks of"—but speaks of it nevertheless, in lovely, exact, mind-broadening philosophical vignettes that make it one of my favorite discoveries of the year, and the one I'm likely to keep by my bedside for years to come. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607171702-3VYST8GJ9UQLZPWAYCTJ/Flanagan_Question.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Question 7 by Richard Flanagan One of the first books I reviewed for this newsletter was Richard Flanagan's novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which soon after won the Booker Prize and remains one of the best books I've read in the last decade. Somewhat inexplicably, I've hardly read him since, but his new book must have been what I was waiting for: it's every bit as good. A memoir (if you can call it that) rather than a novel, it returns to the same source as The Narrow Road (his father's harrowing time as a Japanese prisoner during World War II), but in this book that memory, beginning with the moral question of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima (which Flanagan is sure saved his father's life), sets off a chain reaction of its own, from H.G. Wells to physicist Leo Szilard to the near-destruction of Aboriginal Tasmania (Flanagan's home) to his own near-death experience in his 20s. It's a book of deep seriousness worn lightly, and one worthy of a lifetime's thought and experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607189169-1UCFOHQLVCRW3DG57GIU/Greenwell_Small.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Small Rain by Garth Greenwell Greenwell's first two books, What Belongs to You and Cleanness, each made my year-end top 10, and this third one is likely to as well. Those earlier books were both disarmingly frank (and often breathtakingly beautiful) accounts of desire, seen through the eyes of a young gay American man in Bulgaria. In this new one the setting has shifted—to Iowa City—and the subject has too, to an aspect of the body equally autobiographical and nearly as unspoken: the vulnerability of sudden illness and the intimacy of medical care. The story is almost artless in its structure, following, with some digressions, the ten days of its narrator's hospitalization in close clinical detail, but full of art in its close attention to the body, to life and near-death, to the transcendence and the banality of everyday love. A beauty once again. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607204320-X0TC5BD4JBKADDG0HOGR/Hutto_Flatwoods.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Illumination in the Flatwoods by Joe Hutto This is a joyful book. Much of the joy comes from the wild turkeys Joe Hutto raises from a clutch of eggs, as they investigate and appreciate their portion of north Florida woodland, but Hutto is full of the delight of animal curiosity himself. As the young birds imprint on him, accepting him as their parent and protector as they grow into independence, they leave perhaps a greater imprint on him. He records their months together with the quality of observation of Thoreau's journals, but without Thoreau's compulsion to turn every moment into metaphor. He does, though, finally come to some profound philosophical insights himself, about the comparative intelligences of humans and birds and about the eternal nature/nuture debate. And about the capacity for human and animal joy. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607219801-UPI3Q831XH896NZE1YO7/July_Fours.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery All Fours by Miranda July Well, this might be the best book I've read so far this year. For all the flutter of "quirkiness" that surrounds July, she is a stone-cold artist, in whatever form she chooses, and this is a capital-N Novel in all the best ways: morally serious, formally surprising and ambitious, and frigging hilarious. Imagine a character somewhat like Ms. July (middle-aged, "semi-famous"), and then launch her into a plot of self-transformation whose first half strikingly resembles an Emily Henry rom-com (driven urban woman connects with small-town hunk) and then shifts into something closer to the rebuild-the-world-from-scratch revolution of Women Talking. Throughout, it's funny, startling, moving, vividly and charmingly weird, and so breathtakingly raunchy it reads like a vegan Sabbath's Theater. Wow. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607235645-ZN30L0O3TBPBCCHBRPWF/Morrison_Bluest.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The literary highlight of my year so far came from a writer I thought I knew well already. I had read (and loved) many of Morrison's novels, but when I learned that she narrates the audio versions of some of her best-known books, I took that chance to catch up with one I'd missed, her debut. And my god, what a debut, and what an experience to hear it in the author's voice, recorded decades after she wrote it. The precision of her language, the surprises of her choices at every turn (which only feel inevitable after she has made them), her persistence in fully inhabiting each of her characters, even the most reprehensible: all of these are heightened by the resonance and sheer delight of Morrison's reading. A revelation! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607249107-RAX2S1N2VJLF4Q297TV3/ONeill_Godwin.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Godwin by Joseph O’Neill Godwin is, as advertised, about the search for a teenage soccer prodigy who may or may not exist in West Africa and who may or may not be the next Messi. But it's also about a minor power struggle at a small Pittsburgh firm of tech-writer freelancers. That O'Neill can credibly braid these two stories together—and make the latter drama as compelling as its more glamorous counterpart—is a sign of his particular talent for nailing with graceful irony (as he did in his marvelous novel, Netherland) the wonder, the pettiness, the greed, and the kindness that are all part of our interconnected modern world. He's one of the few writers I always read, and Godwin made me once again glad I do. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607263499-4EABGI62UFHVSH8UI3NJ/Everett_James.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery James by Percival Everett Mark Twain famously began Huckleberry Finn by declaring, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." You get the feeling Twain and Percival Everett might have gotten along fine. Everett has made a career out of upending narratives and skewering literary expectations; by his standards, Everett plays this one, a retelling of Twain's classic from Jim's perspective, pretty straight; plenty is upended (Jim reads Voltaire on the sly, and joins a real-life minstrel troupe), but there might be a moral or two in it, and some dead-serious philosophy-in-action. It'll make you want to read Huck Finn again; it's so good it'll also make you want to read James again. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607278811-ZB4TOFRIVMSACLSIZ70S/Ritter_Woman.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter, translated by Jane Degras In 1933, Christiane Ritter, an Austrian artist, told her husband, who had spent the last few years living off the land on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, that she wanted to join him. And so she does, spending the full, dark winter in a tiny hut with her husband and a young Norwegian friend, who admitted later he was looking forward to watching her lose her mind. She keeps her sanity, grounded by her good humor and the constant tasks required to survive, but it's as if she found a whole new mind in that year, broadened by the isolation and the fierce elements. It's a spare and beautiful book, bright in its vision against the months of darkness it records. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607321174-TQY9DCXIKZG69ZYALHTR/Sante_Lucy.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante About three years ago, Sante, a writer in her mid-60s known until then as Luc, sent to a few dozen close friends a piece of writing titled "Lucy," a tender, exact, joyful, and terrified confession and declaration that she, feeling "something liquefy in the core of my body," was ready to take a step she had dreamed of (when she allowed herself to) for nearly her whole life: to publicly transition to being a woman. It's a choice not uncommon now, but Sante brings to it the wisdom and regret and exhilaration of a decision made late in life, as well as the wry, frank, chiseled style that has long made her one of my favorite writers. She tells this story in parallel: the cracking of her egg, as the trans phrase goes, in the present alongside a memoir of a bohemian life in which almost anything felt possible, except what she most wanted. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1733607340347-P8YN1OQEMKSTMHVALU57/Steed_Forces.jpg Tom 2024 Top 10 Gallery Forces of Nature by Edward Steed The New Yorker cartoon is one of those venerable comedy institutions that, like Saturday Night Live, is at this point often more "funny" than funny. But, as also happens on Saturday Night Live, once in a while a genius still emerges, and it's become clear that this generation's New Yorkercartoon genius is a young British transplant named Edward Steed. It was the bitter brilliance of "You call that a banana-mobile?" that first made me notice his name, but with dashes of Booth and Addams, and of Steadman and Stamaty, he has maintained that level of hilariously angry impotence and sadly misplaced hopefulness ever since, whether in the "World's Tallest Potato Contest," "Staff Picks" (oh that hits home for us booksellers), "You're not going to find anything in your price range that isn't full of bees," or this wordless gem. I weep with joy. http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal daily 0.75 2025-05-12 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/2013/1/22/our-new-space-phc76 monthly 0.5 2013-01-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358892818596-4RD2WIR29BVZEMTZFPJO/mckenzie_powell_studio_5.jpeg Journal - Our New Space! http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/2012/10/10/emgwjixspkrbiv4qoftqk09v8ii7nv-3bd6h monthly 0.5 2013-01-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358890971794-LIG6FEWN04Q4RUKUJ67J/Jen1.jpeg Journal - A Winter Wedding: Jennifer & Scott https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358890975810-NXNTHDVT93TCOMXZI36N/jen3.jpeg Journal - A Winter Wedding: Jennifer & Scott https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358890987028-7C6CZV88Z8LLF4790ZYJ/jen2.jpeg Journal - A Winter Wedding: Jennifer & Scott http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/2012/10/10/p6o7r1z5zg6ssurmz22hoie4ccypye-2js3y monthly 0.5 2013-01-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358967921190-DVDYN5JS8SPZKNQ0IUNO/red-and-orange-flowers-1.jpeg Journal - Autumn Arrangements http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/2012/10/10/rm3tc02vcw3csd6d1r79lrqq5mpv53-kydmd monthly 0.5 2013-01-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358891284791-QJ67472X3Q41OZPGBP0W/megantyler3.jpeg Journal - A Peachy Soirée: Amanda & Kurt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358891291519-6J96W44QEMQ12D7N0NKS/megantyler12.jpeg Journal - A Peachy Soirée: Amanda & Kurt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1358891325577-JDYNLOI7887T0X305V7P/megantyler2.jpeg Journal - A Peachy Soirée: Amanda & Kurt http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/Text monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/Promotions monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/Inspiration monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/Stores monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/Event+Design monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/News monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/category/Tips monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/studio monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/fruit monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/personal monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/winter monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/autumn monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/wedding monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/lilies monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/summer monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/journal/tag/thanksgiving monthly 0.5 http://www.phinneybooks.com/services daily 0.75 2025-05-12 http://www.phinneybooks.com/gallery daily 0.75 2025-05-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1354035282259-P7UXS1OCWLIKMADLDN7F/erin-chris18.jpeg Work Credits: Images on this site belong to McKenzie Powell Floral & Event Design. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1354035282464-2EXTKYQ8YFE70RL46RQD/erin-chris19.jpeg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1354035283342-XDXX7YDM697C5LX8ECCS/courtney-clark9.jpeg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1354035283000-IAMO5UY35D7L7W1TY8IQ/courtney-clark7.jpeg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1354036935756-12HREP0MAUCZ7YMAPFSX/erin-chris15.jpeg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/505b6d77e4b0791034f9024f/1354036938085-9YPQR7TRQO8Y6WFSLOAM/erin-chris20.jpeg Work http://www.phinneybooks.com/anika-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536365409-HGF9NNIL5EPRO8WYWBFQ/Austin_Rats.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin As I've come to expect from Emily Austin's previous two novels, the beating heart of We Could Be Rats lies in its deeply flawed but lovable characters. However, where we were given the singular perspective of Gilda (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead) and Enid (Interesting Facts About Space), in this one we get the perspectives of two sisters: Sigrid and Margit. And where Gilda and Enid grappled with profound anxiety, Sigrid struggles with suicidal ideation. Sigrid's older sister Margit is a university student working toward a conventionally attractive future, while Sigrid is a queer high school dropout working at Dollar Pal. At 20, Sigrid is grieving her childhood, having become disillusioned with adulthood, her small, conservative hometown, and her dysfunctional family of origin; the novel opens with her penning her suicide letter. Sigrid's hopeful Margit will eventually edit it for her, making it more palatable for their parents and relatives. She writes, "I'm worried my death might bum you out, so I want to leave you with something to cheer you up." All that follows is strange and tender and dark and imaginative and sad and funny. I'll read anything this woman writes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536365409-HGF9NNIL5EPRO8WYWBFQ/Austin_Rats.