Here’s the list of 65 STAFF PICKS PROJECT acquisitions for AUGUST 2018. 
Staff Picks are on display in the library or checked out to a library patron. Come in to browse!
Check the Coos Library Coastline database to place your hold or ask the library staff to place your reservation for you. Be sure to keep your patron record up to date so you can be notified by email when your hold is ready for pick-up. Donate to help this project achieve its goal of $10,000 for 12 months of Staff Picks acquisitions. If we go over our goal, donations will be used to extend the project until funds are depleted.
Use our new searchable and sortable list of ALL Staff Picks items to explore all of them.
| TITLE | FIRST NAME | LAST
NAME |
#Category | DESCRIPTION
(from Amazon.com unless otherwise noted) |
|
| 1. | And Then We Danced: A Voyage into the Groove |
Henry | Alford | #NONFIC | Tackling a wide range of forms (including ballet, hip-hop, jazz, ballroom, tap, contact improvisation, Zumba, swing), this grand tour takes us through the works and careers of luminaries ranging from Bob Fosse to George Balanchine, Twyla Tharp to Arthur Murray. Rich in insight and humor, Alford mines both personal experience and fascinating cultural history to offer a witty and ultimately moving portrait of how dance can express all things human. |
| 2. | Gross Anatomy: Dispatches from the Front (and Back) |
Mara | Altman | #NONFIC | Mara Altman’s volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder about a lot of stuff over the years. Like, who decided that women shouldn’t have body hair? And how sweaty is too sweaty? Also, why is breast cleavage sexy but camel toe revolting? Isn’t it all just cleavage? These questions and others like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute Gross Anatomy, an essay collection about what it’s like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies. |
| 3. | Isle of Dogs |
Wes | Anderson, Director | #DVD | Visionary director Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs tells the story of Atari Kobayashi, 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi. When all the canine pets of Megasaki City are exiled to vast Trash Island, Atari sets off in search of his bodyguard dog, Spots. With the assistance of his newfound mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire Prefecture. |
| 4. | Monet’s Palate Cookbook: The Artist & His Kitchen Garden at Giverny |
Aileen | Bordman & Derek Fell | #NONFIC | For the first time in history, Monet’s Palate Cookbook: The Artist & His Kitchen Garden at Giverny brings Claude Monet’s beloved kitchen garden back to life. Written by filmmaker Aileen Bordman and garden writer Derek Fell, the book includes sixty recipes linked to Monet’s two-acre kitchen garden near his home at Giverny, France. Included is detailed information about the vegetables he grew, plus photographs and descriptions of the house interiors and gardens capturing Monet’s extraordinary lifestyle. Meryl Streep has written the Foreword and the recipes beautifully photographed by Steven Rothfeld. |
| 5. | Modus Season One |
Mao | Brostrøm & Peter Thorsboe, Directors | #DVD | This smart and brooding Swedish detective thriller follows psychologist and ex-FBI profiler Inger Johanne Vik as she finds herself and her autistic daughter drawn into an investigation surrounding a series of disturbing and brutal deaths in Stockholm. The case leads her to team up with local detective Ingvar Nymann and together they set about uncovering the clues to these shocking crimes.
…Based on the best-selling novels of Anne Holt, Modus is a thrilling, atmospheric crime series that raises questions about faith, intolerance, and the very nature of love itself. |
| 6. | The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts and Reason |
Chapo Trap House | #NONFIC | Chapo Trap House is a collective of writers, artists, and satirists that began as a political comedy podcast in March 2016.
