Each year at the store we have an official competition to see who can sell the most of their seasonal picks and I won this year for the first time ever! I talked a bit about mine in Summer Reading Recommendations and while some of my coworkers may think that I had an unfair advantage,… Continue reading The Art of Recommending a Book
As the book buyer for a local independent book store, I have the great joy of being able to see what books are coming, what publishers are excited about, and more, a good three to nine months before the books are actually released. While this is normally very exciting, it also means that by the… Continue reading New This Month: September 2019
Originally a selection for my old book club, the Modern Readers, which alas, no longer exists. I started it back in October of 2016 for said club and just recently got around to finishing it. Synopsis From the back cover:Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.… Continue reading Stiff by Mary Roach
It's another nonfiction book club pick! As someone who is fascinated by books and journalism, I'm really not all that interested in the English language and how it functions - I never really learned grammar properly, and (as I'm sure this post and others can verify) am often in need of a copy editor. But… Continue reading Word by Word by Kory Stamper
I, like so many others in the world, still mourn the loss of Anthony Bourdain and have difficulty accepting that he's no longer here, difficulty accepting, still, that he's not here by his own hand. So when the opportunity to once more "hear his voice" in a book presented itself, I jumped at it, as… Continue reading Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview
After going through a bit of book club withdrawal over the evolution and loss of my former book club, I decided to start a new one at the bookstore with a focus strictly on works of nonfiction. Tonight is the sixth meeting and I can hardly believe it's already been around that long! As nonfiction… Continue reading Nonfiction Book Club
Another Nonfiction Book Club selection, this one was selected for my new Antarctica-loving friend, Lenore! Synopsis From the Back Cover:It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an… Continue reading The Stowaway by Laurie Gwen Shapiro
There are blurbs on this book from authors I love, and the description of it is Vikings meets Wonder Woman made it a "total Sarah pick" as our Macmillan sales rep told me. So of, course, eventually, I had to read it. Synopsis From the Back Cover:Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside… Continue reading Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young
A good friend loves Grady Hendrix's books and so when I was looking to branch out and read a horror book on the beach, she told me I had to read We Sold Our Souls. Synopsis From the Back Cover:Only a girl with a guitar can save us all. Every morning Kris Pulaski wakes up… Continue reading We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix
I've had a good reading year so far, better than previous years - I've only hated 3 books so far! But below are my favorites thus far - not necessarily published in 2019 but read in 2019. And surprisingly, only 1 work of nonfiction and 3 fiction. Range by David Epstein An enjoyable psychology/sociology minded… Continue reading Favorite Reads of 2019 So Far