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin As I've come to expect from Emily Austin's previous two novels, the beating heart of We Could Be Rats lies in its deeply flawed but lovable characters. However, where we were given the singular perspective of Gilda (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead) and Enid (Interesting Facts About Space), in this one we get the perspectives of two sisters: Sigrid and Margit. And where Gilda and Enid grappled with profound anxiety, Sigrid struggles with suicidal ideation. Sigrid's older sister Margit is a university student working toward a conventionally attractive future, while Sigrid is a queer high school dropout working at Dollar Pal. At 20, Sigrid is grieving her childhood, having become disillusioned with adulthood, her small, conservative hometown, and her dysfunctional family of origin; the novel opens with her penning her suicide letter. Sigrid's hopeful Margit will eventually edit it for her, making it more palatable for their parents and relatives. She writes, "I'm worried my death might bum you out, so I want to leave you with something to cheer you up." All that follows is strange and tender and dark and imaginative and sad and funny. I'll read anything this woman writes. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536389019-EGGUMK83I1LHJFOJFA6J/Babbitt_Tuck_graphic.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel by Natalie Babbitt, adapted and illustrated by K. Woodman-Maynard Tuck Everlasting is one of my top ten favorite books of all-time, so it's hardly surprising that this beautiful illustrated adaptation will be one of my top ten reads of the year. The original tells the story of eleven-year-old Winnie Foster, who runs away to a nearby wood in pursuit of adventure and finds it in the form of the immortal Tuck family, who drank from the wood's enchanted spring nearly a century before. Woodman-Maynard's gorgeous watercolor vision captures and enhances what I loved about the original: the restless and languid feel of a childhood summer, the thoughtful conversations about mortality, and that ending. A timeless treasure. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536422873-N6AZYWET8TDBE2SM1ISF/Biggs_Life.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs “Even if a book is about everything else, it is never not about the life the writer lived.” Memoir meets biography meets literary criticism in this heartfelt bibliomemoir (and yes, I was delighted to learn there's a specific word for this genre-blending). In the wake of her divorce and in the midst of losing her mother, Oxford-educated author Joanna Biggs turns to literature for comfort, wisdom, and guidance; the result is this impressive collection of essays, where she examines the lives and works of eight great women writers (Biggs herself is one of the nine promised in the title). I've admittedly only read the works of some of the included writers, but I found that this in no way diminished my enjoyment of the book; in fact, I adore Biggs's conversational, confessional tone as she spills tea about these women's personal lives and reveals much about her own as she seeks to build a life she's proud of. The cherry on top is the reading list I finished with; I feel rallied to reach for classics I've overlooked (there are spoilers if you read for plot!) and to revisit the ones I've loved before. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536376851-MW94MPV1HTQDHDRO26QT/Carmon_Unbearable.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America by Irin Carmon I read this twice in two weeks. As soon as I finished the audiobook version, I knew I had to get my hands on a physical copy. The second reading demanded that I underline sentences, paragraphs, and sometimes nearly full pages. Carmon combines the intimate personal narratives of five women navigating pregnancy in modern, post-Roe America with research into the history of obstetrics and the legislation and criminalization of pregnant (and, ugh, pre-pregnant) bodies. This book exposes how the political and personal can intersect to devastating effect when it comes to fertility, abortion, and pregnancy. Maggie, Hali, Christine, Alison, and Yoshica's lived experiences serve to illuminate specific ways the legal and medical systems can and do fail individuals across the country, from rural Alabama to New York City. As I read and reflected on the suffering and resiliency found in these pages, and on the need for more compassionate, patient-centered care, I was reminded of another book I read and loved that inspired rage and awe: The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service. I highly recommend both. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536450333-41MFFWCACU6DNNXZQWOL/Esperanza_Detained.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery Detained by D. Esperanza and Gerardo Ivan Morales D. Esperanza's story is a perfect example of how the personal is political. Thirteen-year-old Esperanza could not have anticipated that his first journal would become this memoir, just as he could not have foreseen the circumstances—the deaths of his caregivers—that forced him and his young cousins from Honduras and Guatemala to the United States. Unfortunately, the hundreds of perilous miles the four boys traversed over the course of four months was not the worst of it; Esperanza and his cousins were detained and separated at the border; he was then held in detention for the next five months while waiting to be reunited with his parents in Tennessee. Written with tremendous tenacity and foresight, Detained reveals the inhumanity and senselessness of U.S. immigration policies. Much like Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, this should be required reading. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536401893-2UGFFR5HFSUM59H0Q7F2/Howarth_Sunburn_US.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536410125-3U6ZDEV8VM9ALDXJ2MOZ/Kay_Little.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery A Little Daylight Left by Sarah Kay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536433816-XJO9ZO31PMJ3G93HBG94/Liang_Jessica.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery I Am Not Jessica Chen by Ann Liang I Am Not Jessica Chen is a haunting portrait of social pressure and academic burnout. When Jenna Chen's wish to become her golden child cousin literally comes true, she's initially elated. She finds herself aglow in a constant stream of positive attention, praise, and validation. Being Jessica Chen is so intoxicating to Jenna that when she discovers her own body is missing as well as her cousin's consciousness, her primary concern is keeping up the charade. Even when little by little, reality starts to crack through the surreal glamour of Jessica Chen's life, Jenna can't help but prefer it to her suffocatingly average one. It's only when Jenna discovers that the memory of her very existence is corroding—first, in the self-portraits she painted for an upcoming art show and then in the minds of the people who loved her best—she begins to comprehend what she stands to lose instead of gain. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764799851434-OL0KH7QALQ3M159PQMAF/Pattee_Tilt.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery Tilt by Emma Pattee Suddenly, the Big One—the catastrophic earthquake predicted to ravage the PNW in the next half century—is no longer a matter of What If but of What Now? Annie is nine months pregnant in IKEA stressing about a crib purchase when it happens. The narrative alternates between the present-day disaster and ruminations on the past with an eye to the immediate and uncertain future. Annie addresses her baby-to-be as she sets out on an odyssey across the ruined city of Portland, OR, to reunite with her husband. Propulsive in plot and rich in story, Tilt deftly articulates so much about motherhood and humanity, survival and strength. As a fellow Millennial and anxious new parent, I related deeply to Annie and felt myself with her every aching step of her journey, devoted and unwilling to put the book down until we reached the final page together. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536467430-SKLXNPTKH7NH22A867WF/Shearn_Dear.jpg Anika 2025 Top 10 Gallery Dear Edna Sloane by Amy Shearn Told in a modern epistolary form that includes emails, texts, and social media posts, Dear Edna Sloane is a delight. With the ambition and earnestness of an MFA graduate who's landed a dream-adjacent job as an editorial assistant in New York City, Seth Edwards has tasked himself with tracking down an all-but-forgotten author, Edna Sloane, in hopes that doing so might launch his own career. Sloane's literary star burned bright in the 1980s with the publication of her instant and enduring classic, An Infinity of Traces, but she mysteriously disappeared from the public eye at the height of its success. The personal and professional correspondences that emerge are often filled with creativity-fueled existential angst and literary snark, and they all work together to tell the story of an evolving industry and culture. http://www.phinneybooks.com/nancy-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-11-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537248966-UG87JFO2DNMB04LQNNR6/Baer_How.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery How About Now by Kate Baer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537248966-UG87JFO2DNMB04LQNNR6/Baer_How.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery How About Now by Kate Baer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764536957196-GPTXLYK81OCAG9QAWM4A/Brooks_Memorial.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537059616-97B3J8BU65WN1I4UAWNP/Kay_Little.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery A Little Daylight Left by Sarah Kay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537124376-HJLERD9FIRS70GLRK9H3/King_Heart.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Heart the Lover by Lily King https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537051307-3SPWY613X5BBXCMVIURW/Lawhon_Frozen_pb.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537108383-N4Q0WJ9QGDF056JA5OSL/Jones_Sleep.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Sleep by Honor Jones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537284899-4B2Y1BGXUWUFTK825UFG/Packer_Some.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537015340-WB6T7M7S9CGA3KSW1YOX/Pattee_Tilt.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Tilt by Emma Pattee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537004107-IKSZWE9VYAZUF4TF0X7K/Sittenfeld_Show.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537115656-TYA9WFWEKQ06KMQOA4HC/Walter_So.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery So Far Gone by Jess Walter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537207025-3HILN56HM31YYLSBU8Q7/White_Like.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery Like Family by Erin O. White https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764537213867-QLWGF8K99JER37GVGRID/Whybrow_Salt.jpg Nancy 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life by Helen Whybrow http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764719132616-ZOJ5E7PIHLZSQ7XHX1AL/Duras_War.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The War: A Memoir by Marguerite Duras https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764719132616-ZOJ5E7PIHLZSQ7XHX1AL/Duras_War.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The War: A Memoir by Marguerite Duras https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764719091375-COH3448BQPQD70C2TTYG/Gardam_Old.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery Old Filth by Jane Gardam https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764719219196-8ZNJGZMABFWMZD8VX636/Keane_Rising.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Rising Tide by Molly Keane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764718733101-H9D9WY4BB6F7VSJFKOS6/Miller_Land.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764719040800-8QY1BNFBVVFIWHICPRQ7/Moore_Lonely.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764718870507-63DF03I1SUWANCLJ7QOY/OBrien_Country.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764718906565-9EGRGI6YAS341LARKPLT/Painter_One.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes I hesitate to use an overworked booksellers’ phrase, but I can’t get around the fact that this 1947 novel epitomizes the “rediscovered gem.” It’s a 170-page story about a woman, a family, and a village on one radiant summer day a year after the end of WWII. Panter-Downes is a meticulous craftsperson and her descriptions are charmingly apt. Sheep run with the “rapid little steps of elderly ladies trying to catch a bus," two matrons of different classes wage an undeclared war, “pitting the sniff delicate against the sniff insolent”—and the written world is visible, audible. Her wistful, but not mournful, rumination on the ways war reshaped the English caste system makes the book veddy, veddy British, but I shared the uneasiness of those who had just come through an ordeal personally unscathed but unable to regain their balance. While light and compact, this book holds hints of the weighty vastness of history and time. Read savoringly. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764718825197-WCATL6MLE1A1O9WQ9261/Szabo_Katalin.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery Katalin Street by Magda Szabo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764718959533-NLJHAYXPEA7CQUWK1IPL/Szalay_Flesh.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery Flesh by David Szalay If the first thing you think when you finish a book is, “How did he do that!?”, you can be sure the author has pulled off something remarkable. I’ve long admired Szalay’s style and enjoyed his previous novels, but in his latest, the medium somehow IS the message. With spare, straightforward prose, and dialogue laconic in the extreme, Szalay portrays István, from age 15 to about 65. What he undergoes during that half-century is out-of-the ordinary, yet his story is, at bottom, about our common human experience. Physical and emotional, personal and geopolitical, it examines our bodies’ interface between our inner selves and the outer world. While Szalay has a quietly goofy humor that just tickled me, he also brought me to tears. But it wasn’t distress I was feeling, it was catharsis. And I realized that’s exactly what I’ve been needing these days. —Liz P.S. I know it’s early, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Flesh was a Booker nominee. It’s definitely going to be on my personal 2025 Top Ten. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764718778605-FRZCC37YTPUM5V7N88PC/Zweig_World.jpg Liz 2025 Top 10 Gallery The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig http://www.phinneybooks.com/doree-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720314314-65YIEWM6HW3LS95GV7P9/Backman_Friends.