You can almost always count on London columnist Diana Henry (now on her ninth publication) for a beautiful book that’s fairly accessible — and what’s more accessible than chicken? A Bird in the Hand offers more than 100 ways to approach everybody’s favorite fowl, from classic international favorites like saltimbocca and Korean fried chicken wings to squabs perfumed in rosewater and sauced in sour cherries. There are chicken pastas and chicken salads and chicken curries; it almost makes you wonder, why ever eat anything else?
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "178472002X", "asin": "", "oclc": 886490206, "seamus": 458768862, "bookshop": "", "cover": "178472002X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781784720025", "isbn10": "178472002X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 1, "book": "A Bird In The Hand: Chicken Recipes For Every Day And Every Mood", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 1, "book": "A Bird In The Hand: Chicken Recipes For Every Day And Every Mood", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" } ] }, "2": { "id": 2, "title": "A God In Ruins: A Novel", "author": "Kate Atkinson", "text": "Buy a house in East London today and a real estate agent may warn you that the foundation is uneven because of bomb damage from World War II. British people have a more personal relationship to the Second World War than most Americans do, and that immediacy comes through vividly in Kate Atkinson’s A God In Ruins. Her main character, Teddy, is a fighter pilot whose exploits feel more harrowing than heroic. It’s Atkinson’s second book exploring the same family — the first was her virtuosic 2013 novel, Life After Life. We should be so lucky to get a third.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "family matters", "for history lovers", "rather long", "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Ari Shapiro" ], "isbn": "0316176532", "asin": "", "oclc": 906029238, "seamus": 402563189, "bookshop": 9780316176538, "cover": "0316176532", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316176538", "isbn10": "0316176532", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 2, "book": "A God In Ruins: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Kate Atkinson Tells Book Club How She Crafts Characters At All Life Stages", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/16/414669606/kate-atkinson-tells-book-club-how-she-crafts-characters-at-all-life-stages" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 2, "book": "A God In Ruins: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Bombs Blast And Time Marches On In 'A God In Ruins'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/08/411696701/bombs-blast-and-time-marches-on-in-a-god-in-ruins" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 2, "book": "A God In Ruins: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "After 'Life,' 'A God In Ruins' Picks Up The Epic Tale Of The Todds", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/06/403127284/after-life-a-god-in-ruins-picks-up-the-epic-tale-of-the-todds" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 2, "book": "A God In Ruins: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Join The 'Morning Edition' Book Club As We Read 'A God In Ruins'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/05/402554435/join-the-morning-edition-book-club-as-we-read-a-god-in-ruins" } ] }, "3": { "id": 3, "title": "A Head Full Of Ghosts: A Novel", "author": "Paul Tremblay", "text": "From H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, horror writers have found frightening inspiration in small-town New England. It’s no surprise, then, that Boston-based author Paul Tremblay cites the works of both authors in his new novel, A Head Full of Ghosts. Updating the basic idea behind The Exorcist for a generation awash in bloggers and reality TV, this tale of possession and horrific secrets grips and doesn’t let go. And its ultimate, bloodcurdling revelation is as sickeningly satisfying as it is masterful.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "the dark side", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "0062363239", "asin": "", "oclc": 906020638, "seamus": 410044115, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062363239", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062363237", "isbn10": "0062363239", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 3, "book": "A Head Full Of Ghosts: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Click If You Dare: 100 Favorite Horror Stories", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/632779706/click-if-you-dare-100-favorite-horror-stories" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 3, "book": "A Head Full Of Ghosts: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Ghosts' Is An Eerie, Edgy Tale Of Perception And Possession", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/02/408296128/ghosts-is-an-eerie-edgy-tale-of-perception-and-possession" } ] }, "4": { "id": 4, "title": "A History Of Money: A Novel", "author": "Alan Pauls, translated by Ellie Robins", "text": "In A History of Money, Argentine novelist Alan Pauls frames a brilliant and absorbing tale through the lens of money and materialism. Translated by Ellie Robins, the novel delves into the troubled political and economic history of Argentina. As great stories often do, it begins with a body, that of a steel company executive who is sent to deliver an attache case full of money but dies in a helicopter crash. Was this event an accident or a planned execution? The unnamed narrator asks these questions while also weaving in stories concerning his personal history with money and how it complicates our lives. Pauls’ book is beautifully textured and chock-full of sentences that dazzle consistently.
", "tags": [ "fiction", "historical fiction", "tales from around the world", "rather short" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "1612194230", "asin": "", "oclc": 910623212, "seamus": 412050823, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1612194230", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781612194233", "isbn10": "1612194230", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 4, "book": "A History Of Money: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "In 'History,' Money Makes The World Go 'Round", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/06/412050092/in-history-money-makes-the-world-go-round" } ] }, "5": { "id": 5, "title": "A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story Of A Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, And A Young Dictator's Rise To Power", "author": "Paul Fischer", "text": "In the late 1970s, South Korea’s top director and his star actress were kidnapped and shipped to North Korea, where they were forced to create films for the Hollywood-obsessed Kim Jong Il. After years of propaganda films, bizarre dinner parties and excruciating torture, the pair finally managed to escape. This book reads so much like a thriller you sometimes have to stop and remind yourself it’s completely true. Paul Fischer gives a fascinating look inside Kim’s manic imagination and the tenacity of two people who found themselves in a situation right out of a movie.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "mysteries & thrillers", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "tales from around the world", "no biz like show biz", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Meghan Keane" ], "isbn": "1250054273", "asin": "", "oclc": 908176009, "seamus": 457927329, "bookshop": 9781250054272, "cover": "1250054273", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250054272", "isbn10": "1250054273", "links": [] }, "6": { "id": 6, "title": "A Little Life: A Novel", "author": "Hanya Yanagihara", "text": "At nearly 800 pages, A Little Life feels like it’s telling the story of four New York friends in real time — over takeout, at parties, during dinners that end in arguments. It’s most moving when author Hanya Yanagihara lets us live long stretches with the character Jude, a survivor of child abuse. The book doesn’t shy away from those horrors or the physical and emotional pain endured to overcome them. And Yanagihara is not afraid to show how his friends love him, care for him and sometimes let him down.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "rather long", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Audie Cornish" ], "isbn": "0385539258", "asin": "", "oclc": 886672369, "seamus": 394048053, "bookshop": 9780385539258, "cover": "0385539258", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385539258", "isbn10": "0385539258", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 6, "book": "A Little Life: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'A Little Life': An Unforgettable Novel About The Grace Of Friendship", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/19/394050118/a-little-life-an-unforgettable-novel-about-the-grace-of-friendship" } ] }, "7": { "id": 7, "title": "A Manual For Cleaning Women: Selected Stories", "author": "Lucia Berlin", "text": "Cleaning ladies are rare characters in literary fiction; so, too, are clerical workers and hospital staff, but they populate Lucia Berlin’s stories because Berlin herself held those kinds of jobs before her death in 2004. This collection of 43 of Berlin’s stories aims to bring her the recognition she never enjoyed in her own rocky lifetime. You can imagine the narrators of these stories sitting down next to you in a bar after work, ordering a first shot and, unbidden, starting to talk about their crappy days. Berlin had been around the block a few too many times to sugarcoat things. But her one-of-a-kind voice and vision make these stories well worth the pain.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "book club ideas", "fiction", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "0374202397", "asin": "", "oclc": 898433447, "seamus": 432748578, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374202397", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374202392", "isbn10": "0374202397", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 7, "book": "A Manual For Cleaning Women: Selected Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'A Manual For Cleaning Women' Showcases A Gritty, One-Of-A-Kind Voice", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/24/432748481/a-manual-for-cleaning-women-showcases-a-gritty-one-of-a-kind-voice" } ] }, "8": { "id": 8, "title": "A Planet For Rent", "author": "Yoss, translated by David Frye", "text": "A Planet for Rent is the English-language debut of Yoss, one of Cuba’s most lauded writers of science fiction. Translated by David Frye, these linked stories craft a picture of a dystopian future: Aliens called xenoids have invaded planet Earth, and people are looking to flee the economically and socially bankrupt remains of human civilization. Yoss’ smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "tales from around the world", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "1632060361", "asin": "", "oclc": 895814463, "seamus": 458372631, "bookshop": 9781632060365, "cover": "1632060361", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781632060365", "isbn10": "1632060361", "links": [] }, "9": { "id": 9, "title": "A Spool Of Blue Thread: A Novel", "author": "Anne Tyler", "text": "To me, reading an Anne Tyler book is like hanging out with an old friend: You open the book to the first page and emerge three hours later surprised that so much time has gone by. A Spool of Blue Thread fits perfectly into that mold. Abby and Red Whitshank are getting old and their four children are eager to help them stay in the beloved family home. Sibling rivalries flare up; family secrets are spilled; and the Whitshanks emerge bruised but a little wiser at the end of it all. Pull up a comfortable chair and enjoy yourself.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Lynn Neary" ], "isbn": "1101874279", "asin": "", "oclc": 897346174, "seamus": 38435234, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1101874279", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101874271", "isbn10": "1101874279", "links": [] }, "10": { "id": 10, "title": "A Strangeness In My Mind: A Novel", "author": "Orhan Pamuk, translated by Ekin Oklap", "text": "In A Strangeness in My Mind, Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk chronicles the life of his hometown, Istanbul, through the eyes of a street peddler named Mevlut. He’s one of millions who migrated from the countryside beginning in the 1950s. As Mevlut wanders the hidden corners of Istanbul selling boza, a traditional Turkish drink, readers get a glimpse of the religious, economic and political forces swirling through the rapidly changing city. Meanwhile, on the home front, Mevlut’s elopement with a woman he never meant to marry turns into an enduring love. Pamuk’s fondness for both his character and his city shines through on every page.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "historical fiction", "love & romance", "rather long", "fiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Lynn Neary" ], "isbn": "0307700291", "asin": "", "oclc": 904011925, "seamus": 450037389, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0307700291", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307700292", "isbn10": "0307700291", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 10, "book": "A Strangeness In My Mind: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Orhan Pamuk Takes A Fresh Look At His Beloved Istanbul In 'Strangeness'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/450036606/orhan-pamuk-takes-a-fresh-look-at-his-beloved-istanbul-in-strangeness" } ] }, "11": { "id": 11, "title": "A Tour Of Bones: Facing Fear And Looking For Life", "author": "Denise Inge", "text": "When Denise Inge’s husband, John, was appointed the bishop of Worcester Cathedral in 2008, she discovered their new house was built over an ossuary, or “charnel house.” The bones of Benedictine monks were collected there in medieval times. It took Inge a while to work up the courage to descend into that cellar. Gazing on all those skulls and femurs brought Inge face to face with the brevity of life and propelled her on a journey, both literal and spiritual, in which she visited bone houses throughout Europe. As a book — part travelogue, part memoir, part memento mori — A Tour of Bones is as strange and inspiring as are any of the bone houses that Inge visited.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "the dark side", "eye-opening reads", "staff picks", "tales from around the world", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "1472913078", "asin": "", "oclc": 890162097, "seamus": 431557274, "bookshop": 9781472913074, "cover": "1472913078", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781472913074", "isbn10": "1472913078", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 11, "book": "A Tour Of Bones: Facing Fear And Looking For Life", "source": "NPR", "text": "Confronting Mortality In An Unsettling, Inspiring 'Tour Of Bones'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/11/431555618/confronting-mortality-in-an-unsettling-inspiring-tour-of-bones" } ] }, "12": { "id": 12, "title": "A Wild Swan: And Other Tales", "author": "Michael Cunningham", "text": "Michael Cunningham calls his reworked fairy tales “curses” and “incantations”; he plays with the sexy, warts-and-all stuff that happens after the happy ending “fell on everyone like a guillotine’s blade.” Snow White’s prince harbors a fetish for ogling his beloved in deathlike sleep — a scenario he asks her to re-enact over and over again. The most human and heartbreaking character you’ll encounter is classically one of the more odious ones: Rumpelstiltskin, who desperately wants a child of his own. And the witch from Hansel and Gretel? By the time the twins — recast as libidinous and broken punk teenagers — shove her aged flesh and bones into the oven, it’s a mercy.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "short stories, essays & poetry", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Malika Gumpangkum" ], "isbn": "0374290253", "asin": "", "oclc": 898419535, "seamus": 455041654, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374290253", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374290252", "isbn10": "0374290253", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 12, "book": "A Wild Swan: And Other Tales", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'A Wild Swan' Flies Beyond Happily Ever After", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/08/455006783/the-wild-swan-flies-beyond-happily-ever-after" } ] }, "13": { "id": 13, "title": "Accidental Saints: Finding God In All The Wrong People", "author": "Nadia Bolz-Weber", "text": "I never would have guessed that my favorite interview of 2015 would be with a Lutheran minister, but Nadia Bolz-Weber isn’t your average holy roller. Decked out in sleeve tattoos, she curses like a sailor and has a background in comedy. In 2008 she founded her own church, The House for All Sinners and Saints, which welcomes all walks of life — including addicts, drag queens and nonbelievers. Accidental Saints is a series of unflinchingly honest (and funny) stories about her life as a minister. You don’t have to be religious to get something out of this book. Like this: “Whenever people annoy me beyond reason, I can guarantee it’s because they’re demonstrating something I’d rather not see in myself.” This is a quick read that will leave you feeling better about yourself and others — for all our flawed, messy goodness.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "funny stuff", "staff picks", "nonfiction", "identity & culture", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Molly Seavy-Nesper" ], "isbn": "1601427557", "asin": "", "oclc": 907976244, "seamus": 441140070, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1601427557", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781601427557", "isbn10": "1601427557", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 13, "book": "Accidental Saints: Finding God In All The Wrong People", "source": "NPR", "text": "Lutheran Minister Preaches A Gospel Of Love To Junkies, Drag Queens And Outsiders", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/17/441139500/lutheran-minister-preaches-a-gospel-of-love-to-junkies-drag-queens-and-outsiders" } ] }, "14": { "id": 14, "title": "After Birth", "author": "Elisa Albert", "text": "Elisa Albert’s take on birth, motherhood and female relationships is the antithesis of the treacly cliches that so often surround these well-trod subjects. Her story is messy, devastating and raw — deeply felt and deftly told. Through the experience of Ari, a hard-core feminist party girl/academic, Albert explores the most difficult part of becoming a mother: the eclipsing of your identity and relationships, and the struggle to find your footing in a completely new world. It will leave you marveling at the power women have to survive, to break each other’s hearts and, when we’re lucky, to rescue one another.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "eye-opening reads", "family matters", "fiction", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Jessica Pupovac" ], "isbn": "0544273737", "asin": "", "oclc": 869437498, "seamus": 388480798, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0544273737", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780544273733", "isbn10": "0544273737", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 14, "book": "After Birth", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'After Birth' Author On 'Mommy Wars': 'It Doesn't Have To Be This Way'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/23/388482173/after-birth-author-on-mommy-wars-it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way" } ] }, "15": { "id": 15, "title": "After The Parade: A Novel", "author": "Lori Ostlund", "text": "A man named Aaron leaves his longtime partner to move to San Francisco and begin a new life as a teacher of English as a second language — while confronting the dark corners of his Midwestern childhood, including his father’s abuse and sudden death. After the Parade is a sprawling, hefty narrative — deeply sad and profoundly moving — and its prose is like a second protagonist: Vibrant, living and practically lifting off the page.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Carmen Maria Machado" ], "isbn": "1476790108", "asin": "", "oclc": 894747019, "seamus": 458340438, "bookshop": 9781476790107, "cover": "1476790108", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476790107", "isbn10": "1476790108", "links": [] }, "16": { "id": 16, "title": "Against The Country: A Novel", "author": "Ben Metcalf", "text": "Against The Country is a screed — almost the definition of one. It is a long, meandering, explosive, fierce, grating exploration and refutation of the notion that all the good in our national character comes from the rural and pastoral, and that all our manifold sins are born of town. At its most basic, it is a Southern Gothic yarn about the youth and coming of age of an unnamed narrator, growing up in a fictional version of Goochland County, Va. — a land of evil soil, terrible parents, vicious idiots, snakes, racists, genius chickens and suicidal dogs.
", "tags": [ "eye-opening reads", "fiction", "seriously great writing", "family matters", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "1400062691", "asin": "", "oclc": 873237911, "seamus": 374038466, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1400062691", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781400062690", "isbn10": "1400062691", "links": [] }, "17": { "id": 17, "title": "All The Bright Places", "author": "Jennifer Niven", "text": "Finch and Violet didn’t mean to stop each other from jumping off the roof of the school’s bell tower, but once they do, they find themselves inescapably drawn together. They embark on a series of adventures, chronicling the natural wonders of their native Indiana. As Violet begins to overcome the family tragedy that led her onto the ledge in the first place, Finch struggles to control his depression and truly commit to living his life. The heartbreak of this story is made real through the charming first-person narration. It’s hard to avoid hoping for a happy ending.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "family matters", "love & romance", "fiction", "young adult" ], "reviewers": [ "Caitlyn Paxson" ], "isbn": "0385755880", "asin": "", "oclc": 870336323, "seamus": 458808931, "bookshop": 9780385755887, "cover": "0385755880", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385755887", "isbn10": "0385755880", "links": [] }, "18": { "id": 18, "title": "All The Old Knives: A Novel", "author": "Olen Steinhauer", "text": "Put down whatever you’re reading, or doing, and pick up Olen Steinhauer’s newest spy thriller, a book so taut and, yes, brilliant that it will make your other entertainments seem pale and poorly written. The remarkable thing about it is that nearly the entire novel consists of a conversation between Henry and Celia, two former CIA agents at the Vienna station — and former lovers, as well. Their dinner in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., is in complete contrast to the hostage crisis six years earlier that the two of them raced to resolve — and that Henry can’t forget.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "1250045436", "asin": "", "oclc": 930556498, "seamus": 394018922, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1250045436", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250045430", "isbn10": "1250045436", "links": [] }, "19": { "id": 19, "title": "Among The Wild Mulattos And Other Tales", "author": "Tom Williams", "text": "Identity, both racial and otherwise, is at the heart of nearly all the stories in Among the Wild Mulattos, a manic, cutting and frequently hilarious collection from Kentucky author and academic Tom Williams. He’s an uncompromising writer with a fiercely original voice, and he has created one of the most unforgettable books of the year. The collection feels vital, essential, not only for the unexpected ways Williams talks about identity but for his brash, gutsy writing.
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "family matters", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "1680030183", "asin": "", "oclc": 898167223, "seamus": 429763981, "bookshop": 9781680030181, "cover": "1680030183", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781680030181", "isbn10": "1680030183", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 19, "book": "Among The Wild Mulattos And Other Tales", "source": "NPR", "text": "Identity Is At The Heart Of Brash, Essential 'Mulattos'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/07/418600831/identity-is-at-the-heart-of-brash-essential-mulattos" } ] }, "20": { "id": 20, "title": "Ancillary Mercy", "author": "Ann Leckie", "text": "It would be a mistake to go into Ancillary Mercy hoping for the same lightning-strike of Ancillary Justice. The first installment of Ann Leckie’s trilogy opened a world; by now, things are so complicated for protagonist Breq that all you can hope for is to be satisfied. Luckily, Mercy delivers. The world-building particularly shines in the machinations of this closing chapter, as Breq tries to use her new political powers to stop a war with all the weapons the Radchaai Empire has at its disposal: insinuation, shifting loyalties and the second-best tea set.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Genevieve Valentine" ], "isbn": "0316246689", "asin": "", "oclc": 910622081, "seamus": 445034908, "bookshop": 9780316246682, "cover": "0316246689", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316246682", "isbn10": "0316246689", "links": [] }, "21": { "id": 21, "title": "Andy Goldsworthy: Ephemeral Works: 2004-2014", "author": "Andy Goldsworthy", "text": "Andy Goldsworthy creates art from the materials he finds in nature. His sculptures are made from ice sheets, tree branches, snow, clay and rock — he uses leaves like paint. Much of his art is meant to be ephemeral, to decay and degrade with the elements, to exist in a moment. Fortunately, Goldsworthy also photographs this work for us to enjoy and has collected 10 years of his temporary art in this beautiful coffee table book. Plus, if you’ve ever had the urge to just lie down outside in the rain, Goldsworthy’s rain shadow photographs provide you an excuse — you’re making art. Another book documenting his more permanent works is due out in spring 2017.
", "tags": [ "for art lovers", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Sam Briger" ], "isbn": "1419717790", "asin": "", "oclc": 917370912, "seamus": 446731382, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1419717790", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781419717796", "isbn10": "1419717790", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 21, "book": "Andy Goldsworthy: Ephemeral Works: 2004-2014", "source": "NPR", "text": "Sculptor Turns Rain, Ice And Trees Into 'Ephemeral Works'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/08/446731282/sculptor-turns-rain-ice-and-trees-into-ephemeral-works" } ] }, "22": { "id": 22, "title": "At Home With Umami: Home-Cooked Recipes Unlocking The Magic Of Super-Savory Deliciousness", "author": "Laura Santtini", "text": "British restaurateur and food entrepreneur Laura Santtini has hitched her wagon to the “fifth taste” — umami. In 2010 she launched “Taste #5 Umami Bomb” — all the savory flavors of umami, in a squeezable tube. Her cookbook, however, doesn’t simply push the product. It’s an eclectic collection of recipes that hop from country to country — croquetas and hamburger and rendang to madeleines and cheesecake. Each one turns up the volume on umami via anchovies, tomatoes, miso, Parmesan, whatever it takes. You can serve them up with an explanation about the fifth flavor if you like — or you can just quietly keep eating, before you lose your chance at seconds.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "1849756678", "asin": "", "oclc": 907657349, "seamus": 458769296, "bookshop": 9781849756679, "cover": "1849756678", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781849756679", "isbn10": "1849756678", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 22, "book": "At Home With Umami: Home-Cooked Recipes Unlocking The Magic Of Super-Savory Deliciousness", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" } ] }, "23": { "id": 23, "title": "Baklava To Tarte Tatin: A World Tour In 110 Dessert Recipes", "author": "Bernard Laurance, photographed by Amélie Roche", "text": "Popular French blogger Bernard Laurance may be little-known stateside, but he aims to change that with a new English-language blog and his first book. It’s not the first globetrotting baking book — there’s one every few years — but it’s an accessible and evenhanded one that visits every continent. There are fussy canelés and easy brownies; spiced nuts and sticky sweets — in fact there’s something, most likely, for even the most unadventurous palate.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "2080202154", "asin": "", "oclc": 884298213, "seamus": 458769356, "bookshop": "", "cover": "2080202154", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9782080202154", "isbn10": "2080202154", "links": [] }, "24": { "id": 24, "title": "Barbara The Slut And Other People", "author": "Lauren Holmes", "text": "The characters in Lauren Holmes’ debut short story collection are fully, sometimes exasperatingly real, portrayed by a young writer with a great deal of charm and not a hint of pretension. The stories in this book are sometimes painful, sometimes brilliantly funny, and most often both; Holmes can find the humor in the worst situations and the tragedy in the most glorious moments. But it’s her characters that carry the action — imperfect, difficult and defiantly human. In other words, they’re people. Just like us.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "1594633789", "asin": "", "oclc": 893894760, "seamus": 427463377, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594633789", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594633782", "isbn10": "1594633789", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 24, "book": "Barbara The Slut And Other People", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Barbara' Is Imperfect, Defiant And Wonderfully Human", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/30/426741554/barbara-is-imperfect-defiant-and-wonderfully-human" } ] }, "25": { "id": 25, "title": "Bettyville: A Memoir", "author": "George Hodgman", "text": "Last year’s literary tour de force about the trials of tending to aged parents was Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?; This year’s must-read dispatch from the frontlines of caretaking is George Hodgman’s Bettyville. A few years ago, Hodgman, who had enjoyed a highflying publishing career, lost his job and returned to his childhood home in Paris, Mo., to care for his 90-year-old mother, Betty. The kicker is that Betty has never acknowledged that her only son is gay. Bettyville powerfully chronicles the exhaustion and absurdity of eldercare, as well as the psychic cost of maintaining a familial relationship that demands silence.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "family matters", "staff picks", "nonfiction", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "0525427201", "asin": "", "oclc": 881888036, "seamus": 458471319, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0525427201", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780525427209", "isbn10": "0525427201", "links": [] }, "26": { "id": 26, "title": "Between The World And Me", "author": "Ta-Nehisi Coates", "text": "Conceived as a letter from author Ta-Nehisi Coates to his son, this book punches way above its weight as provocation and analysis. Coates aims to unsettle complacency with research and bracing rhetoric. His book’s central question — “How do I live free in this black body?” — is far less haunting, Coates argues, than the ever fresh episodes of violence against the black bodies that made this nation possible. In beautiful prose, Coates bequeaths to his child the clear-eyed approach of his parents, “who never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and were skeptical of preordained American glory.” Those gifts, he maintains, make it possible for him to pose unanswerable questions without fearing the consequences. Some readers may regard his conclusions as grim; others are likely to find them liberating.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "family matters", "rather short", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing", "staff picks", "identity & culture", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Cheryl Devall" ], "isbn": "0812993543", "asin": "", "oclc": 912045191, "seamus": 421479495, "bookshop": 9780812993547, "cover": "0812993543", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812993547", "isbn10": "0812993543", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 26, "book": "Between The World And Me", "source": "NPR", "text": "Summer Reading For The College-Bound", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/30/534458892/the-books-college-kids-are-reading-this-summer" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 26, "book": "Between The World And Me", "source": "NPR", "text": "One Way To Bridge The Political Divide: Read The Book That's Not For You", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/501975656/one-way-to-bridge-the-political-divide-read-the-book-thats-not-for-you" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 26, "book": "Between The World And Me", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ta-Nehisi Coates On Police Brutality, The Confederate Flag And Forgiveness", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461337958/ta-nehisi-coates-on-police-brutality-the-confederate-flag-and-forgiveness" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 26, "book": "Between The World And Me", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ta-Nehisi Coates On Police Brutality, The Confederate Flag And Forgiveness", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/13/422554778/ta-nehisi-coates-on-police-brutality-the-confederate-flag-and-forgiveness" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 26, "book": "Between The World And Me", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ta-Nehisi Coates Looks At The Physical Toll Of Being Black In America", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/07/10/421469553/ta-nehisi-coates-looks-at-the-physical-toll-of-being-black-in-america" } ] }, "27": { "id": 27, "title": "Between You & Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen", "author": "Mary Norris", "text": "Between You and Me is part memoir, part guide to the mind-bending nuances of English grammar, part homage to The New Yorker — where Mary Norris has spent more than 20 years as a highly specialized proofreader — and completely delightful. It brims with wit, personality and commas. Norris is a stickler who can’t resist shtick. She pounces gleefully on typos and is as passionate about sharp pencils — soft graphite Palomina Blackwing 602 pencils, to be specific — as she is about sharp writing. Despite her insistence on maintaining grammatical standards, a prim and regal comma queen she is not. In fact, she is vociferous in her defense of judiciously deployed profanity — which adds punch to her explanation of why “between you and I,” in trying to be “so [bleep]ing polite,” is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "biography & memoir", "it’s all geek to me", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "0393240185", "asin": "", "oclc": 897468521, "seamus": 397094471, "bookshop": 9780393240184, "cover": "0393240185", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780393240184", "isbn10": "0393240185", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 27, "book": "Between You & Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen", "source": "NPR", "text": "Memoir, Perfectly Punctuated In 'Between You & Me'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/08/397823382/memoir-perfectly-punctuated-in-between-you-me" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 27, "book": "Between You & Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen", "source": "NPR", "text": "Just 'Between You & Me,' Here Are Some Handy Grammar Tips", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/04/397094248/just-between-you-me-here-are-some-handy-grammar-tips" } ] }, "28": { "id": 28, "title": "Binary Star", "author": "Sarah Gerard", "text": "In 2012 Sarah Gerard wrote a powerful essay for The New York Times about her experiences with bulimia, anorexia and addiction. It’s a harrowing read, but only half as much so as her debut novel, Binary Star. In it, Gerard’s unnamed, semi-autobiographical protagonist goes on a road trip that’s at first an escape, then an odyssey, then an extended metaphor for a tragic metamorphosis. Gerard has channeled her trials and tribulations into a work of heightened reality, one that sings to the lonely gravity of the human body.
", "tags": [ "the dark side", "eye-opening reads", "seriously great writing", "rather short" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1937512258", "asin": "", "oclc": 875240501, "seamus": 376165928, "bookshop": 9781937512255, "cover": "1937512258", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781937512255", "isbn10": "1937512258", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 28, "book": "Binary Star", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Binary Star' Is A Hard, Harrowing Look Into Inner Space", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/15/376093692/binary-star-is-a-hard-harrowing-look-into-inner-space" } ] }, "29": { "id": 29, "title": "Bitch Planet Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine", "author": "Kelly Sue DeConnick, illustrated by Valentine De Landro", "text": "If you like your feminism dangerous, this is the comic for you. In a near-future where society has been taken over by the “fathers,” women branded “non-compliant” — too opinionated, too fat, too unmanageable — are deposited on a prison planet awash in violence and nudity straight out of a 1970s exploitation flick. Kelly Sue DeConnick’s story is wildly original and Valentine De Landro’s art is down-and-dirty. Particularly fun are the old-fashioned comic book ads between chapters, like one for X-Ray Specs: “The Perfect Way to See Through His Intentions!”
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "1632153661", "asin": "", "oclc": 925378197, "seamus": 446606748, "bookshop": 9781632153661, "cover": "1632153661", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781632153661", "isbn10": "1632153661", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 29, "book": "Bitch Planet Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine", "source": "NPR", "text": "Let's Get Graphic: 100 Favorite Comics And Graphic Novels", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2017/07/12/533862948/lets-get-graphic-100-favorite-comics-and-graphic-novels" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 29, "book": "Bitch Planet Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine", "source": "NPR", "text": "Planet 'B': How A Feminist Comic Book Found Devoted Fans Through Absurdity", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/07/446605717/planet-b-how-a-feminist-comic-book-found-devoted-fans-through-absurdity" } ] }, "30": { "id": 30, "title": "Black Chalk", "author": "Christopher J. Yates", "text": "Black Chalk is a story about the fictional Pitt College at Oxford. Six students, freshers all — five Brits of varying tempers and varying levels of damage, and one American exchange student called Chad — concoct a game in a moment of boredom and inspiration. To say any more about it would be to ruin the pleasure because this book has one of the greatest surprise reveals of the year. When you see the tricky switch Christopher Yates has pulled, you just want to kiss him, because dammit if there isn’t something sweet and satisfying about a plot twist pulled off with aplomb.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "the dark side", "tales from around the world", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "1250075556", "asin": "", "oclc": 893894154, "seamus": 429436977, "bookshop": 9781250075550, "cover": "1250075556", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250075550", "isbn10": "1250075556", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 30, "book": "Black Chalk", "source": "NPR", "text": "Six Friends, A Pile of Cash And A Game With Deadly Consequences", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/05/429436922/six-friends-a-pile-of-cash-and-a-game-with-deadly-consequences" } ] }, "31": { "id": 31, "title": "Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget", "author": "Sarah Hepola", "text": "Where to go when you’re a young woman aching for adventure? To the tavern, if you’re Sarah Hepola. There she became the woman she longed to be: fearless, funny, sexual, tough. Alcohol was “the gasoline of all adventure,” until she was forced to admit that she had flamed out. This funny, confident memoir details how Hepola created a life unfueled by ethanol without disowning the wild woman within.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "let’s talk about sex", "the dark side", "staff picks", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Nancy Shute" ], "isbn": "1455554596", "asin": "", "oclc": 910919271, "seamus": 415751568, "bookshop": 9781455554591, "cover": "1455554596", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781455554591", "isbn10": "1455554596", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 31, "book": "Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Path From 'Blackout' Drunkenness To Sobriety And Self-Acceptance", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/30/427435929/a-path-from-blackout-drunkenness-to-sobriety-and-self-acceptance" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 31, "book": "Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget", "source": "NPR", "text": "After Years Of Blackouts, A Writer Remembers What She 'Drank To Forget'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/21/415748050/after-years-of-blackouts-a-writer-remembers-what-she-drank-to-forget" } ] }, "32": { "id": 32, "title": "Book Of Numbers: A Novel", "author": "Joshua Cohen", "text": "Describing Joshua Cohen’s sprawling, comic, tragic new novel is not easy. I’m tempted to use an old joke, “It’s about 600 pages,” but Cohen beat me to it. He actually uses that line in the novel. Book Of Numbers is about a digital-age superstar, the founder of a Google-like super-search engine called Tetration. It’s also about the Holocaust, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Arabs, government surveillance of email, writers, their editors, agents and parents; also nonparents, estranged spouses, and I could go on. I read the book in one very intense week, and I had a lot of fun in the process.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "it’s all geek to me", "rather long", "fiction", "funny stuff", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Robert Siegel" ], "isbn": "0812996917", "asin": "", "oclc": 896126877, "seamus": 412961459, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812996917", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812996913", "isbn10": "0812996917", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 32, "book": "Book Of Numbers: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "This 'Book Of Numbers' Speaks A Human Language", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/08/412907626/this-book-of-numbers-speaks-a-human-language" } ] }, "33": { "id": 33, "title": "Carry On", "author": "Rainbow Rowell", "text": "Simon Snow is the most powerful wizard in the world, but despite being a senior at the Watford School of Magicks, he has no idea how to control his power and be a proper Chosen One. To make matters worse, his roommate and archnemesis, Baz, is missing, and Simon can’t stop thinking about him. This book began its life as a Harry Potter stand-in featured in Rainbow Rowell’s previous book, Fangirl. It is charmingly cheeky, and so deeply fond of the material that it’s impossible not to get caught up in this new world of wizardry.
