Staff Picks

Abdurraqib's writing is passionate, jumps off the page at times, and has rhythm and meaning for every word and at the corners of every sentence. He articulates what it means to be a true fan, how that fandom is intertwined with the city you're from, and how a lot of times that city lets you down but you keep showing up, because you've always dreamed of the day your team, your city, can rise above it and get national recognition for redemption, even if it's just for that moment.

 

Publisher's description: 

While Hanif Abdurraqib is an acclaimed author, a gifted poet, and one of our culture's most insightful music critics, he is most of all, at heart, an Ohioan. Growing up in Columbus in the '90s, Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron were forged, and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tensions between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role-models, all of which he expertly weaves together with memoir: "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jumpshot," Abdurraqib writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.

 

This book about breathing was so engaging. The author takes us on his own journey about helping himself to breathe better. He shows us the ways in which our lives can be improved by breathing properly and provides the history behind so many breathing issues. Breathing is so much more than our nose, it is the structure of our mouths, the changes that happened to our bone structure from diet, orthodontist practice. I appreciated the author's exercises about ways to improve our own breathing and have been constantly practicing to "shut my mouth" and breath through my nose.

 

Publisher's description: 

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how resilient your genes are, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Science journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong with our breathing and how to fix it. Why are we the only animals with chronically crooked teeth? Why didn't our ancestors snore? Nestor seeks out answers in muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He tracks down men and women exploring the science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe. Modern research is showing us that changing the ways in which we breathe can jump-start athletic performance, halt snoring, rejuvenate internal organs, mute allergies and asthma, blunt autoimmune disease, and straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

 

 

Which inventor would you choose for a classroom presentation? Thomas Edison? Madam C.J. Walker? Steve Jobs? Silas chooses the 1970's baseball player, Glenn Burke. Maybe you never heard of him, but he was important--not just for inventing the high five, but also for inspiring Silas to truly be himself.

 

Publisher's description:

When sixth grader Silas Wade does a school presentation on former Major Leaguer Glenn Burke, it’s more than just a report about the irrepressible inventor of the high five. Burke was a gay baseball player in the 1970s—and for Silas, the presentation is his own first baby step toward revealing a truth about himself he's tired of hiding. Soon he tells his best friend, Zoey, but the longer he keeps his secret from his baseball teammates, the more he suspects they know something’s up—especially when he stages one big cover-up with terrible consequences. This is a powerful story about the challenge of being true to yourself, especially when not everyone feels you belong on the field.

 

Less of a manual and more of a primer, this book squeezes in every last tidbit of useful information it can. Written plainly and clearly, with illustrations to help you along the way, it sparked a new eagerness for exploration in me. Though I love hiking, I never realized just how much of the land's story I was missing until I read this book. Dog-ear it, mark it up, throw it in your backpack, and haul it along on every adventure you undertake henceforth.

 

Publisher's description: When writer and navigator Tristan Gooley journeys outside, he sees a natural world filled with clues. The roots of a tree indicate the sun’s direction; the Big Dipper tells the time; a passing butterfly hints at the weather; a sand dune reveals prevailing wind; the scent of cinnamon suggests altitude; a budding flower points south. To help you understand nature as he does, Gooley shares more than 850 tips for forecasting, tracking, and more, gathered from decades spent walking the landscape around his home and around the world. Whether you’re walking in the country or city, along a coastline, or by night, this is the ultimate resource on what the land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and clouds can reveal—if you only know how to look!

 

What a great read for anyone familiar with Hawaii, or with surfing culture. This story tells the tale of a boy-turned-man who escapes his adolescent trials through surfing, but is then forced to grow in adulthood when he causes/encounters/endures a tragedy of his own making. He's required to look at his life and take stock. The main character wasn't always sympathetic, but I did find him realistic. Theroux has again infused his writing with an intimate understanding of Hawaii, its people, its history, and also with a very heartfelt and honest take on human nature, the ways people can get stuck, and how they journey through emotional dark places toward personal growth.

 

Publisher description:

Now in his sixties, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime and is losing his "stoke." The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still idolize the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere. One night, while driving home from a bar after one too many, Joe accidentally kills a stranger near Waimea, a tragedy that sends his life out of control. As the repercussions of the accident spiral ever wider, Joe's devoted girlfriend, Olive, throws herself into uncovering the dead man's identity and helping Joe find vitality and refuge in the waves again.

 

 

Mo loves football, but he's the smallest player on the team. How can he help the team win? Kick off your next level of reading with this easy reader that has some longer words.

 

Publisher description: 

Mo is the youngest kid on the Robins football team. The kids on the rival team tease him for being a 'butterfingers' who's too tiny to catch the ball. But Mo's coach has a plan up his sleeve to turn Mo's little size into a big win for the Robins.

 

In this book, David Foster Wallace captures the oddness of tennis: how hard it can be to play, how weird the culture is, and the way that certain figures are. Years after I stopped playing in school, this book encapsulates why I still enjoy watching tennis.

 

Publisher description:

Gathered for the first time in a deluxe collector's edition, here are David Foster Wallace's legendary writings on tennis, five tour-de-force pieces written with a competitor's insight and a fan's obsessive enthusiasm. Wallace brings his dazzling literary magic to the game he loved as he celebrates the other-worldly genius of Roger Federer; offers a wickedly witty dissection of Tracy Austin's memoir; considers the artistry of Michael Joyce, a supremely disciplined athlete on the threshold of fame; resists the crush of commerce at the U.S. Open; and recalls his own career as a "near-great" junior player. Whiting Award-winning writer John Jeremiah Sullivan provides an introduction.

Find String Theory in our online catalog.

An exuberantly illustrated account of the Pendleton Round-Up in 1911, in which the audience disagreed with the judges' decision about who had ridden the best when the judges declared the only white finalist as the winner. George Fletcher was hailed as the People's Champion, and the audience raised money to award him a bigger purse than the official winnings. The author also included a glossary, photographs and further information about George Fletcher and the other main figures of the book, plus an excellent bibliography.

 

Publisher description: 

African American George Fletcher loved horses from an early age. When he unfairly lost the 1911 Pendleton Round-Up to a white man, the outraged audience declared him "people's champion".

 

What a great book! The author has the ability to spin a wonderful nonfiction yarn! The characters are so endearing and uplifting. If you like to run...at all, you will like this book. If you like to read fun and lively nonfiction...you will like this book. If you are fascinated by indigenous cultures...you will like this book. History of ultra running, the running shoe, Leadville 100, Tarahumara Tribe, and a crazy gringo named Caballo Blanco. Yippeeeeeeeeeee!

 

Publisher Description:

An epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pits America's best ultra-runners against the tribe. McDougall's incredible story will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.