In a manifesto that renders all previous attempts at political satire obsolete, The Chapo Guide to Revolution shows you that you don’t have to side with either the pear-shaped vampires of the right or the craven, lanyard-wearing wonks of contemporary liberalism. These self-described “assholes from the internet” offer a fully ironic ideology for all who feel politically hopeless and prefer broadsides and tirades to reasoned debate. |
|
| 7. | The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain |
Nick | Chater | #NONFIC | In this profoundly original book, behavioral scientist Nick Chater contends . . . [that] rather than being the plaything of unconscious currents, the brain generates behaviors in the moment based entirely on our past experiences. Engaging the reader with eye-opening experiments and visual examples, the author first demolishes our intuitive sense of how our mind works, then argues for a positive interpretation of the brain as a ceaseless and creative improviser. |
| 8. | 100 Books That Changed the World |
Scott | Christianson & Colin Salter | #NONFIC | Prize-winning author Scott Christianson brings together an exceptional collection of groundbreaking works that have changed the tide of history. Included are scriptures that founded religions, manifestos that sparked revolutions, scientific treatises that challenged ingrained beliefs, and novels that kick-started new literary movements. |
| 9. | Your Guide to Forest Bathing: Experience The Healing Power of Nature |
M. Amos | Clifford | #NONFIC | Simply being present in the natural world – with all our senses fully alive – can have a remarkably healing effect. It can also awaken in us our latent but profound connection with all living things. This is “forest bathing”, a practice inspired by the Japanese tradition of shinrin-yoku. It is a gentle, meditative approach to being with nature and an antidote to our nature-starved lives that can heal our relationship with the more-than-human world. |
| 10. | Gardenalia: Creating the Stylish Garden |
Sally | Coulthard | #NONFIC | Gardenalia explores how to make the garden or outdoor space an extension of your style. Filled with inspirational ideas, the book features superb color photographs that demonstrate the different moods and spatial effects that can be achieved with a carefully selected combination of plant material and decorative objects such as furniture, architectural items, and other objects, both vintage and contemporary. While shrubbery and hedging are the bones of an outdoor space, garden ornaments are the key to style, whether formal or informal. |
| 11. | Bad Girls |
Alex | de Campi and Victor Santos | #FIC | In this heart-pounding, starkly colored, and visually stunning graphic novel, three women have twelve hours to get out of Cuba with six-million dollars on the night of New Year’s Eve 1958. |
| 12. | French Exit |
Patrick | DeWitt | #FIC | . . . a brilliant and darkly comic novel about a wealthy widow and her adult son who flee New York for Paris in the wake of scandal and financial disintegration. . . .
Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind ‘tragedy of manners,’ a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute. |
| 13. | The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher’s Search For Ecstatic Experience |
Jules | Evans | #NONFIC | Beginning around the Enlightenment, western intellectual culture has written off ecstasy as ignorance or delusion. But philosopher Jules Evans argues that this diminishes our reality and denies us the healing, connection and meaning that ecstasy can bring.
He sets out to discover how people find ecstasy in a post-religious culture, how it can be good for us, and also harmful. Along the way, he explores the growing science of ecstasy, to help the reader – and himself – learn the art of losing control. |
| 14. | A Terrible Country |
Keith | Gessen | #FIC | A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation. |
| 15. | Near Death Experiences And Others |
Robert | Gottlieb | #NONFIC | This new collection from the legendary editor Robert Gottlieb features twenty or so pieces he’s written mostly for The New York Review of Books, ranging from reconsiderations of American writers such as Dorothy Parker, Thornton Wilder, Thomas Wolfe (“genius”), and James Jones, to Leonard Bernstein, Lorenz Hart, Lady Diana Cooper (“the most beautiful girl in the world”), the actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth, the scandalous movie star Mary Astor, and not-yet president Donald Trump. |
| 16. | Effortless Living: Wu-Wei and the Spontaneous State of Natural Harmony |
Jason | Gregory | #NONFIC | Revealing wisdom utilized by renowned sages, artists, and athletes who have adapted “being in the zone” as a way of life, the author shows that wu-wei can yield a renewed sense of trust in many aspects of your daily life, making each day more effortless. As an avid wu-wei practitioner, he provides keen insight on how you, too, can experience the beauty of achieving an enlightened, effortless mind while reveling in the process of life’s unfolding. |
| 17. | The Story of a Marriage |
Geir | Gulliksen | #FIC | “We think we know the ones we love.” So Pearlie Cook begins her indirect, and devastating exploration of the mystery at the heart of every relationship–how we can ever truly know another person.