", "tags": [ "love & romance", "rather long", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "young adult", "it’s all geek to me", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Caitlyn Paxson" ], "isbn": "1250049555", "asin": "", "oclc": 898419026, "seamus": 446065637, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1250049555", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250049551", "isbn10": "1250049555", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 33, "book": "Carry On", "source": "NPR", "text": "Fan Fiction Comes To Life In 'Carry On'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/443414759/fan-fiction-comes-to-life-in-carry-on" } ] }, "34": { "id": 34, "title": "Chinatown Kitchen From Noodles To Nuoc Cham: Delicious Dishes From Southeast Asian Ingredients", "author": "Lizzie Mabbott", "text": "British blogger Lizzie Mabbott had a sleeper hit this year in Chinatown Kitchen, a rollicking and robust ode to traditional (and not-so-traditional) recipes using Southeast Asian ingredients. It’s less a Chinese cookbook than an adventurous romp through the overlapping cuisines of Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China and Indonesia. Juicy to look at and fiery fun to eat.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "1784720313", "asin": "", "oclc": 892702058, "seamus": 458769654, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1784720313", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781784720315", "isbn10": "1784720313", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 34, "book": "Chinatown Kitchen From Noodles To Nuoc Cham: Delicious Dishes From Southeast Asian Ingredients", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" } ] }, "35": { "id": 35, "title": "Circling The Sun: A Novel", "author": "Paula McLain", "text": "As chronicled in this richly textured novel, aviator Beryl Markham’s life is the stuff of legend. The narrative focuses on Markham’s life through her 20s; she tells her story from the cockpit of her plane during her record-breaking Atlantic flight. Born Beryl Clutterbuck, raised in British East Africa to a neglectful mother and a racehorse-trainer father, she models fearlessness throughout her life. At the heart of the story is Markham’s romantic liaison with the iconic big-game-hunter Denys Finch Hatton (of Out of Africa fame). Paula McLain has created a voice that is lush and intricate to evoke a character who is enviably brave and independent.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "tales from around the world", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jean Zimmerman" ], "isbn": "0345534182", "asin": "", "oclc": 906031438, "seamus": 426746114, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0345534182", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780345534187", "isbn10": "0345534182", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 35, "book": "Circling The Sun: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Aviator Beryl Markham Soars Again In 'Paris Wife' Author's New Book", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/01/427113402/aviator-beryl-markham-soars-again-in-paris-wife-authors-new-book" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 35, "book": "Circling The Sun: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "An Airborne Adventurer's Journey In 'Circling The Sun'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/28/426741186/an-airborne-adventurers-journey-in-circling-the-sun" } ] }, "36": { "id": 36, "title": "City On Fire: A Novel", "author": "Garth Risk Hallberg", "text": "Some people look at a giant novel with dread. Then there are those of us who approach it with reverence, even glee. If you’re the latter, you’re probably aware of Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut doorstop, City on Fire, because of the hype that surrounded its publication. Is the book worth the nearly $2 million Knopf paid for it? That’s for you to decide, but I can assure you that it is certainly worth reading all 944 pages. Hallberg is incapable of writing a boring sentence, and the story, set in 1977 New York City, has multiple narrators and myriad threads — but each piece fits together so tightly, you’ll actually want to read to the end to see how the whole picture develops.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "historical fiction", "rather long", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0385353774", "asin": "", "oclc": 896806743, "seamus": 448683765, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385353774", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385353779", "isbn10": "0385353774", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 36, "book": "City On Fire: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Poetic And Expansive, 'City On Fire' Ultimately Falls Short Of Its Reach", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/20/450240864/poetic-and-expansive-city-on-fire-ultimately-falls-short-of-its-reach" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 36, "book": "City On Fire: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Real Magic Of This Big 'City' — And The New Voice Behind It", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/17/449203568/the-real-magic-of-this-big-city-and-the-new-voice-behind-it" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 36, "book": "City On Fire: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Epic 'City On Fire' Burns Almost Too Brightly", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/15/446676259/epic-city-on-fire-burns-almost-too-brightly" } ] }, "37": { "id": 37, "title": "Cookie Love: More Than 60 Recipes And Techniques For Turning The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary", "author": "Mindy Segal and Kate Leahy", "text": "Smoky bacon candy bar cookies? Folgers crystals with sour cream gianduja shortbread? Graham cracker and passion fruit whoopie cookies? It’s not your grandma’s bake sale! Mindy Segal, proprietor of Chicago-based HotChocolate Restaurant and Dessert Bar, dares you to redefine your cookie repertoire. There are some standards — brownies, thumbprints, snickerdoodles — but most of these cookies push the envelope, and keep right on going.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "1607746816", "asin": "", "oclc": 891185818, "seamus": 458770161, "bookshop": 9781607746812, "cover": "1607746816", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781607746812", "isbn10": "1607746816", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 37, "book": "Cookie Love: More Than 60 Recipes And Techniques For Turning The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 37, "book": "Cookie Love: More Than 60 Recipes And Techniques For Turning The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" } ] }, "38": { "id": 38, "title": "Cooking Class: 57 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love To Make (And Eat!)", "author": "Deanna F. Cook", "text": "Of all the kids’ cooking books that have crossed my threshold over the years, this is the one. I usually hand them to my 9-year-old for a first opinion before looking at them myself, but this one I never got back. It’s got punchy graphics and clear instructions. It’s got pictures of other kids cooking by themselves. It’s got peel-off labels for your homemade dressings. And now, it’s got stains and sticky spots, sure signs of devotion.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "family matters", "kids’ books" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "1612124003", "asin": "", "oclc": 863195033, "seamus": 458770389, "bookshop": 9781612124001, "cover": "1612124003", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781612124001", "isbn10": "1612124003", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 38, "book": "Cooking Class: 57 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love To Make (And Eat!)", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" } ] }, "39": { "id": 39, "title": "Cries for Help, Various: Stories", "author": "Padgett Powell", "text": "Padgett Powell captures voices and thoughts so exquisitely it hurts to read sometimes; you want to stop to laugh or sigh but you also can’t wait to see what comes next. In these 44 stories, Powell grabs you and lets you go at the same time — with poignant observations and expressions of longing followed by a quick comment on how banal it all is. He does it in the title itself, Cries for Help, Various, and he delivers it again and again in his finely wrought stories.
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "1936787318", "asin": "", "oclc": 913798296, "seamus": 458516275, "bookshop": 9781936787319, "cover": "1936787318", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781936787319", "isbn10": "1936787318", "links": [] }, "40": { "id": 40, "title": "Death And Mr. Pickwick: A Novel", "author": "Stephen Jarvis", "text": "The Pickwick Papers, serialized in 1836, made Charles Dickens — then writing under the pen name “Boz” — famous. The illustrator of the work was a then-well-known caricaturist named Robert Seymour. Stephen Jarvis’ debut novel dramatizes the origin story of The Pickwick Papers, bringing Dickens and Seymour alive in rollicking scenes of early 19th century England. Driving the narrative are the circumstances of Seymour’s spark of an idea for Pickwick, his shocking suicide and Dickens’ later claim of authorship. In the end, though, Jarvis’ arguments about who concocted the book seem less important than the Dickensian/Seymourian atmosphere he creates.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "eye-opening reads", "rather long", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jean Zimmerman" ], "isbn": "0374139660", "asin": "", "oclc": 902936979, "seamus": 416861965, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374139660", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374139667", "isbn10": "0374139660", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 40, "book": "Death And Mr. Pickwick: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Death' Uncovers The Secret History Of Mr. Pickwick", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/24/416516125/death-uncovers-the-secret-history-of-mr-pickwick" } ] }, "41": { "id": 41, "title": "Deep Dark Fears", "author": "Fran Krause", "text": "Web cartoonist Fran Krause takes 101 of the darkest and most wildly irrational fears he and his readers harbor, and exposes them to the brilliant sunlight of his friendly, colorful art. You’d think the humorous disconnect that inevitably results would render these four-panel Zen koans of everyday horror (“I’m not waving at anyone / And I’m not crazy. / I’m just making sure there are no / Invisible people in my bathroom”) safer, less unsettling. You’d be very wrong.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "the dark side", "funny stuff", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "1607748150", "asin": "", "oclc": 909538177, "seamus": 458342752, "bookshop": 9781607748151, "cover": "1607748150", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781607748151", "isbn10": "1607748150", "links": [] }, "42": { "id": 42, "title": "Delicious Foods: A Novel", "author": "James Hannaham", "text": "Delicious Foods starts where some other books might end. Its hero, Eddie, is a bloodied survivor, and author James Hannaham tells us how he got there: When Eddie’s drug-addled mother, Darlene, disappears — she’s been kidnapped by a corrupt farm where she and others are treated like modern-day slaves — Eddie goes looking for her. The result is a bittersweet story of a mother who careens through life and a son who does his best to hold on.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "family matters", "fiction", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Audie Cornish" ], "isbn": "0316284947", "asin": "", "oclc": 904290569, "seamus": 391915861, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316284947", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316284943", "isbn10": "0316284947", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 42, "book": "Delicious Foods: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "If Drugs Could Talk: In 'Delicious Foods' They Do", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/13/391914914/if-drugs-could-talk-in-delicious-foods-they-do" } ] }, "43": { "id": 43, "title": "Descender Volume 1: Tin Stars", "author": "Jeff Lemire, coauthored and illustrated by Dustin Nguyen", "text": "Tin Stars collects the first six issues of this rich and surprisingly poignant science-fiction comic about a planetary system threatened with annihilation by mysterious ancient machines, and the desperate measures humanity takes to fight back. Jeff Lemire’s main character, an android programmed to be a human child’s companion, radiates emotional warmth in a cold and dangerous universe beset by warring pro- and anti-robot factions. It’s a nuanced, thoughtful yet propulsive read that’s buoyed by Nguyen’s ghostly watercolors, which imbue even the bulkiest piece of future-tech with an uncanny layer of menace.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "1632154269", "asin": "", "oclc": 908087928, "seamus": 458342963, "bookshop": 9781632154262, "cover": "1632154269", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781632154262", "isbn10": "1632154269", "links": [] }, "44": { "id": 44, "title": "Descent: A Novel", "author": "Tim Johnston", "text": "This was the first book I read in 2015, and it was also my favorite. When 18-year-old Caitlin goes missing on a family vacation in the Rocky Mountains, her stoic father stays behind, always looking. An unlikable character will surprise you, and there’s an ascent — a drive up, up into the mountains through snow-covered switchback turns — that is excruciatingly satisfying. Long after another big 2015 thriller, The Girl On The Train, evaporated from my reading brain, I am still thinking about Descent.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "family matters", "mysteries & thrillers", "fiction", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Shannon Rhoades" ], "isbn": "1616203048", "asin": "", "oclc": 866938509, "seamus": 374045887, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1616203048", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616203047", "isbn10": "1616203048", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 44, "book": "Descent: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Descent' Is A Twisty Thriller-Plus", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/06/374040251/descent-is-a-twisty-thriller-plus" } ] }, "45": { "id": 45, "title": "Destiny And Power: The American Odyssey Of George Herbert Walker Bush", "author": "Jon Meacham", "text": "Jon Meacham’s biography of George H.W. Bush wasn’t even out before it started making news. In Destiny And Power, the 41st president of the U.S. criticizes former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — two key players in his son’s administration. The book also describes the elder Bush’s view of the war he led against Iraq. These anecdotes are based on Meacham’s extensive interviews with Bush, with many others and with unique access to Bush’s audio diaries. Meacham described Bush to me as a politician who would say nearly anything to attain power (e.g., “Read my lips. No new taxes”) and then “do the right thing,” even if directly contradictory, once in office.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "rather long", "nonfiction", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Robert Siegel" ], "isbn": "1400067650", "asin": "", "oclc": 907446893, "seamus": 456614867, "bookshop": 9781400067657, "cover": "1400067650", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781400067657", "isbn10": "1400067650", "links": [] }, "46": { "id": 46, "title": "Did You Ever Have a Family", "author": "Bill Clegg", "text": "Bill Clegg’s polished, deeply compassionate debut novel digs through the ashes of a tragic fire that wipes out a woman’s nearest and dearest on the eve of her daughter’s wedding to explore how guilt and regrets fan the flames of scorching grief — and how human connection helps calm them. Yes, the title is mawkish and the sensational setup feels like the stuff of tabloids. But the novel, shifting between various survivors, shines as it sifts through everything that went up in smoke that night to reveal what actually happened. It also salvages the solace and hope to be found in connecting with others.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "family matters", "fiction", "the dark side", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "1476798176", "asin": "", "oclc": 1476798176, "seamus": 43558206, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1476798176", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476798172", "isbn10": "1476798176", "links": [] }, "47": { "id": 47, "title": "Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt", "author": "Kristin Hersh", "text": "Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh recounts the time she spent with her friend Vic Chesnutt, the indie rock legend who died in 2009 at age 45. Written mostly in the second person, it’s essentially a tender, angry love letter to Chesnutt. Don’t Suck, Don’t Die is not only one of the best books of the year; it’s one of the most beautiful rock memoirs ever written. Hersh is as stunningly talented an author as she is a musician, and her portrayal of Chesnutt is perfectly done.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "for music lovers", "rather short", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "nonfiction", "no biz like show biz" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0292759479", "asin": "", "oclc": 904861640, "seamus": 443436098, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0292759479", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780292759473", "isbn10": "0292759479", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 47, "book": "Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt", "source": "NPR", "text": "Memories Of A Maybe Angel In 'Don't Suck, Don't Die'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/28/443413386/memories-of-a-maybe-angel-in-dont-suck-dont-die" } ] }, "48": { "id": 48, "title": "Drawn & Quarterly: 25 Years Of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics And Graphic Novels", "author": "edited by Tom Devlin", "text": "Here’s one for the comics maven on your shopping list — even if that’s you. Venerated publisher D&Q has gone all-out with this 776-page anniversary tome. Works by alt-comics luminaries Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Joe Sacco, Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman, Peter Bagge, Lynda Barry and Julie Doucet intermingle with creations by a bevy of up-and-comers, plus numerous essays on the form. Want to remember why comics can be an intellectual treat? This volume does the trick.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "rather long", "for art lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "177046199X", "asin": "", "oclc": 894141106, "seamus": 412882203, "bookshop": "", "cover": "177046199X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781770461994", "isbn10": "177046199X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 48, "book": "Drawn & Quarterly: 25 Years Of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics And Graphic Novels", "source": "NPR", "text": "After 25 Years, A Comics Publisher Pauses To Collect And Reflect", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/30/412885068/after-25-years-a-comics-publisher-pauses-to-collect-and-reflect" } ] }, "49": { "id": 49, "title": "Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, And The Night That Split The Sixties", "author": "Elijah Wald", "text": "All folk music lovers think they know what happened at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when a scruffy, much loved American protest singer whipped out a Stratocaster. The musical disruption that followed rivals the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Fortunately, cultural historian Elijah Wald wasn’t content to let sleeping legends lie. Wald revisits Bob Dylan’s infamous set through contemporary accounts (including pages from one fan’s scrapbook) and interviews with surviving participants. The result leaves those of us who weren’t there wishing we had been. It’s rollicking, poignant and fun.
", "tags": [ "for music lovers", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Cheryl Devall" ], "isbn": "0062366688", "asin": "", "oclc": 913522388, "seamus": 424977707, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062366688", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062366689", "isbn10": "0062366688", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 49, "book": "Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, And The Night That Split The Sixties", "source": "NPR", "text": "50 Years Ago, Bob Dylan Electrified A Decade With One Concert", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/25/424977355/50-years-ago-bob-dylan-electrified-a-decade-with-one-concert" } ] }, "50": { "id": 50, "title": "Echo", "author": "Pam Muñoz Ryan", "text": "Stories within stories intertwine as the lives of three children from three vastly different backdrops and time frames set the stage for Echo. From bleak Nazi Germany to a Depression-era orphanage in Pennsylvania, to sunny World War II Southern California, a deceptively simple harmonica becomes a powerful instrument in the hands of each child. Though they never meet, these three are bound together not just by the harmonic notes but by their bravery, determination and heart. Pam Muñoz Ryan’s modern classic draws you in, and you will still hear the music, long after the last page is read. (For ages 10 to 14)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books", "family matters", "for music lovers", "historical fiction", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "0439874025", "asin": "", "oclc": 881179207, "seamus": 457226042, "bookshop": 9780439874021, "cover": "0439874025", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780439874021", "isbn10": "0439874025", "links": [] }, "51": { "id": 51, "title": "Ellie", "author": "Mike Wu", "text": "Introducing Ellie, an adorable baby elephant. When she hears that her zoo is closing, little Ellie is sad because there’s nothing she can do to help … until she comes across a brush and some paint. As Ellie begins to experiment she discovers that her paintings can help to keep the zoo open. Mike Wu’s friendly watercolors harken back to an earlier era of picture books, and this story of hope, determination and creativity saving the day will leave you cheering for Ellie. (For ages 3 to 5)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books", "for art lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "1484712390", "asin": "", "oclc": 879983321, "seamus": 458509840, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1484712390", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781484712399", "isbn10": "1484712390", "links": [] }, "52": { "id": 52, "title": "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, And The Quest For A Fantastic Future", "author": "Ashlee Vance", "text": "Elon Musk is a real man, but also a cartoon superhero. He decided to take on the biggest challenges on Earth — as well as in outer space — and launched not one, but three companies: Tesla Motors, the luxury electric car brand; SpaceX, the private firm that wants to slash the cost of space travel; and SolarCity, which is led by his cousin from South Africa. When I told a 5-year-old friend about the entrepreneur’s life, he said, preciously: “He is doing too much. He needs to focus.” Sound advice for a man who doesn’t seem to know how to take advice. Musk is all over the place. The biography by Ashlee Vance is not. It’s a page-turning read with brilliant detail. And quite a testament to the reporting. When Musk refused to participate in interviews, Vance circled his friends and family and became such a pain, the superhero caved, and talked.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "nonfiction", "it’s all geek to me", "book club ideas", "science!" ], "reviewers": [ "Aarti Shahani" ], "isbn": "0062301233", "asin": "", "oclc": 881436803, "seamus": 458509704, "bookshop": 9780062301239, "cover": "0062301233", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062301239", "isbn10": "0062301233", "links": [] }, "53": { "id": 53, "title": "Epitaph: A Novel Of The O.K. Corral", "author": "Mary Doria Russell", "text": "Whatever it is you think you know about the gunfight at the OK Corral, however it is you think you feel about it, forget it all. Or don’t. Maybe cling all the tighter to whatever convictions you have about what happened, who was right and who was wrong on that day, because Mary Doria Russell has 600 pages to burn a fresh understanding into you, and she uses every one of them. Needs every one of them, too, because like I said, whatever it is you think you know about what happened at the OK Corral, you’re probably wrong.
", "tags": [ "rather long", "historical fiction", "fiction", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0062198769", "asin": "", "oclc": 881399647, "seamus": 389258764, "bookshop": 9780062198761, "cover": "0062198769", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062198761", "isbn10": "0062198769", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 53, "book": "Epitaph: A Novel Of The O.K. Corral", "source": "NPR", "text": "30 Seconds That Echo Through History In 'Epitaph'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/07/388955173/30-seconds-that-echo-through-history-in-epitaph" } ] }, "54": { "id": 54, "title": "Fake Fruit Factory", "author": "Patrick Wensick", "text": "Twenty-six-year-old Mayor Bo Rutili is the fourth-youngest mayor in the country, leader of the decaying town of Dyson, Ohio. In Patrick Wensick’s wondrous, uproarious Fake Fruit Factory, Bo must pull Dyson together after NASA predicts a satellite will crash into the town, a threat that’s compounded by political machinations, reality-show intrusions — and a mummy. Yes, a mummy. If it all sounds like Twin Peaks meets Scooby-Doo, well, it is — but in the best possible way.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "funny stuff", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1940430569", "asin": "", "oclc": 903424757, "seamus": 439561117, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1940430569", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781940430560", "isbn10": "1940430569", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 54, "book": "Fake Fruit Factory", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Fake Fruit Factory' Portrays Warped, Whimsical Small-Town America", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/14/437287168/fake-fruit-factory-portrays-warped-whimsical-small-town-america" } ] }, "55": { "id": 55, "title": "Fates And Furies: A Novel", "author": "Lauren Groff", "text": "I fell in love with Lauren Groff’s writing in her 2012 novel, Arcadia. My admiration continues with Fates and Furies, though this time I was also sucked in by a plot that had me sneaking off to read the book while laundry piled up and chores went undone. It’s the story of the marriage between Lotto, short for Lancelot, and Mathilde. They meet and marry in a rush of passion. He expects only good things from life, and with Mathilde by his side he has both love and success. But their story is told in two parts, and when we see the marriage from Mathilde’s perspective, it takes on a darker sheen. Enough said. Forget the laundry, just dig in.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "fiction", "love & romance", "seriously great writing", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Lynn Neary" ], "isbn": "1594634475", "asin": "", "oclc": 900623942, "seamus": 440226506, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594634475", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594634475", "isbn10": "1594634475", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 55, "book": "Fates And Furies: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Lauren Groff Used 'Fates And Furies' To Bring 'Feminine Rage' Into Light", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/27/451928229/lauren-groff-used-fates-and-furies-to-bring-feminine-rage-into-light" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 55, "book": "Fates And Furies: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Dreamy Marriage Turns To Rage In 'Fates And Furies'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/15/437286835/a-dreamy-marriage-turns-to-rage-in-fates-and-furies" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 55, "book": "Fates And Furies: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Join The 'Morning Edition' Book Club As We Read 'Fates And Furies'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/15/440224908/join-the-morning-edition-book-club-as-we-read-fates-and-furies" } ] }, "56": { "id": 56, "title": "Fatherland: A Family History", "author": "Nina Bunjevac", "text": "It will take you only an hour or two to read this graphic memoir, even if you stop on every page to admire Yugoslavian-Canadian artist Nina Bunjevac’s crosshatched handiwork. And what a story she has to tell: When Bunjevac was 2, her mother moved her and her sister back to Yugoslavia to escape Bunjevac’s father, whose involvement with a Serbian nationalist terrorist group ultimately led to his death in an accidental explosion. The book follows Bunjevac as she tries to better understand her father. I will admit the story isn’t exactly happy, but it will stay with you for days — or months, in my case.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "comics & graphic novels", "family matters", "rather short", "nonfiction", "the dark side", "tales from around the world", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Becky Sullivan" ], "isbn": "1631490311", "asin": "", "oclc": 899141143, "seamus": 377190866, "bookshop": 9781631490316, "cover": "1631490311", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781631490316", "isbn10": "1631490311", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 56, "book": "Fatherland: A Family History", "source": "NPR", "text": "In 'Fatherland,' A Daughter Outlines Her Dad's Radicalization", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/25/378657704/in-fatherland-a-daughter-outlines-her-dads-radicalization" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 56, "book": "Fatherland: A Family History", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Cool, Painstaking Account Of A Difficult Past In 'Fatherland'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/21/377189726/a-cool-painstaking-account-of-a-difficult-past-in-fatherland" } ] }, "57": { "id": 57, "title": "Fever Pitch", "author": "Heidi Cullinan", "text": "Closeted Aaron hooks up with out-and-proud — and harassed — Giles, then arranges to go to the same small private Midwest college Giles is attending. Mixed signals have the boys circling each other warily, but when they finally come together, the relationship is intense — and brings down the wrath of Aaron’s father. Buoyed by campuswide support, especially from a music department that’s like a second family, Aaron begins to feel safe, but a truly malevolent enemy is determined to keep them apart forever. A touching romance that spotlights how devastating (and sometimes dangerous) coming out can be, as well as the healing power of love and music.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "love & romance", "for music lovers", "let’s talk about sex", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "1619226189", "asin": "B00KNPC1M2", "oclc": 912620517, "seamus": 458062117, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1619226189", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781619226180", "isbn10": "1619226189", "links": [] }, "58": { "id": 58, "title": "Fig", "author": "Sarah Elizabeth Schantz", "text": "This lyrical debut novel tells the story of Fig as she makes her way toward the specter of her 19th birthday, the age at which her mother’s schizophrenia first emerged. Fig’s own instability and deep love for her artistic mom propel her into a series of compulsive tasks in a quest to save her family. The mental illness in this book is portrayed with great compassion. The result is a nuanced portrait of a family struggling to be good to one another under heartbreaking circumstances.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "fiction", "young adult", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Caitlyn Paxson" ], "isbn": "1481423584", "asin": "", "oclc": 884570954, "seamus": 458809259, "bookshop": 9781481423588, "cover": "1481423584", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781481423588", "isbn10": "1481423584", "links": [] }, "59": { "id": 59, "title": "Find Me: A Novel", "author": "Laura van den Berg", "text": "Laura van den Berg’s novel follows Joy, a young woman who is taken to a hospital in rural Kansas after surviving a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Find Me is both touching and haunting, an extremely powerful look at the fragility of human life, the connections we make in dire circumstances, and the will to survive even when it seems like there’s no point.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0374154716", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582747, "seamus": 385198820, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374154716", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374154714", "isbn10": "0374154716", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 59, "book": "Find Me: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Find Me' Gets Lost Along The Way", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/17/385193550/find-me-gets-lost-along-the-way" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 59, "book": "Find Me: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Dangerous Freedoms And Fading Memories In 'Find Me'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/14/386059140/dangerous-freedoms-and-fading-memories-in-find-me" } ] }, "60": { "id": 60, "title": "Fortune Smiles: Stories", "author": "Adam Johnson", "text": "Adam Johnson, who won the Pulitzer for his novel The Orphan Master’s Son returns to North Korea for the title story in his new collection, in which he reveals the surprising culture shock as two North Korean defectors try to adjust to Seoul’s “bewildering nature.” “Nirvana” revolves around a high-tech genius whose talks via iProjector to an assassinated president give him comfort when he can’t help his temporarily paralyzed wife. In these stories and others, about a UPS driver navigating the post-Katrina universe with his toddler son or an ex-Stasi torturer meeting his doom, Johnson shows astonishing empathy and inventiveness.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "tales from around the world", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "0812997476", "asin": "", "oclc": 911255046, "seamus": 432091161, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812997476", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812997477", "isbn10": "0812997476", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 60, "book": "Fortune Smiles: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Fortune Smiles' Can Be Brilliant, But It's Never Easy", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/19/432582428/fortune-smiles-can-be-brilliant-but-its-never-easy" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 60, "book": "Fortune Smiles: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Dealing With Freedom — And Disaster — In 'Fortune Smiles'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/15/432083424/dealing-with-freedom-and-disaster-in-fortune-smiles" } ] }, "61": { "id": 61, "title": "Freedom's Child: A Novel", "author": "Jax Miller", "text": "Drunk barkeep Freedom Oliver isn’t who she says she is, and when her long-buried criminal past reaches its tentacles toward the Oregon town where she’s landed, Freedom has to choose between her own anonymity in witness protection and the safety of the two children she gave up for adoption as part of her plea bargain. There’s a lot going on in this novel by first-timer Jax Miller, and if you’re after a perfectly plotted gem, look elsewhere — but if you’re looking for something original, compelling and voice-y, you’re in for a treat.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "0804186804", "asin": "", "oclc": 890814685, "seamus": 412016303, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0804186804", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780804186803", "isbn10": "0804186804", "links": [] }, "62": { "id": 62, "title": "Freeman's: Arrival: The Best New Writing On Arrival", "author": "edited by John Freeman", "text": "Former Granta editor John Freeman (full disclosure: We served together on the board of the National Book Critics Circle) taps his global literary network for illuminating new work in this, the first anthology in a biannual series. It includes eloquent commentaries on the theme of arrival by Louise Erdrich, returning to a cemetery in Turtle Island; Colum McCann, circumnavigating Dublin airport; and David Mitchell, sensing a ghost in his bedroom in Hiroshima. Lydia Davis describes teaching herself Norwegian by reading a Dag Solstad novel. Aleksandar Hemon ponders his parents’ relocation from Sarajevo. Plus new work from Anne Carson, Honor Moore, Haruki Murakami, and Laura van den Berg. Perfect reading for our ever-accelerating times.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "tales from around the world", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "0802124410", "asin": "", "oclc": 904813632, "seamus": 458372260, "bookshop": 9780802124418, "cover": "0802124410", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780802124418", "isbn10": "0802124410", "links": [] }, "63": { "id": 63, "title": "Funny Girl", "author": "Nick Hornby", "text": "No, this isn’t Nick Hornby’s take on the classic Barbra Streisand musical, but rather the story of a different funny girl. Sophie Straw is a Lucille Ball devotee and small-town beauty queen who moves to London and lands the lead role in a BBC sitcom. But this isn’t just Sophie’s story; Hornby lovingly creates an ensemble of writers, producers and actors trying to make light entertainment during the turbulent 1960s. Funny Girl explores the roles of highbrow and lowbrow entertainment, and what it means when art imitates life. The result is a charming, sweet book that’s not at all as fluffy as the sitcom at its center.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "historical fiction", "fiction", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Jessica Reedy" ], "isbn": "1594205418", "asin": "", "oclc": 884539466, "seamus": 381635933, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594205418", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594205415", "isbn10": "1594205418", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 63, "book": "Funny Girl", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Funny Girl' Is A Book Made For Binge-Watching", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/03/381635164/funny-girl-is-a-book-made-for-binge-watching" } ] }, "64": { "id": 64, "title": "Future Perfect", "author": "Jen Larsen", "text": "Ashley Perkins is a 17-year-old biracial Latina girl growing up in her grandmother’s house. She’s smart, funny, driven, ambitious — and fat; so far as her grandmother is concerned, that last quality obliterates everything else. Every year, Ashley’s grandmother offers her birthday gifts in exchange for losing weight, and every year Ashley rejects them out of hand — until the year her grandmother offers her full tuition to Harvard in exchange for weight-loss surgery. For the first time, Ashley finds herself seriously considering making the horrific bargain — and the book follows her temptations and resistance, her friendships and soul-searching. A gorgeous, fiercely moving debut.
", "tags": [ "young adult", "family matters", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "0062321234", "asin": "", "oclc": 910936247, "seamus": 458336115, "bookshop": 9780062321237, "cover": "0062321234", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062321237", "isbn10": "0062321234", "links": [] }, "65": { "id": 65, "title": "George", "author": "Alex Gino", "text": "George has a secret. She knows something no one else does — that she’s not a boy, she’s a girl. Only, George is too scared to tell people, for fear they won’t understand, or they will laugh … or they will stop loving her. But when George takes on the role of Charlotte in her class’ production of Charlotte’s Web, she can finally show the world who she really is. Warm, funny and heartbreaking, Alex Gino’s incredible debut novel George is one to cherish and share. (For ages 8 to 12)
", "tags": [ "family matters", "kids’ books", "fiction", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "1407158279", "asin": "", "oclc": 900624128, "seamus": 434305960, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1407158279", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781407158273", "isbn10": "1407158279", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 65, "book": "George", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'George' Wants You To Know: She's Really Melissa", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/434277989/-george-wants-you-to-know-she-s-really-melissa" } ] }, "66": { "id": 66, "title": "Get In Trouble: Stories", "author": "Kelly Link", "text": "These days some of my favorite reading experiences are those books and stories where fantasy, science fiction and realism get all mixed up in a deliciously intriguing package. Kelly Link’s collection, Get in Trouble, falls into that category. Each story introduces you to another world, from boyfriends who are literally unreal to a superpowered lovers’ reunion in a ghostly theme park. The first story, “The Summer People,” begins as a straightforward tale of a girl in rural North Carolina, and gives no hint of the mysterious place it will take you before it is over. Link has a gift for creating characters with emotional lives that feel deeply human even in situations that bear no relation to reality.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "short stories, essays & poetry", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Lynn Neary" ], "isbn": "0804179689", "asin": "", "oclc": 878023877, "seamus": 383276904, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0804179689", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780804179683", "isbn10": "0804179689", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 66, "book": "Get In Trouble: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ignoring The Rules, Kelly Link Traffics In Wonder, Irony And Teenage Longings", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/10/384112942/ignoring-the-rules-kelly-link-traffics-in-wonder-irony-and-teenage-longings" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 66, "book": "Get In Trouble: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Drift Away Into The Not-Quite-Dreamy Logic Of 'Get In Trouble'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/03/383316784/drift-away-into-the-not-quite-dreamy-logic-of-get-in-trouble" } ] }, "67": { "id": 67, "title": "Girl In The Dark: A Memoir", "author": "Anna Lyndsey", "text": "Anna Lyndsey has a slight light sensitivity that grows worse until it becomes debilitating and she finds herself living in a dark box, mummified in layers of light-protectant clothing. Her disorienting, dreamy memoir tries to capture what it feels like to live in the dark, where her personhood, her presence as a body are suddenly in question. How do you deal with a sudden, violent narrowing of life — from something that’s expansive, impossibly full, to a small existence where meaning, instead of flowing in streams, must be eked out from unwilling corners? And what about identity — are you still yourself if everything you associated with your former life is impossible? In this gorgeous book, that question — is there such a thing as a stable, continuous self? — goes from being theoretical to being desperately, urgently relevant.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "seriously great writing", "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "nonfiction", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Annalisa Quinn" ], "isbn": "0385539606", "asin": "", "oclc": 881436918, "seamus": 390461967, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385539606", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385539609", "isbn10": "0385539606", "links": [] }, "68": { "id": 68, "title": "Girl Waits With Gun", "author": "Amy Stewart", "text": "I don’t particularly like to laugh when I read — I’d happily have my nose in a crime book at all times — but I read this entire novel with a smile on my face. Amy Stewart resurrects a very real heroine from history: In 1914 New Jersey, Constance Kopp dared to pursue justice for herself and her sisters after their horse buggy was hit by a car. The adventures that follow set Constance on a path to becoming one of the first female deputy sheriffs in the U.S. And how I smiled when I found out this is the first of a trilogy!
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "family matters", "historical fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Shannon Rhoades" ], "isbn": "0544409914", "asin": "", "oclc": 898052619, "seamus": 436386260, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0544409914", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780544409910", "isbn10": "0544409914", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 68, "book": "Girl Waits With Gun", "source": "NPR", "text": "Truth Is Strange And Fiction Is Charming In 'Girl Waits With Gun'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/435543465/truth-is-strange-and-fiction-is-charming-in-girl-waits-with-gun" } ] }, "69": { "id": 69, "title": "Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle For Voting Rights In America", "author": "Ari Berman", "text": "In 1965, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, wiping away obstacles that had prevented African-Americans from voting, like literacy tests and poll taxes. But what happened after the VRA became law? In Give Us the Ballot, Ari Berman chronicles five decades of political and ideological fights over voting rights. He argues that the law’s passage birthed a “counterrevolutionary” movement that worked to restrict minority voters through voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering, voting purges and other efforts. Berman’s book culminates with the 2013 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The book seems particularly interesting now that we’re in the midst of the first presidential election held since that controversial decision.