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith Every novel that Fredrik Backman writes immediately becomes my favorite. There is simply no one better at illustrating the human experience of love and friendship. In his latest, My Friends, he reminds us how deep childhood friendships can be, and how regrets can haunt you years later. A group of teenagers spends a transformational summer together, riding bikes, swimming, surviving trauma, lifting each other up while the world tries to tear them down. One of them puts all of these experiences and emotions into a painting that will later set the art world on fire. Years later, we learn in flashbacks what happened to each of these children. I cried, sad tears and happy tears, and am now inspired to reach out to some of my childhood friends to thank them for helping make me the person I am today. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720314314-65YIEWM6HW3LS95GV7P9/Backman_Friends.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith Every novel that Fredrik Backman writes immediately becomes my favorite. There is simply no one better at illustrating the human experience of love and friendship. In his latest, My Friends, he reminds us how deep childhood friendships can be, and how regrets can haunt you years later. A group of teenagers spends a transformational summer together, riding bikes, swimming, surviving trauma, lifting each other up while the world tries to tear them down. One of them puts all of these experiences and emotions into a painting that will later set the art world on fire. Years later, we learn in flashbacks what happened to each of these children. I cried, sad tears and happy tears, and am now inspired to reach out to some of my childhood friends to thank them for helping make me the person I am today. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720364350-WODOI6RM2UNZKV6S4476/Fagan_Three.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720431717-JV43T5PPYSQNMR6U2I39/Hall_Broken.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720388406-MZE19G2QSBKS5JCVIJO0/Jane_American.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery American Werewolves by Emily Jane Emily Jane’s first novel was about aliens, her second about sea monsters, and her third is about, as the title makes clear, werewolves. In each of her books, Jane uses supernatural beings to fully plumb the depths of what it means to be human and part of a community. American Werewolves is completely bonkers, in the best possible way. Shane, a young and successful venture capitalist, is invited to join his firm’s partnership ranks, which comes with privileges such as raw, bloody steaks and chasing prey through the woods. He meets a young woman whose roommate was viciously murdered in what looks like an animal attack. The two join forces and ... well, I won’t give any more away, but let’s just say American Werewolves provides a savage yet very funny perspective on wealth disparity in America, and how we can’t outrun our ancestors. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720376351-AJR0XFWEY62868ZNX2K0/Lawhon_Frozen_pb.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720444273-3G11BML3N4J62VP8KBXS/Osman_Impossible.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720302531-O1OLNROA4EE86YM5MCII/Pattee_Tilt.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery Tilt by Emma Pattee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720400460-NG9T04SZI1FMLV9KO0OR/Penny_Black.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Black Wolf by Louise Penny https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720506560-6W0G1SH1KWEYX7CZMUZN/Shepherd_Art.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Art of the Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764720492570-416PTTE2JTKAYD1YM5X7/VanPelt_Remarkably_pb.jpg Doree 2025 Top 10 Gallery Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721849029-MGSSKJ0GARJRJOKH00M1/Balle_Calculation1.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery On the Calculation of Volume, Book I by Solveg Balle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721849029-MGSSKJ0GARJRJOKH00M1/Balle_Calculation1.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery On the Calculation of Volume, Book I by Solveg Balle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721310545-SIUFU6CO77MG088XM6UL/Case_Harder.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721463823-5PK374OWU405OE7BXZPI/Cornwell_Ring.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland by Betsy Cornwell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721369801-IKCOX60JR4F8VUNYS90B/Dalton_Raising.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton "There was a time when I knew nothing about hares and gave them little thought," Chloe Dalton writes in Raising Hare. That changes when Dalton rescues a baby hare (called a leveret) near her English countryside home. As her habits shift to accommodate the little wild creature, its presence gradually awakens her to the natural world outside. This beautifully written and moving memoir will fill you with wonder and reverence. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in animals or nature. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721481957-P78WFTYWET1W79PTAX2G/Akkad_One.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721351838-X5HQ5DRTQ5FQECTLOLC1/Kingfisher_Hollow.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher This book is so good! Suspenseful, hilarious, great characters, and ingeniously creative. Kara moves in with her uncle Earl, who runs an oddities museum. One day, a hole appears in the wall, leading to a hallway that shouldn't be there… https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721466830-JOKP08KQI7I15VDXCG67/Krow_SInkhole.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids: Stories by Leyna Krow A fabulous collection of magical short stories by Spokane author Leyna Krow--all set in the Pacific Northwest. For fans of authors like Kelly Link. I really enjoyed this book! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721542072-ECLLXC8CX4BLLJJ2FKEI/Oakes_All.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery All the Things They Said We Couldn’t Have: Stories of Trans Joy by T.C. Oakes-Monger A beautifully written celebration of being human. I loved this little gem. Recommended reading for everyone! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721381741-2TX72BNH03TREO30E648/Sachar_Magician.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar I loved this imaginative (and surprisingly time period–specific) fairytale from the author of Holes and the Wayside School books. This is his first book for adults. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764721300781-DGJHSB694L6FAWNAY19K/Shepherd_Art.jpg Haley 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson The Art of a Lie is my favorite book of 2025 so far! I was drawn in by the main character's eighteenth-century confectionery shop and treated to a page-turner full of more twists and turns than a Hitchcock film. Historical fiction can be hit-or-miss for me, based on how real the setting feels, but in The Art of a Lie, Shepherd-Robinson completely transports her readers into a well-researched 1749 London world. Learning so much about daily life and customs during this time period was a highlight, but the storyline also constantly kept me on my toes—even gasping with surprise at several parts. I'd tell you more of the plot, but I think it's best to go into this book with no prior knowledge, like I did. Check it out if you enjoy history, mystery, or just a well-told story. http://www.phinneybooks.com/haley-2025-picture-book-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722391900-V565GNYFN9QFTYQ240FH/Barnes_Got.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery I Got You: A Brother’s Promise by Derrick Barnes and Shamar Knight-Justice https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722391900-V565GNYFN9QFTYQ240FH/Barnes_Got.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery I Got You: A Brother’s Promise by Derrick Barnes and Shamar Knight-Justice https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722248437-C5OZWURQSTK0QTKIGTWD/Booth_We.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery I Am We: How Crows Come Together to Survive by Leslie Barnard Booth and Alexandra Finkelday https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722004755-R46VTZ9F39ZQ2P7XYI9U/Fang_Broken.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery Broken by X. Fang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722110176-RPZTAJL17SDY7EU2I6BT/Jackson_Sleeper.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery The Sleeper Train ‍by Mick Jackson and Baljinder Kaur Aboard the Indian sleeper train, everyone is getting ready for bed. But one little girl is too excited to sleep. She thinks it might help to try to remember all the places she has slept in the past, like the beach, her grandparents' house, or a tent in the countryside. This gentle bedtime book feels like a classic. I particularly loved Baljinder Kaur's wonderfully detailed art, which takes readers into a magical dreamland of colors and patterns. —Haley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722092442-EB4SV8IQT003F68LWHBZ/Kang_Our.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery Our Lake by Angie Kang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722163538-B9TQCOBY9J7D8GZCVXIC/Lim_Window.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery At the Window by Hope Lim, illustrated by Qin Leug https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722205386-XF2NT5EFUED5M4QKOL9Z/Sterer_Call.gif Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone by Gideon Sterer and Emily Hughes "If you make a call on a banana phone, who will answer?" The boy in this picture book finds out when he strikes up a long-distance friendship with a gorilla. Emily Hughes's soft-looking illustrations show the boy and the gorilla as they learn about each other and compare their lives. The repetition of "if..." may remind readers of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie—and like that forty-year-old classic, If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone also has an enduring quality. Perfect for a cozy read-aloud! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722259972-Q46S5TT0EPQKOM6TKAW2/Stead_Anything.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery Anything by Rebecca Stead and Gracey Zhang The young protagonist in Anything tells us she can wish for very hard things—a rainbow in her room or the biggest slice of pizza in the whole world! But wishes (or "anythings," as she calls them) only go so far when you've just moved into a new apartment that doesn't feel like home. The girl's father has a few tricks up his sleeve to make her wishes come true and help the two of them create new memories. This is Newbery winner Rebecca Stead's first picture book and she writes for a younger audience with the same emotional intelligence that she brings to her middle-grade books. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722052640-FTEJLZUF4W3BKZ287WEW/Tabor_Cranky.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery Cranky, Crabby Crow (Saves the World) by Corey R. Tabor https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764722335289-WOC73M8IH9280M2IROAA/Chang_What.jpg Haley 2025 Picture Book Top 10 Gallery What If We… by Eugenia Yoh and Vivienne Chang http://www.phinneybooks.com/tom-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727518032-5Y9QWF00SGFG35LD0P9H/Case_Harder.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir by Neko Case "What makes you think you're so important that someone should listen to you?" It's the question Neko Case has been asked—and even worse, asked herself—her whole life, born into a spectacularly neglected childhood ("raised by two dogs and a space heater") and bounced around the rural Northwest until she found her people and her voice in the Tacoma punk scene. If you love her singing and her songwriting, it's inconceivable you won't love this starkly beautiful book, but even if you've never heard her (you should!) you'll likely never forget the childhood she recalls and the person she became. It's my favorite book I've read so far this year—easily. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727518032-5Y9QWF00SGFG35LD0P9H/Case_Harder.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A Memoir by Neko Case "What makes you think you're so important that someone should listen to you?" It's the question Neko Case has been asked—and even worse, asked herself—her whole life, born into a spectacularly neglected childhood ("raised by two dogs and a space heater") and bounced around the rural Northwest until she found her people and her voice in the Tacoma punk scene. If you love her singing and her songwriting, it's inconceivable you won't love this starkly beautiful book, but even if you've never heard her (you should!) you'll likely never forget the childhood she recalls and the person she became. It's my favorite book I've read so far this year—easily. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727656074-AKNZ8ZWOU1EDN9TWPG1K/DeKretser_Theory.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser Recently I sifted through our new releases in search of—well, I wasn't sure. A certain kind of book I knew I needed without quite knowing what it was. And this little novel, I realized almost as soon as I picked it up, was it. Can I describe it now? I'm still not sure, but what comes to mind first is "restlessly intelligent." An Australian woman from Sri Lanka studies Virginia Woolf in grad school, and has an irrationally possessive affair with a young man who is, mostly, seeing someone else. It's a story very much about what the title says—the gap, the friction, between theory and practice—but really it's about the grit and the thought of this particular life, looked back on from afar. If you liked Claire Dederer's Monsters (and I know many of you did), you'll find a fictional companion here, somewhat in subject but certainly in that shared restless intelligence. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727552190-7DBG35UQ8LYBS7HMX0I5/Drexler_Smithereens.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler I had never heard of Rosalyn Drexler before I opened this novel, published in 1972 and reissued this year as the first book from the cool new imprint Hagfish, but she seems like a heck of a woman. Mostly a painter who made her own way through the fist-fighters of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art (the cover painting to the left is hers), she also has written plays and a dozen or so books in her 98 years (including the novelization of Rocky!), and, like her character Rosa Rubinsky, was for a time a pro wrestler on the sleazy, pre-TV circuit. Writing may have been second to painting for her, but whoa, she can write: To Smithereens is a raunchy, ratty tale that reads a little like The Queen's Gambit seen through the eyes of R. Crumb, and then seen again through the eyes of a savvy, seen-it-all feminist. It's satirical but surprisingly humane toward even its creepiest characters, and best of all, Drexler has a deliciously spot-on ear for the way people talk and think. I loved it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727525313-3830B2LV7IJ935CV1WQN/Akkad_One.