Staff Picks - LibGuides at Boulder Public Library

Grace recommends We Carry their Bones by Erin Kimmerle

02/26/2025

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, history, Black, .Grace's reviews

Kimmerle explores the investigation that inspired Colson Whitehead's novel The Nickel Boys in this challenging read. However, Kimmerle also shows that there are those who are committed to preserving history, including the bad.

Publisher description:

Recounts the story of the Dozier School, a Florida reform school shut down in 2011 due to reports of cruelty, abuse, and mysterious deaths, and the efforts of the author, a leading forensic anthropologist, to locate and exhume the graves of the boys buried there in order to reunite them with their families.

Find We Carry their Bones in our online catalog

Grace recommends Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

02/24/2025

Boulder Library

teen fiction, lived experiences, BIPOC, Black, .Grace's reviews

Reynolds explores "the rules" that have been passed down to Will by generations before him: no crying, no snitching, and always get revenge. Written in verse, this work considers the troubling emotions often suppressed in a neighborhood where stoicism is respected and forgiveness is rare. Being immersed in a story about the cycle of violence, Long Way Down fosters empathy for people who have different lived experiences from their own.

Publisher's description:
As Will, fifteen, sets out to avenge his brother Shawn's fatal shooting, seven ghosts who knew Shawn board the elevator and reveal truths Will needs to know.

Find Long Way Down in our online catalog

Grace recommends Sociopath: A Memoir by Patric Gagne

12/07/2024

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, autobiography, lived experiences, .Grace's reviews, mental health

I am so glad this book exists and that I read it. I learned so much and found Patric's personal experiences to be incredibly enlightening. Gagne provides an honest perspective of living with sociopathy and breaks down some of the stigmas around mental health and sociopathy.

Publisher's description:

A fascinating, revelatory memoir revealing the author’s struggle to come to terms with her own sociopathy and shed light on the often maligned and misunderstood mental disorder. Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt. She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something. In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified -- well over 200 years ago -- sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim. But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either. This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.

Find Sociopath in our online catalog

Grace recommends We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

11/23/2024

Boulder Library

adult fiction, science fiction, .Grace's reviews

A fantastic dystopian novel that fostered great works like 1984 and A Brave New World, you simply must read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin if you enjoy futuristic dystopian literature. Set in a heavily-surveilled urban nation with glass-only architecture, Zamyatin creates a haunting setting and story.

Publishers description:

We (1924) is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Written between 1920 and 1921, the novel reflects its author's growing disillusionment with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the Russian Civil War. Smuggled out of the country, the manuscript was translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg and published in New York in 1924. In a series of diary entries, D-503, an engineer in charge of building the spaceship Integral, reflects on life in the One State. In this totalitarian society, people live within glass structures under direct, constant surveillance by the Benefactor and his operatives. When he is not working on the Integral, D-503 visits with his state-appointed lover O-90 and spends time with his friend R-13, a poet who reads his works at executions. On a walk with O-90, D-503 meets a free-spirited woman named I-330, who flirts with him and eventually convinces him to transgress the rules he has followed his whole life. Although he plans to turn her over to authorities, he cannot bring himself to betray her trust, and begins to have dreams for the first time in his life. Struggling to balance his duty to the state with his strange new feelings, D-503 moves closer and closer to the limits of law and life. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a classic of Russian literature and dystopian science fiction reimagined for modern readers.

Find We in our online catalog

Grace recommends The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg

09/14/2024

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, science, .Grace's reviews

You do not need to love bugs to love this book! Sjöberg creates a beautiful compilation of observations and musings ranging from the history of entomology to lost loves and art. The Fly Trap is a short read that sits with you long after finishing.

Publisher's Description:

The Fly Trap is a meditation on the unexpected beauty of small things and an exploration of the history of entomology itself. What drives the obsessive curiosity of collectors to catalog their finds? What is the importance of the hoverfly? As confounded by his unusual vocation as anyone, Sjöberg reflects on a range of ideas--the passage of time, art, lost loves--drawing on sources as disparate as D. H. Lawrence and the fascinating and nearly forgotten naturalist René Edmond Malaise. From the wilderness of Kamchatka to the loneliness of the Swedish isle he calls home, Sjöberg revels in the wonder of the natural world and leaves behind a trail of memorable images and stories.

Find The Fly Trap in our online catalog

Grace recommends The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

05/20/2024

Boulder Library

adult nonfiction, autobiography, lived experiences, motherhood, grief, .Grace's reviews

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.

Find The Year of Magical Thinking in our online catalog.