", "tags": [ "for history lovers", "eye-opening reads", "nonfiction", "staff picks", "identity & culture", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Sam Briger" ], "isbn": "0374158274", "asin": "", "oclc": 904801086, "seamus": 429327139, "bookshop": 9780374158279, "cover": "0374158274", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374158279", "isbn10": "0374158274", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 69, "book": "Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle For Voting Rights In America", "source": "NPR", "text": "Republican Voter Suppression Efforts Are Targeting Minorities, Journalist Says", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659784277/republican-voter-suppression-efforts-are-targeting-minorities-journalist-says" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 69, "book": "Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle For Voting Rights In America", "source": "NPR", "text": "Block The Vote: A Journalist Discusses Voting Rights And Restrictions", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/10/431238980/block-the-vote-a-journalist-discusses-voting-rights-and-restrictions" } ] }, "70": { "id": 70, "title": "Gold Fame Citrus: A Novel", "author": "Claire Vaye Watkins", "text": "The prose is stunning in this beautiful, meditative exploration of tomorrow’s likeliest nightmare. That’s when Claire Vaye Watkins has set her new dystopia du jour novel, Gold Fame Citrus: just over a too-near horizon where everything in the American West is drought and lack and death. Where the water is gone and the people are gone and the Southwest has become a wild, weird, rolling apocalypse that, sure, is a fiction today but might be history by next year.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "1594634238", "asin": "", "oclc": 907391179, "seamus": 444498384, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594634238", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594634239", "isbn10": "1594634238", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 70, "book": "Gold Fame Citrus: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Gold Fame Citrus' Holds Fear In A Handful Of Dust", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/30/443413533/gold-fame-citrus-holds-fear-in-a-handful-of-dust" } ] }, "71": { "id": 71, "title": "Golden Age: A Novel", "author": "Jane Smiley", "text": "Jane Smiley’s expansive, cumulatively addictive “Last Hundred Years” trilogy plows through a century of American history and social change as it follows an Iowa farm family from 1920-2019. The Langdons disperse across the country, fight wars overseas, serve in Congress, make and lose bundles on Wall Street, marry and divorce, and suffer the effects of extreme weather. The trilogy’s power lies in the unfolding lives of a Russian novel’s worth of characters who breed and hybridize in unpredictable ways — yet still share a connection, however eroded, to their agrarian roots. Golden Age, with its many deaths and its emphasis on the alarming, far-reaching impact of climate change, leaves some surviving characters wondering whether the golden age is perhaps behind them. The result is a sobering finale to Smiley’s impressive saga.
", "tags": [ "rather long", "family matters", "fiction", "book club ideas", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "0307700348", "asin": "", "oclc": 908698999, "seamus": 458371217, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0307700348", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307700346", "isbn10": "0307700348", "links": [] }, "72": { "id": 72, "title": "Golden Son: Book II Of The Red Rising Trilogy", "author": "Pierce Brown", "text": "Last year Pierce Brown wrote a book called Red Rising that was like The Hunger Games with real blood under its nails. The second novel in his trilogy is like a space opera in the best possible way, full of ships and ray guns and rocket boots. It’s kind of a YA series (in that the protagonist begins in his teens), but owing to some wild streak of honesty, Brown writes characters who actually behave like the murderous, entitled, terrified, insane, bestial kids they are. Brown’s command of plot (and director’s eye for dramatic, explode-y set pieces) keep the story surging forward, and the path he carves across space, the moon and Mars is bloody in the extreme.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "the dark side", "rather long", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0345539834", "asin": "", "oclc": 869904689, "seamus": 374048598, "bookshop": 9780345539830, "cover": "0345539834", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780345539830", "isbn10": "0345539834", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 72, "book": "Golden Son: Book II Of The Red Rising Trilogy", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Golden Son' Is Space Opera That Doesn't Forget The Opera", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/11/374036545/golden-son-is-space-opera-that-doesnt-forget-the-opera" } ] }, "73": { "id": 73, "title": "Goodbye Stranger", "author": "Rebecca Stead", "text": "Goodbye Stranger centers on a group of middle-school girlfriends who are determined to stick together as each grapples with how she defines (and then redefines) herself. Bridge has a new friend who’s a boy (does that make him a boyfriend?); Emily has new curves; Tabitha is discovering her inner activist; and a mystery high school girl experiences a Valentine’s Day drama that will affect them all. It’s a funny and warm page-turner that challenges conventional wisdom about mean girls and social media. (For ages 10 and up)
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "kids’ books", "love & romance", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Justine Kenin" ], "isbn": "0385743173", "asin": "", "oclc": 891427691, "seamus": 429366825, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385743173", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385743174", "isbn10": "0385743173", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 73, "book": "Goodbye Stranger", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Bonds Of Friendship Stay Strong In 'Stranger'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/429365941/the-bonds-of-friendship-stay-strong-in-stranger" } ] }, "74": { "id": 74, "title": "Gutshot: Stories", "author": "Amelia Gray", "text": "Amelia Gray’s prize-winning, weirdly skewed stories are addictive. This third collection — her best yet — offers 36 marvels. “It’s harder to leave your burning home after you’ve spent so much time cleaning its floors,” she writes in “Houseproud.” “Labyrinth” recasts Halloween in a Hellenic vein, in a world that is ominous and off kilter. And she’s funny, too: “This isn’t a strip club; it’s a crime scene. And it happens to have some nice lunch specials.” Read her because she’s full of surprises, and she’ll change the way you see your world.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "funny stuff", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "0374175446", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582763, "seamus": 397073187, "bookshop": 9780374175443, "cover": "0374175446", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374175443", "isbn10": "0374175446", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 74, "book": "Gutshot: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Gutshot' Is Gloriously Grand Guignol", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/14/397071343/gutshot-is-gloriously-grand-guignol" } ] }, "75": { "id": 75, "title": "H Is For Hawk", "author": "Helen Macdonald", "text": "U.K. writer Helen Macdonald’s breathtakingly beautiful account of training a hawk after her father’s death also tells the gripping parallel story of great English writer and falconry aficionado T.H. White, whose series of Arthurian novels established him as a sort of spiritual patriarch for British writers interested in their country’s pre-Christian mythology. But White was also a conflicted sadist whose passion for hawks was partly an attempt to control his own savage impulses. Who could have imagined a study of hawk-human communion could also be a brilliant reflection on nature, nationalism, loneliness and family tragedies?
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Neda Ulaby" ], "isbn": "0802123414", "asin": "", "oclc": 883651136, "seamus": 389230749, "bookshop": 9780802123411, "cover": "0802123414", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780802123411", "isbn10": "0802123414", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 75, "book": "H Is For Hawk", "source": "NPR", "text": "How We Deal With Loss In Different Ways In Two Beautifully Written Memoirs", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392572768/how-we-deal-with-loss-in-different-ways-in-two-beautifully-written-memoirs" } ] }, "76": { "id": 76, "title": "Habitat: The Field Guide To Decorating", "author": "Lauren Liess", "text": "Whether you’re an Ikea devotee, an antiques store prowler or a catalog shopper, home design can be intimidating. Lauren Liess’ book, Habitat: The Field Guide To Decorating, breaks it down into what she calls the fundamental and intangible elements of design. So whether you need to know what size rug will work best in your space or how to infuse your home with comfort and charm, Habitat can help. And it doesn’t hurt that her aesthetic — which values nature and texture and calm and vintage touches — mirrors that of my favorite designer of all time: my grandmother.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "for art lovers", "nonfiction", "it’s all geek to me" ], "reviewers": [ "Sarah Handel" ], "isbn": "1419717855", "asin": "", "oclc": 903284854, "seamus": 457928142, "bookshop": 9781419717857, "cover": "1419717855", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781419717857", "isbn10": "1419717855", "links": [] }, "77": { "id": 77, "title": "Half An Inch Of Water: Stories", "author": "Percival Everett", "text": "These stories aren’t filled with stylistic somersaults and authorial acrobatics. They are plain in the best sense, an exemplar of high-plains stoicism. Though the stories share locations and characters, there’s no overarching narrative. The stories unfold in dry Wyoming and Colorado, where things aren’t good or bad, they just are: ominous and evocative and marvelous and difficult and amusing and bizarre.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction", "staff picks", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "1555977197", "asin": "", "oclc": 898419502, "seamus": 441504318, "bookshop": 9781555977191, "cover": "1555977197", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781555977191", "isbn10": "1555977197", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 77, "book": "Half An Inch Of Water: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "For Prolific Author Percival Everett, The Wilderness Is A Place Of Clarity", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/20/441504103/for-prolific-author-percival-everett-the-wilderness-is-a-place-of-clarity" } ] }, "78": { "id": 78, "title": "Hand Drawn Jokes For Smart Attractive People", "author": "Matthew Diffee", "text": "I’m barely average, so I may not have gotten as much out of it as you will. Still, even if you only understand 56 percent of what’s going on, this book is hilarious. Matthew Diffee is a master of conciseness. One drawing, a few words, and you’ll be calling people over to show them what you just discovered. The introductions to the thematically organized chapters are superb examples of joke-writing as well.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "funny stuff", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "1476748748", "asin": "", "oclc": 894746914, "seamus": 405204782, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1476748748", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476748740", "isbn10": "1476748748", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 78, "book": "Hand Drawn Jokes For Smart Attractive People", "source": "NPR", "text": "For 'New Yorker' Cartoonist, '90 Percent Rejection Is Doing Great'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/09/405202294/for-new-yorker-cartoonist-90-percent-rejection-is-doing-great" } ] }, "79": { "id": 79, "title": "Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction", "author": "Hannu Rajaniemi", "text": "In Hannu Rajaniemi’s collected short fiction, godhood is a plague, the city of Paris woos a Finnish man, a record chain’s logo is a dense symbolic capsule, and stories occasionally read you while you read them. Mixing myth, fairy tale and hard science fiction in dazzling proportions, these stories are mind-blowing, engrossing revelations of which I can only speak hyperbolically. From Finland to the farthest reaches of outer space, Rajaniemi weds vast scope to marvelous intimacy in prose reminiscent of a ringing glass bell.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "short stories, essays & poetry", "tales from around the world", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "1616961929", "asin": "", "oclc": 922576123, "seamus": 406719567, "bookshop": 9781616961923, "cover": "1616961929", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616961923", "isbn10": "1616961929", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 79, "book": "Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Science Of 'Collected Fiction' Is Pure Magic", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/20/406716402/the-science-of-collected-fiction-is-pure-magic" } ] }, "80": { "id": 80, "title": "Heaven: Poems", "author": "Rowan Ricardo Phillips", "text": "Rowan Ricardo Phillips’ second collection is packed with poems that romp and revel their way off the tongue — think “pomegranate balustrades” and “nacre-gnarled écorchés.” He packs phonic exuberance into the tightest turns of phrase, while pondering the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Homer’s Hector, or considering the vengeance of envious gods and the elusiveness of justice. Through it all, his poems circle back to variations on heaven — as afterlife, as fixed sphere, as backdrop to the stars. He repeats the word itself like a curse or a compulsion. And while he can get quite solemn about the celestial, the joy he takes in his language balances out the seriousness.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Camila Domonoske" ], "isbn": "0374168520", "asin": "", "oclc": 894816374, "seamus": 377261765, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374168520", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374168520", "isbn10": "0374168520", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 80, "book": "Heaven: Poems", "source": "NPR", "text": "Resurrections, Do-Overs, And Second Lives: A 2015 Poetry Preview", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/17/377189644/resurrections-do-overs-and-second-lives-a-2015-poetry-preview" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 80, "book": "Heaven: Poems", "source": "NPR", "text": "Resurrections, Do-Overs, And Second Lives: A 2015 Poetry Preview", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/17/377189644/resurrections-do-overs-and-second-lives-a-2015-poetry-preview" } ] }, "81": { "id": 81, "title": "Hip Hop Family Tree Book 3: 1983-1984 (Vol. 3)", "author": "Ed Piskor", "text": "Ed Piskor navigates the convoluted history of early-’80s urban culture with a buoyant combination of insight and good cheer. He captures such moments as the Beastie Boys’ transition from hardcore to rap, the rise of the Fat Boys, the creation of Whodini’s Escape, and Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin’s forging of the Def Jam label. His graphical skills are formidable. Though he works in a huge, 9-inch-by-13-inch format, each page barely seems to contain its subjects’ energy.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "for history lovers", "for music lovers", "for art lovers", "nonfiction", "identity & culture", "it’s all geek to me", "no biz like show biz" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "160699848X", "asin": "", "oclc": 861324827, "seamus": 427049009, "bookshop": 9781606998489, "cover": "160699848X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781606998489", "isbn10": "160699848X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 81, "book": "Hip Hop Family Tree Book 3: 1983-1984 (Vol. 3)", "source": "NPR", "text": "Beats Bubble Up In The Latest Volume Of 'Hip Hop Family Tree'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/08/11/488426984/beats-bubble-up-in-the-latest-volume-of-hip-hop-family-tree" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 81, "book": "Hip Hop Family Tree Book 3: 1983-1984 (Vol. 3)", "source": "NPR", "text": "Peace, Love And Realness In A Hip-Hop History", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/29/424726344/peace-love-and-realness-in-a-hip-hop-history" } ] }, "82": { "id": 82, "title": "Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs", "author": "Sally Mann", "text": "Sally Mann’s memoir, Hold Still, is a book about a photographer, but it’s only partially about photography. The native Virginian’s personal story is just as much about the South as it is about her own journey. In one section, she looks back on family road trips with her beloved childhood nanny, Gee-Gee, and remembers that she never saw her nanny eat; Gee-Gee was African-American, and the restaurants they went to were segregated. All the while, Mann explores “the treachery of memory,” or how photographs can erode our memories of an experience. But there’s nothing faded about this memoir – Mann’s paints a picture that’s as vivid as they come.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "family matters", "for art lovers", "rather long", "staff picks", "for history lovers", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Ariel Zambelich" ], "isbn": "0316247766", "asin": "", "oclc": 890625865, "seamus": 406159257, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316247766", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316247764", "isbn10": "0316247766", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 82, "book": "Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs", "source": "NPR", "text": "Making Art Out Of Bodies: Sally Mann Reflects On Life And Photography", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/12/405937803/making-art-out-of-bodies-sally-mann-reflects-on-life-and-photography" } ] }, "83": { "id": 83, "title": "Home", "author": "Carson Ellis", "text": "A gentle meditation on the idea of what constitutes a home, Carson Ellis’ picture book is whimsical and thought-provoking. Her lovely watercolor illustrations imbue both the grand (Slovakian duchesses’ mansions) and the familiar (an urban apartment) with ornate charm, but it is her inspired depictions of the odd (a Norse god’s castle and a mysterious estate encased in a geodesic dome) that make the book stand out. Best of all, in the final illustration of Ellis’ own studio (“An artist lives here”), each piece of bric-a-brac ties back to the vignettes shown previously, a detail attentive rereaders will surely find delightful. (For ages 4 to 8)
", "tags": [ "family matters", "kids’ books", "for art lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Margaret Willison" ], "isbn": "0763665290", "asin": "", "oclc": 903273486, "seamus": 458515738, "bookshop": 9780763665296, "cover": "0763665290", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780763665296", "isbn10": "0763665290", "links": [] }, "84": { "id": 84, "title": "Honeydew: Stories", "author": "Edith Pearlman", "text": "Like melon and prosciutto, the 20 bittersweet, unconventional love stories in Honeydew are a delectable combination of sweet and salty. Many are set in Godolphin, Mass., Pearlman’s fictional stand-in for Brookline, the Boston suburb that’s home to an educated, multicultural population of professionals — and Pearlman. She writes with wry charm, grace and compassion about people who learn to adjust their expectations and recognize the merits of being “happy enough.” These wise, penetrating stories, a worthy follow-up to Binocular Vision, her award-winning 2011 collection, reaffirm the value of living even as they acknowledge the loss and pain life so often entails.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "family matters", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "0316297232", "asin": "", "oclc": 884571010, "seamus": 378632882, "bookshop": 9780316297233, "cover": "0316297232", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316297233", "isbn10": "0316297232", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 84, "book": "Honeydew: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Delicious Short Stories, Ripe On The Vine In 'Honeydew'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/22/378611801/delicious-short-stories-ripe-on-the-vine-in-honeydew" } ] }, "85": { "id": 85, "title": "Hotels of North America", "author": "Rick Moody", "text": "Reginald Edward Morse is one of the “Top Reviewers” for a site called RateYourLodging.com — a man who uses the review format to spin a fractured story of love and loneliness and cockroaches and heartbreak. Hotels presents itself as a formal collection, a quasi-epistolary novel in the drag of a published guidebook, and Moody gives Morse an air of class that feels rented and roughly used. It’s a style that’s beautifully evocative except when it’s maddening (or annoying, or gross), and it gives Morse the perfect fractured voice for this postmodern tale.
", "tags": [ "rather short", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0316178551", "asin": "", "oclc": 859582197, "seamus": 455604261, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316178551", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316178556", "isbn10": "0316178551", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 85, "book": "Hotels of North America", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Downtrodden Protagonist Reveals Himself Room-By-Room In 'Hotels Of North America'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/07/458767650/a-downtrodden-protagonist-reveals-himself-room-by-room-in-hotels-of-north-americ" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 85, "book": "Hotels of North America", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Hotels Of North America' Gets 4 Stars", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/12/455604463/hotels-of-north-america-gets-four-stars" } ] }, "86": { "id": 86, "title": "Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir", "author": "Carrie Brownstein", "text": "Rock fans know Carrie Brownstein as one of the voices behind legendary riot grrrl outfit Sleater-Kinney, and comedy fans know her as Fred Armisen’s partner in the show Portlandia. She defies expectations once again with her new memoir, which is candid and brave, and a powerful tribute to the power of music to heal, to connect, to break you down and then make you whole again. Brownstein proves to be a funny, elegant writer, and her book is wholly original. Her music has always helped people feel like they really do belong somewhere, and her wonderful memoir does the same thing.
", "tags": [ "for music lovers", "biography & memoir", "seriously great writing", "family matters", "book club ideas", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "1594486638", "asin": "", "oclc": 904421445, "seamus": 452204320, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594486638", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594486630", "isbn10": "1594486638", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 86, "book": "Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "All Songs +1: Carrie Brownstein Isn't Who You Think She Is", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/11/05/454331830/all-songs-1-carrie-brownstein-isnt-who-you-think-she-is" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 86, "book": "Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "Music Destroys And Music Heals In 'Modern Girl'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/04/452891005/music-destroys-and-music-heals-in-modern-girl" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 86, "book": "Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Modern Girl' Carrie Brownstein Describes Finding (And Hiding) Herself In Music", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/27/452204158/modern-girl-carrie-brownstein-describes-finding-and-hiding-herself-in-music" } ] }, "87": { "id": 87, "title": "I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make The Most Of Their Time", "author": "Laura Vanderkam", "text": "Laura Vanderkam is a best-selling productivity author with four children, and her book is a bracingly practical corrective to the hand-wringers about women, success and having it all. Vanderkam analyzes more than 100 time diaries showing a typical week in the life of mothers who earn more than $100,000. In this admittedly privileged club, she says, women are getting plenty of sleep, exercise and me time; achieving at work without putting in crazy hours; and managing to connect with their children and partners, too. Her cheery message is: “A little intention goes a long way.”
", "tags": [ "eye-opening reads", "family matters", "nonfiction", "staff picks", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Anya Kamenetz" ], "isbn": "159184732X", "asin": "", "oclc": 910965560, "seamus": 457918936, "bookshop": "", "cover": "159184732X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781591847328", "isbn10": "159184732X", "links": [] }, "88": { "id": 88, "title": "If You Only Knew", "author": "Kristan Higgins", "text": "A winning story of two sisters navigating love and betrayal, from romance star Kristan Higgins. Wedding dress designer Jenny is determined to leave behind the ex-husband who abandoned her but still wants to be “best friends,” so she moves back to her suburban hometown — just in time for her sister Rachel’s seemingly perfect marriage to implode. Rachel loves her comfortable life but feels she can’t trust her husband. Meanwhile, Jenny is drawn to her emotionally wounded neighbor — and has to keep a secret that puts undue pressure on both sisters’ romantic relationships. Poignant, funny and richly entertaining.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "love & romance", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "037378497X", "asin": "", "oclc": 892461118, "seamus": 458338581, "bookshop": 9780373784974, "cover": "037378497X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780373784974", "isbn10": "037378497X", "links": [] }, "89": { "id": 89, "title": "In A Dark, Dark Wood", "author": "Ruth Ware", "text": "At home sick with a brain-numbing flu bearing down, I was unable to put this book down. A crime writer wakes with amnesia and the sinking feeling that she has done something bad. Then the story shifts to a group of 20-somethings gathered in a remote English country home for a “hen,” or bachelorette, party. There is murder, and there are also delightful tips of the pen to Agatha Christie. You will probably sniff out who is to blame, but only when you’re within striking distance of the end — and in no way will that spoil the fun.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "mysteries & thrillers", "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Shannon Rhoades" ], "isbn": "1501112317", "asin": "", "oclc": 903812560, "seamus": 431281712, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1501112317", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781501112317", "isbn10": "1501112317", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 89, "book": "In A Dark, Dark Wood", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Dark, Dark' Doings In A Slick Debut Thriller", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/18/432582306/dark-dark-doings-in-a-slick-debut-thriller" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 89, "book": "In A Dark, Dark Wood", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Scream' Meets Agatha Christie In 'A Dark, Dark Wood'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/10/431136362/english-bachelorette-party-is-the-perfect-setting-for-a-crime-novel" } ] }, "90": { "id": 90, "title": "In The Country: Stories", "author": "Mia Alvar", "text": "Set variously in the Philippines, the U.S. and Bahrain, In the Country is a stunning short story collection about people who have little to nothing in common with one another, except that they’re all trying to find a home, and it’s always a more challenging task than anyone would expect. Mia Alvar finds beauty in the unlikeliest of places, and that’s what makes this such an inspired, remarkable book.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "book club ideas", "fiction", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0385352816", "asin": "", "oclc": 891324469, "seamus": 410287268, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385352816", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385352819", "isbn10": "0385352816", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 90, "book": "In The Country: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Beyond The 'Sometimes Sentimental' Story Of Filipino Migrants", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/21/413462292/beyond-the-sometimes-sentimental-story-of-filipino-migrants" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 90, "book": "In The Country: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "We're All Looking For A Home 'In The Country'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/16/414616808/were-all-looking-for-a-home-in-the-country" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 90, "book": "In The Country: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Morally Messy Stories, Exquisitely Told, In Mia Alvar's 'In The Country'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/15/414655706/morally-messy-stories-exquisitely-told-in-mia-alvars-in-the-country" } ] }, "91": { "id": 91, "title": "Indian Harvest: Classic And Contemporary Vegetarian Dishes", "author": "Vikas Khanna", "text": "Vikas Khanna (chef at New York’s Junoon) isn’t shy about bringing together ingredients from all corners of the earth — spiced cauliflower with orange sauce, green lentils with spinach and chipotle, sauteed broccoli with grapefruit — in this bold vegetarian cookbook. Although the underlying spice palette of these recipes still points, however delicately, to his roots in Amritsar, India, Khanna’s sense of culinary adventure knows no frontiers.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "163286200X", "asin": "", "oclc": 898419233, "seamus": 458770474, "bookshop": "", "cover": "163286200X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781632862006", "isbn10": "163286200X", "links": [] }, "92": { "id": 92, "title": "Innocence; Or, Murder On Steep Street", "author": "Heda Margolius Kovály, translated by Alex Zucker", "text": "Thank goodness Soho Crime had the taste and intelligence to publish this 1973 gem of Czech crime fiction. Heda Kovaly, a Holocaust survivor and memoirist (Under A Cruel Star), wrote Innocence based on her own experience of 1950s Prague, and its gnarly twists and turns mimic the steep climb up that city’s Castle Hill. You think the main character is lonely Helena Nováková — but her narration is just part of the story. Once your seat belt is fastened, Kovaly takes you on a ride as thrilling for its literary mastery as for its bleak mystery. Caveat lector: You may find the end unsatisfying. But the bulk of the novel is so amazing you won’t care, and you’ll mourn the fact that Kovaly never wrote another.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "tales from around the world", "historical fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "1616954965", "asin": "", "oclc": 896687724, "seamus": 419179945, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1616954965", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616954963", "isbn10": "1616954965", "links": [] }, "93": { "id": 93, "title": "Interstellar Cinderella", "author": "Deborah Underwood, illustrated and co-authored by Meg Hunt", "text": "Take a classic fairy tale, blast it into outer space, give the heroine a toolbox, and welcome to the world of Interstellar Cinderella. In this upbeat retelling by Deborah Underwood, Cinderella is a whiz at mechanics. When she rescues the prince by fixing his spaceship, he becomes smitten. But will she marry him, or does this Cinderella have other ideas? Debut picture book illustrator Meg Hunt’s strong and lively art delves into a palette of deep purples, rusts and blues to show off a galaxy where anything is possible. (For ages 3 to 5)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books", "funny stuff", "it’s all geek to me", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "1452125325", "asin": "", "oclc": 869825134, "seamus": 457233872, "bookshop": 9781452125329, "cover": "1452125325", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781452125329", "isbn10": "1452125325", "links": [] }, "94": { "id": 94, "title": "Intimacy Idiot", "author": "Isaac Oliver", "text": "If you’re still mourning the demise of Sex and the City, and wish that David Sedaris would get a little raunchier, look no further than Isaac Oliver’s laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays about sleeping his way around New York. At first, his prose presents the polished self-presentation of a monologue or stand-up comedy routine, but Oliver doesn’t bore by remaining on the surface. Instead, he performs a daring emotional striptease, peeling away the layers of a stock character (the promiscuous single gay man) to reveal the heart and soul beneath.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "funny stuff", "let’s talk about sex", "short stories, essays & poetry", "staff picks", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Anya Kamenetz" ], "isbn": "1476746664", "asin": "", "oclc": 893668811, "seamus": 457919098, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1476746664", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476746661", "isbn10": "1476746664", "links": [] }, "95": { "id": 95, "title": "It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life Of Love And War", "author": "Lynsey Addario", "text": "In 2011 photojournalist Lynsey Addario was kidnapped in Libya. She was covering the fighting between dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s troops and rebel forces when the car she was traveling in (with three other journalists) was ransacked. She was tied up, assaulted and held for a week. Addario’s memoir, It’s What I Do, begins with this chilling scene. In her vivid retelling, you can practically hear the bullets whiz by and taste the dirt as she’s pushed to the ground with a gun held to her head. It’s a story of vulnerability, humanity and courage that will give you an adrenaline rush without your moving a muscle.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "tales from around the world", "eye-opening reads", "for art lovers", "staff picks", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Molly Seavy-Nesper" ], "isbn": "159420537X", "asin": "", "oclc": 881888259, "seamus": 385243918, "bookshop": "", "cover": "159420537X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594205378", "isbn10": "159420537X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 95, "book": "It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life Of Love And War", "source": "NPR", "text": "Powerful Photos Of Love And War By Lynsey Addario", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/10/25/660487232/the-remarkable-photos-of-lynsey-addario" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 95, "book": "It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life Of Love And War", "source": "NPR", "text": "Twice Kidnapped, Photographer Returns To War Zone: 'It's What I Do' ", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/11/385246118/twice-kidnapped-photographer-returns-to-war-zone-its-what-i-do" } ] }, "96": { "id": 96, "title": "Joan Of Arc: A History", "author": "Helen Castor", "text": "It turns out that 15th century France was Game of Thrones without the dragons. Helen Castor spends the first 89 pages of this biography setting up a world of blood and betrayal before Joan even makes her entrance. When the maid finally wades into this political snake pit, her power to move hearts and armies is both mysterious and astonishing. Castor never goes beyond the bounds of the documents and never succumbs to the modern impulse to psychoanalyze her heroine. As a result, this Joan is a creature of her time: used, destroyed and sanctified to serve the aims of the powerful.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "tales from around the world", "staff picks", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Ina Jaffe" ], "isbn": "0062384392", "asin": "", "oclc": 884961873, "seamus": 457923007, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062384392", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062384393", "isbn10": "0062384392", "links": [] }, "97": { "id": 97, "title": "Katrina: After The Flood", "author": "Gary Rivlin", "text": "Investigative reporters have long followed this rule from the 1976 film All The President’s Men: “Follow the money.” Gary Rivlin applies that dictum to power, politics and planning in New Orleans before and after its infamous 2005 deluge. His book focuses on the central role of black-owned Liberty Bank in the redevelopment of neighborhoods inhabited largely by African-American professionals. At the same time, Rivlin offers a strong, infuriating argument that Katrina was a catastrophe decades in the making, abetted by the powers that be on the local, state and national level. The narrative includes heroes, too: Liberty Chief Executive Alden McDonald, the publishers of the monthly New Orleans Tribune, and the endearingly bourgeois, resourceful and indomitable Wall sisters of New Orleans East.
", "tags": [ "rather long", "nonfiction", "for history lovers", "staff picks", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Cheryl Devall" ], "isbn": "1451692226", "asin": "", "oclc": 894746789, "seamus": 457920862, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1451692226", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781451692228", "isbn10": "1451692226", "links": [] }, "98": { "id": 98, "title": "Killing And Dying", "author": "Adrian Tomine", "text": "The six short stories of Killing and Dying fit squarely in the genre of Comics About People Being Horrible To Each Other dominated by such virtuosos of alienation as Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes. With surgical precision, Adrian Tomine dissects the everyday conflicts and unhealthy patterns that engulf couples and families: A would-be artist lashes out at his patient wife; a father grapples with his daughter’s embarrassing attempts at stand-up comedy; an alcoholic woman falls in with a man she knows she should not. Yet there’s nothing clinical about the empathy Tomine feels for his characters or the specificity of detail in his art; together, they create a world the reader cannot merely observe from a safe remove — a world so unsettlingly familiar it can’t help but implicate us, and pull us in.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "family matters", "the dark side", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "1770462090", "asin": "", "oclc": 907565724, "seamus": 458343330, "bookshop": 9781770462090, "cover": "1770462090", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781770462090", "isbn10": "1770462090", "links": [] }, "99": { "id": 99, "title": "Kitchen Hacks: How Clever Cooks Get Things Done", "author": "America's Test Kitchen", "text": "OK, it’s not a cookbook at all. It’s just a little book of quick tips — use a corkscrew to remove an avocado pit! Shell stubborn pistachios in a garlic press! Make dotted lines across a tomato with a fork to guide your knife to perfect slicing. Some tips have little to do with cooking — like using a toothbrush to disclose the hidden end of the plastic-wrap roll — but these ingenious answers to First World Problems will very likely find a happy home in your kitchen (or perhaps the bathroom closest to it).
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "eye-opening reads", "it’s all geek to me" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "1940352002", "asin": "", "oclc": 904801168, "seamus": 458770500, "bookshop": 9781940352008, "cover": "1940352002", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781940352008", "isbn10": "1940352002", "links": [] }, "100": { "id": 100, "title": "Kitchens Of The Great Midwest: A Novel", "author": "J. Ryan Stradal", "text": "The greatest magic in this book isn’t its depiction of foodie culture, which itself is quite wonderful. The magic lies in the way the main character — an elusive celebrity chef of destination dining — is revealed. The book is a chronological series of vignettes, from an infancy in which her father feeds her pureed pork shoulder, to her 30s, when she is the celebrity chef hosting secret destination dinners at $5,000 a plate. Never, though, is she the main actor in the events. I’m still scratching my head about how J. Ryan Stradal pulled it off.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "cookbooks & food", "family matters", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "052542914X", "asin": "", "oclc": 893894918, "seamus": 430314741, "bookshop": "", "cover": "052542914X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780525429142", "isbn10": "052542914X", "links": [] }, "101": { "id": 101, "title": "Lafayette In The Somewhat United States", "author": "Sarah Vowell", "text": "With the guy’s glorious French mug now frowning down at us from statues across the country, it may be tough to believe that the Marquis de Lafayette (“best friend” to a fledgling United States) was ever anything other than marble. Happily, Sarah Vowell’s funny, unpretentious meander through history is ready to remind us that Lafayette, the man who helped the patriots find their footing in the American Revolution, was once a teenager, too. Vowell may not take herself (or her subjects) too seriously, but her smirk never stands in the way of a good yarn. She manages a quick, quippy — and edifying — history of our “all-American inability to get our s - - - together.”