It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful young housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset District in San Francisco, caring not only for her husband’s fragile health, but also for her son, who is afflicted with polio. Then, one Saturday morning, a stranger appears on her doorstep, and everything changes. Lyrical, and surprising, The Story of a Marriage is, in the words of Khaled Housseini, “a book about love, and it is a marvel to watch Greer probe the mysteries of love to such devastating effect.” |
| 18. | Love After Love |
Russell | Harbaugh, Director | #DVD | What happens when you lose the foundation of your family? In the wake of a husband and father’s death, the family members he leaves behind find themselves adrift—and in danger of drifting apart—as they each try to find meaning in a world without the man who held them together. Mother Suzanne (Andie MacDowell) tentatively seeks companionship—but her attempts at dating only drive a wedge between her and older son Nicholas (Chris O’Dowd), whose own relationship with his girlfriend is disintegrating. Meanwhile, younger son Chris (James Adomian) deals with grief in his own complicated—and increasingly worrying—way. What plays out between the trio is a beautifully observed, powerfully emotional journey that speaks to the strength of family ties. |
| 19. | Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness |
Anastasia | Higginbotham | #NONFIC | [Children’s picture book – Age Range: 8 – 12 years] Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness is a picture book that invites white children and parents to become curious about racism, accept that it’s real, and cultivate justice. |
| 20. | On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation |
Alexandra | Horowitz | #NONFIC | Page by page, Horowitz shows how much more there is to see—if only we would really look. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she discovers a feast of fascinating detail, all explained with her generous humor and self-deprecating tone. So turn off the phone and other electronic devices and be in the real world—where strangers communicate by geometry as they walk toward one another, where sounds reveal shadows, where posture can display humility, and the underside of a leaf unveils a Lilliputian universe—where, indeed, there are worlds within worlds within worlds. |
| 21. | How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice from White People |
D.L. | Hughley and Doug Moe | #NONFIC | Now, at last, activist, comedian, and New York Times bestselling author D. L. Hughley offers How Not to Get Shot, an illustrated how-to guide for black people, full of insight from white people, translated by one of the funniest black dudes on the planet. In these pages you will learn how to act, dress, speak, walk, and drive in the safest manner possible. You also will finally understand the white mind. It is a book that can save lives. Or at least laugh through the pain. |
| 22. | Call Me American: A Memoir |
Abdi | Iftin | #NONFIC | In an amazing stroke of luck, Abdi won entrance to the U.S. in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America–filled with twists and turns and a harrowing sequence of events that nearly stranded him in Nairobi–did not come easily. Parts of his story were first heard on the BBC World Service and This American Life. Now a proud resident of Maine, on the path to citizenship, Abdi Nor Iftin’s dramatic, deeply stirring memoir is truly a story for our time: a vivid reminder of why western democracies still beckon to those looking to make a better life. |
| 23. | Small Innovative Houses |
Philip | Jodidio | #NONFIC | Forget the McMansions; budgets aren’t what they used to be, houses are smaller, and lifestyles are changing rapidly. Clients today want to create a home that is easy to maintain, environmentally responsible, and inexpensive to operate. Own less, live more.
