Now that summer is definitely, apparently (?) upon us, it’s time once again for the Free-For-All to share with you some of our lovely staff’s selections for summer reading!
We are a staff of diverse reading/listening/viewing habits, which makes these posts so much fun. There is such a wide range of books and media that our staff enjoy that there is bound to be something in here to help make your summer that much more entertaining! And so, without further ado, here is our second round of Staff Selections:
From the West Branch:
The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
“An engaging story with a dual narrative of mother and daughter. I appreciated the themes of the struggles of bi-cultural life experience, the mother-daughter relationship development, the symbolism, and the historical fiction aspect. A warning regarding the historical aspects of the book – the abuse the mother shares in her narrative that takes place in the very painfully patriarchal early/mid 1900s China may be triggering for victims of abuse”
From the Upstairs Offices:
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
One of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the his people’s past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power.
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar, awash in petrodollars, find joy in all that cash? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? In a unique mix of travel, psychology, science and humor, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions…I would love to see an update of this book now that social media has become so saturated in our lives.
From the Reference Desk:
Furiously happy : a funny book about horrible things by Jenny Lawson
A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best….Furiously Happy is about “taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they’re the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence….This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are – the beautiful and the flawed – and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways.