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "for history lovers", "funny stuff", "nonfiction", "staff picks", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Colin Dwyer" ], "isbn": "1594631743", "asin": "", "oclc": 900623786, "seamus": 448933113, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594631743", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594631740", "isbn10": "1594631743", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 101, "book": "Lafayette In The Somewhat United States", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Somewhat United' Brings Lafayette Down From His Pedestal", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/21/448932918/somewhat-united-brings-lafayette-down-from-his-pedestal" } ] }, "102": { "id": 102, "title": "Last Stop On Market Street", "author": "Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson", "text": "Every week a little boy and his grandma hop on the bus after church. Along the way, they meet all kinds of people — a person with lots of tattoos, a flirty blind man, a dude playing guitar. The boy complains about the rain and about not having a car. The grandmother is stern, but loving; they don’t need a car, and the rain waters the trees by the bus stop. The book features a diverse cast of characters, but it’s not a book about diversity. It’s a story about a kid and his grandma and the city, and the beauty and excitement of everyday adventures. (For ages 3 to 5)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books", "family matters", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Rebecca Hersher" ], "isbn": "0399257748", "asin": "", "oclc": 881469289, "seamus": 383856474, "bookshop": 9780399257742, "cover": "0399257748", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780399257742", "isbn10": "0399257748", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 102, "book": "Last Stop On Market Street", "source": "NPR", "text": "Teaching Kids About Slavery: Picture Books Struggle With The Task", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/01/22/463977451/controversial-picture-books-surface-struggle-to-help-children-understand-slavery" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 102, "book": "Last Stop On Market Street", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Last Stop On Market Street' Wins Newbery Medal, 'Finding Winnie' Takes Caldecott", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/11/462660992/last-stop-on-market-street-wins-newbery-medal-finding-winnie-takes-caldecott" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 102, "book": "Last Stop On Market Street", "source": "NPR", "text": "On Board A City Bus, A Little Boy Finds The Route To Gratitude", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/06/383856887/on-board-a-city-bus-a-little-boy-finds-the-route-to-gratitude" } ] }, "103": { "id": 103, "title": "Leaving Berlin: A Novel", "author": "Joseph Kanon", "text": "If you haven’t already, read The Good German, Joseph Kanon’s first Berlin novel (and, for good measure, see the movie starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett). However, you needn’t do so to enjoy Leaving Berlin, a stand-alone set in the very, very cold winter of 1948, when the divided capital was in physical ruins and crisscrossed by agents playing mental games at the highest levels of espionage. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer who escaped to America before the war, finds that his communist past puts him afoul of the swaggering U.S. authorities. They offer him a legal way back to America: spying in exchange for a passport. Unfortunately, they want him to spy on the love of his life.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "tales from around the world", "historical fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "1476704643", "asin": "", "oclc": 873740949, "seamus": 392504228, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1476704643", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476704647", "isbn10": "1476704643", "links": [] }, "104": { "id": 104, "title": "Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, And Other Writings", "author": "Shirley Jackson", "text": "“The Lottery” author Shirley Jackson died in 1965, so it’s surprising to see new, uncollected material still coming to light. Even more surprising: Much of this material is marvelous. It ranges from comic essays that reveal Jackson’s playful, even ridiculous side to powerful stories fit for the classics shelf. Let Me Tell You is unmistakably an attic-clearing anthology, packing together odds and sods like an unfinished character sketch and a Dr. Seuss review. But the best material is revelatory, revealing again how Jackson drew indelible characters with a few sparse words, then sent them off on wild adventures.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "short stories, essays & poetry", "funny stuff", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Tasha Robinson" ], "isbn": "0812997662", "asin": "", "oclc": 894540399, "seamus": 425115944, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812997662", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812997668", "isbn10": "0812997662", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 104, "book": "Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, And Other Writings", "source": "NPR", "text": "How Haunting is 'Hill House'?", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2018/10/31/662558504/how-haunting-is-hill-house" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 104, "book": "Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, And Other Writings", "source": "NPR", "text": "Shirley Jackson Gets To The Heart Of The Home In 'Let Me Tell You'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/424727835/shirley-jackson-gets-to-the-heart-of-the-home-in-let-me-tell-you" } ] }, "105": { "id": 105, "title": "Letter To A Future Lover: Marginalia, Errata, Secrets, Inscriptions, And Other Ephemera Found In Libraries", "author": "Ander Monson", "text": "For Ander Monson, libraries are something more than just buildings filled with books. He’s interested in them as a concept, as a living, adapting exchange of ideas, as a way people can connect with one another, even across generations. Monson’s latest is a breathtakingly original consideration of what it means to be a reader — or a writer, or a human being. His focus isn’t books, but rather the things we find in them: notes, due date slips, scrawlings in the margins. As an essay collection, this book is magnificent; as a love letter, it’s a work of overwhelming devotion and generosity.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "rather short", "nonfiction", "for art lovers", "rather short" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "1555977065", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582822, "seamus": 381651740, "bookshop": 9781555977061, "cover": "1555977065", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781555977061", "isbn10": "1555977065", "links": [] }, "106": { "id": 106, "title": "Listen, Slowly", "author": "Thanhhà Lại", "text": "Listen, Slowly is a sort of reverse migration-adventure story. It follows Mai, a Vietnamese-American middle schooler, as she travels back to her family’s home country for one summer. She’s there to look after her grandmother and to help discover the truth about what happened to her grandfather during the Vietnam War. Author Thanhhà Lại immerses both Mai and the reader in Vietnamese life, and she infuses the book with humor as well. (For ages 8 to 12)
", "tags": [ "family matters", "kids’ books", "funny stuff", "tales from around the world", "staff picks", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Justine Kenin" ], "isbn": "0062229184", "asin": "", "oclc": 881042154, "seamus": 457923264, "bookshop": 9780062229182, "cover": "0062229184", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062229182", "isbn10": "0062229184", "links": [] }, "107": { "id": 107, "title": "Loving Day: A Novel", "author": "Mat Johnson", "text": "Mat Johnson likes to say that being biracial is an optical illusion: The son of an African-American mother and an Irish-American father, Johnson grew up looking white but feeling black. Loving Day is his satirical take on what it means to be biracial in America. In it, Warren Duffy, who shares some biographical traits with Johnson, discovers during a midlife crisis that he has a teenage daughter. His desire to make her comfortable in her biracial skin leads him to a mixed-race commune full of odd characters and misfits. Johnson’s heightened awareness of racial ambiguity, coupled with a keen sense of humor, are on full display.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "love & romance", "fiction", "identity & culture", "funny stuff", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Lynn Neary" ], "isbn": "0812993454", "asin": "", "oclc": 906031161, "seamus": 408585487, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812993454", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812993455", "isbn10": "0812993454", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 107, "book": "Loving Day: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Writer Mat Johnson On 'Loving Day' And Life As A 'Black Boy' Who Looks White", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/09/16/494234198/writer-mat-johnson-on-loving-day-and-life-as-a-black-boy-who-looks-white" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 107, "book": "Loving Day: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "What College Freshmen Are Reading", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/30/486622777/what-college-freshmen-are-reading" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 107, "book": "Loving Day: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Mat Johnson On 'Loving Day' And Life As A 'Black Boy' Who Looks White", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/29/418549923/mat-johnson-on-loving-day-and-life-as-a-black-boy-who-looks-white" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 107, "book": "Loving Day: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Learning To Love, And Forgive, In Brilliant 'Day'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/26/408295998/learning-to-love-and-forgive-in-brilliant-day" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 107, "book": "Loving Day: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Novelist Mat Johnson Explores The 'Optical Illusion' Of Being Biracial", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/24/408791207/novelist-mat-johnson-explores-the-optical-illusion-of-being-biracial" } ] }, "108": { "id": 108, "title": "Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes", "author": "Peter Meehan", "text": "Sure, the recipes are clear and well-written. The introductions and explanations are charming, and that incredible shot of the Lacquered Roast Chicken looks like exactly what I want to eat right now. But my favorite parts of this book (which comes out of a brilliant food magazine run by chef David Chang and food writer Peter Meehan) are the huge photo spreads detailing exactly which brands of Asian ingredients the authors favor — sure to save this intrepid shopper many hours of scrutinizing different bottles of cooking wine, preserved black beans and jars of spicy chili crisp in the aisles of her local Chinese supermarket.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "Rose Friedman" ], "isbn": "0804187797", "asin": "", "oclc": 907931361, "seamus": 458373310, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0804187797", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780804187794", "isbn10": "0804187797", "links": [] }, "109": { "id": 109, "title": "Lungdon: Book Three (The Iremonger Trilogy)", "author": "Edward Carey", "text": "This wildly original trilogy is set in a fantasy London of the 1870s, where a family called Iremonger ministers to the heaps of city trash. Each Iremonger is assigned a “birth-object” that must never leave his or her person: Clodius Iremonger, for instance, has a bath plug, while his betrothed, Pinalippy, has a doily, and so on. Beginning with the mystery of why Clod can hear birth-objects speaking names, each volume expands into the next like nesting dolls: Heap House grows into Foulsham which grows into Lungdon, house to borough to city. A magnificently engrossing indictment of our late capitalist modernity.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "young adult", "rather long", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "1468309552", "asin": "", "oclc": 929951903, "seamus": 455483954, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1468309552", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781468309553", "isbn10": "1468309552", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 109, "book": "Lungdon: Book Three (The Iremonger Trilogy)", "source": "NPR", "text": "Sooty 'Lungdon' Is A Breathlessly Exciting Finale", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/19/455483034/sooty-lungdon-is-a-breathlessly-exciting-finale" } ] }, "110": { "id": 110, "title": "M Train", "author": "Patti Smith", "text": "Patti Smith writes exquisitely and achingly about loss and the things that matter to her in her second memoir. Unlike the mostly chronological narrative of Just Kids, about her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, M Train is a running mental locomotive of memories and dreams, with little about her performance career. The tone is elegiac, melancholic and meditative as she evokes people who died far too young, including — most devastatingly — her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith and her brother Todd, both in 1994. But the book is energized by various passions, including coffee, detective shows, far-flung pilgrimages to the graves of artistic and literary touchstones, and a rundown property she bought near the beach in Far Rockaway, Queens, just weeks before Hurricane Sandy devastated the area.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "for music lovers", "seriously great writing", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "1101875100", "asin": "", "oclc": 900179805, "seamus": 445338942, "bookshop": 9781101875100, "cover": "1101875100", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101875100", "isbn10": "1101875100", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 110, "book": "M Train", "source": "NPR", "text": "Patti Smith Reveals Her Solitary Soul In 'M Train'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/07/446589412/patti-smith-reveals-her-solitary-soul-in-the-m-train" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 110, "book": "M Train", "source": "NPR", "text": "Punk Icon Patti Smith Releases Second Memoir, 'M Train'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/05/445943695/punk-icon-patti-smith-releases-second-memoir-m-train" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 110, "book": "M Train", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'M Train' Is A Poetic Journey Through Life And Loss", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/04/445034824/m-train-is-a-poetic-journey-through-life-and-loss" } ] }, "111": { "id": 111, "title": "Mamushka: Recipes From Ukraine And Eastern Europe", "author": "Olia Hercules", "text": "In the era of all things Sichuan-blasted and bacon-infused, this lovely Ukrainian cookbook is a breath of fresh air. Sections on homemade dumplings and breads are delightful, and simple soups like duck and sorrel or mushroom with buckwheat look downright healthful. Plus, author Olia Hercules’ stories of camping with her family by the Dnieper River and collecting duck eggs from her mother’s yard will have you dreaming of a new life and a fresh, seasonal approach to cooking.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world", "family matters" ], "reviewers": [ "Rose Friedman" ], "isbn": "1616289619", "asin": "", "oclc": 905521155, "seamus": 458374045, "bookshop": 9781616289614, "cover": "1616289619", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616289614", "isbn10": "1616289619", "links": [] }, "112": { "id": 112, "title": "March: Book Two", "author": "John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell", "text": "Comic books are known for their heroes, but the heroes in U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ comic are largely nameless; they’re found among the tens of thousands of people who participated in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. Lewis, who headed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, downplays his own actions — and humbles other notable figures too. Artist Nate Powell keeps the speeches and meetings from being dull. His pen skitters and dances, imbuing every human face and form with explosive potential.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "biography & memoir", "for history lovers", "eye-opening reads", "nonfiction", "identity & culture", "book club ideas", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "1603094008", "asin": "", "oclc": 900415906, "seamus": 382173917, "bookshop": 9781603094009, "cover": "1603094008", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781603094009", "isbn10": "1603094008", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 112, "book": "March: Book Two", "source": "NPR", "text": "Low-Key, Real-Life Heroism In 'March: Book Two' ", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/29/382173865/low-key-real-life-heroism-in-march-book-two" } ] }, "113": { "id": 113, "title": "Marilyn's Monster", "author": "Michelle Knudsen, illustrated by Matt Phelan", "text": "Marilyn has a problem: Her monster hasn’t arrived yet. In Marilyn’s world, you’re supposed to wait for your monster and not go out looking for it, but Marilyn takes matters into her own hands in this lovely, exciting tale. Not a lot of books meant for kids have tension, multiple levels and drawings that endlessly fascinate, but this one does. I’ve read it to kids as young as 3 and as old as 9 and they all asked for it again. My takeaways: Sometimes you have to push boundaries to get what you want — and monsters aren’t that scary if they need to be rescued. (For ages 4 to 8)
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "kids’ books", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Lulu Garcia-Navarro" ], "isbn": "0763660116", "asin": "", "oclc": 884479967, "seamus": 457925846, "bookshop": 9780763660116, "cover": "0763660116", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780763660116", "isbn10": "0763660116", "links": [] }, "114": { "id": 114, "title": "Mezze: Small Plates To Share", "author": "Ghillie Başan", "text": "Prolific Scottish food writer and cookbook author Ghillie Başan turns to the Middle East in this jewellike tribute to mezze, the small plates that, in various guises, have made their way to even the farthest flung supermarkets. Here are hummus and stuffed grape leaves and tabbouleh, little phyllo pastries, as well as a zillion things one can do with “aubergine” and “courgette” (yes, it’s written in British, so don’t look for eggplant and zucchini). The photography is so sumptuous you may find yourself licking your fingers before you’ve even taken a bite.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "1849756511", "asin": "", "oclc": 919000043, "seamus": 458770552, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1849756511", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781849756518", "isbn10": "1849756511", "links": [] }, "115": { "id": 115, "title": "Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy Of India's Partition", "author": "Nisid Hajari", "text": "Nisid Hajari’s history of the partition of India and Pakistan is clear, well-written and at times gripping. The book focuses on the months leading up to partition and those right after, when the newly founded nations — created in a cauldron of blood — went to war over Kashmir. As Hajari points out, the story has “no easy villains — and few heroes,” but it helps us understand the present by examining the roots of the mistrust between the nuclear-armed nations. Midnight’s Furies provides a fresh and, at under 300 pages, easily digestible take on the pivotal separation.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Nishant Dahiya" ], "isbn": "0547669216", "asin": "", "oclc": 885225559, "seamus": 41312126, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0547669216", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780547669212", "isbn10": "0547669216", "links": [] }, "116": { "id": 116, "title": "Mosquitoland", "author": "David Arnold", "text": "Mim is totally done with her anxious, secretive father, so when she finds out her mother is ill, she buys a bus ticket and sets out to find her. Her trip soon turns into an odyssey as she encounters a series of unanticipated events. Mim is a refreshingly imperfect heroine, whose observations prove judgmental, self-absorbed and occasionally mean. Her vulnerability and wit redeem her, and her voice perfectly captures the pretentious and self-searching tone that is the hallmark of so many teen writings.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "fiction", "young adult" ], "reviewers": [ "Caitlyn Paxson" ], "isbn": "045147077X", "asin": "", "oclc": 875771096, "seamus": 458809611, "bookshop": "", "cover": "045147077X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780451470775", "isbn10": "045147077X", "links": [] }, "117": { "id": 117, "title": "Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories", "author": "Bonnie Jo Campbell", "text": "Bonnie Jo Campbell tells stories of the Rust Belt with frankness and an infinite patience for the voices of those whose stories are often left untold. These are contemporary mothers and daughters stretched beyond human capabilities, each desperate to be heard, but despairing of an audience; Campbell rescues them from invisibility. The stories here are filled with shifts when a turn of fate, a moment in nature, brings surprises and revealing insights. And within the turmoil and the troubles, the demands and the limits of life, Campbell reminds us, there are possibilities for moments of grace.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "family matters", "book club ideas", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "0393248453", "asin": "", "oclc": 902661442, "seamus": 44667763, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0393248453", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780393248456", "isbn10": "0393248453", "links": [] }, "118": { "id": 118, "title": "My Documents", "author": "Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell", "text": "In My Documents, a collection of 11 stories translated by Megan McDowell, Alejandro Zambra tells stories as only he can. He finds the foundations for his most enthralling work in the complex ties between fathers and sons, nations and their people, and, especially, hapless lovers. To read Zambra and a collection like My Documents is to engage with someone who writes as though the burden of history was upon him and no one else — the history of his country of Chile, of literature and of humanity’s shared experience. Put simply, the novel is a force, and further proof that the author is in a class of his own.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "1940450527", "asin": "", "oclc": 881440787, "seamus": 381654852, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1940450527", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781940450520", "isbn10": "1940450527", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 118, "book": "My Documents", "source": "NPR", "text": "Stories That Must Be Told In 'My Documents'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/08/381654757/stories-that-must-be-told-in-my-documents" } ] }, "119": { "id": 119, "title": "My Feelings: Poems", "author": "Nick Flynn", "text": "Every dismissive thought you could have about Nick Flynn’s feelings — or, by extension, a book called My Feelings — he’s thought already. “Inappropriate,” “extravagant,” “misguided,” “entitled,” “f**** up”* … he writes them down and crosses them out. What do we gain, after all, by pretending we’re above our own emotions? So the poet, playwright and memoirist lays it out: the lingering ache of one lost parent, the sharp shock of losing another, the baffling surprises of fatherhood, the dark jokes of addiction. Some of the poems are elaborate and abstracted; others are spare, plain and transparently personal. But they all ring true, and a few linger long after the book is shut.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "family matters", "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Camila Domonoske" ], "isbn": "1555977103", "asin": "", "oclc": 889165165, "seamus": 457920635, "bookshop": 9781555977108, "cover": "1555977103", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781555977108", "isbn10": "1555977103", "links": [] }, "120": { "id": 120, "title": "My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life", "author": "Ruth Reichl", "text": "When Gourmet abruptly ceased publishing in 2009, Ruth Reichl, its editor-in-chief for 10 years, retreated from Manhattan to her upstate New York hilltop glass house. Obviously not wired for the retiring life, she threw herself into writing My Kitchen Year, an unabashedly sentimental memoir about the restorative solace of cooking and the redemptive power of “finding joy in ordinary things.” But even better, it’s a collection of 136 recipes, mostly comfort food and the stuff of cravings. She’s as refreshingly assertive in her opinions as she is in her taste for bold spices like sriracha. For example, about her favorite waffles — an elaborate yeast-raised production from Fannie Farmer — she comments, “There are easier waffle recipes, but they’re little more than pancakes with dents.” Plenty to feast on here.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "biography & memoir", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "140006998X", "asin": "", "oclc": 884571092, "seamus": 444092334, "bookshop": 9781400069989, "cover": "140006998X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781400069989", "isbn10": "140006998X", "links": [] }, "121": { "id": 121, "title": "My Sunshine Away", "author": "M.O. Walsh", "text": "A close-knit neighborhood in Baton Rouge, La., is forever changed after a teenage girl is attacked “beneath the first busted streetlight in the history of Piney Creek Road.” As I started this novel, I thought, “Do I need another girl-in peril-story written by a man, from the point of view of a man?” But M.O. Walsh’s writing — stewed in secrets and Southern humidity — pulled me in, and his ending made me want to pull the reading equivalent of a U-turn to double back and reread from the very beginning.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "mysteries & thrillers", "fiction", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Shannon Rhoades" ], "isbn": "0399169520", "asin": "", "oclc": 876466298, "seamus": 457928457, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0399169520", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780399169526", "isbn10": "0399169520", "links": [] }, "122": { "id": 122, "title": "Nein. A Manifesto", "author": "Eric Jarosinksi", "text": "Oh, the joys of negativity! Eric Jarosinski, a self-proclaimed failed intellectual who leapt off the tenure track in modern German critical theory, has made it his mission to fight “a world of yes. A tyranny of yes.” This profoundly clever chapbook of brainy, nihilistic, dour but playful aphorisms began as work-avoiding tweets. With the stern-faced, monocled German Jewish philosopher Theodor W. Adorno as his avatar, Jarosinski riffs succinctly and brilliantly on Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, philosophy, and language as he gleefully plumbs the sinkhole of existential hopelessness. A few favorites: “-Ologies: Are usually taut,” and “Telling a tale full of sound and fury: Idiot-proof. Signifying nothing: Harder than it looks.” An aphorism, he writes, is “Philosophy’s ship in literature’s bottle.” In my book, Nein is a big Yes.
", "tags": [ "rather short", "funny stuff", "nonfiction", "it’s all geek to me" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "0802124372", "asin": "", "oclc": 904813735, "seamus": 458371466, "bookshop": 9780802124371, "cover": "0802124372", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780802124371", "isbn10": "0802124372", "links": [] }, "123": { "id": 123, "title": "NeuroTribes: The Legacy Of Autism And The Future Of Neurodiversity", "author": "Steve Silberman", "text": "It’s easy to think of a medical diagnosis like autism as something that’s black and white; you either are or you aren’t. In his masterful history of that disorder, Steve Silberman examines the myths surrounding the condition. He says for decades the definition of autism was manipulated to suit scientists’ career and political ambitions. But NeuroTribes is more than the story of how those on the autism spectrum have been wronged; it also shows how those same people have come together (through shared interests like ham radios and science fiction) and are forcing society to rethink “normal.”
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "eye-opening reads", "rather long", "nonfiction", "for history lovers", "science!" ], "reviewers": [ "Nancy Shute" ], "isbn": "158333467X", "asin": "", "oclc": 907295282, "seamus": 436743355, "bookshop": "", "cover": "158333467X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781583334676", "isbn10": "158333467X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 123, "book": "NeuroTribes: The Legacy Of Autism And The Future Of Neurodiversity", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'NeuroTribes' Examines The History — And Myths — Of The Autism Spectrum", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/09/09/493148713/neurotribes-examines-the-history-and-myths-of-the-autism-spectrum" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 123, "book": "NeuroTribes: The Legacy Of Autism And The Future Of Neurodiversity", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'NeuroTribes' Examines The History — And Myths — Of The Autism Spectrum", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/02/436742377/neurotribes-examines-the-history-and-myths-of-the-autism-spectrum" } ] }, "124": { "id": 124, "title": "Nimona", "author": "Noelle Stevenson", "text": "Nimona, the shape-shifting title character of this graphic novel, has a penchant for mischief, mayhem and turning into a shark. She enlists herself as sidekick to the villainous Lord Ballister Blackheart, and pursued by Blackheart’s nemesis, Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, the two set out to destroy “the Institution.” Noelle Stevenson’s charming art blends a medieval setting with futuristic technology, and her writing both delights and takes the book to surprising emotional depths.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "comics & graphic novels", "young adult", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Mallory Yu" ], "isbn": "0062278231", "asin": "", "oclc": 889736666, "seamus": 406467383, "bookshop": 9780062278234, "cover": "0062278231", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062278234", "isbn10": "0062278231", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 124, "book": "Nimona", "source": "NPR", "text": "We Did It For The LOLs: 100 Favorite Funny Books", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/752044550/we-did-it-for-the-lols-100-favorite-funny-books" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 124, "book": "Nimona", "source": "NPR", "text": "Let's Get Graphic: 100 Favorite Comics And Graphic Novels", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2017/07/12/533862948/lets-get-graphic-100-favorite-comics-and-graphic-novels" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 124, "book": "Nimona", "source": "NPR", "text": "Fun, Fast-Moving 'Nimona' Is A Perpetual Surprise", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/19/407077625/fun-fast-moving-nimona-is-a-perpetual-surprise" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 124, "book": "Nimona", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Nimona' Shifts Shape And Takes Names — In Sensible Armor, Of Course", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/13/406467585/nimona-shifts-shape-and-takes-names-in-sensible-armor-of-course" } ] }, "125": { "id": 125, "title": "Not On Fire, But Burning: A Novel", "author": "Greg Hrbek", "text": "The Wakefields, the family at the heart of Greg Hrbek’s Not on Fire, But Burning, live in New York, having fled California after a catastrophic event that destroyed San Francisco. In a chilling twist on the dystopian formula, this catastrophe has never been explained, and the lingering uncertainty has transformed the country’s identity for the worse. Departing radically and refreshingly from the expected, the book operates simultaneously as apocalyptic alarmism, brain-bending quantum fiction, character-driven drama and gripping mystery.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "family matters", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1612194532", "asin": "", "oclc": 909198512, "seamus": 442879918, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1612194532", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781612194530", "isbn10": "1612194532", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 125, "book": "Not On Fire, But Burning: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Not On Fire' Is A Poignant, Perplexing Twist On Dystopia", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/24/437287806/not-on-fire-is-a-poignant-perplexing-twist-on-dystopia" } ] }, "126": { "id": 126, "title": "Notes On The Assemblage", "author": "Juan Felipe Herrera", "text": "The latest collection from Juan Felipe Herrera, the nation’s new poet laureate, covers an expansive range of forms: elegies for lost friends, long polyvocal narratives, ekphrastic poems, language splintered into shapes. Frequently profound and often furious, the collection is at its most agonized when Herrera rages against an epidemic of unjust deaths: “& your body’s / on the fence & your ID’s in the air & the shots / get fired.” He even fits danger and sorrow into white space:
\n\n you throw a stone\ni throw a stone\ni throw a stone\nyou throw a stone\nthen a rocket\na rocket comes down\n", "tags": [ "staff picks", "short stories, essays & poetry" ], "reviewers": [ "Camila Domonoske" ], "isbn": "0872866971", "asin": "", "oclc": 912356947, "seamus": 440308576, "bookshop": 9780872866973, "cover": "0872866971", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780872866973", "isbn10": "0872866971", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 126, "book": "Notes On The Assemblage", "source": "NPR", "text": "From Mexico Kidnappings To Eric Garner, Hererra Writes Poetry Of The Moment", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/16/437287870/from-mexico-kidnappings-to-eric-garner-hererra-writes-poetry-of-the-moment" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 126, "book": "Notes On The Assemblage", "source": "NPR", "text": "Poet Laureate's Migrant Childhood Was Like 'Living In Literature Every Day'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/15/438630601/poet-laureates-migrant-childhood-was-like-living-in-literature-every-day" } ] }, "127": { "id": 127, "title": "Of Noble Family", "author": "Mary Robinette Kowal", "text": "
In this final installment of Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Glamourist” series, illusion-casting glamourists Jane and Vincent travel to Antigua to deal with the death of Vincent’s father, Lord Verbury — a cruel despot who has left behind a ruined estate and terribly abused, angry slaves. Verbury’s machinations from beyond the grave trap Jane and Vincent on his plantation — but all is not as it seems, and they end up both helping and learning from a clever community of native glamourists who have crafted a rich society beyond the reach of the island’s landowners. A perfect end to a not-to-be-missed series.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "love & romance", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "0765378361", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582568, "seamus": 458338768, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0765378361", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780765378361", "isbn10": "0765378361", "links": [] }, "128": { "id": 128, "title": "On The Move: A Life", "author": "Oliver Sacks", "text": "Reading this New York Times essay by Oliver Sacks in mid-August moved me so much that I immediately picked up On the Move, his memoir, and was completely absorbed. It’s an intimate, generous and insightful reflection on Sacks’ full and varied life: the shock of his mother’s rejection when she learned he was gay; his forays into weightlifting, fast motorcycles and drugs; his exceptional career as neurologist and writer; his late-life experience of love in his 70s; and, always, his curiosity and empathy for others. The book is so powerful that when this great scientist-humanist died (two weeks after I turned the last page) it felt like a personal loss.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing", "staff picks", "identity & culture", "science!" ], "reviewers": [ "Hannah Bloch" ], "isbn": "0385352549", "asin": "", "oclc": 900565064, "seamus": 404890276, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385352549", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385352543", "isbn10": "0385352549", "links": [] }, "129": { "id": 129, "title": "One Of Us: The Story Of Anders Breivik And The Massacre In Norway", "author": "Asne Seierstad, translated by Sarah Death", "text": "Journalist Asne Seierstad’s recounting of the 2011 massacre in Norway, in which an ultra-right-wing terrorist killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, is unimaginably difficult to read. But it’s worth it: Her writing, translated into English by Sarah Death, is both straightforward and compassionate. One of Us is a masterpiece of journalism, a deeply painful chronicle of an inexplicable and horrifying attack that we’ll very likely never understand.
", "tags": [ "eye-opening reads", "rather long", "the dark side", "nonfiction", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0374277893", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582758, "seamus": 400186820, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374277893", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374277895", "isbn10": "0374277893", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 129, "book": "One Of Us: The Story Of Anders Breivik And The Massacre In Norway", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'One Of Us' Examines The Damaged Inner Terrain Of Norwegian Mass Shooter", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/05/403303535/one-of-us-examines-the-damaged-inner-terrain-of-norwegian-mass-shooter" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 129, "book": "One Of Us: The Story Of Anders Breivik And The Massacre In Norway", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'One Of Us' Is A Difficult, Unforgettable Look At Tragedy", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/21/400178847/one-of-us-is-a-difficult-unforgettable-look-at-tragedy" } ] }, "130": { "id": 130, "title": "Only The Strong", "author": "Jabari Asim", "text": "Jabari Asim’s captivating first novel introduces the close-knit community of Gateway City (which is not unlike his hometown, St. Louis) in the tumultuous year of 1970, two years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. His cast includes “Guts” Tolliver, a one-time gangland enforcer who now runs a taxi business; Tolliver’s former boss, a crime lord trying to go legit; a beloved pediatrician who is a community leader with a secret, and her high-spirited foster child — all characters so complicated, flawed and beguiling you can imagine you know them as well as your friends and neighbors.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "book club ideas", "fiction", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "1932841946", "asin": "", "oclc": 890181318, "seamus": 410288192, "bookshop": 9781932841947, "cover": "1932841946", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781932841947", "isbn10": "1932841946", "links": [] }, "131": { "id": 131, "title": "Ordinary Light: A Memoir", "author": "Tracy K. Smith", "text": "Tracy K. Smith’s memoir, Ordinary Light, is anything but ordinary — but she performs the magic trick of writing with such beautiful simplicity that you don’t notice the language until you realize you’ve stopped to grab a tissue. This is of course because memoir is not her first language — Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. This book is the story of her early life, her faith and her experiences with race. It’s also about her relationship with her mother and her mother’s death from cancer. Smith’s pain and confusion — and the process of learning to live without her mother — are all told with beauty and sensitivity. She is a master of poetry, prose and philosophy.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "family matters", "seriously great writing", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0307962660", "asin": "", "oclc": 900157951, "seamus": 458804990, "bookshop": 9780307962669, "cover": "0307962660", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307962669", "isbn10": "0307962660", "links": [] }, "132": { "id": 132, "title": "Orient: A Novel", "author": "Christopher Bollen", "text": "If your previous acquaintance combining Long Island and thrillers is limited to the novels of Nelson DeMille, prepare for something completely different, and much more complex. In the slow-to-gentrify North Fork town of Orient, a series of deaths and disturbing events unites the community against a troubled young loner named Mills Chevern, who has been taken in by architect Paul Benchley. Benchley and a local real estate agent named Beth Shepherd try to fend off nasty accusations against Chevern, while Shepherd’s disturbing sculptor husband, Gavril, hosts soirees for his high-end artist pals, giving Christopher Bolen (an editor at Interview magazine) plenty of spicy sauce for his rich and suspenseful stew.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "rather long", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "0062329952", "asin": "", "oclc": 883146192, "seamus": 458336469, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062329952", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062329950", "isbn10": "0062329952", "links": [] }, "133": { "id": 133, "title": "Outline: A Novel", "author": "Rachel Cusk", "text": "If there’s a writer who marries thinking and writing with more muscularity than Rachel Cusk — well, introduce me. Outline is the oddest of books, in which a writer travels to Athens to run a writing workshop. On the journey she engages in conversations, listening, sometimes without comment. That’s all it is — a series of chats, of observations — but it suddenly becomes so intensely observed that you realize you’re not holding a novel; you’re holding a blade. No book in 2015 ruffled me more — I found myself waking in the night to spend time with its icy-hot precision, its crisp writing, and the opportunity to hold its mirror to my own mind.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "fiction", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0374228345", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582772, "seamus": 37609848, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374228345", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374228347", "isbn10": "0374228345", "links": [] }, "134": { "id": 134, "title": "Palace Of Treason: A Novel", "author": "Jason Matthews", "text": "A beautiful Russian double agent, a jealous boss who wants to kill her, and Vladimir Putin in her bedroom watching her sleep? Jason Matthews has written a worthy follow-up to his 2013 best-seller, Red Sparrow. His heroine, Dominika Egorova, has been promoted to a captain of the SGV (KGB 2.0) and, to complicate things, she and her CIA boss are in love and the Russian president has the hots for her. Add a staggering body count, countless twists and turns, and a few grisly torture scenes, and you have yourself a whopper of a read. Fasten your seat belts.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "love & romance", "mysteries & thrillers", "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Karen Grigsby Bates" ], "isbn": "1476793743", "asin": "", "oclc": 908250524, "seamus": 457925680, "bookshop": 9781476793740, "cover": "1476793743", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476793740", "isbn10": "1476793743", "links": [] }, "135": { "id": 135, "title": "Phoenix Claws And Jade Trees: Essential Techniques Of Authentic Chinese Cooking", "author": "Kian Lam Kho, photographed by Jody Horton", "text": "“Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees” is just a lyrical way of saying “chicken feet and Chinese broccoli,” according to Kian Lam Kho, the New York blogger behind redcook.net. This kind of demystification sets the tone for his first book. It’s a beautiful and meticulous volume that examines the techniques one by one — stir-frying, deep-frying, saucing, braising. The recipes travel the gamut from familiar (mapo tofu) to startling (pig’s skin and bean aspic), offering something for both the student and the adventurer in your kitchen.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "0385344686", "asin": "", "oclc": 898334352, "seamus": 458770659, "bookshop": 9780385344685, "cover": "0385344686", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385344685", "isbn10": "0385344686", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 135, "book": "Phoenix Claws And Jade Trees: Essential Techniques Of Authentic Chinese Cooking", "source": "NPR", "text": "Cook Your Own Adventure: 11 Cookbooks For Kitchen Dreamers", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/16/459663175/cook-your-own-adventure-11-cookbooks-for-kitchen-dreamers" } ] }, "136": { "id": 136, "title": "Playlist For The Dead", "author": "Michelle Falkoff", "text": "2015 was a banner year for realism-based drama in young adult novels. The post-apocalyptic dystopias of the Hunger Games era have largely given way to personal apocalypses, and Playlist For The Dead centers on a big one: a 15-year-old trying to understand his best friend’s suicide by listening to his music. It’s remarkable for its structure, which invites readers to ponder how songs like Radiohead’s “How To Disappear Completely” or Wilco’s “How To Fight Loneliness” would sound to a depressed, bullied outcast. But it’s also touching for the conclusions Falkoff reaches, which aren’t as pat and simple as the song titles.