Ranging from glass cabins to copper-clad tree houses, Small Innovative Houses features an international collection of more than fifty residences in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. |
| 24. | The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves |
Eric R. | Kandel | #NONFIC | In his seminal new book, The Disordered Mind, Kandel draws on a lifetime of pathbreaking research and the work of many other leading neuroscientists to take us on an unusual tour of the brain. He confronts one of the most difficult questions we face: How does our mind, our individual sense of self, emerge from the physical matter of the brain? . . . By studying disruptions to typical brain functioning and exploring their potential treatments, we will deepen our understanding of thought, feeling, behavior, memory, and creativity. Only then can we grapple with the big question of how billions of neurons generate consciousness itself. |
| 25. | The Perfection Detox: Tame Your Inner Critic, Live Bravely and Unleash Your Joy |
Petra | Kolber | #NONFIC | Award-winning fitness professional and consultant shares a practical, accessible program to help women replace destructive perfectionistic mindsets with concrete strategies and life-changing tips. |
| 26. | Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump |
Gary | Lachman | #NONFIC | In Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump, historian and cultural critic Gary Lachman takes a close look at the various magical and esoteric ideas that are impacting political events across the globe. From New Thought and Chaos Magick to the far-right esotericism of Julius Evola and the Traditionalists, Lachman follows a trail of mystic clues that involve, among others, Norman Vincent Peale, domineering gurus and demagogues, Ayn Rand, Pepe the Frog, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz, synarchy, the Alt-Right, meme magic, and Vladimir Putin and his postmodern Rasputin. Come take a drop down the rabbit hole of occult politics in the twenty-first century and find out the post-truths and alternative facts surrounding the 45th President of the United States with one of the leading writers on esotericism and its influence on modern culture. |
| 27. | Dinner With Georgia O’Keeffe: Recipes, Art and Landscape |
Robyn | Lea | #NONFIC | Featuring fifty recipes collected from Georgia’s favorite cookbooks with her handwritten notes or prepared for her by cooks and caretakers, Dinner with Georgia O’Keeffe is a perfect balance between the fresh local and traditional ingredients O’Keeffe sought and the New Mexican landscape and culture that constantly influenced both her art and her sense of self. |
| 28. | Disobedience |
Sebastian | Lelio, Writer & Director | #DVD | Academy-Award winner Rachel Weisz (Denial) and Rachel McAdams (Spotlight) star in this spellbinding drama about a woman as she returns to the community that shunned her decades earlier for an attraction to a childhood friend. Once back, their passions reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality in this film that critics call “romantic and gripping” (Parade ). |
| 29. | Guerrilla Kindness and Other Acts of Creative Resistance: Making a Better World Through Craftivism
|
Sayraphim | Lothian |
#NONFIC | In Guerilla Kindness artist, scholar, activist, and YouTube art teacher Sayraphim Lothian gives you an introduction to the art of craftivism, and provides a brief history of creative resistance. This master craftivist shows you how to make and use various crafts for political and protest purposes |
| 30. | Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire |
Matthew N. | Lyons | #NONFIC | Matthew N. Lyons takes readers on a tour of neonazis and Christian theocrats, by way of the patriot movement, the LaRouchites, and the alt-right. Supplementing this, thematic sections explore specific dimensions of far-right politics, regarding gender, decentralism, and anti-imperialism. His final chapter offers a preliminary analysis of the Trump presidential administration relationship with far-right politics and the organized far right’s shifting responses to it. |
| 31. | No One Tells You This |
Glynnis | Macnicol | #NONFIC | Over the course of her fortieth year, which this memoir chronicles, Glynnis embarks on a revealing journey of self-discovery that continually contradicts everything she’d been led to expect. . . In doing so, she discovers that holding the power to determine her own fate requires a resilience and courage that no one talks about, and is more rewarding than anyone imagines.
Intimate and timely, No One Tells You This is a fearless reckoning with modern womanhood and an exhilarating adventure that will resonate with anyone determined to live by their own rules. |
| 32. | Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology |
Lisa | Margonelli | #NONFIC | Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually—and yet, in Margonelli’s telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we’re building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition. |
| 33. | See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism and Commentary |
Lorrie | Moore | #AUDIO | A welcome surprise: more than fifty prose pieces, gathered together for the first time, by one of America’s most revered and admired novelists and short-story writers, whose articles, essays, and cultural commentary–appearing in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere–have been parsing the political, artistic, and media idiom for the last three decades. |
| 34. | Bark |
Lorrie | Moore | #AUDIO | A literary event – a new collection of stories by one of America’s most beloved and admired short story writers, her first collection in fifteen years.
