Recent Reviews

	How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?	Magda sets off on an unplanned road trip with an unusual companion. Along the way, she begins to examine her life, eventually arriving at new hope and happiness. We travel along with her, journeying through her memories and emotions, in this warm and insightful look at one woman’s life. Recommended by Nancy
	Faux Feminism	This is an excellent addition to the body of works examining and criticizing white feminism and other narrowly-focused feminisms. Khader examines mainstream feminism and where it goes wrong and the destructive ways it can be manipulated. She offers background and extensive research into often harmful myths many of us embrace and offers a perspective that focuses on large-scale systems of oppression, such as colonialism, and how dismantling those is necessary for achieving feminism’s goals. Recommended by Nancy
	What a Chicken Knows	This delightful little book packs a punch! Sy Montgomery’s avian anecdotes are interspersed with scientific research findings that prove the haters wrong. Chickens are much more intelligent (and docile) than is widely believed. This glimpse into the “Chicken Universe” will enlighten readers to the bravery, playfulness, and individuality of the world’s most common bird. Montgomery’s stories of rural life in New Hampshire are a balm for the overstimulated mind. Recommended by Mary
	How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unameable Disaster	In this queer speculative novel where ghosts are commonplace and food is scarce, residents of a single New York apartment building find routine in hunkering down from weekly acid rain. Upon moving back in with her mom, Mira is heartbroken that her partner, Mal, chose to stay behind, alone, in her late parents’ home. To pass the time and process, she begins a talk radio show, and later falls in love with one of her listeners, a headless (and also heartbroken) man called Sad. With rotating narration and an all-BIPOC cast—excluding a beautifully tender, gay cockroach ghost—this debut is existential, surreal, and electric. Recommended by Mary
	John Lewis: A Life	Throughout his long life as an activist and politician, John Lewis saw America repeatedly falter on the road to securing racial equality. Greenberg's substantive biography charts Lewis's beginnings as a remarkable child to his strength and devotion to the cause of Black equality in the face of nearly unbelievable cruelty and opposition. This is a journey everyone should take on our collective way forward. Recommended by Kelly
	Exposure	After her blockbuster first novel, Shutter, Ramona Emerson had her work cut out for her. But her second offering in the Rita Todacheene series fails to disappoint. Forensic photographer Todacheene can see the dead, and they know it. That's her problem; they want her to solve their murders, to muscle the police with her her extrasensory abilities. But as a Diné woman, this knowledge is taking a huge psychological, spiritual, and even physical toll. Where it's up to her to right wrongs, its up to family and tribal members to keep her from irreparable harm in the process. Recommended by Kelly
	Didion & Babitz	I finished this book and immediately began to reread-re-highlight and re evaluate all I knew about Didion & Babitz. At some point on a fully booked flight to NYC I found myself crying over this book and the brand new sense of vulnerability it allows Eve Babitz to embody. This book shows you the faults of it's subjects and it does so before any praise, it chalks it up to the human experience and the fervor that formed the friendship between Didion & Babitz. An edge of jealousy, a deep trench of love and an undertone of longing permeate each essay, leaving readers gasping for air and begging for a chance to get their hands on the letters that started it all. Recommended by Kahill
	The Twilight Zone	The Twilight Zone, which reads like true crime and is inspired by true events, is a distressing but essential story of political violence in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, juxtaposed with modern life and allusions to American media. Fernández dives deep into the multiplicity of reality in her poetic imagination of the lives of the disappeared and their loved ones. Frequent leaps between timelines illustrate the repetition of history, the unfathomable horrors of what happened, the mysteries that still remain, the gaslighting, the candles still burning. Recommended by Mary
	Perdita	What started out as blog posts on the devastation and disrepair that cancer causes families, turned into a memoir intended as a journal-like collection of hope and heartache for a son caught in a tangle of loss. In Perdita, Riley provides, in gorgeous detail, windows into his romance with his wife Emanuella and what their lives were like as they dealt with her cancer, diagnosis and eventual passing because of it. Perdita is, in no way, intending to provide solace or advice for others, living with or dying of cancer. It is only a first-hand account of the heartbreak it brings. As honest as the memoir is, there are generous points of tenderness, including a request from the author to his wife that she look in on him and their son from time to time, that maybe she would consider coming back as a bird of some sort. Recommended by Manda
	Field Guide for Accidents	In this collection of poetry, Abonado describes the intertwining and contradictory experience of being both Filipino and American in this country today. While all pieces in this collection take different forms, they are all intimate reflections on racism, self reflection, and what it means to move through this world when there is no specific space saved for you. A fascinating part of Abonado's work is the amount of research he puts into topics. References are made to folklore, sleep studies, demographics, and national highway safety data. Information provided in this collection provides a multi layered experience of reflection. Recommended by Manda