Staff Picks

You've probably heard something about supply chains recently, but how much do you actually know about how our food gets to our shelves? This book made me realize that I actually knew very little! Sourcing food, pitching a product, designing labels, securing transportation, and storage space are all very important realities of the food supply chain. From learning the philosophies behind our favorite stores to shadowing industry professionals, Benjamin Lorr travels the world to witness the (sometimes horrific) market forces and human ingenuity that decide what we will be having for dinner.

 

Publisher's description: What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively readable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn: The secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself; Why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels"; What it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade"; The struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business; The truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry. The result is a page-turning portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and exploitation required to make this everyday miracle continue to function.

This book is about to become a major motion picture starring Harry Styles and Emma Corinne. I'm glad I read this before seeing the movie. It was very well written and immersive. Roberts captures this era in history quite well. The stakes for a gay man in 1950s England are high, making for an emotional and heartbreaking read. This novel is told from the perspectives of the three members of a love triangle, which makes for an interesting premise. They also did great casting for the movie, because I could vividly picture Harry Styles as Tom while reading. It was almost as if the character had been written for him. I predict this will be a big hit come next awards season. I would recommend this to fans of Call Me by Your Name, The Song of Achilles, or Carol.

 

Publisher description:
It is in 1950's Brighton that Marion first catches sight of Tom. He teaches her to swim, gently guiding her through the water in the shadow of the city's famous pier and Marion is smitten-determined her love alone will be enough for them both. A few years later near the Brighton Museum, Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world of art, travel, and beauty. Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion and meet Patrick in secret. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed. In this evocative portrait of mid-centry England, Bethan Roberts reimagines the real life relationship the novelist E. M. Forster had with a policeman, Bob Buckingham, and his wife

 

Finding Wonders is a fictional telling of the stories of three girls who made significant contributions to science: Maria Merian (naturalist and artist); Mary Anning (self-taught paleontologist); and Maria Mitchell (astronomer). Using prose to bring life to the girls' childhoods makes for an engaging read that celebrates women's successes in science.

 

Publisher's description:

A biographical novel in verse of three different girls in three different time periods who grew up to become groundbreaking scientists.

 

Selected a Best Book of May by the New York Times, Time Magazine, and LitHub, this lovely novel is literally a "companion piece" to Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, this time telling a pandemic-related story in the author's trademark style. We're expecting this to be a future Staff Pick, as well as a contender for some of this year's literary awards short lists.

 

Publisher's Description:

From the Man Booker Prize shortlisted-author of the brilliant Seasonal Quartet series--a major new novel that promises to capture the present moment with Ali Smith's genius and bold spirit. "A story is never an answer. A story is always a question." Here we are in extraordinary times. Is this history? What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other? What have we lost? What stays with us? What does it take to unlock our future? Following her astonishing Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its timeless and contemporary, legendary and unpindownable, spellbinding and shapeshifting forms. Companion Piece stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself. But like Smith's groundbreaking series, this new novel boldly captures the spirit of the times. "Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting."

 

This adorable children's picture book provides kids with a roadmap to think and imagine their dreams into existence. It allows little ones to understand that they have a role to play in their own thoughts, feelings, and outcomes. With its beautiful illustrations, this book offers a welcome and uplifting message.

 

Publisher description:
A children's book that inspires dreams, kindles hopes, and empowers you to believe in yourself. Permeate your children's minds and their actions with positivity.

 

The author addresses her discomfort about being asked to write about "dead Jews" and offers thought provoking essays that illuminate the paradox of celebrating Jews who have died against a history of antisemitism. The essays include, among others, her discomfort at how the Anne Frank Museum de-emphasizes its Jewishness to appeal to a broader audience, the history of Jews in building the city of Harbin in Manchuria before they were forced to leave, and the little-known "righteous gentile" Varian Fry, an American who saved many Jewish cultural icons from the Holocaust.

 

Publisher's description:

A startling exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Dara Horn challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, as emblematic of the worst of evils the world has to offer, and so little respect for Jewish lives, as they continue to unfold in the present. Horn draws upon her own family life to assert the vitality, complexity and depth of this life against an anti-Semitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

 

A beautifully written and heart-wrenching book, The Sweetness of Water sometimes reads like a dreamscape. Setting his story in a recently-emancipated Southern town, Nathan Harris shows how the reality of change is slow to come for individuals and gives us a glimpse into the chaos this sudden emancipation proclamation could cause. All the main characters in this novel are looking for direction in their lives, including George and Isabelle, who employ two newly-freed slaves, Prentiss and Landry, found camping in their woods. Their stories weave together and unfold in surprising directions as their refreshing sincerity is met with the harshness of other viewpoints and actions.

 

Publisher description:

In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.

 

The fast-paced, imaginative adventures of Zita the Spacegirl remind me of Calvin's alter-ego Spaceman Spiff in Calvin & Hobbes. Zita fearlessly travels through a galaxy of unusual aliens in order to save her friend Joseph.

 

Publisher's description

When young Zita discovers a device that opens a portal to another place, and her best friend is abducted, she is compelled to set out on a strange journey from star to star in order to get back home.

 

 

When their new lodger, Kate, becomes obsessed with her, her husband, and the baby they are desperately trying to conceive, Marisa must find out who Kate really is before she loses everything she's worked so hard to create--her perfect romance, her perfect family, and her perfect self.

 

The author does a masterful job of pulling together so much of what is happening in the world into the interlacing story of a widow and her son, a young woman and older poet confined to a wheel-chair living on the streets, the comfort of the library, an influential Buddhist nun and the power of consumerism and pharmacology. The book does not let us turn away from the complexity of every character: a young widow overwhelmed by her job of navigating through terrible news and inability to let anything go, her grieving, sensitive son who hears objects speak yet is put through so much by a well-meaning psychiatrist who lacks the ability to listen. Throughout the book, the public library offers a refuge for so many of the book's characters, including the son and the community he finds with others dealing with their own anxieties and demons. There is a sense of wisdom threaded throughout the book about the need to open our eyes to truly see the world and others around us. The writing is beautiful, as are the characters in all their flawed complexity.

 

Publisher's description:

After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.