In these eight masterful stories, Lorrie Moore, in a perfect blend of craft and bewitched spirit, explores the passage of time and summons up its inevitable sorrows and hilarious pitfalls to reveal her own exquisite, singular wisdom. |
| 35. | Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic Atheists in American Public Life |
R. Laurence | Moore & Isaac Kramnick | #NONFIC | God occupies our nation’s consciousness, even defining to many what it means to be American. Nonbelievers have often had second-class legal status and have had to fight for their rights as citizens.
As R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick demonstrate in their sharp and convincing work, avowed atheists were derided since the founding of the nation. . . . Moore and Kramnick lay out this fascinating history and the legal cases that have questioned religious supremacy. . . . In Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic, the authors also explore the dramatic rise of an “atheist awakening” and the role of organizations intent on holding the country to the secular principles it was founded upon. |
| 36. | To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way For the Trump Presidency and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course |
Ralph | Nader | #NONFIC | America’s number one citizen Ralph Nader’s latest book shows us how unchecked corporate power has led to the wrecking ball that is the Trump presidency. Nader brings together the outrages of the Trump administration with the key flaws and failures of the previous administrations—both Republican and Democratic—that have led our nation to its current precipice. It’s all in the details and Ralph Nader knows them all. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. Bush and Obama led the way.
Writing as a Washington, DC, activist and people’s advocate for over fifty years―someone who has saved more lives and caused more impactful legislation to be enacted than almost any sitting president or legislator—Nader shows how Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors followed the path of no resistance of the Obama, Bush and Clinton regimes, which ushered in the extreme rise of corporate power and the abandonment of the poor and middle classes. |
| 37. | Writers and Their Cats |
Alison | Nastasi | #NONFIC | Mark Twain, Alice Walker, Haruki Murakami, Ursula K. Le Guin—this volume celebrates 45 famous authors who have shared their homes and hearts with furry feline friends. The photographs and stories in Writers and Their Cats capture the special bond between wordsmith and mouser. From the six-toed kitties who still inhabit the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Florida to the mewling muses of mystery writer Lilian Jackson Braun, cats are clearly, in the words of Gloria Steinem, “a writer’s most logical and agreeable companion.” |
| 38. | Unclean Jobs For Women and Girls: Stories |
Alissa | Nutting | #FIC | “A dark catalog of behavior for her characters and the result is a kind of human bestiary, if humans were programmed to go down in flames, to run themselves aground, to seek ruin on every occasion. . . . (They) illuminate how people hide behind their pursuits, concealing what matters most to them while striving, and usually failing, to be loved.”—Ben Marcus |
| 39. | Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over |
Nell | Painter | #NONFIC | Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school―in her sixties―to earn a BFA and MFA in painting.
Bringing to bear incisive insights from two careers, Painter weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art. |
| 40. | America’s Great River Journeys: 50 Canoe, Kayak, and Raft Adventures |
Tim | Palmer | #NONFIC | From the Penobscot to the Potomac, the New to the Suwannee, the Colorado to the Snake, America’s Great River Journeys entices people to experience America from its free-flowing waterways. Vivid descriptions of our nation’s fifty finest river trips are complete with stunning photos of each leg of each journey, an engaging narrative, and practical tips about the length of trips, seasonal preferences, difficulty of white water, joys of camping along the shores, availability of professional outfitters, and other details. |
| 41. | Your Black Friend and Other Strangers |
Ben | Passmore | #FIC | Graphic novel – Ben Passmore’s necessary contribution to the dialogue around race in the United States, Your Black Friend is a letter from your black friend to you about race, racism, friendship and alienation.
