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!
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.
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?: Stories
by Kathleen Collins
A collection of rediscovered stories from a pioneering filmmaker who died too young.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues
edited by Paul Devlin
One of the all-time great talkers, on his greatest subject.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bob Stevenson
by Richard WIley
Honestly, it's really that I love the cover so much, and the intriguing first page.
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.