         Staff Picks Andrew's
Picks
Girl with the Typewriter Eyes
Dave Eggers tells the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a real-life refugee from Sudanese Civil War of the 80s and 90s. Just when you think it couldn't possibly get any worse for Achak, life deals him another tragic blow. And then another and then another and then another. And yet, Achak refuses to give up on finding a life worth living for himself and what is left of his family. This is a true story of astonishing perseverance in the face of unrelenting catastrophe.
Before Tintin, there was Kim. The orphan son of an Irish soldier, Kim lives on the streets of Lahore, India during British rule. Kim befriends a Tibetan Lama and joins him on a quest to find the River of the Arrow and free himself from the Wheel of Things. During his travels across India, Kim is enlisted as a spy in the conflict between Britain and Russia around the time of the Afghan wars in the late 1800s. Kipling's masterpiece is a great adventure story for adults and children alike.
A modern fable about a 92 year-old baron millionaire named Lamberto (a member of the 1%) who owns 24 banks and has 24 life threatening illnesses. A grand spectacle unfolds when the baron's island villa gets "occupied" by a band of terrorists (all named Lamberto) who demand 24 million dollars for the baron's life. If Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, and Roald Dahl had a three-headed goat, they would name it Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto.
"'You can try,' Mrs. Whatsit said, 'though I'm not sure how it will work. You see, though we travel together, we travel alone. We will go first and take you afterward in the backwash. That may be easier for you.' As she spoke the great white body began to waver, the wings to dissolve into mist. Mrs. Who seemed to evaporate until there was nothing but the glasses, and then the glasses, too, disappeared. It reminded Meg of the Cheshire Cat."
A twisted and hilarious graphic novel laying out a new adventure for Billy Hazelnuts as he attempts to return a baby owl to its mother. The Crazy Bird says, "Happy Thanksgiving.".
A cross between a wild wild western, Princess Mononoko, and Orwell's 1984. The Engines of the Line are pushing the boundaries of their machine driven world further and further west, while battling the insurrectionist Agents of the Gun in an endless war. Locked inside the mind of a demented general, former leader of the fallen Red Republic, is a secret weapon that could bring about the war's end. With the armies of the Line in frantic pursuit, an Agent of the Gun takes the General and his Victorian era doctor hostage, fleeing west beyond the frontier into the unnamed and amorphous lands of the Hill Folk. Gilman creates an intricate, well-paced, gripping tale in a fully imagined and highly original world.
In The Secret Sharer, a nameless captain hides a murderer (his own shadow?) on board his ship. This story will haunt you long after you have finished reading it.
First Toru Okada's cat goes missing. Then his wife leaves him. From there events unfold like box full of strange and colorful objects spilled onto the floor. In his search for his cat and his wife, Toru is surrounded by a cast of bizarre characters, including two psychic prostitutes who he mostly encounters in his dreams. The story slips back and forth between reality and a subterranean parallel world beneath Tokyo that Turo can only access by going into a trance-like state while sitting in the bottom of an old well. A menacing, amusing, topsy turvy, surreal suspense novel. Awesome.
Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste The 33 1/3 series is a fantastic collection of books covering many of the greatest rock albums of all time. There are 78 books is the series thus far, and each book is by a different writer, discussing a different album. In Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, Carl Wilson, who at the start cannot stand Celine Dion, sets out to comprehend why she is one of the highest selling female singers of all time. What is her appeal? Wilson challenges himself to move past the easy dismissal of Dion, and he comes to some surprising conclusions. Check out the 33 1/3 series in the music section of our store.
The Poetry of Rilke Now the hour bends down and touches me Nothing was complete before I saw it, Nothing is too small: against a gold background
Catch 22
The Art of Conversation
Cortazar's short stories will bend your mind into new dimensions. Every story is fantastic, and Blow Up is one of the greatest short stories ever written. This is great pick for readers who like Kafka, Borges, and Calvino.
Antonio Tabucchi is a great Italian writer who is relatively unknown in the US. His novella Pereira Declares sets the standard for narrative technique. He builds the tension and suspense at a perfect pace, drawing the reader into the moral dilemma of the protagonist and anti-hero. The story takes place in post-WWII Lisbon, Portugal during the authoritarian, right wing Salazarist government. Beware: once you begin reading, you may not be able to stop until you reach the end.
City of Thieves is one of my new favorite books. Benioff creates two of the most lovable characters I have encountered in fiction. Lev and Kolya, two Russians accused of looting and deserting, are captured by the Soviet military police during the Nazi siege of Leningrad. The colonel of police spares their lives in order to send them on a mission to find a dozen eggs for his daughter's wedding cake. Benioff does a brilliant job of placing the reader in a Russian city under siege in the middle of a brutal winter during WWII, and he navigates with mastery the line between tragedy and comedy.
|
|
Web site created by Beans n' Rice.com
|
Love, An Index
What is the What
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto
A Wrinkle in Time
Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird
The Half-made World 
The Secret Sharer
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Blow Up and Other Stories
Pereira Declares
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010
City of Thieves