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad To say that this book began as a tweet—a single sentence posted in late October 2023, a little longer than what became its title but the same in spirit—is not to belittle it, but to capture the power of its focused eloquence. El Akkad, author of the provocative near-future novel, American War, expanded on that sentence in this nonfiction memoir/polemic not with the usual back-and-forth of Middle East historical blame but by tracing his own path: from a childhood in Egypt, Qatar, and Canada to an adult decision to become a citizen of the United States. It was a path driven in part by opportunity and the appeal of a more open society, but now, after two decades of reporting on empire and the unrelenting evidence of the destruction of Gaza, his understanding of the hypocrisy of the West and its indifference to the suffering of others becomes almost a koan of anger and anguish, tempered only slightly by the hope that there will be a future that might, at some point, see it for what it was. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727643022-OORNOU9EUDZVMTM0FK93/Macfarlane_River.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane If rivers can die—we've all seen that they can—shouldn't that also mean that rivers are alive? Macfarlane's newest book is his most pointedly provocative, adding an activist's urgency to his usual, miraculous attention to nature, love for language, and charismatic generosity toward the best of his fellow humans. In this participatory study of living waterways, almost giddy with hope and the possibility of despair, you'll meet four river systems, in the cloudforests of Ecuador, the polluted flatlands of India, the wild, yet-undammed reaches of Quebec, and Macfarlane's home territory of Cambridge, and you'll also get to know some of the larger-than-life people who love and try to protect them. In a time when we pay particular attention to pronouns, you'll note the one he insists on using for each river: not "it," but "who." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727582209-8LDRGN8F41QSEJHDJFWR/Mann_Art.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Art Work: On the Creative Life by Sally Mann There's something about the particular eloquence of Sally Mann's photographs—their locality, their intimacy, and the sense you get of her as not merely a silent, reserved observer but a real participant in her compositions—that makes it unsurprising she is such a good writer too. The first evidence was her 2011 memoir, Hold Still, a National Book Award finalist; the second is this book, which she thought she'd never write until she found herself jotting chapter headings. It's presented as an artistic self-help book, and it reminded me of my favorite in that genre, Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, in its attention to both the practical and passionate sides of long-term art-making. But Mann is such a personal artist, and such a natural storyteller, that inevitably this is another memoir of sorts, adding to her life story and revisiting her obsessions with place and family and the joys and the grind of creation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727569723-EBUELV16L8QR5V65CKU9/Moody_Coming.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody Although she worked alongside civil rights legends like Bob Moses and Medgar Evers, you won't find Moody's name in the indexes of the big histories of the movement, and her memoir doesn't follow the arc of progress those histories trace. It's a story of frustration as much as success, of exhaustion as much as exhilaration. It's a view, not from above the ocean waves, but from inside the churn of the surf, where you can't tell if you are moving forward or backward, up or down. But it's a moving and rousing story nevertheless, as Moody, from early childhood, chafes against nearly everything in her poor rural upbringing, fights for her education and earning power, and finds a purpose—even if an often thwarted one—in political action and community. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727605089-1841JXI50I7ZFULYW0ZL/Roth_Flight.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Flight Without End by Joseph Roth I am slowly catching up with the genius of Joseph Roth. After the multigenerational sweep of his masterpiece, The Radetzky March, this little novel reads like a minor chamber piece, but in some ways it burrowed under my skin more deeply. It's the story, such as it is, of a certain Franz Tunda—a bourgeois young Austrian officer, engaged to a suitable bride, whose life goes thoroughly sideways when he is taken as a prisoner of war and escapes to a new identity in Siberia. Possessed by a strangely indifferent restlessness, he finds himself a Soviet revolutionary, then a husband in Baku, and finally a sponger and a vagrant in Vienna and Paris: a perfectly modern man, and an utterly "superfluous" one. It's an oddly unsettling, and often drily hilarious, story. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764728690720-L9FWBEEENZDFW1LK1DS5/Roy_Mother.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy In the wake of the fame granted by her bestselling, Booker-winning debut novel, The God of Small Things, Roy has mostly turned her writing to political reporting and activism. But the death of her mother, a larger-than-life figure who left her feckless husband and built an acclaimed school from the sheer force of her will while cascading a constant stream of insults toward her own children, drove Roy to tell the story of her own life. It's dramatic, funny, thoughtful, and more earthily practical than her lush fiction—especially when narrated in her own drily witty voice in the audiobook. As domineering as "Mrs. Roy" was (she commanded her children to call her the same name her other students used)—"my shelter and my storm," her daughter says—Arundhati herself is an equally forceful figure, making her way out of that storm and then reckoning with the surprising dangers of her own fame and fortune. It's marvelous. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727594282-T06M0HQCF5J1G6DC8XFJ/Rukeyser_Willard.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Willard Gibbs: The Whole Is Simpler than Its Parts by Muriel Rukeyser This hefty, beautiful, and mysterious book tempted me from across the store for months, and when I finally had the time to sit down with it, it turned out to be all of those things: hefty, beautiful, and still mysterious. The first book in Maria Popova's new Marginalian imprint for the excellent McNally Editions, it's a biography (of sorts) of the 19th-century scientist Willard Gibbs, first published in 1942 by the poet Muriel Rukeyser. Gibbs was a titan—Rukeyser, not outlandishly, counts him as one of the four great Americans of his time, along with Lincoln, Whitman, and Melville—but largely unknown then and still so now, even as his ideas, in their brilliant connection and abstraction across mathematics, physics, and chemistry, laid the foundation for much of what the 20th century discovered. "A modest man," in Rukeyser's words, "living and dying in the space of three New Haven blocks," his life story is almost vacant, so she makes it a biography of an entire age, of industrial and social transformation and of brainy, searching peers like William James and Henry Adams. It is a dense, lyrical, fascinating book, full of science that largely flew over my head and cultural history as wise as any I've read. That Rukeyser wrote it all by the time she was 29 is astounding, and makes me even more curious about her than about her elusive subject. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727626525-0HNZFYU68HNYL5LCQGSI/Szalay_Flesh.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery Flesh by David Szalay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764727536009-8MGOKOOQIQMNO342ASRX/Werner_Frog.jpg Tom 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner, translated by Michael Hofmann We pay attention to Michael Hofmann's translations here, not only for his skill in turning German into English (e.g., Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March and Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos) but for his taste in the books he chooses to translate. So when, in the introduction to this book, he described Werner, a Swiss novelist I hadn't heard of before, as "exquisitely addictive," as "swift," "bleak," and "deadly," well, I had to keep reading. And I acquired an appetite for Werner too, which likely won't be satisfied with this one book. The story is slight, alternating between the voices of a lapsed, disgraced pastor and his late dairy-farmer father, who refuses to forgive his son even in death, but it's the voices that are the pull, grouchy rants worthy of Thomas Bernhard or Michel Houellebecq that are somehow refreshing and even humane in their flaws and fury. I don't remember when bitter misanthropy has made me so glad to be alive. http://www.phinneybooks.com/shane-2025-top-10-gallery daily 0.75 2025-12-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737684164-EMLK77DXPMNBI2RUR0D5/Armfield_Private_pb.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Private Rites by Julia Armfield https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737684164-EMLK77DXPMNBI2RUR0D5/Armfield_Private_pb.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Private Rites by Julia Armfield https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737590395-HXT8T32NJOG93YVYZ4WZ/Byron_Herculine.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Herculine by Grace Byron https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737614461-HO26HYM3V4XR1UDRPH01/Davis_Women.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737457062-4NMY096UF25TI6MRGOO7/Dinniman_Dungeon.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt DInniman In Dungeon Crawler Carl, Carl’s world collapses. Literally. Every interior on Earth with a roof is collapsed and absorbed into the 18-Level World Dungeon. Part Hunger Games, part role-playing game, The Dungeon is an episodic intergalactic reality show with impossible odds. Dinniman has a clear understanding of what makes action readable and an impressive ability to bring a character to life. And beneath the very foot-enthusiastic game host A.I. and the ultra charismatic talking cat, Dungeon Crawler Carl is about humanity—finding and keeping it under a system that exploits and commodifies. It is the funnest, most engaging series I’ve ever read—and it all starts here: “You will not break me." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737560754-2U0S3NS5W506AW1J05NZ/Gill_Short.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery A Short History of Trans Misogyny by Jules Gill-Peterson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737699253-PEE6X4UZOL73FDD8I8W9/Kuang_Babel.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737643450-LJW7TY9SVZJCLYJ3L2GZ/Ravn_Wax.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Wax Child by Olga Ravn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737734811-QRXN3Q96CJ70Z2PB2T0F/Rosson_Coffin.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737490152-X6BHJPQ53CEP8EI0QX2T/Shannon_Priory_pb.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1764737528848-KS6S9DBLATOZ09JN9POP/Shannon_Day_pb.jpg Shane 2025 Top 10 Gallery A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon http://www.phinneybooks.com/2014-gift-guide-true-stories daily 0.75 2014-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113270473-Z5FCQTIKFWJ4ZE4Y0XXG/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113343340-WRB6O0JA1U1K908QE3KX/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113389595-LOVTJODRVHMRQPJL50TV/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113437557-ZYDB2ATWX7WQ7C4U5OXR/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113491683-1K75OB7X15C6P0PQ5DTP/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113555276-OHC02GLQNSGI1P5DAZH2/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113603598-TCJCQX5SCH7J0T3MS42I/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113647629-UPVG3ZVBSZBWTQU6GK1O/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113700082-BQBACAEQZ6WNF9KB9BP0/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113742720-J72U29TPCM7TBG68XM1O/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113791664-BDEVA62GT2W3SB46CL5V/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113844905-OYXXIGEI5RJTZ8LWIGOC/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113885310-3MG4QQQZP61HB7NQIJBT/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1418113945570-U1JS2EM0WS0QFZP3RF6A/image-asset.jpeg 2014 Gift Guide: True Stories http://www.phinneybooks.com/phinney-by-post daily 0.75 2025-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1416730786400-AWHG7IZAC4V6GZ89PHEQ/Phinney_by_Post.jpg Phinney by Post https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1416731593106-MKYKVQ9B6TCVM7HITDVC/Post_logo_full_200.jpg Phinney by Post - Phinney by Post Full Plan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1416731593111-Q1GE2XNADBZU3XDB7VCP/Post_logo_true_200.jpg Phinney by Post - Phinney by Post True Plan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1416731592912-5H64HUWPRBJREWJJU016/Post_logo_made_200.jpg Phinney by Post - Phinney by Post Made-Up Plan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432606602898-V40SIHYI12EVQU15SBRG/Gornick_Fierce.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #1: January 2015 Vivian Gornick's memoir Fierce Attachments (1987) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432620058279-5DY8ZBN2LGII2I5HJH2K/Tevis_Queen.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #2: February 2015 Walter Tevis's novel The Queen's Gambit (1983) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432621109485-TU9JH9YNBGG2IS3IR80I/Weschler_Boggs.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #3: March 2015 Lawrence Weschler's profile of an artist (or con artist), Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432621207897-OVBIIK3DGT3LE6THKRKL/Ledgard_Submergence.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #4: April 2015 J.M. Ledgard's novel Submergence (2011) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1432621279695-P9ROAW9G1QN1U4X2X9G3/Nordstrom_Genius.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #5: May 2015 Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, edited by Leonard Marcus (1998) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436224655399-SSMJIJN8OM7GHZ3VF6T5/image-asset.jpeg Phinney by Post - Book #6: June 2015 Penelope Fitzgerald's novel Offshore (1979) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1436224977315-L3AK6545EMLQ8TKV3SC5/Hull_Rock.