", "tags": [ "young adult", "for music lovers", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Tasha Robinson" ], "isbn": "006231050X", "asin": "", "oclc": 879583327, "seamus": 458374426, "bookshop": "", "cover": "006231050X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062310507", "isbn10": "006231050X", "links": [] }, "137": { "id": 137, "title": "Pool", "author": "Jihyeon Lee", "text": "Pool by JiHyeon Lee is a gorgeous fantasy. The wordless picture book takes readers, and its two protagonists, away from an overly crowded pool to a world far below where you can frolic with wondrous sea creatures big and small. The colored pencil and pastel drawings — engaging, playful and warm — will have you roving the pages for little treasures. Since Pool is Lee’s first book, I can’t wait to see what she creates next. (For ages 3 to 5)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Justine Kenin" ], "isbn": "1452142947", "asin": "", "oclc": 885911565, "seamus": 457925044, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1452142947", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781452142944", "isbn10": "1452142947", "links": [] }, "138": { "id": 138, "title": "Poorly Drawn Lines: Good Ideas And Amazing Stories", "author": "Reza Farazmand", "text": "Cool, impassive tigers flipping you the bird. Ernesto, the Bear from Space, whose turtle roommate is seriously not chill. Arthur the wooden stool, who clings to his halcyon past as a tree. And of course: Death-Goose. These and many other strips from Reza Farazmand’s popular Web comic fill this dryly absurdist collection, accompanied by new prose pieces so hilariously deadpan that rigor mortis sets in. Farazmand’s art style promises Sarah Boynton-greeting-card whimsy, but what he delivers is darker, weirder, funnier and completely his own.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "the dark side", "funny stuff", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "0147515424", "asin": "", "oclc": 909112186, "seamus": 458343495, "bookshop": 9780147515421, "cover": "0147515424", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780147515421", "isbn10": "0147515424", "links": [] }, "139": { "id": 139, "title": "Purity: A Novel", "author": "Jonathan Franzen", "text": "Jonathan Franzen is often thought of as a comic novelist — and he certainly is that — but he’s also a historical novelist, able to capture the mood of a community at a specific moment in time. In Purity, he turns his gaze on state surveillance, online privacy, the student loan bubble, tech culture, and feminism. At the center is Purity Tyler, a recent college graduate looking for the truth about her father. As in Franzen’s previous novels, there are multiple and intertwining plots, superbly crafted scenes, and exquisitely observed moments. But it’s his characters that will keep you reading: They’re angry, yet frail; sensitive, yet oblivious; smart and yet wrong about so many things.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "family matters", "rather long", "fiction", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Laila Lalami" ], "isbn": "0374239215", "asin": "", "oclc": 905450285, "seamus": 436446489, "bookshop": 9780374239213, "cover": "0374239215", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374239213", "isbn10": "0374239215", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 139, "book": "Purity: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Franzen's Latest Novel: An Ambitious But Tarnished 'Purity'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/02/436593413/franzens-latest-novel-an-ambitious-but-tarnished-purity" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 139, "book": "Purity: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Compelling Plot Gives Way To Farce In Franzen's Purity", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/435543843/book-review-purity-jonathan-franzen" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 139, "book": "Purity: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Jonathan Franzen On Writing: It's An 'Escape From Everything'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/436442184/jonathan-franzen-on-writing-its-an-escape-from-everything" } ] }, "140": { "id": 140, "title": "Real Men Don't Sing: Crooning In American Culture", "author": "Allison McCracken", "text": "How did popular music get from Point A to Justin Bieber? DePaul University professor Allison McCracken fills in a key piece of the puzzle with this research-rich, intriguing account of how microphone-assisted heartthrobs won over American ears in the early 20th century. Grounded in the story of the first vocalizing pop idol, Rudy Vallee, McCracken’s book shows how shifting technologies, changing attitudes about sex and a new, female-driven fan culture fed pop’s “intimate aesthetic,” which prevails to this day. A chapter on Adam Lambert and Glee brings the story into this century.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "for music lovers", "nonfiction", "for history lovers", "book club ideas", "no biz like show biz" ], "reviewers": [ "Ann Powers" ], "isbn": "0822359170", "asin": "", "oclc": 894746159, "seamus": 457918610, "bookshop": 9780822359173, "cover": "0822359170", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780822359173", "isbn10": "0822359170", "links": [] }, "141": { "id": 141, "title": "Rogue Lawyer", "author": "John Grisham", "text": "Rogue Lawyer introduces readers to a so-called street lawyer named Sebastian Rudd. Or, maybe a better term for Rudd would be “mobile lawyer,” because, ever since his office was firebombed, he’s been operating out of a bulletproof van and not sleeping in the same place for more than a few days. “Mr. Smooth,” Rudd is not — he rubs both criminals and cops the wrong way. But, in hallowed Grisham tradition, scrappy Rudd is the defense lawyer you want sitting beside you in the courtroom when things look bleak. The biggest mystery that Rogue Lawyer poses is how John Grisham, at this stage in his long writing career, can still concoct all these distinctive characters, tricky legal predicaments and clever ways to worm out of them.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "0385539436", "asin": "", "oclc": 924556168, "seamus": 452803789, "bookshop": 9780385539432, "cover": "0385539436", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385539432", "isbn10": "0385539436", "links": [] }, "142": { "id": 142, "title": "Satin Island: A Novel", "author": "Tom McCarthy", "text": "Tom McCarthy himself writes in the novel (parenthetically, how else?): “(events! If you want those, you’d best stop reading now).” So it’s not a page-turner, but it is a mind-turner, and sometimes that kind of book hits the spot. The nameless protagonist (OK, he has a name: U) is a corporate anthropologist — he studies businesses as cultures — and is inspired by events around him (failed parachute in news; oil spill; friend’s cancer; girlfriend’s interrogation by sinister forces) to develop a Grand Theory of Everything. No real story results, but the thinking and the sentence-writing are breathtaking.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "0307593959", "asin": "", "oclc": 881436746, "seamus": 458516337, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0307593959", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307593955", "isbn10": "0307593959", "links": [] }, "143": { "id": 143, "title": "Secrets Of State", "author": "Matthew Palmer", "text": "In his second novel, Matthew Palmer plunges into the murky world of Washington consulting firms full of former insiders who have trouble giving up their stock in power and influence. The story revolves around suspicions of fake intelligence manufactured to provoke India and Pakistan to up their nuclear rivalry. Conspiracy theorists will enjoy the shadowy world of The Stoics, a secret group of government bureaucrats who are determined to reshape the world by circumventing official policy. The story is so captivating you can’t help but wonder if it might be slightly plausible.
", "tags": [ "the dark side", "mysteries & thrillers", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Edith Chapin" ], "isbn": "0399165711", "asin": "", "oclc": 893895069, "seamus": 457921339, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0399165711", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780399165719", "isbn10": "0399165711", "links": [] }, "144": { "id": 144, "title": "See How Small: A Novel", "author": "Scott Blackwood", "text": "Scott Blackwood’s novel is inspired by the Austin yogurt shop murders, a grisly unsolved case from 1991 in which four young girls were murdered and the store where they worked was set ablaze. Blackwood writes with compassion, poetry and artistic fearlessness. See How Small is a brutal, necessary and near-perfect novel.
", "tags": [ "fiction", "the dark side", "historical fiction", "family matters" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "031637394X", "asin": "", "oclc": 899212511, "seamus": 377194297, "bookshop": 9780316373944, "cover": "031637394X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316373944", "isbn10": "031637394X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 144, "book": "See How Small: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Vastness Of Violent Loss In 'See How Small'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/22/377189942/the-vastness-of-violent-loss-in-see-how-small" } ] }, "145": { "id": 145, "title": "Seveneves: A Novel", "author": "Neal Stephenson", "text": "In the first line of Neal Stephenson’s newest epic, Seveneves, he goes old-school mad scientist and blows up the moon. Then he spends 900 pages tracking what that one moment means for the following 5,000 years of human history. Though at times dry and overly technical (you will never again be the fella at the party who knows the least about Soviet spacesuit design), Stephenson is writing a true hard sci-fi novel here. His science is thrillingly merciless, and he makes life and death in space about actual life and death — about the million things that will kill you and the two or three things that really smart people can do to stay alive.
", "tags": [ "rather long", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "it’s all geek to me", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0062190377", "asin": "", "oclc": 884539342, "seamus": 407730345, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062190377", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062190376", "isbn10": "0062190377", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 145, "book": "Seveneves: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "No Warp Drives, No Transporters: Science Fiction Authors Get Real", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/13/459392474/no-warp-drives-no-transporters-science-fiction-authors-get-real" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 145, "book": "Seveneves: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Seveneves' Blows Up The Moon — And That's Just The Beginning", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/20/407079232/seveneves-blows-up-the-moon-and-thats-just-the-beginning" } ] }, "146": { "id": 146, "title": "Shadowshaper", "author": "Daniel José Older", "text": "A warm, wonderful book about art, heritage and community, Shadowshaper is the story of Sierra Santiago, a Brooklyn teenager painting her first big mural on an abandoned building. But the murals in her neighborhood are changing: Some faces weep; others look terrified; all are fading too quickly. In fits and starts, her grandfather explains that Sierra is part of a long line of sorcerer-artists being hunted through the city by a strange and destructive power. Together with her friends, Sierra must sift through family secrets to understand and confront it, in a story full of friendships, banter, gorgeous voice work and refreshing characters.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "family matters", "young adult", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "identity & culture", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "0545591619", "asin": "", "oclc": 891427666, "seamus": 419167254, "bookshop": 9780545591614, "cover": "0545591619", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780545591614", "isbn10": "0545591619", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 146, "book": "Shadowshaper", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Shadowshaper' Paints A Vibrant Picture", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/04/418597069/shadowshaper-paints-a-vibrant-picture" } ] }, "147": { "id": 147, "title": "Showa: A History of Japan 1953-1989", "author": "Shigeru Mizuki, translated by Zack Davisson", "text": "Celebrated manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, who died in November, put his quirky personality and passionate moral sense on display in this history of 20th-century Japan. In four volumes Mizuki alternated between historical events – with a bias toward the scandalous and macabre – and personal experience. In this final volume his occasional departures from reality, as when he apparently has a mental breakdown from overwork, add an unsettling but fascinating note. Mizuki’s sketches of Japan and New Guinea, with his patented blend of clashing styles, are piquant and engaging throughout.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "biography & memoir", "for history lovers", "tales from around the world", "rather long", "nonfiction", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "1770462015", "asin": "", "oclc": 884539727, "seamus": 361471219, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1770462015", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781770462014", "isbn10": "1770462015", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 147, "book": "Showa: A History of Japan 1953-1989", "source": "NPR", "text": "An Artist Draws His Journey Away From War And Death, With Gratitude", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2014/11/12/363123600/an-artist-draws-his-journey-away-from-war-and-death-with-gratitude" } ] }, "148": { "id": 148, "title": "Showdown: Thurgood Marshall And The Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America", "author": "Wil Haygood", "text": "It is no small feat to weave a rich, compelling book out of a Senate Judiciary confirmation (I suspect some might yawn even just reading that sentence) but it helps when the year is 1967 and the subject is late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the high court. It also helps when the writer is Wil Haygood, who has a knack for injecting drama and spark into legal and legislative proceedings. Within the framework of the fiery five-day hearing, Haygood uses Marshall’s career as a lens to explore the complexities and contradictions of American race relations.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Michele Norris" ], "isbn": "0307957195", "asin": "", "oclc": 895500987, "seamus": 457927889, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0307957195", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307957191", "isbn10": "0307957195", "links": [] }, "149": { "id": 149, "title": "Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories", "author": "Katherine Heiny", "text": "Nina is sleeping with her running partner; Sasha has agreed to meet her lover’s wife for a drink; and Gwen is in love with her roommate. Each story in Katherine Heiny’s collection doles out gems that are so authentic and outrageous I wanted to read them out loud to a friend over the phone — like the opening lines of the story “Blue Heron Bridge”: “The worst thing about the affair, Nina thought, was that it made her so impatient with the children.” Be ready to laugh and hoot, and then buy Single, Carefree, Mellow for all your girlfriends — but probably not your mother-in-law.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "funny stuff", "let’s talk about sex", "love & romance", "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Justine Kenin" ], "isbn": "0385353634", "asin": "", "oclc": 876466295, "seamus": 457925233, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385353634", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385353632", "isbn10": "0385353634", "links": [] }, "150": { "id": 150, "title": "Sisters In Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor And Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went To The Supreme Court And Changed The World", "author": "Linda Hirshman", "text": "The title tells all: Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World. Linda Hirshman’s joint biography of the first and second women to serve on the nation’s highest court is a gossipy, funny, sometimes infuriating and moving tale of two women so similar and yet so different. O’Connor, a lifelong Republican, was raised on a Western ranch and cut her political teeth as majority leader of the Arizona Senate. Ginsburg was born and bred in Brooklyn, the daughter of a Russian Jewish immigrant, and became a professor and litigator. But as different as their backgrounds were, and even their approaches to judging, when it came to women’s rights, O’Connor and Ginsburg were allies. They began their careers at a time when women could be denied jobs, credit, even a place on a jury. But they always had an amazing self-confidence, believing that they could be lawyers and leaders.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "nonfiction", "for history lovers", "book club ideas", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Nina Totenberg" ], "isbn": "0062238469", "asin": "", "oclc": 900868775, "seamus": 436368511, "bookshop": 9780062238467, "cover": "0062238469", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062238467", "isbn10": "0062238469", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 150, "book": "Sisters In Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor And Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went To The Supreme Court And Changed The World", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Sandra Day O'Connor, 'Sisters In Law'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/436368073/ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-sandra-day-oconnor-sisters-in-law" } ] }, "151": { "id": 151, "title": "Slade House: A Novel", "author": "David Mitchell", "text": "“Beautifully twisty” is pretty much David Mitchell’s trademark, and Slade House does nothing to tarnish his rep. It’s a horror novel (which is something you just don’t see that much anymore) that covers the years 1979 to 2015, told with shifting main characters. And while there may be a bit of goofiness living at its heart, it’s still a worthy read simply because Mitchell is very aware of every trick he’s lifting from a thousand scary stories come before, and so are his characters — each one being just as jaded, just as suspicious and just as disbelieving of all this nonsense as we are. Right up until they realize that the trap has been sprung on them, too.
", "tags": [ "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0812998685", "asin": "", "oclc": 910475239, "seamus": 452316070, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812998685", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812998689", "isbn10": "0812998685", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 151, "book": "Slade House: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Soul-Sucking Vampires Of David Mitchell's 'Slade House' Started On Twitter", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/17/456198580/soul-sucking-vampires-of-david-mitchells-slade-house-started-on-twitter" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 151, "book": "Slade House: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "It's Coming From Inside The House ... 'Slade House,' That Is", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/28/450887665/its-coming-from-inside-the-house-slade-house-that-is" } ] }, "152": { "id": 152, "title": "Slice Harvester: A Memoir In Pizza", "author": "Colin Atrophy Hagendorf", "text": "Pizza is a lot of things to a lot of people. But to Colin Atrophy Hagendorf, it’s a blank canvas upon which we can, and should, project anything we wish. In his bittersweet memoir, Slice Harvester, the infamous pizza blogger works punk rock, substance abuse, online dating and hilariously poignant anecdotes about his family (and actor Phoebe Cates) into his running commentary on that most hallowed of New York City institutions: the slice.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "nonfiction", "cookbooks & food", "it’s all geek to me" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1476705887", "asin": "", "oclc": 894746850, "seamus": 431650563, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1476705887", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476705880", "isbn10": "1476705887", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 152, "book": "Slice Harvester: A Memoir In Pizza", "source": "NPR", "text": "Pizza As Autobiography In 'Slice Harvester'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/12/431243504/pizza-as-autobiography-in-slice-harvester" } ] }, "153": { "id": 153, "title": "Sorcerer To The Crown: A Sorcerer Royal Novel", "author": "Zen Cho", "text": "This is a relentlessly charming character-driven romance, where women and people of color take center stage in a romp through a magical Regency England. Zacharias Wythe has inherited the position of Sorcerer Royal from his recently deceased guardian under mysterious circumstances at a politically threatening time. Meanwhile, Prunella Gentleman, a dark-skinned young Englishwoman of uncertain parentage, is keen to escape her magical school and enter society under Wythe’s protection and tutelage. Hijinks ensue! Pitch-perfect tone, perilous plots and delightful characters make this a thoroughly absorbing and astonishing debut novel.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "book club ideas", "historical fiction", "identity & culture", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "0425283372", "asin": "", "oclc": 900623721, "seamus": 436699592, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0425283372", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780425283370", "isbn10": "0425283372", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 153, "book": "Sorceror to the Crown: A Sorceror Royal Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Sorcerer' Is A Delightful Romp With Deep, Solid Roots", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/03/435543648/sorcerer-is-a-delightful-romp-with-deep-solid-roots" } ] }, "154": { "id": 154, "title": "Speak: A Novel", "author": "Louisa Hall", "text": "An inventor is imprisoned for making baby dolls that are too realistic. A Puritan girl, married against her will, sails to America with her dog. A programmer’s wife shuns him in favor of a sentient computer he created. In this stunning and audacious second novel from Louisa Hall, perspectives shift between different eras and places, twisting together to form a story that’s as hard to describe as it is remarkable. It’s not just one of the smartest books of the year; it’s one of the most beautiful.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "it’s all geek to me", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0062391194", "asin": "", "oclc": 913887336, "seamus": 419241639, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062391194", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062391193", "isbn10": "0062391194", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 154, "book": "Speak: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Speak' Asks Hard Questions About Communication And Technology", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/418600139/speak-asks-hard-questions-about-communication-and-technology" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 154, "book": "Speak: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "If Robots 'Speak,' Will We Listen? Novel Imagines A Future Changed By AI", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/04/419246275/if-robots-speak-will-we-listen-novel-imagines-a-future-changed-by-ai" } ] }, "155": { "id": 155, "title": "Spectacle: The Astonishing Life Of Ota Benga", "author": "Pamela Newkirk", "text": "There’s just no other way to say it: Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk is required reading. In 1906, Ota Benga, a young man from the Congo, was put on display in a cage at the Bronx Zoo — with an orangutan. Based on years of research, Newkirk masterfully explores the circumstances that culminated in Benga’s horrifying ordeal and then goes a step further to unpack the layers of racism, wealth and imperialism that made this racist spectacle possible.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "the dark side", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Saeed Jones" ], "isbn": "006220100X", "asin": "", "oclc": 890435450, "seamus": 458804533, "bookshop": "", "cover": "006220100X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062201003", "isbn10": "006220100X", "links": [] }, "156": { "id": 156, "title": "Spy Games", "author": "Adam Brookes", "text": "Adam Brookes is quickly becoming a first-rate author of international thrillers. The deft pacing of his second novel, Spy Games, kept me reading every free moment, including workday lunches and cab rides home. What separates Brookes from many others in the genre is that he knows his subject, China, intimately. (Full disclosure: The author and I were colleagues when he served as a BBC correspondent in Beijing in the 1990s.) Brookes has ripped the plot of Spy Games from the headlines of a real-life Communist Party power struggle and set it in London, Ethiopia, Hong Kong and a Chinese casino in the jungles of Myanmar. For an atmospheric tale of intrigue centered on the world’s rising superpower, Brookes is your man.
", "tags": [ "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "mysteries & thrillers", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Frank Langfitt" ], "isbn": "0316399906", "asin": "", "oclc": 910866744, "seamus": 457922661, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316399906", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316399906", "isbn10": "0316399906", "links": [] }, "157": { "id": 157, "title": "Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection", "author": "Kate Beaton", "text": "I depend on Kate Beaton’s comic strips when I need a good, hearty giggle. Her latest collection features hilarious parodies of classic literature, history and pop-culture, with brilliant caricatures of everyone from Lord Byron to Ida B. Wells and Wonder Woman. Highlights include her blistering takedowns of “strong female characters” and “cool girls,” as well as her cheeky depiction of hairy-legged, bra-burning “straw feminists,” who sneak into children’s bedrooms to swap a Justin Bieber poster for one of a busty Mother Earth. And if you thought Wuthering Heights was too ridiculous to parody, Beaton finds a way to make it even more deliciously weird.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "comics & graphic novels", "for history lovers", "funny stuff", "rather short" ], "reviewers": [ "Kate Parkinson-Morgan" ], "isbn": "1770462082", "asin": "", "oclc": 898419571, "seamus": 441222952, "bookshop": 9781770462083, "cover": "1770462082", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781770462083", "isbn10": "1770462082", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 157, "book": "Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Step Aside, Pops' Lampoons History With Humor And Wit", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/437287082/step-aside-pops-lampoons-history-with-humor-and-wit" } ] }, "158": { "id": 158, "title": "Strangers Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, And The Overpowering Urge To Help", "author": "Larissa MacFarquhar", "text": "This book makes me uncomfortable, and not just in that smug way, like saying after a lecture on ethics, “Well, at least I’m struggling with these questions, right?” No, this book — which offers both a history of altruism and profiles of “extreme” altruists, like the couple who adopted 22 kids — makes me question whether I’ve ever done anything good in my life. But Larissa MacFarquhar writes so simply and beautifully that I forget my discomfort and just let her narrative carry me along. In fact, this is a book that would be less upsetting if it never ended, and we could all just live in her prose forever. That way we’d never have to face the upshot, which is that it’s very, very difficult to be a good person.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "seriously great writing", "nonfiction", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Rebecca Hersher" ], "isbn": "1594204330", "asin": "", "oclc": 919691156, "seamus": 449774644, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594204330", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594204333", "isbn10": "1594204330", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 158, "book": "Strangers Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, And The Overpowering Urge To Help", "source": "NPR", "text": "What Makes A Do-Gooder Do Good? And How Come We Sometimes Resent Them?", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/18/449209484/what-makes-a-do-gooder-do-good-and-how-come-we-sometimes-resent-them" } ] }, "159": { "id": 159, "title": "Summerlong: A Novel", "author": "Dean Bakopolous", "text": "Summerlong is the story of a marriage disintegrating. Of youth fading. Of a single, hot summer in a small college town in Iowa and how it destroys the lives of a local real estate agent, a frustrated novelist, a floundering actor and a grieving young woman. It’s a sharply observed and smartly written book, but it’s also one that’s haunted by death and sorrow and the terrible heartbreak of growing old. It captures the that instant of perfect equilibrium, where everything is exactly right — when love and family and career have come into exquisite balance. And then the instant after when everything you thought you’ve built just falls to pieces.
", "tags": [ "fiction", "love & romance", "family matters", "let’s talk about sex", "the dark side" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0062321161", "asin": "", "oclc": 907677056, "seamus": 417183388, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062321161", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062321169", "isbn10": "0062321161", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 159, "book": "Summerlong: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Going Through A Midlife Crisis? 'Summerlong' Is No Escape", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/25/416516179/going-through-a-midlife-crisis-summerlong-is-no-escape" } ] }, "160": { "id": 160, "title": "SuperMutant Magic Academy", "author": "Jillian Tamaki", "text": "Jillian Tamaki published her Web comic about a school for kids with superpowers/mutant abilities/magic for years, and no one would blame you for worrying that once collected, its one-off, gag-strip format might make for disjointed, herky-jerky reading. But then, Tamaki’s never been one to lunge sweatily for a punch line; she’s much more interested in mood and character, and if she happens to find a joke along the way: bonus. As a result, the collected strip reads like a discursive (and deeply sardonic) YA novel in which characters discover themselves at the same gradual pace readers do.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "young adult", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "1770461981", "asin": "", "oclc": 884539726, "seamus": 402851874, "bookshop": 9781770461987, "cover": "1770461981", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781770461987", "isbn10": "1770461981", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 160, "book": "SuperMutant Magic Academy", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'SuperMutant Magic Academy' Is Hogwarts With Nuts (And A Cherry)", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/29/402852474/supermutant-magic-academy-is-hogwarts-with-nuts-and-a-cherry" } ] }, "161": { "id": 161, "title": "Tales From The Loop", "author": "Simon Stalenhag", "text": "In this remarkable, beautiful new art book, Simon Stalenhag has embedded dinosaurs, machines and savage, blond-haired children into an alt history of his native Sweden in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s: Robots clack through suburban streets, lurk in the backyard trees, or lie, still and cold, abandoned in snowy fields. It’s a child’s vision of a time not so far gone, gorgeously rendered, and attended by brief written vignettes — one man’s memories of simpler, stranger, more mysterious times when he and his friends played in echo spheres and collected the castaway bits of scrap shaken off by the slow deterioration of the freighters in the ruins of their imaginary home.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "comics & graphic novels", "the dark side", "rather short", "for art lovers", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "1624650392", "asin": "", "oclc": 218405445, "seamus": 457095390, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1624650392", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781624650390", "isbn10": "1624650392", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 161, "book": "Tales From The Loop", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Tales From The Loop' Doesn't Forget The Robots (Or The Dinosaurs)", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/25/456821778/tales-from-the-loop-doesnt-forget-the-robots-or-the-dinosaurs" } ] }, "162": { "id": 162, "title": "Tales Of The Marvellous And News Of The Strange", "author": "translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith", "text": "It’s hard to imagine shaking off the dust of this thousand-year-old volume of stories (recently discovered in an Istanbul library) and seeing them for the first time. As thoughtful as they are wondrous, these tales run the gamut: epic and domestic, charming and chilling, realistic and magical, with prose like a jewel box. If it looks scholarly at first glance, take heart; by the time God folds up the desert to help a lost heroine find her way across a strange land, this collection will have made itself at home in your imagination.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "tales from around the world", "for history lovers", "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Genevieve Valentine" ], "isbn": "0141395036", "asin": "", "oclc": 894127547, "seamus": 385241293, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0141395036", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780141395036", "isbn10": "0141395036", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 162, "book": "Tales Of The Marvellous And News Of The Strange", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Tales Of The Marvellous' Is Indeed Very Strange", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/18/385193561/tales-of-the-marvellous-is-indeed-very-strange" } ] }, "163": { "id": 163, "title": "Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life", "author": "Jonathan Bate", "text": "If poetry is humanity’s answer to death, then the literary feud may be the poet’s answer. One feud that may never die is between the acolytes of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: Plath’s blame him for her suicide, while Hughes’ blame mental illness. Jonathan Bate’s new biography stokes the flames, bravely taking on the literary giant, while quite wisely admitting that Plath’s suicide is absolutely at the heart of the man’s life. But Bate’s scholarship, while not quite excusing Hughes’ character flaws, does a beautiful job of marrying his subject’s life to his rigorous and important work. The book is as insightful and charismatic as the man himself — whichever side you believe yourself to be on.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "family matters", "for art lovers", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "rather long", "short stories, essays & poetry" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0062362437", "asin": "", "oclc": 908628317, "seamus": 447214053, "bookshop": 9780062362438, "cover": "0062362437", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062362438", "isbn10": "0062362437", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 163, "book": "Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life", "source": "NPR", "text": "Sylvia Plath's Husband, Ted Hughes, Lived A Life Of Poetry And Tragedy", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/10/447156705/sylvia-plaths-husband-ted-hughes-lived-a-life-of-poetry-and-tragedy" } ] }, "164": { "id": 164, "title": "Television Is The New Television: The Unexpected Triumph Of Old Media In The Digital Age", "author": "Michael Wolff", "text": "Only a world-class iconoclast would take on media’s biggest slab of conventional wisdom: that television will soon be killed by digital platforms. But media columnist and author Michael Wolff — whose enemies list is so long, he fills the book’s back page with insults from The New York Times and Gawker — is just that pot-stirrer. His book argues that our love for shiny new concepts has blinded us to a simple fact: TV keeps making money while digital media still traffic in pennies, comparatively. And instead of replacing television, digital video outlets like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube are becoming more like TV. Wolff makes his case with the kind of detail only media nerds will read to the end, but his argument is a great way to stop conversation the next time someone tells you your TV is headed for history’s dustbin.
", "tags": [ "eye-opening reads", "nonfiction", "staff picks", "no biz like show biz" ], "reviewers": [ "Eric Deggans" ], "isbn": "159184813X", "asin": "", "oclc": 894540662, "seamus": 457922563, "bookshop": "", "cover": "159184813X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781591848134", "isbn10": "159184813X", "links": [] }, "165": { "id": 165, "title": "The Arab Of The Future: A Childhood In The Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir", "author": "Riad Sattouf", "text": "Riad Sattouf’s pen frisks and wiggles, but his drawings and his message are more complex than they appear. Telling of his childhood in Libya, Syria and France in the early 1980s, Sattouf — a former contributor to the French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo — denounces pan-Arabism and Islamic politics. This graphic memoir has been compared to Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel about growing up in Iran. In fact, it’s a kind of anti-Persepolis in its icy cynicism.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "book club ideas", "family matters", "tales from around the world", "identity & culture", "biography & memoir", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "1627793445", "asin": "", "oclc": 890622561, "seamus": 452601753, "bookshop": 9781627793445, "cover": "1627793445", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781627793445", "isbn10": "1627793445", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 165, "book": "The Arab Of The Future: A Childhood In The Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Arab Of The Future' Chronicles The Challenges Of A Cross-Cultural Childhood", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/09/455303187/arab-of-the-future-chronicles-the-challenges-of-a-cross-cultural-childhood" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 165, "book": "The Arab Of The Future: A Childhood In The Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "Rage And Humor Alternate In 'Arab Of The Future'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/29/450887754/rage-and-humor-alternate-in-arab-of-the-future" } ] }, "166": { "id": 166, "title": "The Argonauts", "author": "Maggie Nelson", "text": "In Maggie Nelson’s short memoir, nearly everything is flexible. Genres, ideas and bodies all bend, re-form and take on new meanings. Through 143 pages, she tells overlapping stories centered on her romance with the gender-fluid artist Harry Dodge and her own pregnancy. She writes in a long, unbroken sequence of short paragraphs into which she weaves quotes and theories by philosophers, child psychologists, artists, critics and loved ones. The Argonauts is Nelson’s running log of joy and fear in a time of transition — the never-ending voyage of making a family without a map.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "family matters", "for art lovers", "love & romance", "rather short", "seriously great writing", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jacob Ganz" ], "isbn": "1555977073", "asin": "", "oclc": 889165103, "seamus": 404422272, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1555977073", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781555977078", "isbn10": "1555977073", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 166, "book": "The Argonauts", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Argonauts' Is A Voyage Through Parenting, Partnership And Transition", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/07/403127434/the-argonauts-is-a-voyage-through-parenting-partnership-and-transition" } ] }, "167": { "id": 167, "title": "The Art Of Memoir", "author": "Mary Karr", "text": "This is a win-win kind of book. It stimulates in two ways: First, as a textbook of sorts — even if you don’t plan to write a memoir, thinking about memory and communicating past events will set your mind tumbling over itself. And second, as a resource, a bibliography — the books Mary Karr mentions promise to be great reads. (The ones I’ve read are.) Oh, and one more: If you are planning to write a memoir, this is the best possible way to procrastinate putting pen to paper.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "family matters", "staff picks", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "0062223062", "asin": "", "oclc": 899226601, "seamus": 44039790, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062223062", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062223067", "isbn10": "0062223062", "links": [] }, "168": { "id": 168, "title": "The Battle Of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled Into The Spotlight And Made History", "author": "Robin Givhan", "text": "You know that cliche about history “coming alive”? Well, in the hands of Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic Robin Givhan, it does. On a chilly November night back in 1973, five American designers went toe-to-toe and dress-to-dress with five French designers in one legendary fashion show. It was seemingly a fundraiser for the restoration of the Palace of Versailles, but lift the hemline just a smidge and you’ll see that there was so much more at play — race, gender, the new world pushing up against the old. If you’re tempted to dismiss this as simply fashion history — don’t.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "for art lovers", "nonfiction", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Shannon Rhoades" ], "isbn": "1250052904", "asin": "", "oclc": 881437168, "seamus": 393823312, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1250052904", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250052902", "isbn10": "1250052904", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 168, "book": "The Battle Of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled Into The Spotlight And Made History", "source": "NPR", "text": "How A 1970s Fashion Faceoff Put American Designers In The Spotlight", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/19/393823017/how-a-1970s-fashion-faceoff-put-american-designers-in-the-spotlight" } ] }, "169": { "id": 169, "title": "The Bear Ate Your Sandwich", "author": "Julia Sarcone-Roach", "text": "Prepare to be thoroughly entertained by this delightful story about a missing sandwich and the bear who ate it. Julia Sarcone-Roach’s active, engaging and detailed illustrations chronicle Bear’s rollicking journey from the forest to the city. The adventure culminates at a park bench where a lunchbox lies open. Hungry, Bear is caught devouring the sandwich. Embarrassed, he longs for the forest and we bid him farewell as he sets sail to return home. A surprise ending will leave you laughing out loud. (For ages 3 to 7)
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "kids’ books", "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "0375858601", "asin": "", "oclc": 876882570, "seamus": 457235322, "bookshop": 9780375858604, "cover": "0375858601", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780375858604", "isbn10": "0375858601", "links": [] }, "170": { "id": 170, "title": "The Big Green Tent: A Novel", "author": "Ludmila Ulitskaya, translated by Polly Gannon", "text": "Ludmila Ulitskaya’s novel leaps whole decades in a single bound, weaves intricate webs of connection between dozens of characters — and sure makes brief recommendations like this one a hell of a task. How best to label it? A coming-of-age tale of three boyhood friends? A record of Soviet dissident artists, a novel of manners, a historical thriller, a story of mentors and students? Somehow, it manages to slip into every one of these categories (and more) — and then to defy them in turn. At once vast, intimate and riveting, it eludes a 100-word summary. So, instead, I’ll say just three: Please read it.
", "tags": [ "for art lovers", "for history lovers", "rather long", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "historical fiction", "fiction", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Colin Dwyer" ], "isbn": "0374166676", "asin": "", "oclc": 869263715, "seamus": 455265257, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374166676", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374166670", "isbn10": "0374166676", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 170, "book": "The Big Green Tent: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Entire Soviet Union Fits Into 'The Big Green Tent'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/11/455263881/the-entire-soviet-union-fits-into-the-big-green-tent" } ] }, "171": { "id": 171, "title": "The Blondes: A Novel", "author": "Emily Schultz", "text": "Hazel, a graduate student who has been having an affair with her married professor, discovers her pregnancy and witnesses the beginning of an epidemic on the same terrifying day. The mysterious illness, in which blond women attack strangers with rabid ferocity before dying themselves, seizes the country, and Hazel struggles to get home in the midst of the madness. The Blondes is scary and deeply, bitingly funny — a satire about gender that kept me reading until 4 in the morning — and a fine addition to the all-too-small genre of feminist horror.
