Hardback

As a reader, I love books that defy categorization. As a bookseller, my feelings are somewhat more complicated. I am struggling to convey the hope for humanity I felt when finishing this biographical essay collection? Memoir? Krasnostein details her encounters with a death doula, a creationist geologist, a neurobiologist ghost hunter, UFO enthusiasts, a woman incarcerated for killing her abusive husband, and a bunch of Mennonites in New York. The deeply beautiful conclusion is that we can always find more in common with our fellow humans than we originally thought. Spectacular!

Hardback

The typical human lifespan is a pitiful 4,000 weeks if one lives to be 80. That would be a depressing thought if I had read it in any other book but this one which has been a life-changer. Looking at life that way, why not do things you mean to do? Say the things you mean to say? No. It's not as easy as all that, exactly. The author used to be a time-management guru for The Guardian, obsessively researching ways to find "more time" in the day. Well, guess what? You can't! Once you're over that hurdle, you can get on with living a more meaningful life. I love this book so much!!!!

Hardback

Signed copies while available! Brian Cox plays Logan Roy on HBO's Succession: history's most toxic tv dad. This book is everything I like a celebrity memoir to be: he names the names, gives gracious credit where it's due, and slams idiots with gusto! Not a perfect individual himself, he owns up to his failures and is brutally honest about his vulnerabilities. Emotional, charming, lots of belly laughs. Also exceptional on Libro.fm audio.

Hardback

NYC is in the throws of the first big COVID wave and Jamie Gray is stuck in a dead-end food delivery driver app job when he is approached by an old friend to join an "animal rights" organization that pays well. Tom is secretive about the details. Turns out this job is not on our Earth. It's on an alternative Earth with giant dragon-like creatures Jamie is now bound to protect. Everything you love about Scalzi is here: the snappy dialog, the biting, gut-busting humor, and the big heart. Loved it!

Other

It's Star Trek. It's cats. It's also our bestselling puzzle!

Paperback

Two Italian lovers are in a volatile relationship and after arguing Teresa suggests that they each tell one another a terrible secret about themselves that they have never told anyone else and that would bond them together. Pietro reluctantly agrees and when they break up shortly after he is haunted by her knowledge of his shameful deed. They both go on with their lives but are forever connected. The opening sentences are swirling and twisting meditation on love that have me reading them over and over again. Trust may not be your favorite novel you've ever read. Most of the characters were not easy to like for me. But the way they twist and turn around issues of love involving loyalty, longevity, and forms of fidelity and types of love itself are fascinating. The translation by Jhumpa Lahiri is masterful and the translator's note at the end is extraordinary. It's a work of art itself.

Hardback

Stewart O'Nan's books are always so difficult to describe for me. His stories are of ordinary people (usually) in pretty boring surroundings. But within these characters is the capacity for big love and great cruelty, horrific violence and magnificent heroism. But for a twist or turn, they could be me or you. Ocean State follows four women in 2009 working-class Rhode Island. As a love triangle builds to a heartbreaking climax, the fallout devastates everyone it touches. I never, ever miss an O'Nan book.

Paperback

I truly adored this second chance at romance story set on the stormy coast of England. A restauraneur in her mid-late forties has finally had enough of her compulsively unfaithful husband and business partner. She starts a new life with a temporary lease in a cottage in a small seaside village and quickly feels at home despite run-ins with the grouch nephew of the elderly landlady. He is determined to sell the historic property to a developer for leveling. Most of the first half of the book is spent with our heroine forging an empowered identity with the help of a group of women friends and her adult twin sons. In the smoldering second half, the landlady's nephew and she start sparking and action of all kinds ensues! I truly loved this book. Made me want to cheer!!!

Hardback

Disorientation is a book to be read slowly and with care. Ian Williams best-selling author of my staff favorite novel Reproduction (remember the amazing cover???). I also really loved his collection of poetry Word Problems from last year. Using his formidably flexible writing chops, Williams invites us to an urgent conversation on race and racism in this collection of essays that draw directly from his experience of life as a Black man. He covers all subjects from the merely annoying to the tragically deadly aspects of racism from a worldwide perspective having lived in Trinidad, Canada, and the U. S. This book is approachable for all readers and is intended to be a civil conversation about the ugliest of subjects. It's illuminating, dizzying, and intensely personal. I can't recommend it highly enough. Also, exceptional in audio: read by the author.

Hardback

I knew almost nothing about Stanley Tucci going into reading this book. Actually, I listened to it on my Libro.fm. He reads it. This is so much more than a food memoir, although it is among the best ones of those I have ever read (and I read a lot of them). This is a beautiful, big-hearted, earthy celebration of life. Truly one of my favorite books of 2021. Treating myself to life through Tucci's eyes made me appreciate the gifts of my own. Funny, passionate, tragic, uplifting, unforgettable. This book is a true gift.

Hardback

Big, bold, beautiful, encyclopedic. Truly something to be savored! La dolce vita nel un libro!