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #7: July 2015 John M. Hull's memoir Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness (1990) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1443048510474-G3BXX6N7HHQE8UG52DEU/Jones_Lost.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #8: August 2015 Edward P. Jones's collection of stories Lost in the City (1992) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1443048547282-M9ONDB98943O2CDY2DV1/Wolk_Live.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #9: September 2015 Douglas Wolk's appreciation of James's Brown's album, Live at the Apollo, part of the 33 1/3 series (2004) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1446919133970-EO8H29EUBBTBBMZID022/Kleist_Marquise.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #10: October 2015 Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas (in the collection The Marquise of O— and Other Stories) (1810) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1446919309749-YAJG5O5JF7TMJDCM7OD6/Beard_Boys.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #11: November 2015 Jo Ann Beard's collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth (1999) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455003179062-QLMMEYPMN8ANO7EAAXZE/Schwarz-Bart_Bridge.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #12: December 2015 Simone Schwarz-Bart's novel The Bridge of Beyond (1972) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455003207557-FQ88IDXUDMW8MCIF1A9S/McCarthy_Girlhood.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #13: January 2016 Mary McCarthy's memoir Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455003235513-NJ8XMZQ9OTFHQ4Q1DIW5/Household_Rogue.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #14: February 2016 Geoffrey Household's thriller Rogue Male https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367309331-2SA6XABMMMJZJH5KHD7R/Barthelme_Double.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #15: March 2016 Frederick and Steven Barthelme's memoir of gambling, writing, and family, Double Down https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367334203-IKYPKJGXEBV53EAN0J9W/Lewis_Wife.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #16: April 2016 Janet Lewis's historical novel The Wife of Martin Guerre https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367360852-GCP0BYBN3954W0KGKB8R/Frady_Wallace.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #17: May 2016 Marshall Frady's political profile Wallace (1968) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1465367373481-9QLP1NPJQP3XF0IFQCKI/DeWitt_Last.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #18: June 2016 Helen DeWitt's novel The Last Samurai (2000) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1468016950122-IDGH3TMN3PB0LUWVCE1U/McPhee_Levels.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #19: July 2016 John McPhee's account of a 1968 U.S. Open tennis semifinal, Levels of the Game (1969) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1474313649730-2IVHOPFFT05EZZL2FGJB/Johnson_ExColored.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #20: August 2016 James Weldon Johnson's novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1474313787284-7IMTV1XAT8D3T94G8Y5P/Gill_Eating.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #21: September 2016 Charlotte Gill's memoir of tree-planting in British Columbia, Eating Dirt (2011) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1478898640429-FQH9A2Q84QVT9TE7VCCL/Katchor_Cheap.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #22: October 2016 Ben Katchor's collection of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer comic strips, Cheap Novelties (1991) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1478898655368-KCXZPZXJGR13VUDPCCEC/Moss_Ill.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #23: November 2016 W. Stanley Moss's memoir of the kidnapping of a Nazi general in World War II, Ill Met by Moonlight (1950) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1481140813787-05ZL7AIDSPW5Y9STB4H0/Watch_Tower_500.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #24: December 2016 Elizabeth Harrower's novel The Watch Tower (1966) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857299519-GGUHE0GPLEHMR1PNI2JL/Buck_Flight.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #25: January 2017 Rinker Buck's memoir of his teenage flight across the United States, Flight of Passage (1997) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857134917-NOYCTD9TU0OHOHJ90X0H/Collins_Whatever.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #26: February 2017 Kathleen Collins's book of stories, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? (2016) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857363016-804BU4EO4WCJQP4BI7P4/Teffi_Memories.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #27: March 2017 Teffi's memoir of traveling through Russia during the Revolution, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea (1931) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857454473-ICB6XB014EJD2YJ63PW5/Tey_Brat.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #28: April 2017 Josephine Tey's mid-century mystery, Brat Farrar (1949) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857551703-RQ3W921JWWYL6F33EW7X/Berger_Fortunate.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #29: May 2017 John Berger and Jean Mohr's illustrated profile of an English country doctor, A Fortunate Man (1967) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857617831-57C82OU7S74B8VG5817M/Inoue_Bullfight.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #30: June 2017 Yasushi Inoue's short novel, Bullfight (1949) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857771241-G9HJ8Z4TYWMDZLF629CX/Yang_Latehomecomer.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #31: July 2017 Kao Kalia Yang's memoir of her family in Laos, Thailand, and the United States, The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (2008) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857831240-V3NWWO51KUYMGCFUDMWE/Drury_End.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #32: August 2017 Tom Drury's novel The End of Vandalism (1994) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857878199-TWHFR54ODRJIY2NXEZWQ/Lumet_Making.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #33: September 2017 Sidney Lumet's filmmaking memoir, Making Movies (1995) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857928626-92M8GZH0TLZ65G7TMKK9/Carter_Wise.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #34: October 2017 Angela Carter's show-business novel, Wise Children (1991) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511857974742-754KH1Q1TSLT8WMEQN8G/Austin_Land.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #35: November 2017 Mary Austin's nature vignettes from the California desert, The Land of Little Rain (1903) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1511858057391-ORQR078CQCONBY30RPXX/Simenon_Man.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #36: December 2017 Georges Simenon's crime novel The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544659432704-LBHIWF89PFDZUMU71517/Geoghegan_Which.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #37: January 2018 Thomas Geoghegan’s memoir of his life as a labor lawyer, Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back (1991) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544659601919-2MY8Z3JHCVFCY513I5VD/London_Gilgamesh.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #38: February 2018 Joan London’s novel Gilgamesh (2001) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544659990314-WT3AJVRC3EBCBBZVHGSZ/Maurer_Big.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #39: March 2018 David W. Maurer’s guide to the lore and lingo of the underworld, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man (1940) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660099656-9G0E7QMT45V7NQL7EKNY/Strugatsky_Roadside.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #40: April 2018 Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s science-fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1972) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660186252-8AI030X8686E6JHRYWTJ/Ginzburg_Little.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #41: May 2018 Natalia Ginzburg’s book of essays, The Little Virtues (1962) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660261463-7CFFZL6KD3MK3H2H68VX/Kantner_Ordinary.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #42: June 2018 Seth Kantner’s novel Ordinary Wolves (2004) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660373197-XLUTRJ3DX1DTYXUAIMZE/Abad_Oblivion.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #43: July 2018 Hector Abad’s memoir of his father, Oblivion (2006) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660594547-EQH3RPIYQS7GJS0D2QLM/StJohn_Women.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #44: August 2018 Madeleine St. John’s novel The Women in Black (1993) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660838422-2EY8NI42WMCFVJDNGTD1/Origo_War.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #45: September 2018 Iris Origo’s War in the Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944 (1947) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544660961321-7GD4F5MQDA1STJWUGC32/Bambara_Gorilla.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #46: October 2018 Toni Cade Bambara’s book of short stories Gorilla, My Love (1972) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544661082827-RGVBOM3YM62XDK7IO6S6/Winik_Glen.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #47: November 2018 Marion Winik’s collection of elegies, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (2008) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1544663123873-BVQG4W58AJXRCSYNS2VL/Portis_Dog.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #48: December 2018 Charles Portis’s novel The Dog of the South (1979) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550024620918-WX067IYVZMBIRD8MOX0P/Park_Great.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #49: January 2019 Sooyong Park’s nature memoir, The Great Soul of Siberia: In Search of the Elusive Siberian Tiger https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1550024648239-LNTCI6CJQP74W7GMG2XL/Lofts_Town.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #50: February 2019 Norah Lofts’s historical novel The Town House https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555804086832-SVR8W8RMH8GUBCL0CQVM/Jones_How.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #51: March 2019 Hettie Jones’s memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1555804176683-W9M4HO2QL0E4JSYTZSE0/Hamilton_Slaves.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #52: April 2019 Patrick Hamilton’s novel The Slaves of Solitude https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807844113-899MRGVV49RNC1K2JHTS/Fagan_Little.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #53: May 2019 Brian Fagan’s environmental history, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1650 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807856846-XUHPDLLNX8E9V8B4SJ4I/Gloss_Outside.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #54: June 2019 Molly Gloss’s novella, Outside the Gates https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807905643-11603ENAWWWNK2GYW5P1/Sprawson_Haunts.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #55: July 2019 Charles Sprawson memoir and cultural history of swimming, Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807932199-T982LLS34MZUE7EJ6I0M/Chesnutt_Marrow.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #56: August 2019 Charles W. Chestnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807938468-7PT31H39DNVTA56EKWMP/Kincaid_Talk.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #57: September 2019 Jamaica Kincaid’s collection of New Yorker “Talk of the Town” vignettes, Talk Stories https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807950991-38YX5ON5B70NUKQKF8JL/Krabbe_Rider.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #58: October 2019 Tim Krabbé’s cycling novel, The Rider https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574807970145-7ZX61O1UQW7IBHEX3SV0/Summerscale_Whicher.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #59: November 2019 Kate Summerscale’s Victorian true-crime history, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581897069160-LMPTA0O6ORGRSCMJKZR6/See_Golden.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #60: December 2019 Carolyn See’s novel Golden Days https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581897083916-1U21L1LTM6T88RH389NU/Bass_Oil.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #61: January 2020 Rick Bass’s geologist’s memoir, Oil Notes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1581897096967-EKZ5BYW11ZCLCQ0FKDGT/Segal_Her.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #62: February 2020 Lore Segal’s novel Her First American https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068482316-LMYAIRZBBNV4U677KO5X/Faviell_Chelsea.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #63: March 2020 Frances Faviell’s memoir of the London Blitz, A Chelsea Concerto https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068506453-V2DEYDZDVZ9OPRYVCLII/Yourcenar_Hadrian.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #64: April 2020 Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Memoirs of Hadrian https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068525115-HAWXBV6CIEIKE9T4XTCU/Shepherd_Living_hc.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #65: May 2020 Nan Shepherd’s nature memoir, The Living Mountain https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068536348-9X8P1R168KI37TXVUGU4/Holleran_Grief.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #66: June 2020 Andrew Holleran’s novel Grief https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068560741-P6TZE8XSAF1SF820VQ8D/James_Jacobins.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #67: July 2020 C.L.R. James’s history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068573867-PGJWKF8NHSM9N8O67ETI/Mieville_City_pb.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #68: August 2020 China Miéville’s novel The City & the City https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068640768-9U6OS5EO34HBKA3GJQWO/Ditlevsen_Childhood_UK.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #69: September 2020 Tove Ditlevsen’s memoir Childhood https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603068688643-30Z7UGYYWKYOJ5TT637L/Hardwick_Sleepless.