Staff Picks

This is a very sweet, sexy, and moving read. A great look at starting over in the dating world after divorce. Funny too!

Publisher’s description
Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she'd rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children. From awkward encounters to unexpected connections, Anna gamely begins to put herself out there, asking out waiters, the mailman, and even her celebrity crush. But when a romantic connection appears where she least expected it, will she be brave enough to take another chance on love?

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Didion writes authentically about the loss of her daughter and husband, while using her signature captivating style and deadpan humor. An extremely moving and powerful read, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in self-exploration or the intricacies of human relationships.

 

Publisher's description:
"Life changes fast. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years. The weeks and months that followed "cut loose any fixed idea I had about death, about illness, about probability and luck-- about marriage and children and memory-- about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion explores with electric honesty and passion a private yet universal experience. Her portrait of a marriage-- and a life, in good times and bad-- will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, a wife, or a child.

 

Mother figures are enigmatic and our relationships with them are never straight-forward. This is almost written in a train-of-consiousness style that remains easy and engaging to read. We look into the brains of different characters to view the memories they had of their mother. None of the characters, not even Mom, are perfect, which makes them and their sacrifices come alive. The ending leaves the reader in a state of a satisfying lack of closure that is so well-written and lyrical that it lifts the characters off the page and breathes life into them. All in all, this book is really worth it and proves the powers of taking creative choices in literature.

- Natasha, ninth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

Follows the efforts of a family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when they recall memories that suggest she may not have been happy.

 

This book kept me so engaged. Loved the bond that grows between an octopus and a seventy year old woman and that part of the book is narrated from the viewpoint of the octopus.

 

Publisher's description: After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her 18-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over 30 years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors --- until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.

 

Room by Emma Donoghue is told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy named Jack who has never been outside. Jack and his mother are forced to live in a single room of a house by his mother's abusive partner. The story follows the pair’s attempt to escape to see the outside world. Room is emotional and dramatic, perfect for anyone who enjoys a good thriller.

 

- Anonymous tenth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

Told entirely in the language of five-year-old Jack, this story describes the bond between parent and child, and what it means to journey from one world to another. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
 

If you are looking for a gentle story that will take you to Seattle, make you laugh, and draw you in to familiar, wise (and some are hapless) characters, then Always Gardenia is for you. The main character is Gardenia Pitkin who shines as a resourceful and kind mother, grandmother, and friend as she sorts through her own problems of loss, loneliness, and a low bank balance. Always Gardenia evokes the witty and thoughtful style of Barbara Pym and leaves the reader cheering for endearing characters and hoping for a sequel.

 

Publisher's description:

Two years after the death of her beloved husband, Torre, fifty-six-year-old Gardenia Pitkin is adjusting to life as a widow. She's lonely and struggling financially, but she counts her blessings--her son, Hans, and grandson, Milo; her good friend Sylvie; and a new job as an administrative assistant in the English department of the University of the Northwest in Seattle. And her eccentric boss, the Chaucer specialist Arnold Wiggens, proves to be as besotted with his dachshund as Gardenia is with hers. But enter stage right Lex Ohashi, who seems determined to court Gardenia, and Dr. Laurel DuBarr, a new adjunct English professor, who quickly becomes Arnold's romantic infatuation. Meanwhile, Gardenia suspects that her daughter-in-law, Caitlin Curlew, is carrying on with another man. Should she tell her son? Does she want a new relationship with Lex? And what about her blossoming friendship with the quirky but endearing Arnold Wiggens? With nods to the wry comedic sensibility of Barbara Pym and her respect for the role of "trivialities" in human life, Always Gardenia combines laugh-out-loud moments with wise reflections on friendships, families, and loss, as well as the complex relationship between mothers and their grown sons.

The main protagonist, Elizabeth Zott, is a scientist in the late 1950s and early 60s at a time when all the other women at the research lab are secretaries. Zott lives without fear and without constraints for the social norms of this period. Part love story, part social commentary - I highly recommend "Lessons in Chemistry". I could not put this book down and read it in two sittings.

 

Publisher's description: 

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with--of all things--her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth's unusual approach to cooking ("combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride") proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn't just teaching women to cook. She's daring them to change the status quo.
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.

 

A portrait of New York City, but also a portrait of humanity and all the different walks of life woven together. At times uplifting, but more often sobering. And life goes on...

 

Publisher's description:

A rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. A radical young Irish monk struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gathers in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. A 38-year-old grandmother turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's allegory comes alive in the voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century"--a mysterious tightrope walker dancing between the Twin Towers.

 

When Delphine and her sisters visit their mother, they do not expect to end up participating in a Black Panther rally, but as they spend their days at the local community center, they learn to confront the racism that they have taken for granted all their lives. Ultimately, this is a moving and heartfelt story of a young girl and her changing relationships with her mother, her sisters, and her own Blackness.

 

Publisher's description: In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

 

Authored by Kristen Arnett, a queer writer based in Florida. I enjoyed this work of literary fiction in the way it made me think hard and left me feeling unsettled. It is raw and uncomfortable as Sammie's marriage is falling apart and her wife leaves her for a much younger woman. While Sammie never felt the warmth and bond of being a mother to her son, in his teenage years, he starts acting out and is uncontrollable in a way that makes her feel estranged. Sammie is grasping for something to hold onto as she confronts reality. I was hooked from the start and couldn't put it down and while it is not a feel-good, it is fascinating.

 

Publisher's description: If she's being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best--driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school--while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie's life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son's hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess--and the possibility that it will never be clean again.