On the heels of viral online success with 500,000+ views, the revised print edition of the Your Black Friend comic is in gorgeous full color on fancy matte paper stock. |
| 42. | The Tangled Tree: A Radical History of life |
David | Quammen | #NONFIC | Now, in The Tangled Tree, he explains how molecular studies of evolution have brought startling recognitions about the tangled tree of life—including where we humans fit upon it. Thanks to new technologies such as CRISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. The Tangled Tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life’s history, and of our own human nature. |
| 43. | The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity |
Byron | Reese | #NONFIC | We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how—rather than what—we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity. |
| 44. | Boots Riley: Tell Homeland Security – We Are the Bomb |
Boots | Riley | #NONFIC | Provocative and prolific, Boots Riley has written lyrics as the frontman of underground favorites The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club, as well as solo artist, for more than two decades. An activist, educator, and emcee, Riley’s singular lyrical stylings combine hip-hop poetics, radical politics, and wry humor with Bay Area swag. Boots Riley: Collected Lyrics and Writings brings together his songs, commentary, and backstories with compelling photos and documents. |
| 45. | November |
Rainer | Sarnet, Director | #DVD | In this tale of love and survival in 19th century Estonia, peasant girl Liina longs for village boy Hans, but Hans is inexplicably infatuated by the visiting German baroness that possesses all that he longs for. For Liina, winning Hans’s requited love proves incredibly complicated in this dark, harsh landscape where spirits, werewolves, plagues, and the devil himself converge, where thievery is rampant, and where souls are highly regarded, but come quite cheap. With alluring black and white cinematography, Rainer Sarnet vividly captures these motley lives as they toil to exist-is existence worth anything if it lacks a soul? |
| 46. | First Reformed |
Paul | Schrader, Director | #DVD | The pastor of a small church in New York with dwindling attendance gets a call from a pregnant parishioner begging for help with her extremely radical husband. After getting involved, the pastor loses control of every aspect of his life. Stars Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried. |
| 47. | Civilization: from the Ancient to the Modern – Art and Culture Define Who We Are |
Liev | Schreiber, Narrator | #DVD | Survey the history of art, from antiquity to the present, on a global scale. This nine-part series reveals the role art and creative imagination have played in forging humanity, and introduces viewers to works of beauty, ingenuity, and illumination across cultures. Principal contributors Simon Schama, Mary Beard, and David Olusoga travel across the globe, visiting such cultural landmarks as the great mosques of Istanbul, the ancient cities of Mesoamerica, the Buddhist caves of Ajanta in India, the Aztecs’ Templo Mayor in modern Mexico City, the funeral site of China’s first emperor and many more. (from pbs.org) |
| 48. | We’re Doomed. Now What? : Essays on War and Climate Change |
Roy | Scranton | #NONFIC | We’re Doomed. Now What? addresses the crisis that is our time through a series of brilliant, moving, and original essays on climate change, war, literature, and loss, from one of the most provocative and iconoclastic minds of his generation. Whether writing about sailing through the melting Arctic, preparing for Houston’s next big storm, watching Star Wars, or going back to the streets of Baghdad he once patrolled as a soldier, Roy Scranton handles his subjects with the same electric, philosophical, demotic touch that he brought to his groundbreaking New York Times essay, “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene.” |
| 49. | Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water’s Edge |
Susan Hand | Shetterly | #NONFIC | In Seaweed Chronicles, Shetterly takes readers deep into the world of this essential organism by providing an immersive, often poetic look at life on the rugged shores of her beloved Gulf of Maine, where the growth and harvesting of seaweed is becoming a major industry. While examining the life cycle of seaweed and its place in the environment, she tells the stories of the men and women who farm and harvest it. |
| 50. | The Road Trip Book: 1001 Drives of a Lifetime |
Darryl | Sleath edited by | #NONFIC | Entries are organized into three categories: Scenic, Adventure, and Culture. One can marvel at the views from Cape Town’s scenic Chapman’s Peak Drive or central California’s Pacific Coast Highway, but the thrill seeker might opt for the hair-raising ride through Montenegro’s coastal mountains to reach the medieval walled town of Sveti Stefan on the Adriatic. The culture category features routes inspired by film, literature, and history: re-create Thelma and Louise’s heart-pounding joyride (minus the final leap), savor Japan’s “Romance Road” through unspoiled small towns, or follow Jack Kerouac’s path from On the Road. |
| 51. | Armand V |
Dag | Solstad | #FIC | Armand is a diplomat rising through the ranks of the Norwegian foreign office, but he’s caught between his public duty to support foreign wars in the Middle East and his private disdain for Western intervention. He hides behind knowing, ironic statements, which no one grasps and which change nothing. Armand’s son joins the Norwegian SAS to fight in the Middle East, despite being specifically warned against such a move by his father, and this leads to catastrophic, heartbreaking consequences.