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #70: October 2020 Elizabeth Hardwick’s novel Sleepless Nights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751199409-Y9J0ZXTQTLNXFTQWDLKH/Brower_Starship.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #71: November 2020 Kenneth Brower’s profile of Freeman and George Dyson, The Starship and the Canoe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751334391-N6KNPU4Y3JUU4DSHIPFH/Vesaas_Ice.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #72: December 2020 Tarjei Vesaas’s novel The Ice Palace https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751407113-WYVHR1LPNTTLBI2M397L/Barich_Laughing.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #73: January 2021 Bill Barich’s racetrack memoir, Laughing in the Hills https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612751600906-K1AW66S19NH7LWC0UIIT/Kelley_Different.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #74: February 2021 William Melvin Kelley’s novel of sudden Black migration from the South, A Different Drummer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021009291-5WBJ3ICLN0YG4KXU989E/Forna_Devil.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #75: March 2021 Aminatta Forna’s memoir of her childhood in Sierra Leone and Scotland, The Devil That Danced on the Water https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021027504-BGE0VKGIZPI177S3GXZ1/Lehmann_Dusty.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #76: April 2021 Rosamond Lehmann’s novel of youthful love and friendship, Dusty Answer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021039404-6VCB905ILJ8MZ675V9WA/DeGroot_Auberge.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #77: May 2021 Roy Andries De Groot’s book of travel and recipes, The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021048222-8WEQP6WTKRKA8OICWDDW/Dove_Thomas.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #78: June 2021 Rita Dove’s poetic imagining of the lives of her parents, Thomas and Beulah https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021061244-R7YI1B9LVL95LOFER8ZE/Momaday_Names.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #79: July 2021 N. Scott Momaday’s ancestral and personal memoir, The Names https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085875999-A1TKCEGT1UNQ1KDFP3HO/Richards_Nights.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #80: August 2021 David Adams Richards’s novel of family in small-town New Brunswick, Nights Below Station Street https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085895106-QL8Q2EHXM35GFBK2C977/Jarre_Distant.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #81: September 2021 Marina Jarre’s memoir of an outsider’s life in Latvia and Italy, Distant Fathers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085909613-HE5FJSR388OF01MKYZAD/Sherriff_Fortnight.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #82: October 2021 R.C. Sherriff’s novel of a family seaside vacation, The Fortnight in September https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636085984462-DF4TE6GAA3AM0WONHNW0/Babb_Owl.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #83: November 2021 Sanora Babb’s memoir of growing up in eastern Colorado, An Owl on Every Post https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356399994-L2UF5QGETUZUWECAFYT5/Conde_Tituba.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #84: December 2021 Maryse Condé’s fictional reimagining of a lost figure from the witch trials, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356419719-UII8PX4R2NDL3Y21ZYDX/Hart_Act.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #85: January 2022 Moss Hart’s Broadway memoir, Act One https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899036956-MV2KGWL86DBEX815LH1E/OBrien_Third.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #86: February 2022 Flann O’Brien’s novel of bicycles and strange dimensions, The Third Policeman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899109697-M2E6LRW4GXW7Z0RKX3HK/Maillart_Cruel.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #87: March 2022 Ella K. Maillart’s memoir of traveling by car from Switzerland to Afghanistan, The Cruel Way https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899122432-4GOAW111CCW1TS9MH61B/Schwarzenbach_All.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #87: March 2022 Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s memoir of traveling by car from Switzerland to Afghanistan, All the Roads Are Open https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899133497-WIO8R3RF8YSISWJ4GVFQ/Dick_They.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #88: They Kay Dick’s dystopian novel, They https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899159300-XJDQM8RPY6PL7VYO225L/Levine_Canada.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #89: May 2022 Norman Levine’s memoir of travelling across Canada, Canada Made Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654899230118-683QYEBB2WGDZSLR7I9J/Bandyopadhyay_Aranyak.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #90: June 2022 Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel of the Indian forest, Aranyak https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659472839917-9BCSMTBKDDIOP2WUVO5A/Murray_Proud.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #91: July 2022 Pauli Murray’s family history, Proud Shoes https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659472857089-R374V2XO5XUO273L5PNJ/Holtby_South.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #92: August 2022 Winifred Holtby’s social novel of a Yorkshire community, South Riding https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157074032-30TOFXRKCYT6UV2U0V5F/Guerriero_Simple.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #93: September 2022 Leila Guerriero’s profile of an Argentinian dancer, A Simple Story https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157094282-XOYNTUSTOOI5N2M9JQJ2/Baker_Young.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #94: October 2022 Dorothy Baker’s jazz novel, Young Man with a Horn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157114971-PL9AEDJFOGXYTU4KS4RJ/Warner_Beautiful.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #95: November 2022 William W. Warner’s appreciation of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and those who pursue it, Beautiful Swimmers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157707827-P51UIFVWM64NJR38HP5G/Shum_Queen.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #96: December 2022 Michael Shou-Yung Shum’s novel of gambling and suburban Seattle, Queen of Spades https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674157174362-B301CXOLCLE4PDC792DH/Rose_Love.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #97: January 2023 Gillian Rose’s memoir of love and death, Love’s Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677894770848-AOM5YOAR5AURTVJ0DU40/Mulisch_Assault.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #98: February 2023 Harry Mulisch’s novel of World War II and its aftermath in the Netherlands, The Assault https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445691764-3CNU1HP4AZY2KH6EITMS/Royko_Boss.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #99: March 2023 Mike Royko’s biography of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, Boss https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445723141-U0Y0C9KCN6KOMAZVD95S/Ammons_Sphere.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #100: April 2023 A.R. Ammons’s long poem, Sphere: The Form of a Motion https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445762440-24EK40MM9XAOXQKXSX5W/Ullman_Close.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #101: May 2023 Ellen Ullman’s memoir of software development, Close to the Machine https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698445893994-R0SQW2DSSR137PTEPSBJ/MacInnes_Absolute.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #102: June 2023 Colin MacInnes’s novel of teen culture in 1950s London, Absolute Beginners https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698446078659-BWJTEOON34MARL26ESOA/Gwaltney_Drylongso.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #103: July 2023 John Langston Gwaltney's oral history of African Americans, Drylongso https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698446134725-AZNI1B72DRHFPMDD71GC/Babb_Lost.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #104: August 2023 Sanora Babb’s novel of small-town Kansas, The Lost Traveler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698453166792-MNOIGAD9E7SEXQLYV8C1/Athill_Instead.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #105: September 2023 Diana Athill’s memoir of early love and artistic discovery, Instead of a Letter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698446165605-V22L1A7SPNYDALYO6JHS/Thuy_ru.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #106: October 2023 Kim Thúy’s novel of a Vietnamese refugee in Canada, Ru https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698451787310-UXA3VXKG2VILB6OSQTM0/Kent_NbyE.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #107: November 2023 Rockwell Kent’s memoir of a sailing adventure to Greenland, N by E https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1702625210476-QNJ5F7QZMM6NU5T82S7D/Brooks_Maud.jpeg Phinney by Post - Book #108: December 2023 Gwendolyn Brooks’s novel of a life in Chicago, Maud Martha https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490266915-89UR2ZH2Z9Z5DJOXIN3E/Gosse_Father.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #109: January 2024 Edmund Gosse's memoir of his Victorian fundamentalist upbringing, Father and Son https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490452881-IIBXJKP1RUXKZ3TLB0I4/Earling_Perma.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #110: February 2024 Debra Magpie Earling's novel of the Flathead Indian Reservation in the 1940s, Perma Red https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490563440-E842KRWGMCFBJ7AL5KP4/Ritter_Woman.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #111: March 2024 Christiane Ritter's memoir of a year spent on an Arctic island, A Woman in the Polar Night https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490651136-QHG8XVUFL9YOCEB43J4H/Higgins_Eddie.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #112: April 2024 George V. Higgins's crime novel of 1970s Boston, The Friends of Eddie Coyle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1715490811283-5INKL4B3M0KWIPGPY458/Cohen_Train.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #113: May 2024 Leah Hager Cohen's book of reporting and memoir about a school for the deaf in New York City, Train Go Sorry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615439019-VOPAYSXCVBKW7R1KXAWZ/Roberts_Pavane.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #114: June 2024 Keith Roberts’s alternative history of post-Elizabeth England, Pavane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615472755-U2VJEHV52H5XATJLA1Q0/Hutto_Flatwoods.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #115: July 2024 Joe Hutto’s memoir of raising a brood of wild turkeys in the Florida panhandle, Illumination in the Flatwoods https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615492172-BGN19IBSBM8HACCY1AJB/Wilson_Swamp.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #116: August 2024 Edith Wilson’s novel of a woman making a new life for herself in the British Columbia interior, Swamp Angel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615508455-9OJFPBQLAWGLI612M63D/Morton_Nervous.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #117: September 2024 Frederic Morton’s history of a deliriously pivotal year in the politics and culture of the late Habsburg Empire, A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888/1889 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615584389-85MPA4Y2N4E0ISSY2HGJ/Bedford_Jigsaw.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #118: October 2024 Sybille Bedford’s autobiographical novel of a transient youth spent among irresponsible adults, Jigsaw https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1731615595710-YGZC0AICD5CPA7BTZ934/Oppen_Meaning.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #119: November 2024 Mary Oppen’s memoir of a shared, independent life of art, adventure, and activism, Meaning a Life https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751410937750-SYES2SR8KCE2L9NCLBW8/Cercas_Salamis.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #120: December 2024 Javier Cercas’s novel of the Spanish Civil War and memory, Soldiers of Salamis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411083955-NJ7L37U6TO82X2C54TLE/Crawford_Garlic.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #121: January 2025 Stanley Crawford’s memoir of garlic farming in New Mexico, A Garlic Testament https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411181688-XLWDAHJH25HM7C5Y7GVI/Howard_Light.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #122: February 2025 Elizabeth Jane Howard’s novel of an English family and their servants before World War II, The Light Years, the first book in her Cazalet Chronicle https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411287550-40TDXQE61A4UQKLZQPW3/Mayer_They.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #123: March 2025 Milton Mayer’s post-war examination of ten small-town German men who joined the Nazis, They Thought They Were Free https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411466028-4F8SZRIH3BVUTZEZQYSC/Hines_Kestrel.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #124: April 2025 Barry Hines’s coming-of-age story of a boy training a wild kestrel in a town in England’s industrial north, A Kestrel for a Knave https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411553529-H7GNGORAD8Z2TGDMAZZA/Guillermoprieto_Samba.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #125: May 2025 Alma Guillermoprieto’s account of dance schools in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival celebrations, Samba https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411643284-YWZPTBRV3LGWR4JHP8NL/Powell_Edisto.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #126: June 2025 Padgett Powell’s coming-of-age story of a boy in Lowcountry South Carolina, Edisto https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751411782434-LSVHORB9MVVK69I5C1QK/Ross_Picture.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #127: July 2025 Lillian Ross’s eyewitness account of the making of John Huston’s Civil War film, The Red Badge of Courage, Picture https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066665709-5ZY67L7G1VAI2BNAOV2K/Guibert_Friend.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #128: August 2025 Hervé Guibert’s autobiographical novel set in the early years of the AIDS crisis, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066703186-SJCHEQHCLLPJZ28OVAUS/Moody_Coming.