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A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar "When a coworker passed along an advanced review copy of Lavie Tidhar’s latest genre bending novel, A Man Lies Dreaming, a few months ago, I immediately took it home and devoured it. I then ordered in his previous mixture of scifi and noir, Osama, set in an alternative … Continue reading New Books! 3/15/16
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary. From Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond comes a ground-level view … Continue reading New Books! 3/1/16
This post comes from our former bookseller Steven. Back in the lawless wasteland of the early 2000s, while Outkast CDs were playing on America's boomboxes, and Arrested Development was lighting up television sets every week, I was an unjustifiably ambitious college student enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin with the declared intention of earning … Continue reading Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
While its cover hints at its sensuality, don’t let the flowered sheets mislead you—Innocents and Others is a bold novel of subversive characters and eccentric technologies. Beginning in 1980s L.A., it follows Meadow and Carrie, best friends who grow up to be successful filmmakers (of very different varieties), and one of their sad and seductive … Continue reading Top Shelf in March: INNOCENTS AND OTHERS by Dana Spiotta
The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer Newly single mom Beth has one constant, gnawing worry: that her dreamy eight-year-old daughter, Carmel, who has a tendency to wander off, will one day go missing. And then one day, it happens: On a Saturday morning thick with fog, Beth takes Carmel to a local … Continue reading New Books! 2/16/16
This post comes from our inventory manager Jan. I am a expert list-maker. I can pack in a lot of information into a very short format. My secret: I cheat. You might think that there are six titles here for my favorite books of the year, but there are actually thirteen. That’s because I just … Continue reading Jan’s Favorite Books of 2015
This post comes from our manager Consuelo. At the beginning of the year, I decided I was going to take a photo of every book I read this year. And while it didn't really change my reading habits, a few books in, I did start to think more about how I would visualize each book … Continue reading Consuelo’s Top 5 Reads of 2015
This post comes from our gifts inventory assistant and artist Tomoko. Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (I am so stoked that one of my favorites won the National Book Award for Young Adults ) I love this book because it's incredibly and beautifully written. It tells the story of a young man who is starting to … Continue reading Tomoko’s Top 5 Books of 2015
The turn of the last century marked an explosion of continental European writing and a literary movement that would evolve into modernism, existentialism, and postmodernism. Many of the names in this scene comprise the familiar mainstays of the classics section at the bookstore, but then there is Robert Walser. More popular during his brush with fame than any … Continue reading STAFF PICK: Looking at Pictures by Robert Walser
New in Hardback Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting … Continue reading New Books! 5/12/15
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