Told exclusively in footnotes to an unwritten book, this is Solstad’s radically unconventional novel about how we experience the passing of time: how it fragments, drifts, quickens, and how single moments can define a life. |
| 52. | T. Singer |
Dag | Solstad | #FIC | T Singer begins with thirty-four-year-old Singer graduating from library school and traveling by train from Oslo to the small town of Notodden, located in the mountainous Telemark region of Norway. There he plans to begin a deliberately anonymous life as a librarian. But Singer unexpectedly falls in love with the ceramicist Merete Saethre, who has a young daughter from a previous relationship. After a few years together, the couple is on the verge of separating, when a car accident prompts a dramatic change in Singer’s life.
The narrator of the novel specifically states that this is not a happy story, yet, as in all of Dag Solstad’s works, the prose is marked by an unforgettable combination of humor and darkness. Overall, T Singer marks a departure more explicitly existential than any of Solstad’s previous works. |
| 53. | Tehran Taboo |
Ali | Soozandeh, Director | #DVD | In the gorgeously animated drama Tehran Taboo, the lives of several strong-willed women and a young musician intersect. Their stories reveal the hypocrisies of modern Iranian society, where sex, drugs, and corruption coexist with strict religious law. In the bustling metropolis of Tehran, avoiding prohibitions has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation. Nevertheless, women invariably end up on the bottom rung of the social order. A young woman needs an operation to “restore” her virginity. A judge in the Islamic Revolutionary Court exhorts favors from a prostitute in exchange for a favorable ruling. The wife of an imprisoned drug addict is denied the divorce she needs in order to live independently. Making use of rotoscope animation, expat Iranian filmmaker Ali Soozandeh creates a portrait of contemporary Tehran that would be impossible by any other means. |
| 54. | The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever |
Michael Bungay | Stanier | #NONFIC | A fresh innovative take on the traditional how-to manual, the book combines insider information with research based in neuroscience and behavioral economics, together with interactive training tools to turn practical advice into practiced habits. Witty and conversational, The Coaching Habit takes your work–and your workplace–from good to great. |
| 55. | I Can Get Paid for That?: 99 Creative Careers to Live a Life Less Ordinary |
Jo | Stewart | #NONFIC | This book is both an inspirational and a practical guidebook, and it profiles 99 interesting, unusual, and relatively unexplored creative career options—from smoke jumpers to fortune-cookie writers, truffle hunters to food stylists, and golf-ball divers to perfumers. While some of the featured careers may not be for everyone (taxidermy, anyone?) others may be the perfect fit for someone’s skill set, interests, talents, and curiosities. This book is an uplifting, positive guide for those that like to think outside the box. Think of it as the alternative career guide your guidance counselor was too afraid to talk about. |
| 56. | Any Man |
Amber | Tamblyn | #FIC | Told in alternating viewpoints, Any Man is a remarkable, challenging, and dark examination of our gendered biases when it comes to sexual violence. As bold as it is timely, Any Man is a poignant and strikingly original work about our pervasive rape culture that seeks to assert how powerful and transformative language can be in speaking about sexual assault. |
| 57. | Court |
Chaitanya | Tamhane, Director | #DVD | Winner of top prizes at the Venice and Mumbai film festivals, Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court is a quietly devastating, absurdist portrait of injustice, caste prejudice, and venal politics in contemporary India. An elderly folk singer and grassroots organizer, dubbed the people s poet, is arrested on a trumped-up charge of inciting a sewage worker to commit suicide. His trial is a ridiculous and harrowing display of institutional incompetence, with endless procedural delays, coached witnesses for the prosecution, and obsessive privileging of arcane colonial law over reason and mercy. What truly distinguishes Court, however, is Tamhane’s brilliant ensemble cast of professional and nonprofessional actors; his affecting mixture of comedy and tragedy; and his naturalist approach to his characters and to Indian society as a whole, rich with complexity and contradiction. New Directors/New Films |