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #129: September 2025 Anne Moody’s memoir of her childhood and her years in the Civil Rights Movement, Coming of Age in Mississippi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066713459-LQZFWK9N39PGGYMS7HHB/Emshwiller_Moon.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #130: October 2025 An anthology of fabulist stories spanning fifty years of Carol Emshwiller’s career, Moon Songs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763066759199-MLJJIUZS34M97OZ5YWB4/Baker_U.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #131: November 2025 Nicholson Baker’s idiosyncratic investigation of his relationship with John Updike, his “favorite living writer,” U and I https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772047634103-9Q65Q9WBUKEX5AVSA33N/Fisher_Home_Classic.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #132: December 2025 Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s novel of an unconventional marriage in small-town America, The Home-Maker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772047680487-NG3LHAWZ0GS8NGYTB6D0/Peach_Thick.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #133: January 2026 Hilary Peach’s memoir of her career as a welder in the Boilermakers Union, Thick Skin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772048140769-VFKYYHI9SPPZ4U0CNOTW/Weesner_Car.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #134: February 2026 Theodore Weesner’s novel of a teen boy on the wrong side of the law in ‘50s Michigan, The Car Thief https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1772048241728-J4Q6ABIVAH3N6YOI8BAP/Rose_Parallel.jpg Phinney by Post - Book #135: March 2026 Phyllis Rose’s profiles of the marriages of five Victorian writers, Parallel Lives http://www.phinneybooks.com/home daily 1.0 2026-03-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1403676490592-0CIFCA7Q2QM4J7KF4FE3/phinney-opening-storefront.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/5eae69cc-ad9b-4690-8433-4f7f4d31ed3b/Nissley_PBP_book_coverspread.jpg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/52c0dec2-1687-49d5-b30c-2d19266a037b/Case_Szalay_Pattee.jpg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/9f7f83b6-6971-4986-b790-fc6136c56734/Eleventh_Year_Top_10.jpg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/f56635ad-2227-4ac7-8f80-9ebfa8e0839d/First_Ten_Years_Top_10.jpg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/41b2d743-ea71-4cfe-8efc-ed2e29ccb73a/Limon_Warner_Macdonald.jpg Home - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/65b52cb6-9cf2-4a89-b1c2-e3dc3849e941/Tshirts_True_Madeup.jpg Home - Make it stand out Our original t-shirt designs (by Elinor Nissley of course) are back! Choose which side of our store to represent with TRUE and MADE-UP shirts, available now in a variety of sizes and styles, including sweatshirts, long-sleeve tees, and youth sizes. 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Higgins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547618418-XQGH1GSYW5T6KAJ6GTIS/Teckentrup_Tree.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #3: March 2016 Tree by Britta Teckentrup https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547671448-XAOZMP2D44UJLVPVUI7U/Kaplan_Betty.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #4: April 2016 Betty Bunny Loves Chocolate Cake written by Michael B. Kaplan, illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547800499-SY5C2J5OAZP14JQX0RX8/Tallec_Olivier.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #5: May 2016 Who Done It? by Olivier Tallec https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547853460-GUQDMA80B2OSDKDNXFMC/Alexie_Thunder.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #6: June 2016 Thunder Boy Jr. written by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Yuyi Morales https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512547940087-RFCTYDFUDG28C8DBPC12/Dotlich_One.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #7: July 2016 One Day, the End written by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, illustrated by Fred Koehler https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548019469-V1SJI9KO37N4YN152H7H/McClure_Waiting.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #8: August 2016 Waiting for High Tide by Nikki McClure https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548106354-C4S4H36O7V4S02V6Y1XL/Bryan_Girl.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #9: September 2016 A Girl and Her Gator written by Sean Bryan, illustrated by Tom Murphy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548168000-35LGPY0PUHI18WR5YQLY/Escoffier_Trumpet.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #10: October 2016 Have You Seen My Trumpet? written by Michael Escoffier, illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548252647-A3ABLKVU7LWM5D1YYN6N/Ellis_Du.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #11: November 2016 Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548312489-6J7WD1CF1D8JU1WR6F6A/Beaty_Ada.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #12: December 2016 Ada Twist, Scientist written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548383474-KODLA4IJI6QVXHFJVHMH/Cronin_Lost.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #13: January 2017 The Lost House by B.B. Cronin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548450435-AQ4IFCR4TWCGAOBMCJU4/Jenkins_Greyhound.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #14: February 2017 A Greyhound, A Groundhog written by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Chris Appelhans https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548523376-JL244RLZ3FWPRO09WLKC/Brosgul_Leave.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #15: March 2017 Leave Me Alone! by Vera Brosgol https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548573956-1VSEGICBS547Y32Z1PAD/Barnett_Noisy.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #16: April 2017 Noisy Night written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Brian Biggs https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548689349-124IXI5WXZLY01PAZZ0U/Lehrer_Rocket.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #17: May 2017 Rocket Boy by Damon Lehrer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548825160-JQUMIM5YPXZZN5LPQCSJ/Graegin_Fox.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #18: June 2017 Little Fox in the Forest by Stephanie Graegin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512548887303-BH7LVROLNRCEH5ZL24RG/Kvasnosky_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #19: July 2017 Little Wolf's First Howling by Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Kate Harvey McGee https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549068655-FIP4Q6TE7ZL30NCK2W1M/Lamothe_This.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #20: August 2017 This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549215560-8Q0V0R5W5GSXM10B525N/Ishida_Chibi.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #21: September 2017 Chibi Samurai Wants a Pet by Sanae Ishida https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549305362-0UVDF8C8STJ23RCBKNGI/Atteberry_Swamp.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #22: October 2017 I Love You More Than the Smell of Swamp Gas by Kevan Atteberry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549361733-HDS840NPZZY4TATZLH7N/Segal_Mitzi.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #23: November 2017 Tell Me a Mitzi written by Lore Segal, illustrated by Harriet Pincus https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1512549416355-MZZIS7LJIAXQHX6U6SNQ/Jeffers_Here.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #24: December 2017 Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809140298-MX34ZCJLYV8E4HIS9IB2/Barnett_Wolf.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #25: January 2018 The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse written by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809153662-OHE5BJ7CPZT6SKA08CN1/Slate_Marcel.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #26: February 2018 Marcel the Shell: The Most Surprised I’ve Ever Been by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809165183-V4YCDCE1FOFHJKHB2EH3/Charlip_Fortunately.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #27: March 2018 Fortunately by Remy Charlip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809181867-SJK1XGLZWFJD3ASV7Z59/Slater_Antlered.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #28: April 2018 The Antlered Ship written by Dashka Slater, illustrated by the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809195228-ZFAU2WZ7D0OQY8AHTCAF/Diaz_Islandborn.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #29: May 2018 Islandborn written by Junot Díaz, illustrated by Leo Espinosa https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809207184-YRXOXV47LAURHWGVCQVJ/Tamaki_They.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #30: June 2018 They Say Blue by Jillian Tamaki https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809220810-YJ3UXNG1WNQ0SXD5HD9K/Yoshitake_Still.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #31: July 2018 Still Stuck by Shinsuke Yoshitake https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809278969-8BLC427YE04S3V7D33EF/Adbage_Grand.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #32: August 2018 The Grand Expedition by Emma Adbage https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809304378-3K685W9N763YQAN4DK5N/Lin_Big.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #33: September 2018 A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809318205-N1XP080UPBV9A9WWSIFU/Lohr_Wimmelbook_Animals.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #34: October 2018 My Big Wimmelbook: Animals Around the World by Stefan Lohr https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809329760-ITU5BGGU8H40095LTSYY/DeLaPena_Carmela.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #35: November 2018 Carmela Full of Wishes written by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809343266-209PSNB4SO0EINRDPLK7/Lies_Got.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #36: December 2018 Got to Get to Bear’s by Brian Lies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809355543-DDIYC88VO6EY4HH4KA41/Kousky_Harold.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #37: January 2019 Harold Loves His Woolly Hat by Vern Kousky https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809367512-OK4WEL6BG0EPDV869ZQG/Soundor_Snug.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #38: February 2019 You’re Snug with Me written by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Poonam Mistry https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809380142-I0K1W97UZV6P5PNSHQV9/Beaty_Madame.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #39: March 2019 Happy Birthday, Madame Chapeau written by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809392099-2L8NH14U9MF2R0MZ1UV8/Mabbitt_Can.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #40: April 2019 I Can Only Draw Worms by Will Mabbitt https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809406489-73HO3PZJFXP9BTC5XU79/Robinson_Another.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #41: May 2019 Another by Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809419901-GPQSPP82IAFU9XYVG85R/Asch_Yellow.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #42: June 2019 Yellow Yellow written by Frank Asch, illustrated by Mark Alan Stamaty https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809431814-CK4QRSUBXF11JMVQVNK6/Smouha_Sock.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #43: July 2018 Sock Story written by C.K. Smouha, illustrated by Eleonora Marton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809441174-NG9ZA45PA7K2XWOUKN1X/Shea_Kid.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #44: August 2019 Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads written by Bob Shea, illustrated by Lane Smith https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809448899-0VUMKB9048GW73SQF5UT/Wenzel_Stone.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #45: September 2019 A Stone Sat Still by Brendan Wenzel https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809459396-5J848C44O67RFWVI3RM4/Ferry_Scarecrow.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #46: October 2019 The Scarecrow written by Beth Ferry, illustrated by the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1574809467394-H7YWDLXLS03XB15WYAU2/Lin_Big_Bed.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #47: November 2019 A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603066701528-NLN2A2YS5TCHRPJ7X1PS/Volker_Million.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #48: December 2019 A Million Dots by Sven Volker https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603066894830-613PXEQIVKNRYIE91H7K/More_Saturday.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #49: January 2020 Saturday by Oge Mora https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603066976479-VCAHZDS41I4FAWT4DH8X/Nicholls_Button.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #50: February 2020 The Button Book by Sally Nicholls and Bethan Woollyin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067050567-1VTHT4CZ76FK2LUS2P2Z/Meloy_Everyone.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #51: March 2020 Everyone’s Awake by Colin Meloy and Shawn Harris https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067126025-ASL0B56NBB8PB3X49VWR/Keret_Long.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #52: April 2020 Long-Haired Cat-Boy Cub by Etgar Keret and Aviel Basil https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067357077-9BLQEG79XEAHXR8UP2PP/Brown_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #53: May 2020 The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067446730-7MZ264U6RAYV4KEAOST3/Ahlberg_Postman.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #54: June 2020 The Jolly Postman, or Other People’s Letters by Janet and Allan Ahlberg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067516978-68H9Y357HYLQ9RQYVEDW/Sterer_From.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #55: July 2020 From Ed’s to Ned’s by Gideon Sterer and Lucy Ruth Cummings https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067586002-SNFB5DBIKO2554YF40GQ/Fogliano_Just.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #56: August 2020 Just in Case You Want to Fly by Julie Fogliano and Christian Robinson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067639443-1LF1S5CRBPV4503H1NHW/Vendel_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #57: September 2020 Little Fox by Edward Van De Vendel and Marije Tolman https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1603067765563-YZ40S8AB2G0XH502RA7O/Thornburgh_Skulls.