Staff Picks February 2024
Michael
Set on a New England university campus where Ingrid Yang is in her umpteenth year of completing her PHD on Chinese-American poetry, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation is a searing satire of the hypocrisy of academia, racism, and whose voices get to tell what stories. Chou’s novel will make you laugh until you cry, and cry until you laugh.
Cara
Riveting, heartfelt, and shrewdly observant, Nathan Hill’s Wellness is about the psychology of love, the triumphs and heartbreaks of parenthood, and the bumpy, terrifying, wonderful journey to healing the wounds the world has punctured in all of us.
Sierra
Lexi Freiman’s stubbornly contrarian and recently cancelled protagonist in The Book of Ayn stumbles into an Ayn Rand Walking Tour of New York City, and her sudden identification with the godmother of libertarianism leads her on an ever-absurd fumbling through the worlds of publishing and Hollywood, and a meditation retreat of the Isle of Lesbos.
Chris
Orbital is a stunningly poetic, gorgeously philosophical rumination on Earth, space, and what it is to be human. This small-but-mighty book deftly examines the very marrow of our being, and zooms out to the vertiginous depths of our existence — often in the same sentence.
*Am I showing off that I know the word vertiginous? Yes, gimme a break, I own a bookstore.
Chris’ Bonus Pick for Valentine’s Day:
This sweet, patient, and eminently readable love story spans a lifetime of longing and regret, ultimately delivering an enduring tale of hope and redemption.