", "tags": [ "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "mysteries & thrillers", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Carmen Maria Machado" ], "isbn": "1250043352", "asin": "", "oclc": 896954077, "seamus": 458340964, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1250043352", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250043351", "isbn10": "1250043352", "links": [] }, "172": { "id": 172, "title": "The Bollywood Bride", "author": "Sonali Dev", "text": "A Bollywood superstar with an icy reputation, Ria travels to Chicago for a friend’s wedding — and has to face Vikram, the first love she left behind. Convinced Ria abandoned him to pursue fame and fortune, Vikram at first tries to avoid her, but finally gives in to temptation. However, when the secrets Ria tried to bury are unearthed, Vikram re-examines their painful history. It may be too late to be Ria’s hero, but he’ll do everything he can to help her save herself. An exquisite, romantic novel with haunting universal themes.
", "tags": [ "love & romance", "let’s talk about sex", "tales from around the world", "family matters", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "1617730157", "asin": "", "oclc": 921438652, "seamus": 458339102, "bookshop": 9781617730153, "cover": "1617730157", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781617730153", "isbn10": "1617730157", "links": [] }, "173": { "id": 173, "title": "The Book Of Aron: A Novel", "author": "Jim Shepard", "text": "Jim Shepard’s latest novel tells the story of Aron, a Polish boy living in Warsaw when the Nazis invade. The book shares some predictable traits with other works of fiction about the Holocaust — it’s horrifying, brutal and angry. But Shepard’s pitch-black humor and his avoidance of artificial epiphanies are original. It’s an immensely rewarding, shocking and beautiful book.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "1101874317", "asin": "", "oclc": 905880561, "seamus": 404215849, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1101874317", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101874318", "isbn10": "1101874317", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 173, "book": "The Book Of Aron: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "No Easy Answers In 'The Book Of Aron'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/05/403123023/no-easy-answers-in-the-book-of-aron" } ] }, "174": { "id": 174, "title": "The Buried Giant: A Novel", "author": "Kazuo Ishiguro", "text": "No novelist around today beats Ishiguro when it comes to writing about loss; and, almost every time he tackles his signature subject, he does so in a different genre: His breakthrough book, The Remains of the Day, is a “straight” literary novel in diary form; When We Were Orphans is a detective tale and Never Let Me Go is a sci-fi story. Here, Ishiguro serves up a masterful blend of fantasy, and Arthurian romance and postmodern absurdity. In The Buried Giant, an exhausted group of medieval travelers cross a blasted landscape straight out of the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett. They “can’t go on,” but they “go on” and so, too, do Ishiguro’s readers, through scenes infused with menace and magical beauty.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "staff picks", "historical fiction", "love & romance", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "030727103X", "asin": "", "oclc": 903245670, "seamus": 389546694, "bookshop": "", "cover": "030727103X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307271037", "isbn10": "030727103X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 174, "book": "The Buried Giant: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ishiguro's 'Buried Giant' Gets Lost In Its Own Fog", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/04/390447029/ishiguros-buried-giant-gets-lost-in-its-own-fog" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 174, "book": "The Buried Giant: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Persistence — And Impermanence — Of Memory In 'The Buried Giant'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/28/389530345/the-persistence-and-impermanence-of-memory-in-the-buried-giant" } ] }, "175": { "id": 175, "title": "The Complete Stories", "author": "Clarice Lispector, translated by Katrina Dodson", "text": "In The Complete Stories, Clarice Lispector proves herself to be a true master of narrative. The collection, translated by Katrina Dodson, is a perfect introduction to those not familiar with Lispector’s work, beautifully structured and poignant on all levels. Stories like “The Escape” and “Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady” — which deals with a discontented housewife on the brink of insanity — stay with you like a kind of dream. These 85 stories, some only a few pages long, reaffirm Lispector’s singularity and her reputation as “the great witch of Brazilian literature.” Long after her death, Lispector continues to champion the possibilities of language, and its ability to mesmerize.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "0811219631", "asin": "", "oclc": 892878776, "seamus": 43224902, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0811219631", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780811219631", "isbn10": "0811219631", "links": [] }, "176": { "id": 176, "title": "The Country Of Ice Cream Star", "author": "Sandra Newman", "text": "This remains one of the most beautiful books I have read this year — the one I champion everywhere. It’s a challenging book (about rape and murder, slavery, white colonialism, religious fundamentalism, and a plague that has wiped out 80 percent of the population, leaving none behind but several generations of black children who all die before their 20th birthdays) and is written completely in a debased (but inarguably beautified) version of English, developed among isolated knots of survivors. Newman’s voice is powerful, and her protagonist, Ice Cream Star, would make the perfect YA heroine if not for the fact that she is 10 times the heroine in any of the tales whose bones this one steals.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "rather long", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0062227092", "asin": "", "oclc": 863768226, "seamus": 384385902, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0062227092", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062227096", "isbn10": "0062227092", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 176, "book": "The Country Of Ice Cream Star", "source": "NPR", "text": "Ten Hearts For The Country — And Language — Of 'Ice Cream Star'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/16/384112222/ten-hearts-for-the-country-and-language-of-ice-cream-star" } ] }, "177": { "id": 177, "title": "The Court Of Fives", "author": "Kate Elliott", "text": "Caught between the worlds of the ruling-class Patrons and the conquered Commoners, Jessamy must choose between being a dutiful daughter and secretly competing in the Court of Fives — an obstacle race that offers independence. When a power-hungry Patron throws her family into chaos and threatens the lives of her mother and sisters, Jessamy turns to an unlikely source for help: a wealthy Patron boy she beat in The Fives. Full of high-stakes adventure but also heartfelt musings on identity, family and colonization, this book presents a fantasy world that is refreshingly inspired by Greco-Roman and Egyptian cultures.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "young adult", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Caitlyn Paxson" ], "isbn": "0316364193", "asin": "", "oclc": 890971579, "seamus": 458809833, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316364193", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316364195", "isbn10": "0316364193", "links": [] }, "178": { "id": 178, "title": "The Crossing (Bosch)", "author": "Michael Connelly", "text": "In The Crossing, Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, the hero of Michael Connelly’s long-running series of police procedurals, has been forced to retire from the LAPD. Harry gives leisure living a halfhearted try, but he finds that the vintage motorcycle he had planned to tinker with as a hobby interests him for about 10 minutes. Indeed, so antsy is Harry that when his half-brother, Mickey Haller (who is himself the hero of Connelly’s “Lincoln Lawyer” series), asks him to sign on as an investigator, Harry surprisingly agrees. Haller, after all, is the enemy — a criminal defense attorney — and working for him means Harry is “crossing” over to the other side. Harry may be officially over the hill as far as the Los Angeles Police Department is concerned, but Connelly is still very much in his prime.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "seriously great writing", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "0316225886", "asin": "", "oclc": 914296403, "seamus": 456614714, "bookshop": 9780316225885, "cover": "0316225886", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316225885", "isbn10": "0316225886", "links": [] }, "179": { "id": 179, "title": "The Dark Net: Inside The Digital Underworld", "author": "Jamie Bartlett", "text": "The Dark Net is a meticulously researched and reported look at the hidden world of cryptocurrency, anonymous Web browsing and online subcultures. Information technology has carved out small spaces of almost absolute freedom while simultaneously enabling mass surveillance and tracking. Author Jamie Bartlett takes a fair, thoughtful approach to the subject, and if you’ve ever wondered what a bitcoin is or how both child pornographers and political freedom fighters hide out online, The Dark Net serves as a great introduction.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "nonfiction", "the dark side", "it’s all geek to me" ], "reviewers": [ "David Eads" ], "isbn": "1612194893", "asin": "", "oclc": 900594552, "seamus": 411476933, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1612194893", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781612194899", "isbn10": "1612194893", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 179, "book": "The Dark Net: Inside The Digital Underworld", "source": "NPR", "text": "Infiltrating 'The Dark Net,' Where Criminals, Trolls And Extremists Reign", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/06/03/411476653/infiltrating-the-dark-net-where-criminals-trolls-and-extremists-reign" } ] }, "180": { "id": 180, "title": "The Daughters: A Novel", "author": "Adrienne Celt", "text": "In this lush, finely wrought novel, a professional opera singer named Lulu has a child and loses both her voice and beloved grandmother in the same day. Certain that this has happened because of a curse that stalks the women in her lineage, she plumbs the depths of her past and her heritage to confront it. Equal parts feminist fairy tale and elegy, The Daughters is a gorgeous exploration of music, family history and motherhood
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "book club ideas", "family matters", "for music lovers", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "rather short", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Carmen Maria Machado" ], "isbn": "1631490451", "asin": "", "oclc": 891611214, "seamus": 429042162, "bookshop": 9781631490453, "cover": "1631490451", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781631490453", "isbn10": "1631490451", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 180, "book": "The Daughters: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Complex, Generational Music In Lyrical 'Daughters'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/427826569/complex-generational-music-in-lyrical-daughters" } ] }, "181": { "id": 181, "title": "The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: One More Last Rite For The Detective Genre", "author": "Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky, translated by Josh Billings", "text": "The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn, by the brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, is a smart and deeply funny tale that sends its readers down unpredictable paths. First published in 1970, and translated from the Russian for the first time by Josh Billings, the novel follows police inspector Peter Glebsky, a family man anticipating his first vacation in years. Shortly after he arrives at his inn, however, strange events begin to unfold, and Glebsky realizes his vacation will be anything but relaxing. After a body surfaces, the story reaches a new level of strangeness, throwing readers into a detective story that is nothing short of exhilarating.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "tales from around the world", "mysteries & thrillers", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "161219432X", "asin": "", "oclc": 904046952, "seamus": 393364175, "bookshop": "", "cover": "161219432X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781612194325", "isbn10": "161219432X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 181, "book": "The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: One More Last Rite For The Detective Genre", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Mountaineer' Is A Must-Read Of Soviet Sci-Fi", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/19/392634682/mountaineer-is-a-must-read-of-soviet-sci-fi" } ] }, "182": { "id": 182, "title": "The Dirty Dust: Cré Na Cille", "author": "Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley", "text": "Chances are, unless you’ve been brushing up on your modern Irish, you haven’t read Máirtín Ó Cadhain or this 1949 novel. But don’t sweat it: Very few in the English-speaking world had, either, until it finally got an English translation this year. The book, a foul-mouthed gabfest between corpses in a small-town graveyard, can be a tough one to pin down. It’s at once simple in premise and complex in execution; and while not much of note actually happens, its playful turns of phrase — and remarkably inventive profanity — give a lot of bawdy life to this challenging dialogue of the dead.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Colin Dwyer" ], "isbn": "0300198493", "asin": "", "oclc": 890377680, "seamus": 394229750, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0300198493", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780300198492", "isbn10": "0300198493", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 182, "book": "The Dirty Dust: Cré Na Cille", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Shimmy Into English Shakes The Dirt Off This Irish Classic", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/25/392132063/a-shimmy-into-english-shakes-the-dirt-off-this-irish-classic" } ] }, "183": { "id": 183, "title": "The Double Life Of Liliane", "author": "Lily Tuck", "text": "Liliane’s double life begins when she is 8, in 1948, and boards a flight from New York to Rome to visit her father, Rudy, a German Jewish film producer. Liliane’s stylish, artistic mother, Irene, has recently remarried, to a Wall Street investment banker. Growing up, Liliane shuttles between her parents, and she works to construct her own identity as she watches, listens and explores generations of her parents’ families. To tell her story, Lily Tuck inhabits the spacious realm of the imagination, shifting time zones and historic periods effortlessly, weaving memories and photographs, family stories and facts, into a mesmerizing portrait.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "historical fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "080212402X", "asin": "", "oclc": 904460229, "seamus": 437331923, "bookshop": "", "cover": "080212402X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780802124029", "isbn10": "080212402X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 183, "book": "The Double Life Of Liliane", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Liliane' Builds A Life From Fragments Of Memory", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/09/437273656/liliane-builds-a-life-from-fragments-of-memory" } ] }, "184": { "id": 184, "title": "The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day In May", "author": "Mark Z. Danielewski", "text": "This year the author of the cultish (and groundbreaking) House Of Leaves came roaring back with the first two books of his proposed 27-volume (?!?) series, The Familiar. It is … bonkers. Both volumes are massive, track nearly a dozen converging storylines and countless characters, and seem to be attempting to bridge the visual/linguistic gap between the novel and the graphic novel with illustrations, innovative page layouts and other tricks in the typesetter’s arsenal. The second book is stronger and more polished than the first, but Danielewski has boldly marked his artistic turf with these occasionally mind-blowing artifacts of post-everything weirdness.
", "tags": [ "rather long", "eye-opening reads", "seriously great writing", "comics & graphic novels", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "0375714944", "asin": "", "oclc": 888025279, "seamus": 405945011, "bookshop": 9780375714948, "cover": "0375714944", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780375714948", "isbn10": "0375714944", "links": [] }, "185": { "id": 185, "title": "The Fifth Season", "author": "N.K. Jemisin", "text": "N. K. Jemisin’s latest novel, The Fifth Season, takes place in a land called the Stillness — a tragically ironic name, since it suffers geographical cataclysms on a periodic basis. Essun, a schoolteacher whose husband inexplicably kills their son and flees with their daughter, undergoes a quest across the Stillness that starts out as a rescue but becomes something else entirely. Jemisin brilliantly illustrates that imaginative world-building is a vital element of fantasy, but also that every character can be a world unto herself.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "0316229296", "asin": "", "oclc": 863324940, "seamus": 429040160, "bookshop": 9780316229296, "cover": "0316229296", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316229296", "isbn10": "0316229296", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 185, "book": "The Fifth Season", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Fifth Season' Embraces The Scale And Complexity Of Fantasy", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/04/427825372/fifth-season-embraces-the-scale-and-complexity-of-fantasy" } ] }, "186": { "id": 186, "title": "The First Collection Of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic", "author": "Jessica Hopper", "text": "This brilliant collection of music writing by former Pitchfork Senior Editor Jessica Hopper strikes fast with its direct, biting title. And it doesn’t stop there — the book challenges commonplace criticism throughout. In mere pages, Hopper covers both the problematic treatment of female characters in mid-2000s emo lyrics and the abandonment of Christianity by one of Christian rock’s foremost heroes. Music fans would struggle to find a more compelling series of essays.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "for music lovers", "short stories, essays & poetry", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Tyler Fisher" ], "isbn": "0983186332", "asin": "", "oclc": 889168962, "seamus": 457928750, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0983186332", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780983186335", "isbn10": "0983186332", "links": [] }, "187": { "id": 187, "title": "The Fishermen: A Novel", "author": "Chigozie Obioma", "text": "Chigozie Obioma’s debut novel is a modern (yet age-old and universal) story of four brothers, told from the viewpoint of the youngest sibling. It follows the boys’ adventures in the modest town of Akure, Nigeria, where they have an encounter that threatens to violently tear their close-knit family apart. Inspired by his native Nigeria and, by extension, the contradictions and marvels of Africa, Obioma is an articulate and sometimes lyrical storyteller. He’s a dynamic new voice from Africa — and one that deserves a listen.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "fiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Ofeibea Quist-Arcton" ], "isbn": "0316338370", "asin": "", "oclc": 886490811, "seamus": 399592844, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316338370", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316338370", "isbn10": "0316338370", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 187, "book": "The Fishermen: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Fishermen' Ventures Into Dark Waters", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/15/399346137/the-fishermen-ventures-into-dark-waters" } ] }, "188": { "id": 188, "title": "The Fly Trap", "author": "Fredrik Sjöberg, translated by Thomas Teal", "text": "A charming memoir about a Swedish biologist’s passion for hoverflies? Seriously? Yes. Talk about off the beaten track: Fredrik Sjöberg, who lives on the tiny island of Runmarö in the archipelago east of Stockholm, muses and amuses about his baffling passion for hoverflies. In this wry, delightful paean to some of the tiniest wonders of the natural world, he also makes a case for the opposite of globalism — cutting our overwhelming world down to size by focusing intensely on a narrow point of interest. The Fly Trap proves that great writing can elevate anything — including a swarm of insects.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing", "eye-opening reads", "it’s all geek to me", "tales from around the world", "funny stuff", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "110187015X", "asin": "", "oclc": 910665204, "seamus": 410069552, "bookshop": "", "cover": "110187015X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101870150", "isbn10": "110187015X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 188, "book": "The Fly Trap", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Uppermost Aristocracy of the Hoverfly Society", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/07/23/486731588/the-uppermost-aristocracy-of-the-hoverfly-society" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 188, "book": "The Fly Trap", "source": "NPR", "text": "You'll Be Caught Fast By This Delightful 'Fly Trap'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/02/408296119/youll-be-caught-fast-by-this-delightful-fly-trap" } ] }, "189": { "id": 189, "title": "The Galaxy Game", "author": "Karen Lord", "text": "This sequel to The Best of All Possible Worlds follows the adventures of three teenagers against an epic galactic background: Rafi, a young psychic learning to control his gifts; Ntenman, a socially savvy rascal jockeying for capital on his own terms; and Serendipity, a woman from an all-telepath community dealing with recent upheavals in her society. In rich, graceful prose, Karen Lord offers sharp, staggering insights about colonialism, immigrant communities, commerce and assimilation while pouring out a fascinating world — one glass of rum at a time.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "0345534077", "asin": "", "oclc": 852457486, "seamus": 374046678, "bookshop": 9780345534071, "cover": "0345534077", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780345534071", "isbn10": "0345534077", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 189, "book": "The Galaxy Game", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Galaxy Game' Is Rich And Strong As A Shot Of Rum", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/10/374037548/the-galaxy-game-is-rich-and-strong-as-a-shot-of-rum" } ] }, "190": { "id": 190, "title": "The Gap Of Time: A Novel", "author": "Jeanette Winterson", "text": "Re-imagined Shakespeare is, of course, everyone’s bag — I’m looking at you, Baz Luhrmann — but there’s a special frisson when you marry an old play with a thoroughly modern author. Jeanette Winterson’s retelling of A Winter’s Tale shimmers with energy in a way I hope the Bard would have loved. The setting is a modern American city (which could be New Orleans). Leontes is a hedge fund manager with a fully fleshed out back story and real clues to his behavior (which are tough to find in the source material). This is a book that will appeal to any fan of a good yarn; Winterson keeps the action pumping. Even if you already know the play it’s a well-told tale of modern jealousy and power.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "tales from around the world", "family matters", "for art lovers", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0804141355", "asin": "", "oclc": 910914812, "seamus": 44503520, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0804141355", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780804141352", "isbn10": "0804141355", "links": [] }, "191": { "id": 191, "title": "The Ghost Network: A Novel", "author": "Catie Disabato", "text": "The Ghost Network is Catie Disabato’s sharp and inventive debut novel. It’s the story of pop star Molly Metropolis, who vanishes mysteriously while en route to a show in Chicago. Her personal assistant, Nix, takes on the role of detective, searching for clues in Molly’s journal and going down a rabbit hole of abandoned subway lines, song lyrics and secret societies. Disabato builds a fast-paced and brilliantly structured story that is at once fiercely controlled and highly obsessive.
", "tags": [ "fiction", "mysteries & thrillers", "for music lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "1612194346", "asin": "", "oclc": 886745709, "seamus": 458372807, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1612194346", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781612194349", "isbn10": "1612194346", "links": [] }, "192": { "id": 192, "title": "The Girl In The Spider's Web: A Lisbeth Salander Novel", "author": "David Lagercrantz", "text": "When David Lagercrantz was hired to continue Stieg Larsson’s internationally best-selling “Millennium” series, he inherited an ugly public-relations problem: a family war being fought over Larsson’s estate and literary legacy. So he mostly ignored it to produce the best novel he could. And for series fans, it’s hard to deny that he did a memorable job, respecting Larsson’s characters, then confidently expanding them. This isn’t the novel Larsson would have written, but it’s dense, thoughtful and compelling, with its own strong voice and its own take on Lisbeth Salander.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Tasha Robinson" ], "isbn": "0385354282", "asin": "", "oclc": 906814570, "seamus": 434916345, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385354282", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385354288", "isbn10": "0385354282", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 192, "book": "The Girl In The Spider's Web: A Lisbeth Salander Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Girl Who Outlived Her Creator: Salander Returns In 'Spider's Web'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/434916317/the-girl-who-outlived-her-creator-salander-returns-in-spiders-web" } ] }, "193": { "id": 193, "title": "The Girl On The Train", "author": "Paula Hawkins", "text": "Glimpses, fleeting images and faulty memories all add up in this super intriguing “what the heck is going on?” story. An unemployed, alcoholic divorcee (“Girl”) continues her daily commute to keep up appearances — and also because it takes her by her old house, where her ex continues to live with his new wife and kid. When the neighbor four doors down disappears, “Girl” gets involved. The story is told in the first person alternately by three different characters (“Girl,” missing neighbor, and new wife) in incremental morning and evening diary like entries and you’re never quite sure whom or what to believe.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "the dark side", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "1594633665", "asin": "", "oclc": 886879900, "seamus": 376996145, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594633665", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594633669", "isbn10": "1594633665", "links": [] }, "194": { "id": 194, "title": "The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness: A Novel", "author": "Kyung-Sook Shin, translated by Ha-Yun Jung", "text": "Kyung-Sook Shin’s work often inhabits the space between story and reality. This novel — about a girl who isn’t quite her, working in a factory and going to school in the 1970s — is framed with the modern life of “the author,” in a time and place she haunts more than really lives in. Until her youth is laid out and the truth told, she’s trapped in echoes of life: negotiating family in the past, staring at an unfinished manuscript in the future. It’s a story of the pasts that build us, and it makes for one of the most absorbing reads of the year.
", "tags": [ "tales from around the world", "family matters", "historical fiction", "identity & culture", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Genevieve Valentine" ], "isbn": "1605988634", "asin": "", "oclc": 907103923, "seamus": 442583502, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1605988634", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781605988634", "isbn10": "1605988634", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 194, "book": "The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Girl Who Wrote Loneliness' Tells An Almost-True Tale With Tenor Of A Ghost Story", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/437287336/girl-who-wrote-loneliness-tells-an-almost-true-tale-with-the-tenor-of-a-ghost-st" } ] }, "195": { "id": 195, "title": "The Grace of Kings", "author": "Ken Liu", "text": "A magnificent fantasy epic drawing on the events of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but set in an invented and richly realized world. Mata Zyndu, orphaned heir to a noble house, joins forces with Kuni Garu, a charismatic ne’er-do-well, to bring down the ruthless Mapidéré and his young empire. The gods wage proxy wars on each other through their unwitting mortal champions; duchies clash; friendships are formed and broken — and there are two more books to come. A tremendously impressive debut from an award-winning short-fiction writer.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "rather long", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "1481424270", "asin": "", "oclc": 903375832, "seamus": 397857178, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1481424270", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781481424271", "isbn10": "1481424270", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 195, "book": "The Grace of Kings", "source": "NPR", "text": "Sprawling, Soaring 'Grace Of Kings' Changes The Fantasy Landscape", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/07/397857358/sprawling-soaring-grace-of-kings-changes-the-fantasy-landscape" } ] }, "196": { "id": 196, "title": "The Gracekeepers: A Novel", "author": "Kirsty Logan", "text": "Glasgow-based author Kirsty Logan sets her debut novel, The Gracekeepers, in a world that’s been almost entirely inundated by the ocean, where the Circus Excalibur roams the sea looking for islands on which to set up its big top. The scarcity of land leads to two contentious classes of people: damplings and landlockers. Evoking Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, Logan not only captures the cloistered eeriness of circus life; she does so in a way that lovingly reinvents both the weird whimsy and archetypal resonance of fairy tales.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "tales from around the world", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "0553446614", "asin": "", "oclc": 896954086, "seamus": 407713165, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0553446614", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780553446616", "isbn10": "0553446614", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 196, "book": "The Gracekeepers: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "The World Of 'Gracekeepers' Is Immersed In Water — And Secrets", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/21/407077721/the-world-of-gracekeepers-is-immersed-in-water-and-secrets" } ] }, "197": { "id": 197, "title": "The Jemima Code: Two Centuries Of African American Cookbooks", "author": "Toni Tipton-Martin", "text": "For some, just thinking about Aunt Jemima evokes uncomfortable feelings — anger, maybe even guilt or shame, over a racial stereotype of a black woman who’s happiest in the kitchen getting ready to serve her white folks. But just who were the real Aunt Jemimas — the real cooks and chefs whose skill did so much to define American cuisine? To find out, food writer Toni Tipton-Martin (no relation) dived into her collection of 300 or so African-American cookbooks, some of which date back almost 200 years. Martin shares what she learned in the lavishly-illustrated Jemima Code. It’s that rare coffee table book that serves up important history and compelling imagery in digestible, bite-size chunks that still stick to your ribs.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "cookbooks & food", "for history lovers", "nonfiction", "eye-opening reads", "identity & culture", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Michel Martin" ], "isbn": "0292745486", "asin": "", "oclc": 890377551, "seamus": 449198102, "bookshop": 9780292745483, "cover": "0292745486", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780292745483", "isbn10": "0292745486", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 197, "book": "The Jemima Code: Two Centuries Of African American Cookbooks", "source": "NPR", "text": "Beyond 'Aunt Jemima': A Taste Of African-American Culinary Heritage", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/17/449197640/beyond-aunt-jemima-a-taste-of-african-american-culinary-heritage" } ] }, "198": { "id": 198, "title": "The Just City", "author": "Jo Walton", "text": "Never has a book argued so engagingly with Plato’s Republic by way of Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine! Across time and space, whenever people read The Republic in the original Greek and pray to Athena to live there, the goddess plucks them from their historical moment and transports them to the island of Thera before its volcano exploded, telling them that they have a unique time-locked opportunity to build Plato’s dream city themselves — unaware that the god Apollo is incarnated among them as a young boy so that he can begin to understand consent. Utterly wonderful.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "it’s all geek to me", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "0765332663", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582515, "seamus": 376097568, "bookshop": 9780765332660, "cover": "0765332663", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780765332660", "isbn10": "0765332663", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 198, "book": "The Just City", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Consolations (And Controversies) Of Philosophy In 'The Just City'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/01/15/376093453/the-consolations-and-controversies-of-philosophy-in-the-just-city" } ] }, "199": { "id": 199, "title": "The Last Taxi Ride: A Ranjit Singh Novel", "author": "A.X. Ahmad", "text": "The second installment of A.X. Ahmad’s Ranjit Singh mystery series is even better than the first (The Caretaker). Ex-Indian army Capt. Singh has left Martha’s Vineyard for the shadowy streets of Manhattan, where he’s now driving a taxi and attempting to save enough money to have a well-appointed second bedroom for his daughter’s visits from their home country. When Bollywood star Shabana Shah is murdered after an encounter with Singh, police suspect the worst — but Singh knows something even more terrible connecting the beautiful actor with a bizarre and lucrative underworld industry. Great pacing and unforgettable details make this a procedural not to be missed.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "tales from around the world", "no biz like show biz", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "1250020441", "asin": "", "oclc": 889523365, "seamus": 419180556, "bookshop": 9781250020444, "cover": "1250020441", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781250020444", "isbn10": "1250020441", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 199, "book": "The Last Taxi Ride: A Ranjit Singh Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "Dead-Cinch Thrillers: 4 Books To Get Your Heart Pounding", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/07/06/419174387/dead-cinch-thrillers-4-books-to-get-your-heart-pounding" } ] }, "200": { "id": 200, "title": "The Light Of The World: A Memoir", "author": "Elizabeth Alexander", "text": "Elizabeth Alexander is probably best-known as the poet who read at Barack Obama’s first inauguration, but she may be remembered for The Light of the World. This slim book chronicles her 15-year marriage to an Eritrean Renaissance man. Together, they created a happy household that was a magnet for friends and family. When he died just before his 50th birthday, Alexander was inconsolable. Her memoir recounts, in luminous language, how she slowly swam through almost paralyzing grief to break through the surface again and find new life for herself and her sons. Even at its saddest, Alexander’s lyricism shines through.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "family matters", "love & romance", "seriously great writing", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Karen Grigsby Bates" ], "isbn": "1455599875", "asin": "", "oclc": 886490865, "seamus": 400179753, "bookshop": 9781455599875, "cover": "1455599875", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781455599875", "isbn10": "1455599875", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 200, "book": "The Light Of The World: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Kindness Of Strangers Connects A Poet To Her Own Grief", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/11/431343279/the-kindness-of-strangers-connects-a-poet-to-her-own-grief" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 200, "book": "The Light Of The World: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "Memoir Chronicles The Joy And Loss Of 'The Light Of The World'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/19/400179330/memoir-chronicles-the-joy-and-loss-of-the-light-of-the-world" } ] }, "201": { "id": 201, "title": "The Little Gardener", "author": "Emily Hughes", "text": "This beautifully illustrated book tells the magical tale of a tiny boy who loves his garden more than anything. It provides him with joy, shelter and food; it is his entire world. Sadly, it becomes too much for him to handle alone — and he risks losing it all. Emily Hughes’ spare prose allows her gorgeous artwork to tell the story of the gardener and the single flower that brings him inspiration and hope. Layered with meaning, this is a book worth lingering over and cherishing. (For ages 3 to 7)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "1909263435", "asin": "", "oclc": 892164124, "seamus": 457234005, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1909263435", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781909263437", "isbn10": "1909263435", "links": [] }, "202": { "id": 202, "title": "The Marriage Book: Centuries Of Advice, Inspiration, And Cautionary Tales From Adam And Eve To Zoloft", "author": "Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler", "text": "I know. A marriage anthology? Seriously? But just hear me out on this one: Curated by husband-and-wife team Stephen J. Adler and Lisa Grunwald, this collection is refreshingly unsappy. There are chapters devoted to “Grievances,” “Qualms,” “Conflict” and “Infidelity.” This idiosyncratic compilation includes Bill Clinton’s 1998 grand jury testimony, a reddit thread about whether to hyphenate your name, and advice from Ovid on playing hard to get. Like that funny guy or gal you met at the party, this sweet, smart, A-to-Z guide (“from Adam & Eve to Zoloft”) never takes itself too seriously, and before you know it, you’ll find yourself falling in love.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "family matters", "for history lovers", "let’s talk about sex", "love & romance", "rather long", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Beth Novey" ], "isbn": "1439169659", "asin": "", "oclc": 909484947, "seamus": 457919893, "bookshop": 9781439169650, "cover": "1439169659", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781439169650", "isbn10": "1439169659", "links": [] }, "203": { "id": 203, "title": "The Marriage Of Opposites", "author": "Alice Hoffman", "text": "Alice Hoffman’s brilliant paint box of a book is set in the early 1800s in the town of Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas. Here we meet the family of Camille Pissarro — the Impressionist painter who will soon rise to fame — starting with his mother, Rachel. (Camille is her favorite son.) As in Hoffman’s previous work, this book is rich with magical realism. There’s a busy panoply of characters, aunts and cousins and random stepfathers. Forbidden marriages abound. And underlying the relationships is a lavish Caribbean canvas: The parrots in the trees, the coconut cake, the scent of jasmine.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "tales from around the world", "book club ideas", "family matters", "for art lovers", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jean Zimmerman" ], "isbn": "1451693591", "asin": "", "oclc": 913845305, "seamus": 429761851, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1451693591", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781451693591", "isbn10": "1451693591", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 203, "book": "The Marriage Of Opposites", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Marriage Of Opposites' Paints Camille Pissarro's Colorful Family History", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/06/427830933/marriage-of-opposites-paints-camille-pissarros-colorful-family-history" } ] }, "204": { "id": 204, "title": "The Meursault Investigation", "author": "Kamel Daoud, translated by John Cullen", "text": "An aimless, bored and amoral Frenchman gets distracted by the sun on an Algerian beach and impulsively takes someone’s life. That nameless murdered man from Albert Camus’ existential classic, The Stranger, becomes the motivating figure in Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. Daoud gives the man a name, Moses, and a mourning brother, who narrates this taut and riveting novel. The story is less a rebuttal to The Stanger than a continuation of it; it clicks into place like clockwork. And while the book also reflects its source in its off-kilter, mesmerizing tonality, The Meursault Investigation is more than a tribute; it’s a tour de force.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "for art lovers", "rather short", "fiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "the dark side", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Neda Ulaby" ], "isbn": "1590517512", "asin": "", "oclc": 904036613, "seamus": 412912107, "bookshop": 9781590517512, "cover": "1590517512", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781590517512", "isbn10": "1590517512", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 204, "book": "The Meursault Investigation", "source": "NPR", "text": "Novelist Kamel Daoud, Finding Dignity In The Absurd", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/21/432618805/novelist-kamel-daoud-finding-dignity-in-the-absurd" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 204, "book": "The Meursault Investigation", "source": "NPR", "text": "Algerian Writer Kamel Daoud Stands Camus' 'The Stranger' On Its Head", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/23/416828000/algerian-writer-kamel-daoud-stands-camus-the-stranger-on-its-head" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 204, "book": "The Meursault Investigation", "source": "NPR", "text": "Mama's Still Alive Today: 'Meursault' Investigates A Literary Murder", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/10/412911794/mamas-still-alive-today-meursault-investigates-a-literary-murder" } ] }, "205": { "id": 205, "title": "The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook", "author": "Danny Bowien and Chris Ying", "text": "This isn’t really a cookbook in the sense that you’re actually going to make anything from it. Almost nothing here is easy enough for a dinner party, let alone a weeknight meal (I see you, “Beggar’s Duck” baked in clay). But if you’re lucky enough to have visited Danny Bowein’s bicoastal Mission Chinese restaurants (or even if you haven’t) you’ll be fascinated by his stories of time spent in various restaurant kitchens and inspired by his bold flavors (Chongqing Chicken Wings) and playful approach to classic foods from around the world (Kung Pao Pastrami).
