Staff Picks
Books You Can Read in a Day
- Kristin A.
- Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Collection
Not ready to tackle another 500 page novel? Looking for a quick read that still packs a big punch? We've got you covered. Each of these great titles is 100 pages or less, but will keep you engaged from the first page to the last. The perfect size for a lazy afternoon on the couch.
All My Friends Are Dead
Published in 2010
We Should All Be Feminists
Published in 2015
In this essay -- adapted from her TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now -- and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.
The Grownup
Published in 2015
Gillian Flynn's Edgar Award-winning homage to the classic ghost story, published for the first time as a standalone. A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the psychic visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of Susan's terror and grief, she realizes she may not have to pretend to believe in ghosts anymore. Miles, Susan's teenage stepson, doesn't help matters with his disturbing manner and grisly imagination. The three are soon locked in a chilling battle to discover where the evil truly lurks and what, if anything, can be done to escape it. "The Grownup," which originally appeared as "What Do You Do?" in George R. R. Martin's Rogues anthology, proves once again that Gillian Flynn is one of the world's most original and skilled voices in fiction.
The Metamorphosis
Published in 2013
"Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Stanley Corngold Featuring essays by Philip Roth, W. H Auden, and Walter Benjamin "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Franz Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing--though absurdly comic--meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. This Modern Library edition collects Stanley Corngold's acclaimed English translation--long hailed as the gold standard by scholars and general readers alike--along with six critical essays by writers including Philip Roth, W. H. Auden, and Walter Benjamin, background and contextual material, and a new Introduction from Corngold himself"-- Provided by publisher.
Binti
Published in 2015
Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself--but first she has to make it there, alive.
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Published in 2016
An introduction to modern physics by a founder of the loop quantum gravity theory shares seven succinct lessons on topics ranging from general relativity and quantum mechanics to elementary particles and black holes.
Gratitude
Published in 2015
"My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure." --Oliver Sacks No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death. "It is the fate of every human being," Sacks writes, "to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death." Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life. "Oliver Sacks was like no other clinician, or writer. He was drawn to the homes of the sick, the institutions of the most frail and disabled, the company of the unusual and the 'abnormal.' He wanted to see humanity in its many variants and to do so in his own, almost anachronistic way--face to face, over time, away from our burgeoning apparatus of computers and algorithms. And, through his writing, he showed us what he saw." --Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal From the Hardcover edition.
Fox 8
A Story
Published in 2018
Idealistic Fox 8's ability to communicate in "Yuman" cannot save his pack when their den and food supply are destroyed to build a mall, so he writes a letter asking for an explanation of human's cruelty.