Edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Shappell
Offill and Shappell edited another book I started a few years ago, The Friend Who Got Away, a collection of stories by women who had “broken up” with a best friend and which I found too depressing to finish. Money Changes Everything…
Michael Palin – Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
A thick 600+ page book, Palin’s Diaries start slowly but become increasingly engrossing. Covering the very first year Python starts making shows until the release of Life of Brian, Palin describes Python’s ever-increasing popularity. Palin writes with a witty, kind and …
Steven Blush
This book is worth it just for the cover. Blush gives you an up close and personal look at the biggest, hairiest and most famous metal bands. Each page brings a band with still bigger hair, more makeup, hazier lenses and thickly studded leather outfits – all brand …
Will Thomas
I really enjoyed Thomas’ series of books featuring enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his Welsh assistant Thomas Llewelyn. While their clients are often wealthy aristocrats, the people they associate with and investigate live on the margins of proper Victorian British society – Jews, Asians, Irish terrorists and the …
Logan Ward
We saw Ward speak at the WI Book Festival and he as was equally as amusing as AJ Jacobs, though a bit more low-key. Having thoroughly burnt out on the hectic lifestyle of New York, Ward and his wife decide to drop out for a year and …
Kyle MacDonald
I first became aware of the ORP project when I heard a mention of it on Alice Cooper’s radio show (yes he has a show, yes he is quite funny). Unemployed dreamer Kyle MacDonald decides he is tired of sponging off his patient girlfriend Dom. Faced with the …
David Hatcher Childress
I first ran about Nan Madol last month in Oliver Sack’s Island of the Colorblind. The city of Nan Madol is located deep in Micronesia. The partially sunken city once covered 11 square miles and was cut through with Venetian style canals and ringed with man-made …
J
ack Larkin
Despite the uninspiring title and cover, Larkin’s book was thoroughly enjoyable. Focusing on homes of the common family from the times of the founding fathers, Larkin uses a wealth of images taken by the HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey), a project created during the Depression for out-of-work …
Michelle Dresbold
A self-proclaimed “top expert” of handwriting analysis (graphology), Dresbold gives quite a wild ride. After a few pages of self-congratulatory introduction, she gets down to business and covers a wealth of hidden information found in handwriting. While some does seem a hair far-fetched (you can see the weapon …
Ben Marcus
Have I ever surfed? No. Will I ever try? Maaaaybe. But gosh darn these surfboards are beautiful. Along with a pretty interesting history of the sport, major surfers and the evolution of design and materials and numerous gorgeous images of boards. Everything from the earliest all-wood boards to …
My Life in Orange (Tim Guest) and Bhagwan, the God that Failed (Hugh Milne)
Both of these fascinating autobiographies tell of the authors’ lives living in ashrams of the Guru Shree Bhagwan. Guest moved into his first communal ashram at about age 5 when, after short bouts with other major …
A.J. Jacobs
We had the great pleasure of hearing Jacobs speak a few weeks ago at the Wisconsin Books Festival about his new book A Year of Living Biblically. I am greatly looking forward to getting my mitts on this book. A mere 100 other patrons and then it …
Catherine Jinks
Where do you go to school if you are a genius and your father is an evil genius? Why, the evil genius academy, of course. Learn the fine arts of lying, stealing, poisons, hacking, disguise and other deeply useful skills. The only drawbacks? The matriculation rate is nothing …
Trenton Lee Stewart
An ad in the paper looking for exceptional children lures orphan Reynie Muldoon into a strange shadow conspiracy. With a band of other brilliant and bizarre children, they must overthrow an evil mastermind. Inventive and fast-moving, though personally I think a few fires would have solved a …
PB Kerr
The Akhenaten Adventure, The Blue Djinn of Babylon and The Cobra King of Kathmandu.
Upon the removal of their wisdom teeth, twins John and Phillipa Gaunt discover they have strange magical powers. Sent off to their Uncle Nimrod, the Gaunt kids learn to use their djinn …
Terry Pratchett
Moist VonLipwig. Spike. Golums, A small dog named Mr. Fusspot. The Patrician. Perfidious minds. Lousy puns. It’s all good- it’s all Pratchett.…