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "Rose Friedman" ], "isbn": "0062243411", "asin": "", "oclc": 895301458, "seamus": 458373704, "bookshop": 9780062243416, "cover": "0062243411", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062243416", "isbn10": "0062243411", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 205, "book": "The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook", "source": "NPR", "text": "The Audacious Korean-American Chef Who Mastered 'Mission Chinese Food'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/21/462150071/the-audacious-korean-american-chef-who-mastered-mission-chinese-food" } ] }, "206": { "id": 206, "title": "The New Tsar: The Rise And Reign Of Vladimir Putin", "author": "Steven Lee Myers", "text": "If you are perplexed and intrigued by the enigmatic Vladimir Putin, you’ll want to read this biography. Steven Lee Myers goes behind and beyond the stereotypes of a workaholic leader driven by the humiliation and chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reserved and suspicious by nature, Putin is determined to project Russia as a great power and to unify the country with him at its center. His motivations — for everything from hosting the Olympics to getting involved in Ukraine and Syria — are a lot clearer thanks to Myers’ detailed reporting.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "rather long", "nonfiction", "tales from around the world", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Edith Chapin" ], "isbn": "0307961613", "asin": "", "oclc": 910475266, "seamus": 457921756, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0307961613", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307961617", "isbn10": "0307961613", "links": [] }, "207": { "id": 207, "title": "The Only Ones", "author": "Carola Dibbell", "text": "In her debut novel, The Only Ones, Carola Dibbell writes rhythmically and lyrically about New York City’s outer boroughs in the latter half of the 21st century, where life has been radically altered by populace-decimating pandemics and mass poverty. In this fraught landscape, 19-year-old Inez Fardo makes a discovery: The wealthy will pay her good money to let them clone her. For a book about a chilling dystopia, The Only Ones bleeds tenderness, warmth and a hard-won hope.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "the dark side", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1937512274", "asin": "", "oclc": 875240504, "seamus": 393350124, "bookshop": 9781937512279, "cover": "1937512274", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781937512279", "isbn10": "1937512274", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 207, "book": "The Only Ones", "source": "NPR", "text": "Does Post-Apocalyptic Literature Have A (Non-Dystopian) Future?", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/02/402852849/does-post-apocalyptic-literature-have-a-non-dystopian-future" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 207, "book": "The Only Ones", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Only Ones' Puts A Heartbreaking Spin On Dystopia", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/19/392632968/the-only-ones-puts-a-heartbreaking-spin-on-dystopia" } ] }, "208": { "id": 208, "title": "The Penderwicks In Spring", "author": "Jeanne Birdsall", "text": "Oh, the Penderwicks! They’re that creative, messy family you wish you lived next door to. This fourth installment of their story sees Batty, one of five sisters, come of age while the oldest sister, Rosalind, goes off to college. As with any series, I started reading it with nervous anticipation: Would my twin daughters and I still like them? Would they be true to who we’ve grown to know? Yes and yes. With The Penderwicks in Spring, Jeanne Birdsall has once again given us the gift of sisterly love. (For ages 8 to 12)
", "tags": [ "family matters", "kids’ books", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Justine Kenin" ], "isbn": "0375870776", "asin": "", "oclc": 883902946, "seamus": 457925565, "bookshop": 9780375870774, "cover": "0375870776", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780375870774", "isbn10": "0375870776", "links": [] }, "209": { "id": 209, "title": "The Precious One: A Novel", "author": "Marisa de los Santos", "text": "After her estranged father falls ill, Taisy Cleary returns to the town where she grew up and becomes embroiled in the life of her half-sister, 16-year-old Willow. Home-schooled Willow is floundering in her first year of private school, but she’s not exactly ready to accept any help from her long-gone sister. As the two adjust to each other, Willow’s world broadens and Taisy reconnects with a lost love, and they each learn to redefine and expand their ideas of love and family. Smart, vibrant, textured and lyrical.
", "tags": [ "family matters", "love & romance", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "0061670898", "asin": "", "oclc": 877363993, "seamus": 395065332, "bookshop": 9780061670893, "cover": "0061670898", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780061670893", "isbn10": "0061670898", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 209, "book": "The Precious One: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Precious One' Has Love At Its Heart", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/23/394897950/the-precious-one-has-love-at-its-heart" } ] }, "210": { "id": 210, "title": "The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators And The New Online Revolutionaries", "author": "Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan", "text": "The Red Web is an exploration of how the Russian state uses the Internet as a tool for surveillance and cyberaggression while dissidents are trying to use it as a channel for free expression. It reads like a spy novel, and there’s a lot of fascinating history about the state campaign to control information, from Soviet times to today. It’s a great piece of investigative reporting.
", "tags": [ "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "it’s all geek to me", "nonfiction", "tales from around the world", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Corey Flintoff" ], "isbn": "1610395735", "asin": "", "oclc": 914136614, "seamus": 457921248, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1610395735", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781610395731", "isbn10": "1610395735", "links": [] }, "211": { "id": 211, "title": "The Sandman: Overture", "author": "Neil Gaiman, illustrated by JH Williams III", "text": "Best-selling author Neil Gaiman made his name writing the horror/fantasy comic book series The Sandman about the godlike character Morpheus, the Lord of Dreaming. Its 75-issue run revealed Gaiman’s seemingly limitless imagination — he wrote stories about a convention for serial killers, the gods that view hell as prime real estate for development once Lucifer abandons it, and the premiere of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream held for an audience from the fairy realm. For the 25th anniversary of the comic book, Gaiman returned to his beloved characters for a six-issue miniseries. Here, Morpheus is tasked with saving the universe from complete destruction — a destruction he himself set in motion. The Sandman: Overture serves as a prequel to the original series and gives you the chance to read it all over again.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Sam Briger" ], "isbn": "1401248969", "asin": "", "oclc": 915943356, "seamus": 241852196, "bookshop": 9781401248963, "cover": "1401248969", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781401248963", "isbn10": "1401248969", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 211, "book": "The Sandman: Overture", "source": "NPR", "text": "Neil Gaiman On Returning To 'Sandman,' Talking In His Sleep And The Power Of Comics", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/458319575/neil-gaiman-on-returning-to-sandman-talking-in-his-sleep-and-power-of-comics" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 211, "book": "The Sandman: Overture", "source": "NPR", "text": "Recurring Dream: Morpheus Returns In Gaiman's 'Sandman' Prequel", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2013/10/31/241644273/recurring-dream-morpheus-returns-in-gaimans-sandman-prequel" } ] }, "212": { "id": 212, "title": "The Secret Chord: A Novel", "author": "Geraldine Brooks", "text": "If you’re one of those feminists who find the Bible a bit hard to take as literature (where are all the female characters?), well, Happy Hanukkah, have I got one for you. Geraldine Brooks has retold the story of David, giving a fuller look at stories that might have made you raise your eyebrows as written: the friendship between Yonatan and David, the seduction of Batsheva, the relationship with Avigail. A fight between David and Mikhal, one of David’s wives, positively sings with an anger and bitterness any woman might recognize in a fight for agency. Brooks may take King David as her subject, but it’s her minor characters who come into the greatest relief.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "historical fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0670025771", "asin": "", "oclc": 914163566, "seamus": 446724883, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0670025771", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780670025770", "isbn10": "0670025771", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 212, "book": "The Secret Chord: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Secret Chord' Sings A New Song About An Ancient Hero", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/445035230/secret-chord-sings-a-new-song-about-an-ancient-hero" } ] }, "213": { "id": 213, "title": "The Sellout: A Novel", "author": "Paul Beatty", "text": "The story of an African-American man who attempts to bring back slavery and resegregate his Los Angeles neighborhood, The Sellout is one of the funniest American satires in years. It’s a risky book unconcerned about offending readers. It’s also a comic masterpiece. But it’s much more than just that — it’s a smart and honest reflection on race and identity in America, written by an author who truly understands what it means to talk about history in this country.
", "tags": [ "book club ideas", "funny stuff", "seriously great writing", "eye-opening reads", "identity & culture", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0374260508", "asin": "", "oclc": 879582757, "seamus": 389493808, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0374260508", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780374260507", "isbn10": "0374260508", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 213, "book": "The Sellout: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "We Did It For The LOLs: 100 Favorite Funny Books", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/752044550/we-did-it-for-the-lols-100-favorite-funny-books" } ] }, "214": { "id": 214, "title": "The Seven Good Years: A Memoir", "author": "Etgar Keret", "text": "Israeli writer Etgar Keret usually writes short fiction that’s kind of weird — well-regarded, but weird. Here he turns his focus to the seven real-life years between the birth of his son and the death of his father, who survived the Holocaust. It’s a slim book filled with short essays, some of which draw their power from an evocative portrait of life in modern Israel. (The essay “Pastrami” is named after a game Keret plays with his son when the air raid sirens go off.) But most of them don’t need extra relevance; Keret is such a master at finding the humanity and meaning in the tiniest moments of life.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "family matters", "short stories, essays & poetry", "nonfiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "book club ideas", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Becky Sullivan" ], "isbn": "1594633266", "asin": "", "oclc": 893895209, "seamus": 413911536, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1594633266", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781594633263", "isbn10": "1594633266", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 214, "book": "The Seven Good Years: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "What Etgar Keret Learned From His Father About Storytelling And Survival", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/08/05/488370839/what-etgar-keret-learned-from-his-father-about-storytelling-and-survival" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 214, "book": "The Seven Good Years: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Seven Good Years' Remembers Tiny Moments Writ Exquisitely Large", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/18/414616961/-seven-good-years-remembers-tiny-moments-writ-exquisitely-large" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 214, "book": "The Seven Good Years: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "What Etgar Keret Learned From His Father About Storytelling And Survival", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/16/414896816/what-etgar-keret-learned-from-his-father-about-storytelling-and-survival" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 214, "book": "The Seven Good Years: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Seven Good Years' Between The Birth Of A Son, Death Of A Father", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/06/13/413911492/seven-good-years-between-the-birth-of-a-son-death-of-a-father" } ] }, "215": { "id": 215, "title": "The Shepherd's Crown", "author": "Terry Pratchett", "text": "The final novel in Terry Pratchett’s long-running, best-selling “Discworld” series was clearly written as a gentle goodbye to his legions of fans, practically an instruction manual in dealing with his impending death. It begins with the death of one of his most beloved, venerable characters, but sends her off with no-nonsense respect, then firmly shows how the world copes without her. It’s startlingly personal for a fantasy novel about witches and elves. But Pratchett spent decades using real-world parallels to turn his books into guidebooks on wisdom, empathy and kindness. It’s no surprise his swan song continues the tradition.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "young adult", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Tasha Robinson" ], "isbn": "0062429973", "asin": "", "oclc": 907512261, "seamus": 434649843, "bookshop": 9780062429971, "cover": "0062429973", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062429971", "isbn10": "0062429973", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 215, "book": "The Shepherd's Crown", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Shepherd's Crown' Tells Terry Pratchett Fans How To Mourn Him", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/02/435543508/the-shepherds-crown-tells-terry-pratchetts-fans-how-to-mourn-him" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 215, "book": "The Shepherd's Crown", "source": "NPR", "text": "Exclusive First Read: 'The Shepherd's Crown' By Terry Pratchett", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/26/434332713/exclusive-first-read-the-shepherds-crown-by-terry-pratchett" } ] }, "216": { "id": 216, "title": "The Small Backs Of Children: A Novel", "author": "Lidia Yuknavitch", "text": "A photographer takes a picture of a young girl in Eastern Europe, running from the explosion that’s just atomized her parents and brother — and with that image the photographer’s friend, a writer grappling with the long-ago loss of her infant daughter, is undone. To help her, other artists — friends, lovers, family — mobilize to locate the girl in the midst of war. This erotic, beautifully disturbing exploration of sex and violence is a fast, lyrical read, but don’t let the brevity fool you — its effects will linger long after the last page.
", "tags": [ "let’s talk about sex", "rather short", "fiction", "tales from around the world", "for art lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Carmen Maria Machado" ], "isbn": "0062383248", "asin": "", "oclc": 893452958, "seamus": 458341362, "bookshop": 9780062383242, "cover": "0062383248", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062383242", "isbn10": "0062383248", "links": [] }, "217": { "id": 217, "title": "The Speechwriter: A Brief Education In Politics", "author": "Barton Swaim", "text": "In this short memoir, Barton Swaim describes what it was like to work as a speechwriter for former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. The governor’s marital infidelity (yes, that governor — think “Appalachian Trail”) and other moral shortcomings take a back seat here. And deservedly so, for Swaim’s approach is far more entertaining and, if you care about language, far more indicting. He describes an administration in which the mistreatment of language — and staff — was commonplace.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "funny stuff", "staff picks", "nonfiction", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "1476769923", "asin": "", "oclc": 902986007, "seamus": 458766931, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1476769923", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476769929", "isbn10": "1476769923", "links": [] }, "218": { "id": 218, "title": "The Story Of My Teeth", "author": "Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney", "text": "Quirky and inventive, Valeria Luiselli’s second novel — written in collaboration with Mexican Jumex juice factory workers — is a playful, philosophical fun house of a read that demonstrates that not only isn’t experimental fiction dead but it needn’t be deadly either. Luiselli’s elastic mind comfortably wraps itself around molars, Montaigne, fortune cookies, and theories of identity and storytelling. Her charming narrator is an auctioneer who can amp up the value of anything — including his extracted choppers — by embellishing them with hyperbolic, allegoric stories that become “an elegant surpassing of the truth.”
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "rather short", "book club ideas", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Heller McAlpin" ], "isbn": "1566894093", "asin": "", "oclc": 903424674, "seamus": 439465897, "bookshop": 9781566894098, "cover": "1566894093", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781566894098", "isbn10": "1566894093", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 218, "book": "The Story Of My Teeth", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Story Of My Teeth' Covers Art, Identity And Dental Adventures", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/14/439465631/story-of-my-teeth-covers-art-identity-and-dental-adventures" } ] }, "219": { "id": 219, "title": "The Story Of My Tits", "author": "Jennifer Hayden", "text": "Life surges and flows, unstoppable, in Jennifer Hayden’s graphical autobiography. It may be organized around Hayden’s experience of having breasts and losing them to cancer, but it’s far more than just a record of the existence of two bumps of flesh. It’s also a rebuttal to the forces of illness and early death. Hayden shouts back with everything she has. Placed alongside dozens of other experiences in this long book, cancer isn’t allowed to shove joy, hope and humor offstage.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "biography & memoir", "family matters", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "1603090541", "asin": "", "oclc": 910530312, "seamus": 448958196, "bookshop": 9781603090544, "cover": "1603090541", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781603090544", "isbn10": "1603090541", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 219, "book": "The Story Of My Tits", "source": "NPR", "text": "A 'Story' Of Much More Than Cancer", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/446676368/a-story-of-much-more-than-cancer" } ] }, "220": { "id": 220, "title": "The Story Of The Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four", "author": "Elena Ferrante", "text": "For the past few years, Europa Editions has been bringing out Elena Ferrante’s series of literary novels about an edgy, decades-long friendship between two women in Naples. The fourth and final of the “Neapolitan Novels,” titled The Story of the Lost Child, has just been published. It’s spectacular, but you will realize how spectacular it is only if you do not cheat. You must read the three earlier (also superb) Neapolitan Novels, or the perfect devastation wreaked by the conclusion of this last novel will be lost on you.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "fiction", "tales from around the world", "staff picks", "family matters", "historical fiction", "book club ideas", "rather long" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "1609452860", "asin": "", "oclc": 906010450, "seamus": 436301174, "bookshop": 9781609452865, "cover": "1609452860", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781609452865", "isbn10": "1609452860", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 220, "book": "The Story Of The Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four", "source": "NPR", "text": "Translator Behind Elena Ferrante Novels Says Her Job Is To Be An 'Enabler'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/02/20/467382711/translator-behind-elena-ferrante-novels-says-her-job-is-to-be-an-enabler" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 220, "book": "The Story Of The Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Lost Child' Wraps Up Ferrante's Neapolitan Series With 'Perfect Devastation'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/10/438941219/lost-child-wraps-up-ferrantes-neapolitan-series-with-perfect-devastation" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 220, "book": "The Story Of The Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four", "source": "NPR", "text": "In New Neapolitan Novel, Fans Seek Clues About Mysterious Author's Past", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/01/436289199/in-new-neapolitan-novel-fans-seek-clues-about-mysterious-authors-past" } ] }, "221": { "id": 221, "title": "The Thing About Jellyfish", "author": "Ali Benjamin", "text": "Young adult literature often takes grief as its subject — whether in Terabithia or at a cancer support group. Ali Benjamin’s beautiful debut also deals in death and somehow feels both familiar and innovative. The broad strokes: Suzy’s best friend, Franny, dies while swimming in the ocean, after the girls had become estranged. Suzy craves answers — and convinces herself that a rare, poisonous jellyfish must be at fault for Franny’s death. Along the way, the reader — and Suzy — learn a lot of scientific facts. But there are, of course, no good answers to why scary and sad things happen. Benjamin illuminates what we can learn in a voice that will appeal to both kids and adults.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "kids’ books", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0316380865", "asin": "", "oclc": 898029275, "seamus": 458805369, "bookshop": 9780316380867, "cover": "0316380865", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316380867", "isbn10": "0316380865", "links": [] }, "222": { "id": 222, "title": "The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story Of The First Computer", "author": "Sydney Padua", "text": "With her look at the first computer, Sydney Padua transforms punch cards and little brass cogs into the stuff of legend. Her Victorian heroes are nothing if not memorable: The larger-than-life computational genius Charles Babbage, Padua writes, was a “blend of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Toad, Don Quixote and Leonardo da Vinci.” The once-overlooked, eccentric math whiz Ada Lovelace smokes a pipe and scribbles equations. Padua’s exaggerated, loopy drawing style keeps the energy high. Her characters gasp and glower and grin; their hair ruffles in the steam.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "historical fiction", "eye-opening reads", "it’s all geek to me", "for history lovers", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "science!", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Etelka Lehoczky" ], "isbn": "0307908275", "asin": "", "oclc": 869881357, "seamus": 400178919, "bookshop": 9780307908278, "cover": "0307908275", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307908278", "isbn10": "0307908275", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 222, "book": "The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story Of The First Computer", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Lovelace And Babbage' Is A Thrilling Adventure", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/23/400178749/lovelace-and-babbage-is-a-thrilling-adventure" } ] }, "223": { "id": 223, "title": "The Traitor Baru Cormorant", "author": "Seth Dickinson", "text": "The Empire of Masks has devoured Baru’s home and way of life with paper currency and restrictive sexual and domestic practices, forbidding her island’s freer sexuality and family structure as unhygienic. Baru is determined to fight back — by joining the Empire as a civil servant and destroying it from within. Hiding her desire for women as deeply as her desire for vengeance, Baru navigates intrigues in far-flung Aurdwyn, first thwarting and then orchestrating regional rebellions for increasingly murky ends, while trying hard to keep her soul intact.
", "tags": [ "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "identity & culture", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Amal El-Mohtar" ], "isbn": "0765380722", "asin": "", "oclc": 910993787, "seamus": 441496334, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0765380722", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780765380722", "isbn10": "0765380722", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 223, "book": "The Traitor Baru Cormorant", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Baru Cormorant' Will Catch You Unawares", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/27/437287631/baru-cormorant-will-catch-you-unawares" } ] }, "224": { "id": 224, "title": "The Truth About Twinkie Pie", "author": "Kat Yeh", "text": "Toss together daring hairdos, an incredible cast of characters and a whole lot of delicious desserts and you’ve got the recipe for a delightful page-turner. Whip-smart 12-year-old GiGi is the new girl at a posh New York school. However, her hairdresser sister, her trailer park past and a suitcase full of family secrets threaten to unravel GiGi’s life. In this scrumptious debut novel, Kat Yeh creates a world so wonderful you’re never going to want to leave. (For ages 8 to 12)
", "tags": [ "family matters", "kids’ books", "funny stuff" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "0316236624", "asin": "", "oclc": 862928808, "seamus": 457218293, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0316236624", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316236621", "isbn10": "0316236624", "links": [] }, "225": { "id": 225, "title": "The Tsar Of Love And Techno: Stories", "author": "Anthony Marra", "text": "Where to begin to try to explain this book of short stories? First, it reads like a novel. Second, you will never doubt that Anthony Marra is in charge. I began to imagine him standing before a giant bulletin board of timelines, maps and character bios — like a puppeteer moving everything into place exactly as he wanted it. The book covers a vast swath of Russian history, from 1930s Leningrad to modern day, and it’s simultaneously tragic, absurd and poignant. The last story is his only overreach, but it doesn’t matter. All you really need to know is that you should read this book.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "historical fiction", "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Shannon Rhoades" ], "isbn": "0770436439", "asin": "", "oclc": 898909545, "seamus": 444226148, "bookshop": 9780770436438, "cover": "0770436439", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780770436438", "isbn10": "0770436439", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 225, "book": "The Tsar Of Love And Techno: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "In 'Love And Techno,' The World Is Cruel — But The People Aren't (Mostly)", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/445034928/in-love-and-techno-the-world-is-cruel-but-the-people-arent-mostly" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 225, "book": "The Tsar Of Love And Techno: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Mixtape Of Russian History In 'Love And Techno'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/446058860/a-mixtape-of-russian-history-in-love-and-techno" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 225, "book": "The Tsar Of Love And Techno: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "Exclusive First Read: Anthony Marra's 'The Tsar Of Love And Techno'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/29/443410874/exclusive-first-read-anthony-marras-the-tsar-of-love-and-techno" } ] }, "226": { "id": 226, "title": "The Turner House", "author": "Angela Flournoy", "text": "Angela Flournoy’s knockout debut is one of those books that should, by rights, be described as the Great American Novel, as it hits all the points of American life: family, real estate, money, ghosts and loss. Set mostly in Detroit during the financial crisis of 2008, the book tells the story of the 13 adult children of Francis and Viola Turner, who must decide what to do with their family house. The characters are fascinating and funny, and anyone who has played a role in the ecosystem of his family life will recognize the joys and challenges that plague the Turners. But perhaps the strongest character is Detroit itself, as it morphs from bustling modern metropolis to a potent symbol of post-industrial decline.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "family matters", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Barrie Hardymon" ], "isbn": "0544303164", "asin": "", "oclc": 885225314, "seamus": 458804047, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0544303164", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780544303164", "isbn10": "0544303164", "links": [] }, "227": { "id": 227, "title": "The Turnip Princess And Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales", "author": "Franz-Xaver von Schönwerth, translated by Maria Tatar, illustrated by Engelbert Suss", "text": "The history of this rediscovered collection is its own magic: Once upon a time, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth collected fairy tales from Bavaria, where they remained hidden for 150 years until their rediscovery. The tales (translated by Maria Tatar) are fascinating — free of bowdlerized retellings, they have all their original, fiercely oddball appeal. Some are echoes of familiar stories and some are new and occasionally bizarre, but all are alive with personality (lazy flax-harvesting maidens beware). It’s a collection equally at home in an academic library and a kid’s room — if your kids are ready for a little darkness in their fairy tales.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "for history lovers", "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "kids’ books", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Genevieve Valentine" ], "isbn": "0143107429", "asin": "", "oclc": 881869751, "seamus": 387477587, "bookshop": 9780143107422, "cover": "0143107429", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780143107422", "isbn10": "0143107429", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 227, "book": "The Turnip Princess And Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales", "source": "NPR", "text": "It's All Charm and Wolves In 'The Turnip Princess'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/26/387480282/its-all-charm-and-wolves-in-the-turnip-princess" } ] }, "228": { "id": 228, "title": "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1: Squirrel Power", "author": "Ryan North, illustrated by Erica Henderson", "text": "She’s smart, she’s chipper, she’s never-say-die, she’s got the proportionate strength of a squirrel, and she can take down the planet-eating Galactus with a flick of her tail. She’s Squirrel Girl, plucked from Marvel Comics’ deep bench to star in her own solo series, which finds her (and trusty squirrel sidekick Tippy-Toe) navigating new relationships and sundry secret identity shenanigans on her college campus. Breezy jokes animate this all-ages comic that combines a matter-of-factly feminist modern sensibility with bright, whimsical art that feels pleasantly old-school.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "young adult", "funny stuff", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "0785197028", "asin": "", "oclc": 898164417, "seamus": 458343687, "bookshop": 9780785197027, "cover": "0785197028", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780785197027", "isbn10": "0785197028", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 228, "book": "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1: Squirrel Power", "source": "NPR", "text": "We Did It For The LOLs: 100 Favorite Funny Books", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/752044550/we-did-it-for-the-lols-100-favorite-funny-books" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 228, "book": "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1: Squirrel Power", "source": "NPR", "text": "Let's Get Graphic: 100 Favorite Comics And Graphic Novels", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2017/07/12/533862948/lets-get-graphic-100-favorite-comics-and-graphic-novels" } ] }, "229": { "id": 229, "title": "The United States Of Pizza: America's Favorite Pizzas, From Thin Crust To Deep Dish, Sourdough To Gluten-Free", "author": "Craig Priebe and Dianne Jacob", "text": "Chef Craig Priebe has a pizza passion. He’s won pizza competitions. He ran an award-winning pizza restaurant. This isn’t even his first pizza book (his and Dianne Jacobs’ grilled-pizza book came out in 2008). This one is a celebration of a country whose pizza is as wildly diverse as its population — white clam pizza from New Haven, deep dish pizza from Chicago, crab pizza from Baltimore, and so on. They’re inspired by restaurants all over the country, but each recipe is Priebe’s own interpretation — which means they’re consistent, and they work.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "0789329441", "asin": "", "oclc": 905518207, "seamus": 458770783, "bookshop": 9780789329448, "cover": "0789329441", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780789329448", "isbn10": "0789329441", "links": [] }, "230": { "id": 230, "title": "The Unmapped Sea", "author": "Maryrose Wood, illustrated by Eliza Wheeler", "text": "I never counted the months to a book’s publication until I finished listening to Book IV of the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series and howled for more. It’s a droll, fantastic tale of children who were raised by wolves and are guided through danger and artistic development by their sensible and endearing teenage governess, Penelope. Their invented phrases (like “optoomuchstic”: hopeful in that way that sets the stage for perilous disappointment) have made it into my family’s everyday conversation. With its spent children “draped over the furniture, limp as empty coats” and ominous encounters with beet nobility, finishing The Unmapped Sea left me counting the months once again. (For ages 8 to 12)
", "tags": [ "family matters", "funny stuff", "kids’ books", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "staff picks", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Emily Harris" ], "isbn": "0062110411", "asin": "", "oclc": 861650557, "seamus": 457922075, "bookshop": 9780062110411, "cover": "0062110411", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062110411", "isbn10": "0062110411", "links": [] }, "231": { "id": 231, "title": "The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered And Adapted For Today's Kitchen", "author": "Fania Lewando, translated by Eve Jochnowitz", "text": "Fania Lewando was a vegetarian long before it was cool. Born in Poland in the late 1880s, she published the first vegetarian Yiddish cookbook in 1938. Now, more than 70 years after her death — she died in the early ‘40s while trying to flee the Nazis — Lewando’s 400 recipes have been given new life in the newly translated Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook. There’s plenty here that won’t appeal to 21st century palates (sorry, Stewed Cabbage) and these recipes require some interpretation (working without a thermometer, Lewando advises a “hot oven” or a “not-too-hot oven”). But reading through her spare, no-nonsense instructions made me feel like I was spending an afternoon cooking with my own Yiddish-speaking great-grandmother from Vilna, getting a glimpse at a now vanished world.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "cookbooks & food", "eye-opening reads", "for history lovers", "tales from around the world", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Beth Novey" ], "isbn": "0805243275", "asin": "", "oclc": 907677607, "seamus": 457920173, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0805243275", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780805243277", "isbn10": "0805243275", "links": [] }, "232": { "id": 232, "title": "The Visiting Privilege: New And Collected Stories", "author": "Joy Williams", "text": "The Visiting Privilege is the rare collection that doesn’t have a single piece, even a single paragraph, that’s less than brilliant, and it proves that Joy Williams is quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories. She is our poet laureate of loss and mourning, but she’s so much more than that — she seems to have a supernatural ability to show what makes us function as people, at our best and at our worst. And most important, she celebrates our vulnerabilities, the moments that make us so imperfect and broken and essentially human.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "1101874899", "asin": "", "oclc": 897437160, "seamus": 437320196, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1101874899", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101874899", "isbn10": "1101874899", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 232, "book": "The Visiting Privilege: New And Collected Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": "No Solace In 'Visiting Privilege,' But Plenty Of Truth", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/09/437275238/no-solace-in-visiting-privilege-but-plenty-of-truth" } ] }, "233": { "id": 233, "title": "The Vorrh", "author": "Brian Catling", "text": "Brian Catling’s mysterious, fictional domain, The Vorrh — like the book of the same name in which it takes place — is a vast, uncharted forest somewhere in Africa. Inspired by the surrealist writer Raymond Roussel as well as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, The Vorrh is not only a work of alternative history but of alternative literature, a sprawling, omnivorous novel that gobbles up history, geography, mythology and fantasy, then delicately chews it to a rarefied pulp.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "seriously great writing", "tales from around the world", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1101873787", "asin": "", "oclc": 906826603, "seamus": 403579786, "bookshop": 9781101873786, "cover": "1101873787", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101873786", "isbn10": "1101873787", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 233, "book": "The Vorrh", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Vorrh' Takes A Dizzying Trek Into The Dark Heart of Fantasy", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/05/403124788/vorrh-is-a-dizzying-trek-into-the-dark-heart-of-fantasy" } ] }, "234": { "id": 234, "title": "The Wake: A Novel", "author": "Paul Kingsnorth", "text": "Paul Kingsnorth set out to write a long book about England during and after the Norman invasion of 1066 and to do it in a kind of invented mishmash of ancient words reset in modern syntax, though with odd spellings and very little punctuation. Or capital letters. It’s crazy, but Kingsnorth did not fail in his aim. He has brought to life a drunken, wife-beating, occasionally noble, possibly psychotic and completely bloodthirsty hero, given unto him a guerrilla force of farmers turned soldiers, and let him loose in what is essentially a post-apocalyptic world nearly 1,000 years old.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "eye-opening reads", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Sheehan" ], "isbn": "1555977170", "asin": "", "oclc": 898419562, "seamus": 435234546, "bookshop": 9781555977177, "cover": "1555977170", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781555977177", "isbn10": "1555977170", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 234, "book": "The Wake: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "In A Shadow Tongue, 'The Wake' Tells Of Bloody Battles And Old Gods ", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/06/435543696/in-a-shadow-tongue-the-wake-tells-of-bloody-battles-and-old-gods" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 234, "book": "The Wake: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Wake' Is An Unlikely Hit In An Imaginary Language", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/434970724/the-wake-is-an-unlikely-hit-in-an-imaginary-language" } ] }, "235": { "id": 235, "title": "The Walls Around Us", "author": "Nova Ren Suma", "text": "Violet is a ballerina poised to live her dreams. Amber is an inmate at a juvenile detention center, facing a life of imprisonment. Orianna slips between their lives, connecting all three in a tragic cycle of mistakes, regret and rage. Part ghost story and part love song to teenage girls, this book illuminates both the beauty and the pain of youthful friendships. It paints a raw and unromantic portrait of the little societies that girls create, whether in the dance studio or the prison yard.
", "tags": [ "young adult", "the dark side", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Caitlyn Paxson" ], "isbn": "1616203722", "asin": "", "oclc": 886493285, "seamus": 458809960, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1616203722", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616203726", "isbn10": "1616203722", "links": [] }, "236": { "id": 236, "title": "The Water Knife: A Novel", "author": "Paolo Bacigalupi", "text": "Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife imagines a near-future in which the Southwestern U.S. has balkanized over water rights. The rich live in posh high-rise terrariums while the poor suffer in the dust below, and states and corporations are at war (real war — with guns) over water and centuries-old paperwork giving them rights to the flow. For Bacigalupi, it’s all too easy to picture — I mean, his book even predicted Tesla’s bioweapon defense mode. It’s a must-read for science-fiction geeks, eco-freaks and everyone who loves a great page-turner.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "book club ideas", "mysteries & thrillers", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Brian Boyer" ], "isbn": "0385352875", "asin": "", "oclc": 900869568, "seamus": 408545764, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0385352875", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385352871", "isbn10": "0385352875", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 236, "book": "The Water Knife: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Water Knife' Previews A Future Drought Scenario", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/08/11/431522774/the-water-knife-previews-a-future-drought-scenario" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 236, "book": "The Water Knife: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Water Knife' Cuts Deep", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/28/408295800/the-water-knife-cuts-deep" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 236, "book": "The Water Knife: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "What If The Drought Doesn't End? 'The Water Knife' Is One Possibility", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/23/408756002/what-if-the-drought-doesnt-end-the-water-knife-is-one-possibility" } ] }, "237": { "id": 237, "title": "The Water Museum: Stories", "author": "Luis Alberto Urrea", "text": "Most of the stories in The Water Museum take place in the American West and Southwest, but they’re all universal. It’s difficult to find comparisons to an author as original as Luis Alberto Urrea, but you could say that he’s kind of a country-punk Lorrie Moore, compassionate but hard-edged, a kind of literary badass who still believes in love, because sometimes, there’s nothing much else to believe in. The Water Museum is a brilliant, powerful collection, and Urrea is a master storyteller with a rock ’n’ roll heart.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Michael Schaub" ], "isbn": "0316334375", "asin": "", "oclc": 905855219, "seamus": 397824208, "bookshop": 9780316334372, "cover": "0316334375", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316334372", "isbn10": "0316334375", "links": [] }, "238": { "id": 238, "title": "The Whisper", "author": "Pamela Zagarenski", "text": "Pamela Zagarenski’s The Whisper is an invitation to stretch your imagination. A girl is lent an enchanted book by her teacher and, as she heads home, the words fly out and are caught by a sly fox who may have a story of his own. Disheartened by the wordless pages, the girl hears a whisper, “You can imagine the stories.” Slowly, she begins to spin her own tales and learns to become a storyteller. Gorgeous paintings with rich colors and exquisite details will have you lingering over each page and creating stories of your own. (For ages 4 to 7)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "0544416864", "asin": "", "oclc": 795778709, "seamus": 458515162, "bookshop": 9780544416864, "cover": "0544416864", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780544416864", "isbn10": "0544416864", "links": [] }, "239": { "id": 239, "title": "The Whites: A Novel", "author": "Richard Price, writing as Harry Brandt", "text": "Let’s clear one thing up right away: The noun in the title refers to perps that got away — the “great white whales” of a cop’s career. For Billy Graves, that was one Jeffrey Bannion. But now Bannion is dead, Graves is stonewalled, and a strange colleague named Milton Ramos is threatening his family, even though Graves doesn’t know that yet. It all adds up to a confusing swirl of a procedural, but believe me, you’ll want to get sucked down this dizzying drain, as intricately detailed as Richard Price’s Lush Life. The author wanted to use a pseudonym so he could write a more commercial book. In the end, he wrote a more commercial Price book — which means it’s terrific.