| 58. | Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms |
Michelle | Tea | #NONFIC | Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career―memoir―and considers the price that art demands be paid from life. |
| 59. | Infinite Resignation |
Eugene | Thacker | #NONFIC | Comprised of aphorisms, fragments, and observations both philosophical and personal, Thacker’s new book traces the contours of pessimism, caught as it often is between a philosophical position and a bad attitude. Reflecting on the universe’s “looming abyss of indifference,” Thacker explores the pessimism of a range of philosophers, from the well-known (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus), to the lesser-known (E.M. Cioran, Lev Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno). |
| 60. | Flights |
Olga | Tokarczuk | #FIC | Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer. |
| 61. | BEUYS |
Andres | Veiel, Director | #DVD | Known for his contributions to the Fluxus movement and his work across diverse media — from happening and performance to sculpture, installation, and graphic art — Beuys’ expanded concept of the role of the artist places him in the middle of socially relevant discourses on media, community, and capitalism. Using previously untapped visual and audio sources, director Andres Veiel has created a one-of-a- kind chronicle: Beuys is not a portrait in the traditional sense, but an intimate and in-depth look at a human being, his art and ideas, and the way they have impacted the world. |
| 62. | Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide to Saving the Bees |
Lori | Weidenhammer | #NONFIC | Now that bees are facing unprecedented levels of die-off caused by a toxic mixture of environmental stresses, a community-based effort is needed to make gardens, fields and landscapes healthy sanctuaries for bees. . . .
Planning a bee-friendly space can provide a beautiful and bountiful selection of edible crops, native plants and fragrant ornamentals, as well as herbs that have medicinal properties for both pollinators and people. With the help of ten inspiring garden plans and planting guides, Weidenhammer shows how bee-friendly plants can be used in creative combinations for plots and pots of all sizes, and are easily grown by novices and seasoned gardeners alike. |
| 63. | RBG |
Betsy | West, Julie Cohen, et al., Directors | #DVD | At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a lengthy legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But the unique personal journey of her rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG explores Ginsburg’s life and career. |
| 64. | The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege |
Ken | Wytsma | #NONFIC | In this timely, insightful book Wytsma unpacks what we need to know to be grounded in conversations about today’s race-related issues. And he helps us come to a deeper understanding of both the origins of these issues and the reconciling role we are called to play as witnesses of the gospel. Inequality and privilege are real. The Myth of Equality opens our eyes to realities we may have never realized were present in our society and world. And we will be changed for the better as a result. |
| 65. | The Banishment
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Andrey | Zvyagintsev, Director | #DVD | On the heels of his award-winning 2003 feature debut The Return, filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev struggles to avoid the sophomore slump with this art-house crime drama concerning two brothers struggling to keep their lives together in the face of certain disaster. Soon after extracting a bullet from his brother’s arm, Alex (Konstantin Lavroneko) relocates his family from the city to his father’s old house in the countryside. As the family settles into their rustic existence, Alex’s wife Vera (Maria Bonnevie) reveals that she is pregnant by another man. Enraged by his wife’s announcement, Alex consults with his brother and demands that Vera terminate the pregnancy. When the forced abortion goes horribly awry and Alex’s brother suffers a severe heart attack, a confrontation with the man Alex believes to have seduced his wife send events quickly spiraling out of control. SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Cannes Film Festival, European Film Awards, Moscow International Film Festival, …The Banishment ( Izgnanie ) |