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #58: October 2020 Skulls! by Blair Thornburgh and Scott Campbell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753335015-6KAF7K9U2MC68JO1UMHJ/Ball_Feather.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #59: November 2020 Flip-a-Feather by Sara Ball https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753355800-48525UTSW5T7OB1BTIH4/Haldar_No.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #60: December 2020 No Reading Allowed: The Worst Read-Aloud Book Ever by Raj Haldar, Chris Carpenter, and Bryce Gladfelter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753370335-0QLGCH7MMJ1G59PTYDOH/Rex_Gum.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #61: January 2021 On Account of the Gum by Adam Rex https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1612753428931-VI1QAB6JXIE4NYZ3VDHB/Loomis_Ohana.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #62: February 2021 ‘Ohana Means Family by Ilima Loomis and Kenard Pak https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021579135-JSX3H5NOTM9HZTNJVU1M/Camper_Ten.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #63: March 2021 Ten Ways to Hear Snow by Cathy Camper and Kenard Pak https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021591627-65ZCOS9M6TLQ9HG751U0/Goffstein_Fish.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #64: April 2021 Fish for Supper by M.B. Goffstein https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021601788-HVQARV94A7MDCDYRJ2AR/Eggers_Lights.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #65: May 2021 The Lights and Types of Ships at Night by Dave Eggers and Annie Dills https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021631204-983DUEHHHK876XMSKFHH/Hwang_Toasty.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #66: June 2021 Toasty by Sarah Hwang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1627021950468-P2WAZM19X5JMHA3BXDH2/Robert_Other.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #67: July 2021 On the Other Side of the Forest by Nadine Robert and Gerard DuBois https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086519443-J18ZKC3DJ2ADTEPKF39A/Prahin_Ship.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #68: August 2021 Ship in a Bottle by Andrew Prahin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086568553-POL37050SXBQ24L41RQ6/Baek_Moon.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #69: September 2021 Moon Pops by Henna Baek https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086585524-TVTD9NA73F6ZI1KO74V7/Sima_Hardley.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #70: October 2021 Hardly Haunted by Jessie Sima https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1636086627338-26V7JXS1Q90AL7KS0EDN/Mann_Camping.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #71: November 2021 The Camping Trip by Jennifer K. Mann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356942331-77Y7ZFMO8F90EN9T1LW3/Morstad_Time.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #72: December 2021 Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1643356963319-LNXKFLHGWU02X81TRV6E/Gauld_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #73: January 2022 The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902009637-80M20OZ019IZLUISP85H/Shapiro_Carol.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #74: February 2022 Carol and the Pickle Toad by Esme Shapiro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902086286-GASM3TH949WGACUBP7JK/Forsythe_Mina.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #75: March 2022 Mina by Matthew Forsythe https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902103384-3JW4PU11F2CNMPE0S0S2/Young_Emile.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #76: April 2022 Emile and the Field by Kevin Young and Chioma Ebinama https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902340880-F38JMOSCZXN7INYWD176/LloydJones_Tiny.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #77: May 2022 Tiny Cedric by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Rowboat Watkins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1654902385770-WMBPX58S5ZHWLOO3NGWI/Fan_Lizzy.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #78: June 2022 Lizzy and the Cloud by the Fan Brothers https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659473093940-4H9S6Z4U3U628O9ODTM0/Wahl_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #79: July 2022 Little Witch Hazel: A Year in the Forest by Phoebe Wahl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1659473159989-F8TW2LB52ERW9HD6HIE6/Oziewicz_Feelings.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #80: August 2022 What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking by Tina Oziewicz and Aleksandra Zajac, translated by Jennifer Croft https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158224231-FZH6DBEFVFA58LJNPE78/Yum_Twins.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #81: September 2022 The Twins’ Blanket by Hyewon Yum https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158292401-D49C9FOYURA48GVS01YG/Blackall_Farmhouse.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #82: October 2022 Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158309073-9VF4W9QTLNWBI8PCZEOC/Seve_Kitten.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #83: November 2022 This Story Is Not About a Kitten by Randall de Seve and Carson Ellis https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158325195-S97OHKL24XZ87WODRYDI/Kuo_Luminous.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #84: December 2022 Luminous: Living Things That Light Up the Night by Julia Kuo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158580506-VE7LF5K86PJW0213UTSV/Corbet_Animal.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #85a: January 2023 Animal Land Where There Are No People by Sybil and Katharine Corbet https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1674158979106-DUIT103CKG096AOY38UQ/Hoban_How_Tom.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #85b: January 2023 How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1677894898108-EILE3COVJ13K8482MRUX/Tate_Sweeter.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #86: February 2023 What’s Sweeter by June Tate https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454227943-QYONQW8GRBMB1YR156N8/Dorleans_Our.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #87: March 2023 Our Fort by Marie Dorléans https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454384917-BUQNES3O13P6KHTKOECC/Lui_Frank.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #88: April 2023 Meet Frank by Mavis Lai https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454460797-C6O34H04F286KRR6MX82/Hest_Sometimes.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #89: May 2023 Sometimes It’s Nice to Be Alone by Amy Hest and Philip C. Stead https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454923306-B7C4AU7ZNPU93TFJ3DUC/Skorpen_Tired.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #90: June 2023 We Were Tired of Living in a House by Liesel Moak Skorpen and Doris Burn https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698454960589-5RPP8H9KHGFVR1R412UM/Bagley_Maurice.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #91: July 2023 Maurice by Jessixa Bagley https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455000174-6Q7IGM2FK7YBCI6BYOPK/Luyken_ABC.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #92: August 2023 ABC and You and Me by Corinna Luyken https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455069591-E2I7W4XHEZOJ3QK4S8R5/Warburg_My.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #93: September 2023 My Very Own Special Particular Private and Personal Cat by Sandol Stoddard Warburg and Remy Charlie https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455112328-F3LPHLX616YQVBE2KY67/Piercey_Grand.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #94: October 2023 Grand Old Oak and the Birthday Ball by Rachel Piercey and Freya Hartas https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1698455218881-RHKCH3M4JZYMGXAXPYX3/Clanton_Ploof.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #95: November 2023 Ploof by Ben Clanton and Andy Chou Musser https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1751412697218-VR34XMBKS7AVQUF37YI2/Rex_Aunts.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #96: December 2023 Oh No, the Aunts Are Here by Adam Rex and Lian Cho https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068577798-4P9YO7OXD54IL25DBHFJ/McPhail_Truffle.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #97: January 2024 Truffle by David McPhail https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068591217-SF4XZQHNJOXPCDLMRNHW/Mack_Time.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #98: February 2024 Time to Make Art by Jeff Mack https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068611481-FOV8XM81GB3EHB50HSDB/Sedaris_Pretty.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #99: March 2024 Pretty Ugly written by David Sedaris, illustrated by Ian Falconer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068623785-DTD5370O7T99CVWYHQP5/Alexander_Thingamajig.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #100: April 2024 The Thingamajig by Rilla Alexander https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068635076-JLAQQBXA062GQG0LIN3N/Fraser_Mavis.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #101: May 2024 Mavis the Bravest written by Lu Fraser, illustrated by Sarah Warburton https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068646154-4OJ6PQ5KKB5YCKYA3V7J/Sala_If.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #102: June 2024 If You Run Out of Words by Felicita Sala https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068655668-DQY5ZYE44C1PIEV5WT79/Marentette_Rumie.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #103: July 2024 Rumie Goes Rafting by Meghan Marentette https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068665109-JS1QMXF3YJS9HW5CUE61/Fang_Human.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #104: August 2024 We Are Definitely Human by X. Fang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068679596-UVJVNREG6SE83NSYZVKQ/Jeffers_Dictionary.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #105: September 2024 The Dictionary Story written by Oliver Jeffers, illustrated by Sam Winston https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068691521-1OEUSQLFQDHY6TG687ML/Camp_Aldo.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #106: October 2024 Aldo: Ghost Dog by Joaquin Camp https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068704759-W3UYVP3INPKN4TV8HFYA/Wells_Little.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #107: November 2024 The Little Chefs by Rosemary Wells https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068715543-UXPA110YVPDPPPABOPMK/MacKay_Frostfire.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #108: December 2024 Frostfire by Elly MacKay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068725524-0B910V8W7QWXD7CY1YS0/Takeuchi_All.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #109: January 2025 All in a Year by Chihiro Takeuchi https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068743196-I8XA1RBRPEPOZMZDZCPU/Clark_Needed.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #110: February 2025 We Needed a You written by M.H. Clark, illustrated by Olivia Holden https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068752521-Q3E9QGOL4DEKEPALG9K0/Awan_Every.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #111: March 2025 Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068762179-B7AGAUZ82441ADIIPMB5/Clanton_Papilio.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #112: April 2025 Papilio by Ben Clanton, Corey R. Tabor, and Andy Chou Musser https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068770951-OB17V9EO2EZD49U3MXDZ/Pantaleo_Music.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #113: May 2025 And There Was Music by Marta Pantaleo https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068783269-S5B17Y8M9IZELODBC4YB/Stead_Anything.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #114: June 2025 Anything written by Rebecca Stead, illustrated by Gracey Zhang https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068793275-L4VJ0QNNQWFAE2U0L75B/Alves_Owls.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #115: July 2025 Time for Bed, Little Owls written by Katja Alves, illustrated by Andrea Stregmaier https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068806569-H2SAJLPR7WG5QQMEFANQ/Jackson_Sleeper.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #116: August 2025 The Sleeper Train written by Mick Jackson, illustrated by Baljinder Kaur https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068817515-W4TA7HU4ZRKLKMQS8MS6/Borando_Short.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #117: September 2025 Short Stories by Silvia Bocando https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068826505-CKVFP4EVVD3BUTVEAIMP/Lies_Cat.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #118: October 2025 Cat Nap by Brian Lies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1763068873766-P1WWJ6JZCK3JGHVKZG89/Gottwald_Buzz.jpg Phinney by Post Kids - Book #119: November 2025 Buzz! Boom! Bang!: The Book of Sounds by Benjamin Gottwald http://www.phinneybooks.com/author-gift-picks-2015 daily 0.75 2015-11-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1448240059019-YMTU0OM7W6HHD73X5MUA/Brockenbrough_Game.jpg Author Gift Picks 2015 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1448240110722-0QJNS06CRCVQIJCHEPBY/Pinkney_Rhythm.jpg Author Gift Picks 2015 - Give: Rhythm Ride https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1448240174855-KZOBKDMQDTCKT1IQ7NIY/Coates_Between.jpg Author Gift Picks 2015 - Receive: Between the World and Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1448347179440-PSKQG970SEF316B0DPLK/Finnegan_Barbarian.jpg Author Gift Picks 2015 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1448347187937-NUMSRDUMP4F8ZLT3N180/Atkinson_God.jpg Author Gift Picks 2015 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http://www.phinneybooks.com/laura-2015-top-10 daily 0.75 2015-12-03 http://www.phinneybooks.com/liz-unread-2015 daily 0.75 2015-12-16 http://www.phinneybooks.com/all-together-seattle daily 0.75 2016-02-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005024913-IL6E4P7BGYPAV83R1TP9/Walls_Glass.jpg All Together Seattle The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53307b46e4b01e0cfc001f75/1455005074539-FRN1J4KCD24BC9MQ0F87/Edin_200.jpg All Together Seattle $2.00 a Day by Kathryn J. 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