", "tags": [ "mysteries & thrillers", "the dark side", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bethanne Patrick" ], "isbn": "0805093990", "asin": "", "oclc": 887848324, "seamus": 385762167, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0805093990", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780805093995", "isbn10": "0805093990", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 239, "book": "The Whites: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "In Richard Price's Latest Novel, Haunted Cops And Cases They Couldn't Close", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/25/434367794/in-richard-prices-latest-novel-haunted-cops-and-cases-they-couldnt-close" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 239, "book": "The Whites: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "In Richard Price's New Novel, Haunted Cops And Cases They Couldn't Close", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/17/385765453/in-richard-prices-new-novel-haunted-cops-and-cases-they-couldnt-close" } ] }, "240": { "id": 240, "title": "The Witch Of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, And Houdini In The Spirit World", "author": "David Jaher", "text": "Occasionally, you run across a book so good it feels like a secret — and spend months recommending it to anyone who will listen. That’s The Witch of Lime Street. David Jaher’s sprawling history follows Scientific American magazine’s search for a genuine medium in the 1920s. It was a perfect storm of editorial egos, scientific rigor and Spiritualist popularity — and a road that would lead to Boston and a woman ready to face the great debunker, Harry Houdini himself. The research is painstaking, but it reads like a thriller, threading in enough uncertainty that we never lose a sense of dangerous magic. Houdini would approve.
", "tags": [ "nonfiction", "the dark side", "for history lovers", "eye-opening reads", "science!" ], "reviewers": [ "Genevieve Valentine" ], "isbn": "0307451062", "asin": "", "oclc": 909025615, "seamus": 446620462, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0307451062", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780307451064", "isbn10": "0307451062", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 240, "book": "The Witch Of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, And Houdini In The Spirit World", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Lime Street' Bewitches With Mystery And Mayhem", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/10/445035297/lime-street-bewitches-with-mystery-and-mayhem" } ] }, "241": { "id": 241, "title": "The Witches: Salem, 1692", "author": "Stacy Schiff", "text": "In the haunting opening of The Witches, popular historian Stacy Schiff announces her intention to summon up, rather than solve, the mystery of the witch hunts that racked Salem in 1692. She says: “Salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to be groping about in the dark, the place where all good stories begin.” Indeed they do. The Witches surveys the ministers and the odd women easily targeted as witches; the intransient judges; and the teenage girls who found their voice in claiming to be bewitched. Schiff makes the dark an inviting place to linger.
", "tags": [ "for history lovers", "book club ideas", "the dark side", "staff picks", "nonfiction", "eye-opening reads", "rather long", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "0316200603", "asin": "", "oclc": 902831328, "seamus": 451117653, "bookshop": 9780316200608, "cover": "0316200603", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316200608", "isbn10": "0316200603", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 241, "book": "The Witches: Salem, 1692", "source": "NPR", "text": "Spellbinding 'Witches' Offers A Fresh Take On A Familiar Story", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/28/452532347/spellbinding-witches-offers-a-fresh-take-on-a-familiar-story" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 241, "book": "The Witches: Salem, 1692", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'The Witches' Shows Salem Is In Our Blood", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/27/450887372/the-witches-shows-salem-is-in-our-blood" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 241, "book": "The Witches: Salem, 1692", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Witch's Brew Of Fear And Fantasy: America's Tiny Reign Of Terror", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/26/451117489/a-witchs-brew-of-fear-and-fantasy-americas-tiny-reign-of-terror" } ] }, "242": { "id": 242, "title": "The Wonder Garden", "author": "Lauren Acampora", "text": "These linked short stories probe the hidden lives of a small Connecticut town. The Wonder Garden’s protagonists may seem like your ordinary upper-class New England suburbanites, but lurking underneath are stories both grotesque and tragic: a man who becomes obsessed with touching a human brain; a woman who has stopped her car at a stop sign and can’t bring herself to start it again; an artist who covers a client’s home in giant insects. A weird and compelling collection.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Carmen Maria Machado" ], "isbn": "0802123554", "asin": "", "oclc": 890615442, "seamus": 458341996, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0802123554", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780802123558", "isbn10": "0802123554", "links": [] }, "243": { "id": 243, "title": "The World Before Us: A Novel", "author": "Aislinn Hunter", "text": "A gaggle of querulous ghosts narrates the events in this novel by Aislinn Hunter, who brings a moody grace to the phantoms and to her telling of this quirky tale. Protagonist Jane works as an archivist at an eccentric, musty museum, and on the side she investigates the 1877 disappearance of a girl in the English countryside. The twist: As a teen, Jane’s 5-year-old charge went missing in these same woods. Ghost-story tropes abound, from a spooky abandoned asylum to a haunted country house, and at the center is a brutal, long-buried crime. The novel’s tough truths make The World Before Us a memorable read.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "the dark side", "mysteries & thrillers", "tales from around the world", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jean Zimmerman" ], "isbn": "0553418521", "asin": "", "oclc": 919336580, "seamus": 396408566, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0553418521", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780553418521", "isbn10": "0553418521", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 243, "book": "The World Before Us: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Ghostly Chorus Narrates 'The World Before Us'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/396384039/a-ghostly-chorus-narrates-the-world-before-us" } ] }, "244": { "id": 244, "title": "The Wright Brothers", "author": "David McCullough", "text": "Most school kids know that Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first to fly a mechanized plane, but the brothers’ story is so much more than that simple fact, as David McCullough lays out in his typical crisp and compelling style. Wilbur and Orville were an unlikely pair, complementing each other at every stage and thriving in their insular world. McCullough also explores their sister Katharine’s instrumental contributions to their success, and explains how she, too, took to the skies. More than a century later, the Wright family trials and successes are as captivating as if they had taken place last year.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "family matters", "for history lovers", "staff picks", "nonfiction", "science!" ], "reviewers": [ "Edith Chapin" ], "isbn": "1476728747", "asin": "", "oclc": 897424190, "seamus": 406677807, "bookshop": 9781476728742, "cover": "1476728747", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781476728742", "isbn10": "1476728747", "links": [] }, "245": { "id": 245, "title": "There's Something I Want You To Do: Stories", "author": "Charles Baxter", "text": "Minnesota, which Charles Baxter calls his “imagination’s home,” is at the center of the 10 interconnected stories in his new collection. Half are named for vices (Lust, Sloth Avarice, Gluttony, Vanity) and half for virtues (Bravery, Loyalty, Chastity, Charity, Forbearance). The trigger for each story is a request: “Charity” begins when Quinn, who has become dependent on painkillers after a stint as an aid worker in Africa left him ill, approaches a drug dealer named Black Bird in a bar and says, “There’s something I need.” These are plainspoken, nuanced, tales with a dramatic kick.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction", "seriously great writing" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "110187001X", "asin": "", "oclc": 871536557, "seamus": 458372448, "bookshop": "", "cover": "110187001X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101870013", "isbn10": "110187001X", "links": [] }, "246": { "id": 246, "title": "Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff In Simple Words", "author": "Randall Munroe", "text": "Randall Munroe — the former NASA roboticist behind the beloved xkcd webcomic — breaks down complex stuff into simple terms … really simple terms. The Large Hadron Collider? That’s a “Big tiny thing hitter.” The Mars rover? That’s a “Red world space car.” And for those of us who don’t love heights, isn’t “fear porch” really the best possible term for a balcony? Munroe relies exclusively on 1,000 of the most commonly used words in the English language to define and explain everything from your large intestines (“big food hallway”) to NASA shuttles ("flying space trucks.”) And with witty, playful diagrams, you’ll be understanding nuclear reactors ("heavy metal power buildings”) in no time.
", "tags": [ "it’s all geek to me", "nonfiction", "staff picks", "comics & graphic novels", "eye-opening reads", "funny stuff", "science!" ], "reviewers": [ "Beth Novey" ], "isbn": "0544668251", "asin": "", "oclc": 915741565, "seamus": 458288024, "bookshop": 9780544668256, "cover": "0544668251", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780544668256", "isbn10": "0544668251", "links": [] }, "247": { "id": 247, "title": "Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse (And Other Lessons From Modern Life)", "author": "David Mitchell", "text": "There are two different famous David Mitchells — there’s David Mitchell the novelist and David Mitchell the actor/comedian/panel show guest/columnist/writer. This book is written by the latter Mitchell, who is witty, clever, insightful and continually flustered by modern life. He’s a British Robert Benchley, if you will. He questions and pokes at modern platitudes in a fun, mocking way — from a defense of the British habit of apologizing to a cynical analysis of the ways we spend our time and money.
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "tales from around the world", "nonfiction", "staff picks", "short stories, essays & poetry" ], "reviewers": [ "Philipp Goedicke" ], "isbn": "1783350563", "asin": "", "oclc": 892564555, "seamus": 458767389, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1783350563", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781783350568", "isbn10": "1783350563", "links": [] }, "248": { "id": 248, "title": "Thirteen Ways Of Looking: Fiction", "author": "Colum McCann", "text": "Colum McCann has few contemporary parallels as a storyteller. The title novella in his new collection is remarkable — fluid yet dense with layers of consciousness and mystery. “Sh’khol,” in which a divorced translator living on the Irish coast makes a “terrible mistake” when she gives her 13-year-old son a wet suit for Christmas, is an indelible tale of love and loss. The two other stories are equally complex and powerful. These new stories reflect an understanding of the swiftly disappearing flow of our lives that is as knowing and unflinching as any by Joyce or Chekhov.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "family matters", "seriously great writing", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jane Ciabattari" ], "isbn": "0812996720", "asin": "", "oclc": 905970102, "seamus": 447229373, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812996720", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812996722", "isbn10": "0812996720", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 248, "book": "Thirteen Ways Of Looking: Fiction", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Thirteen Ways' Takes A Powerful, Layered Look At Life", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/448968137/thirteen-ways-is-a-powerful-layered-look-at-life" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 248, "book": "Thirteen Ways Of Looking: Fiction", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Thirteen Ways' Lifts Darkness Through Storytelling", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/10/11/447228827/thirteen-ways-lifts-darkness-through-storytelling" } ] }, "249": { "id": 249, "title": "Three Moments Of An Explosion: Stories", "author": "China Miéville", "text": "Three Moments of an Explosion is China Miéville’s first collection of short stories in 10 years. In it, the acclaimed science-fiction/fantasy author imagines the mysterious arrival of icebergs that levitate over London, space-elevator suicides, and meditations on time and probability. These tales explore the dark, horrific beauty hidden just beyond reality — or to quote Miéville himself in the story “The Dowager of Bees”: “A dense forest of might’ves.”
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "the dark side", "short stories, essays & poetry", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "110188472X", "asin": "", "oclc": 907621819, "seamus": 428167869, "bookshop": "", "cover": "110188472X", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781101884720", "isbn10": "110188472X", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 249, "book": "Three Moments Of An Explosion: Stories", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Three Moments' Is A Symphony Of Short Story Strangeness", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/08/01/427826906/three-moments-is-a-symphony-of-short-story-strangeness" } ] }, "250": { "id": 250, "title": "Tiny Little Thing", "author": "Beatriz Williams", "text": "Tiny Hardcastle is supporting her husband’s 1966 bid for Congress when a series of unexpected events make her question everything — especially the secret fling she had, just before her wedding, with her husband’s cousin Caspian. Caspian returns from Vietnam a wounded hero, and their attraction flames back to life just as suggestive photos surface, Tiny’s husband becomes furtive, his family turns intimidating and her capricious sister arrives in trouble: lots of “tiny little things” that add up to concern, if not danger. An elegant and stylish story that pays homage to a lost era while exploring timeless themes of love, romance and finding yourself.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "love & romance", "let’s talk about sex", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "0399171304", "asin": "", "oclc": 893895239, "seamus": 458339316, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0399171304", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780399171307", "isbn10": "0399171304", "links": [] }, "251": { "id": 251, "title": "Toys Meet Snow: Being The Wintertime Adventures Of A Curious Stuffed Buffalo, A Sensitive Plush Stingray, And A Book-Loving Rubber Ball", "author": "Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky", "text": "Whether you’re already acquainted with Lumphy, StingRay and Plastic from their chapter books, or are just meeting them now, you’re sure to love Toys Meet Snow. As the three venture out into the snow for the first time, their unique personalities shine through. Each toy’s impressions and observations are full of imagination and charm. Emily Jenkins’ masterful text is deceptively simple, and Paul O. Zelinsky’s warm and wonderful illustrations make this book an enchanting read for all seasons. (For ages 3 to 7)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "0385373309", "asin": "", "oclc": 876833402, "seamus": 457234091, "bookshop": 9780385373302, "cover": "0385373309", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780385373302", "isbn10": "0385373309", "links": [] }, "252": { "id": 252, "title": "Tropisms", "author": "Nathalie Sarraute, translated by Maria Jolas", "text": "Originally published in 1939, Tropisms is the stunning debut of the late Nathalie Sarraute, long considered one of France’s most important writers. Sarraute, whose work went on to be translated into dozens of languages, once described her work as the “interior movements that precede and prepare our words and actions, at the limits of our consciousness.” This collection of vignettes, made up of short scenes and anecdotes, reads like quiet prose poems that stay with the reader. Translated by Maria Jolas, Tropisms is a masterpiece, short but powerful in every sense.
", "tags": [ "short stories, essays & poetry", "tales from around the world", "for history lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "0811222764", "asin": "B017C0F6JA", "oclc": 907103856, "seamus": 458372959, "bookshop": 9780811222761, "cover": "0811222764", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780811222761", "isbn10": "0811222764", "links": [] }, "253": { "id": 253, "title": "True Thai: Real Flavors For Every Table", "author": "Hong Thaimee", "text": "Who can resist a Thai cookbook that takes you beyond the familiar favorites at your corner restaurant, while still being more or less doable on a weeknight (especially if you live near a well-stocked Asian grocer)? I know I can’t. Yes, you’ll find pad Thai and yum nua in here. But mah mah instant noodles? With crab and Chinese broccoli? Candied salted chiles? Watermelon and Thai basil fruit shake? Hong Thaimee, chef at Ngam in New York, doesn’t hesitate to go there, either.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "0847846237", "asin": "", "oclc": 905518253, "seamus": 458770940, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0847846237", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780847846238", "isbn10": "0847846237", "links": [] }, "254": { "id": 254, "title": "Two Brothers", "author": "Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon", "text": "Twin brothers Gabriel Bá and Fabio Moon, who work exceptionally well together (see: the mind-bending limited series “Daytripper”) adapt a novel by Milton Hatoum about twin brothers who despise one another. This graphic novel, set mostly in and around a decaying manse outside a small Brazilian town, moodily maps one family’s secrets, longings and long-harbored grudges over three generations. Bá’s black and white art features a thick line that lends his lush gardens, overstuffed rooms and crowded streets an oppressive sense of heavy, choking dread.
", "tags": [ "comics & graphic novels", "family matters", "staff picks", "tales from around the world" ], "reviewers": [ "Glen Weldon" ], "isbn": "1616558563", "asin": "", "oclc": 927144566, "seamus": 455335197, "bookshop": 9781616558567, "cover": "1616558563", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616558567", "isbn10": "1616558563", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 254, "book": "Two Brothers", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Two Brothers' Tells A Passionate Tale Of Brazil In Black And White", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/11/10/455334875/two-brothers-tells-a-passionate-tale-of-brazil-in-black-and-white" } ] }, "255": { "id": 255, "title": "Under The Udala Trees", "author": "Chinelo Okparanta", "text": "Ijeoma is a young girl growing up in the difficult years following Nigeria’s 1967 Biafran War. But coming of age in a war-torn country isn’t her only challenge: She’s also struggling to balance her taboo same-sex relationship with her mother’s (and her society’s) expectations. Chinelo Okparanta’s writing is so immersive that even readers who have nothing in common with Ijeoma will feel like they’ve lived her experience. I couldn’t put the book down and even pulled an all-nighter to finish it (then was a zombie at work the next day). Plan your schedule around this binge read!
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "family matters", "historical fiction", "love & romance", "fiction", "tales from around the world", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Elizabeth Baker" ], "isbn": "0544003446", "asin": "", "oclc": 897946305, "seamus": 441502390, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0544003446", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780544003446", "isbn10": "0544003446", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 255, "book": "Under The Udala Trees", "source": "NPR", "text": "Finding Love And Self-Acceptance 'Under the Udala Trees'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441502310/finding-love-and-self-acceptance-under-the-udala-trees" } ] }, "256": { "id": 256, "title": "Undermajordomo Minor: A Novel", "author": "Patrick deWitt", "text": "Poor Lucy. The leading man of Patrick DeWitt’s book isn’t much to write home about — or look at, or listen to. Lucien Minor is a liar who’s no good at lying, an underling to a castle servant and, what’s more, a suitor to a taken woman. Still, he makes for a fitting guide — charmingly befuddled and besieged by circumstance — in this twist on the common folk tale. DeWitt takes on familiar tropes just to turn them on their heads, and the results are by turns funny, fascinating and often plain weird — a bit like Lucy himself.
", "tags": [ "love & romance", "tales from around the world", "funny stuff", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Colin Dwyer" ], "isbn": "0062281208", "asin": "", "oclc": 898052635, "seamus": 439454193, "bookshop": 9780062281203, "cover": "0062281208", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062281203", "isbn10": "0062281208", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 256, "book": "Undermajordomo Minor: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "From Dive Bars To Gothic Castles: A Career With The Arc Of A Fairy Tale", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/12/439727434/from-dive-bars-to-gothic-castles-a-career-with-the-arc-of-a-fairy-tale" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 256, "book": "Undermajordomo Minor: A Novel", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Fable's Foibles: In Gilded Language, This Folk Tale Gets To The Point", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/12/436904538/a-fable-s-foibles-in-gilded-language-this-folk-tale-gets-to-the-point" } ] }, "257": { "id": 257, "title": "Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family", "author": "Anne-Marie Slaughter", "text": "Anne Marie Slaughter has spent the bulk of her career thinking about matters of war and peace, national security and diplomacy and everything else wrapped up in the world of foreign policy. But in 2012, the former dean of Princeton’s School of International Affairs waded into the cultural debate about work/life balance with an article in The Atlantic called “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All.” In Unfinished Business, Slaughter fleshes out a broader argument about why women and men are not given the support they need to pursue meaningful work and raise families. What makes this book so compelling is the shifting perspective between Slaughter and her husband, Andrew Moravcsik, who for several years has been the “lead parent” in their family. It’s a must-read for any working couple trying to find the time to be good employees, good parents and — oh yeah — good partners to each other.
", "tags": [ "nonfiction", "family matters", "staff picks", "eye-opening reads", "book club ideas" ], "reviewers": [ "Rachel Martin" ], "isbn": "0812994566", "asin": "", "oclc": 916684999, "seamus": 443897953, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0812994566", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780812994568", "isbn10": "0812994566", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 257, "book": "Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Unfinished Business': When Working Families Can't Do It All", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/27/443814662/unfinished-business-when-working-families-can-t-do-it-all" } ] }, "258": { "id": 258, "title": "Uprooted", "author": "Naomi Novik", "text": "If your dream dinner party includes Lyra Belacqua, Alanna of Trebond, Hermione Granger or Katniss Everdeen, you should clear a space at your table for Agnieszka of Dvernik. A brave, discerning 17-year-old, Agnieszka is selected from among the girls in her village to serve the enigmatic sorcerer who protects the region from a terrible power that lies at its border. While the thrill of this novel comes from Agnieszka’s growing awareness of her own magical ability, its true power lies in the complexity of its female characters, who are responsible for the novel’s most villainous acts, as well as the most heroic.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "love & romance", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Ravenna Koenig" ], "isbn": "0804179034", "asin": "", "oclc": 892304621, "seamus": 405951632, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0804179034", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780804179034", "isbn10": "0804179034", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 258, "book": "Uprooted", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Writer-Engineer's Historical Fiction Hack: Add Dragons", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2016/02/27/467810806/a-writer-engineers-historical-fiction-hack-add-dragons" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 258, "book": "Uprooted", "source": "NPR", "text": "Friendship, Magic And Danger Blossom In 'Uprooted' ", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/24/407712289/friendship-magic-and-danger-blossom-in-uprooted" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 258, "book": "Uprooted", "source": "NPR", "text": "Exclusive First Read: Naomi Novik's 'Uprooted'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/05/12/405882202/exclusive-first-read-naomi-noviks-uprooted" } ] }, "259": { "id": 259, "title": "V Is For Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques For Home Cooks — From Artichokes To Zucchini", "author": "Michael Anthony", "text": "From Chef Michael Anthony (Gramercy Tavern, Untitled) comes what must be the most giftable vegetable book of the year. It’s a big, glossy, beautifully illustrated volume that goes from Asparagus and Artichokes to the inevitable Zucchini. Some recipes are simple enough for any old night (Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Maple Syrup); others (Chard Arancini) may set you back an hour or two. All of them look good enough to eat right off the page.
", "tags": [ "cookbooks & food" ], "reviewers": [ "T. Susan Chang" ], "isbn": "0316373354", "asin": "", "oclc": 919593445, "seamus": 458771029, "bookshop": 9780316373357, "cover": "0316373354", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780316373357", "isbn10": "0316373354", "links": [] }, "260": { "id": 260, "title": "Vermilion", "author": "Molly Tanzer", "text": "Molly Tanzer’s keen imagination is on display in her new novel, Vermilion, a work of alternative history that finds fresh magic in the mingling of fact and fantasy. In the book’s wild vision of the Wild West circa 1870, ghosts linger to haunt the living. Enter Elouise “Lou” Merriwether, who ushers the dead to their final resting place, along the way becoming one of speculative fiction’s most compelling protagonists in recent memory. Vermilion is a unique, thought-provoking romp that rewrites the past with a vivacious flourish.
", "tags": [ "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "eye-opening reads", "historical fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Jason Heller" ], "isbn": "1939905087", "asin": "", "oclc": 908117367, "seamus": 400181825, "bookshop": 9781939905086, "cover": "1939905087", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781939905086", "isbn10": "1939905087", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 260, "book": "Vermilion", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Vermilion' Finds New Magic In The Old West", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/22/400178830/vermilion-finds-new-magic-in-the-old-west" } ] }, "261": { "id": 261, "title": "Waiting", "author": "Kevin Henkes", "text": "Kevin Henkes is an amazing author — from picture books to young adult novels, his range of skill is without match — so it’s no surprise that his latest picture book, Waiting, is so terrific. In it, a collection of toys sits in a windowsill, each of them waiting for something. There isn’t a child in the picture, so the reader plays that role. Henkes creates a dance of words and pictures — subtle, simple and clever — that rewards the careful observer. Waiting is perfect for night after night after night of reading and rereading. (For ages 4 to 8)
", "tags": [ "kids’ books", "staff picks" ], "reviewers": [ "Justine Kenin" ], "isbn": "0062368435", "asin": "", "oclc": 889712629, "seamus": 442521245, "bookshop": 9780062368430, "cover": "0062368435", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062368430", "isbn10": "0062368435", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 261, "book": "Waiting", "source": "NPR", "text": "Some Kids' Books Are Worth The Wait: 'They Do Take Time,' Says Kevin Henkes", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/09/22/442521229/some-kids-books-are-worth-the-wait-they-do-take-time-says-kevin-henkes" } ] }, "262": { "id": 262, "title": "We Are Pirates", "author": "Daniel Handler", "text": "“Gwen glared at everywhere,” runs one sentence in Daniel Handler’s latest adult novel. The author who brought baroque, morose vocabulary lessons to kids’ books as Lemony Snicket usually isn’t as wry and acerbic in his adult work. But he makes occasional exceptions, bringing a lightness and a sense of play to this story about an unhappy teenager who wants to be a modern pirate and her unhappy father, who has a more conventional plan for escape. Somewhere between a fable, a family drama, an issue-based YA novel and a dark comedy, We Are Pirates has unpredictability going for it. It glares at everywhere, then laughs at it too.
", "tags": [ "the dark side", "family matters", "funny stuff" ], "reviewers": [ "Tasha Robinson" ], "isbn": "1608196887", "asin": "", "oclc": 885312982, "seamus": 458374925, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1608196887", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781608196883", "isbn10": "1608196887", "links": [] }, "263": { "id": 263, "title": "We Were Brothers", "author": "Barry Moser", "text": "When people are called upon to defend certain ideas and beliefs, they often say, “That’s just the way I was raised.” But what about those who were raised the exact same way and, for whatever reason, change? Barry Moser’s memoir is about just that. The acclaimed artist and illustrator describes the very different paths he and his late brother, Thomas, took on the subject of race. Their differences — not just about race but also how to treat one another — led to such a rift that they barely spoke for nearly four decades. Moser’s book is readable in its own right but might prove especially poignant and comforting to people navigating difficult family relationships.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "book club ideas", "eye-opening reads", "family matters", "rather short", "nonfiction", "identity & culture" ], "reviewers": [ "Michel Martin" ], "isbn": "1616204133", "asin": "", "oclc": 898925347, "seamus": 457927774, "bookshop": "", "cover": "1616204133", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781616204136", "isbn10": "1616204133", "links": [] }, "264": { "id": 264, "title": "Welcome To Braggsville", "author": "T. Geronimo Johnson", "text": "T. Geronimo Johnson’s timely novel is a tipsy social satire about race. A white, working-class Southerner named D’aron Davenport gets a scholarship to Berkeley — or “Berzerkeley.” Once there, he’s inspired by an alt history course to return to his hometown of Braggsville with some classmates to scrutinize the town’s annual Civil War re-enactment. As social satirist, Johnson is an equal opportunity mocker. The smugness of the elite university classroom is mirrored by the anti-intellectualism of Braggsville. Welcome to Braggsville deploys stream-of-consciousness poetry, fantasy and straight-up realism to explore the ways Americans miscommunicate when we try to talk about race.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "book club ideas", "funny stuff", "staff picks", "nonfiction", "identity & culture", "the states we’re in" ], "reviewers": [ "Maureen Corrigan" ], "isbn": "0062302124", "asin": "", "oclc": 877364076, "seamus": 385846271, "bookshop": 9780062302120, "cover": "0062302124", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062302120", "isbn10": "0062302124", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 264, "book": "Welcome To Braggsville", "source": "NPR", "text": " 'Welcome To Braggsville' Isn't Quite 'Invisible Man,' But It's Close", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/03/03/389536027/welcome-to-braggsville-isnt-quite-invisible-man-but-its-close" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 264, "book": "Welcome To Braggsville", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Berkeley Student Comes Home In 'Braggsville,' With Consequences", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/02/14/385747603/a-berkeley-student-comes-home-in-braggsville-with-consequences" } ] }, "265": { "id": 265, "title": "When A Scot Ties the Knot: Castles Ever After", "author": "Tessa Dare", "text": "At 16, shy Madeline dodged the London marriage mart by creating a fictional suitor, a captain off fighting Napoleon. She sent him letters for years to maintain the ruse, before claiming he had died. But sometimes odd twists of fate are the answers to silent prayers, the culmination of barely acknowledged dreams. When the war ends, Madeline is a spinster in a remote Scottish castle — and then one Captain Logan shows up, demanding her hand in marriage in exchange for concealing the years of love letters mistakenly routed to him. When a Scot Ties the Knot is lovely, romantic and thought-provoking.
", "tags": [ "historical fiction", "love & romance", "let’s talk about sex", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Bobbi Dumas" ], "isbn": "0062349023", "asin": "", "oclc": 897575444, "seamus": 458340294, "bookshop": 9780062349026, "cover": "0062349023", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780062349026", "isbn10": "0062349023", "links": [] }, "266": { "id": 266, "title": "Where The Bird Sings Best", "author": "Alejandro Jodorowsky, translated by Alfred MacAdam", "text": "Where the Bird Sings Best is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s brilliant, mad and unpredictable semi-autobiographical novel. Translated by Alfred MacAdam, this multigenerational chronicle introduces a host of memorable characters, from a dwarf prostitute and a floating ghost-Rabbi to a lion tamer who eats raw meat and teaches his beasts to jump through flaming hoops. Fantastical elements aside, Where the Bird Sings Best is a fiercely original immigration tale that culminates in the author’s birth in Chile in 1929 — a complicated time in that nation’s history. Combine that with poetry, tarot and Jewish mysticism and you have a genius’s surreal vision brought to life.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "the dark side", "family matters", "historical fiction", "tales from around the world", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Juan Vidal" ], "isbn": "1632060280", "asin": "", "oclc": 906700294, "seamus": 396579493, "bookshop": 9781632060280, "cover": "1632060280", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781632060280", "isbn10": "1632060280", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 266, "book": "Where The Bird Sings Best", "source": "NPR", "text": "A Filmmaker's Surreal Vision On The Page In 'Where The Bird Sings Best'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2015/04/01/396384194/a-filmmakers-surreal-vision-on-the-page-in-where-the-bird-sings-best" } ] }, "267": { "id": 267, "title": "White Light", "author": "Vanessa Garcia", "text": "An artist with a faltering career encounters the opportunity of a lifetime, immediately before her father’s sudden death. As her grief unspools, so does the narrative — in which her memories of him, and her thoughts about his life and death, can only be filtered through the many paint colors she uses to create her masterpiece. A beautiful meditation on the creation of art and difficult familial love.
", "tags": [ "seriously great writing", "family matters", "book club ideas", "fiction", "for art lovers" ], "reviewers": [ "Carmen Maria Machado" ], "isbn": "0991355547", "asin": "", "oclc": 907272248, "seamus": 458342641, "bookshop": 9780991355549, "cover": "0991355547", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780991355549", "isbn10": "0991355547", "links": [] }, "268": { "id": 268, "title": "Widow Basquiat: A Love Story", "author": "Jennifer Clement", "text": "Jennifer Clement uses lyrical vignettes to tell the fraught story of a close friend, Suzanne Mallouk, better known to New York City’s 1980s art world as the last woman Jean-Michel Basquiat loved. The tragic spectacle of Basquiat’s life and art has become so notorious, it’s somewhat difficult to remember he was an actual human being. Clement restores both his humanity — hurt and hurtful, brilliant and blazing — and, just as crucially, pulls Mallouk out of the art scene’s shadows and into the light. To say that this is the most compelling book you’ll ever encounter about Basquiat is just the beginning of the praise Clement deserves.
", "tags": [ "biography & memoir", "eye-opening reads", "for art lovers", "love & romance", "rather short", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Saeed Jones" ], "isbn": "0553419919", "asin": "", "oclc": 876666984, "seamus": 273128390, "bookshop": 9780553419917, "cover": "0553419919", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780553419917", "isbn10": "0553419919", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 268, "book": "Widow Basquiat: A Love Story", "source": "NPR", "text": "From Muse To Outcast, A Woman Comes Of Age In 'Widow Basquiat'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/2014/02/09/267027643/from-muse-to-outcast-a-woman-comes-of-age-in-widow-basquiat" } ] }, "269": { "id": 269, "title": "Words Without Music: A Memoir", "author": "Philip Glass", "text": "Have you ever hung out with Philip Glass, just casually chatting in his living room? I haven’t either, but you certainly feel like it while reading his autobiography. In warm, conversational tones, the famed composer of Einstein on the Beach unspools his remarkable life, from working in his father’s Baltimore record shop to discovering his personal brand of minimalism (“process replaced narrative”) to his enlightened studies with Ravi Shankar. In loving detail, the book also documents the fecund Lower Manhattan arts scene of the 1960s, when dance, visual arts and music commingled to create a vibrancy still potent today.
", "tags": [ "staff picks", "biography & memoir", "for music lovers", "nonfiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Tom Huizenga" ], "isbn": "0871404389", "asin": "", "oclc": 899885254, "seamus": 397831636, "bookshop": 9780871404381, "cover": "0871404389", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780871404381", "isbn10": "0871404389", "links": [ { "year": 2015, "id": 269, "book": "Words Without Music: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "The World Music Education of Philip Glass", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/04/25/401246742/the-world-music-education-of-philip-glass" }, { "year": 2015, "id": 269, "book": "Words Without Music: A Memoir", "source": "NPR", "text": "Philip Glass On Legacy: 'The Future ... It's All Around Us'", "url": "https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/04/06/397832333/philip-glass-on-legacy-the-future-its-all-around-us" } ] }, "270": { "id": 270, "title": "Yard Sale", "author": "Eve Bunting, illustrated by Lauren Castillo", "text": "Yard sales can be fun — but not when your favorite things are being sold. Callie’s move from a house to a small apartment is told with warmth and compassion. As she watches her family’s belongings being picked over and purchased, Callie’s heartache is palpable. Lauren Castillo’s watercolor and ink illustrations compliment Eve Bunting’s tender first-person telling of a routine event. However, Yard Sale is wholly Callie’s story, and we are heartened by her realization that though their belongings are gone, her family remains together to comfort and love one another. (For ages 3 to 7)
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "kids’ books", "family matters" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "0763665428", "asin": "", "oclc": 884479939, "seamus": 457234437, "bookshop": "", "cover": "0763665428", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9780763665425", "isbn10": "0763665428", "links": [] }, "271": { "id": 271, "title": "Your Alien", "author": "Tammi Sauer, illustrated by Goro Fujita", "text": "New friends can come from far-flung places … or planets. In this charming story, a boy meets a little green alien. Instantly, the two become inseparable, sharing fun and adventures. However, at bedtime, the boy sees his new friend growing sad. Hard as it is, he must somehow help his friend get home. In Your Alien, Tammi Sauer captures the giddy joy of friendship and the heartbreak of saying goodbye. This, coupled with Goro Fujita’s friendly and engaging illustrations, will make you long for an alien friend of your own. (For ages 3 and up)
", "tags": [ "funny stuff", "kids’ books", "sci fi, fantasy & speculative fiction", "fiction" ], "reviewers": [ "Lisa Yee" ], "isbn": "1454911298", "asin": "", "oclc": 902661214, "seamus": 458515694, "bookshop": 9781454911296, "cover": "1454911298", "year": 2015, "isbn13": "9781454911296", "isbn10": "1454911298", "links": [] } }