today’s picks

• Irresistibleby Adam Alter
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
• How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself by Robert Paul Smith
• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

• Inland by Téa Obreht
• The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
• Lot by Bryan Washington
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

• Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World by Leah Hager Cohen
• Deaf Republic: Poems by Ilya Kaminsky
• Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks
• I’ll Scream Later by Marlee Matlin

• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• True Blood by Charlaine Harris
• Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

• Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America by Mary Otto
• The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces by James Wynbrandt
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• Where There is No Dentist by Murray Dickson

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Sorrow of War by Bảo Ninh
• Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
• Dangerous Love by Ben Okri

• Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas
• Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
• Evil Flowers by Gunnhild Øyehaug
• Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic
• Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• Roots by Alex Haley
• The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
• The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
• A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

• The New Confessions by William Boyd
• Another Time, Another Place by Jessie Kesson
• Under the Skin by Michael Faber
• 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

• The Psychology of Dreaming by Josie Malinowski
• The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Dream Peddler by Martine Fournier Watson
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

• The Complete Gardener by Monty Don
• Life In the Garden by Penelope Lively
• By Any Other Name: A Cultural History of the Rose by Simon Morley
• Defiant Gardens by Kenneth I Helphand

• Be My Guest by Priya Basil
• Strangers Drowning by Larissa MacFarquhar
• A Path Appears by Nicholas Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
• What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill

• A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann
• How to Bake Pi by Eugenia Cheng
• The Joy of Pi by David Blatner
• Sister Pie: The Recipes and Stories of a Big-Hearted Bakery in Detroit by Lisa Ludwinski

• Chernobyl: Confessions of a Reporter by Igor Kostin
• Craigslist Confessional: A Collection of Secrets from Anonymous Strangers by Helena Dea Bala
• Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar
• Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli

• Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
• A Field Guide to Awkward Silences by Alexandra Petri
• Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid
• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

• The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien
• All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt
• Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney
• Foster by Claire Keegan

• The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• The Powerful Purpose of Introverts: Why the World Needs You to Be You by Holley Gerth
• White Heat by Brenda Wineapple

• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Tinkers by Paul Harding

• Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
• Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
• The Door by Magda Szabó

• Bluets by Maggie Nelson
• The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
• Black: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau
• The World According to Color: A Cultural History by James Fox

• Ramadan Rhapsody: A Daily Celebration by Linda (Ilham) Barto
• Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam by A. Helwa 
• Life Is An Open Secret: Ramadan Special by Zabrina A. Bakar
• I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity by Izzeldin Abuelaish

• The Bear by Andrew Krivak
• Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future by Gloria Dickie
• In the Eye of the Wild by Nastassja Martin
• The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell’s Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears by Nick Jans

• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

• Farewell, Anatolia by Dido Sotiriou
• The Sleepwalker by Margarita Karapanou
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Mythology by Edith Hamilton

• King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz
• The Same and Not the Same by Roald Hoffmann
• Warped Passages by Lisa Randall
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

• What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri
• The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura
• My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story by Abraham Verghese
• Alternative Medicine by Rafael Campo

• Transmutation by Alex DiFrancesco
• Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays by Elena Passarello
• Elixir by Kapka Kassabova
• On Not Knowing by Emily Ogden

• No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History by Gail Collins
• A Bigger Picture by Vanessa Nakate
• It’s Not About the Burqa by Mariam Khan
• Off with Her Head: 3,000 Years of Demonizing Women in Power by Eleanor Herman

• Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl
• Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper
• The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams
• Into Green: Everyday Ways to Find and Lose Yourself in Nature by Caro Langton, Rose Ray

• Transitional by Munroe Bergdorf
• Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural India by Saria, Vaibhav
• Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
• Variations by Juliet Jacques

Breaking Murphy’s Law by Suzanne Segerstrom Binti by Nnedi Okorafor Climate Optimism by Zahra Biabani Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Burbery Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout The Hedgehog Handbook by Sally Coulthard How Can I Help Hedgehogs by Helen Bostock

Lace by Shirley Conran Lace Reimagined: 30 Inspiring Projects for Making and Using Lace Creatively by Elizabeth Healey Bluets by Maggie Nelson The Lace Weaver by Lauren Chater

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. by Siddhartha Mukherjee When Breath Becomes Air by Dr. Paul Kalanithi A Scattering by Christopher Reid Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want You to Know by Lori Hope

Dining Alone: In the Company of Solitude by Nancy A. Scherl The Way We Eat Now by Bee Wilson Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl One More Croissant For The Road by Felicity Cloake

The Emperor’s Feast: A History of China in Twelve Meals by Jonathan Clements The Banquet Bug by Geling Yan Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui Untangling My Chopsticks by Victoria Abbott Riccardi

Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman Dust Bowl Girls by Lydia Reeder Fat Girls Hiking: An Inclusive Guide to Getting Outdoors at Any Size or Ability by Summer Michaud-Skog One Life by Megan Rapinoe

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward Another Country by James Baldwin Lot: Stories by Bryan Washington A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars by Erin Sharkey

Cathedrals of the Flesh by Alexia Brue Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind by Brian M. Fagan The Curve of Time by Blanchet, M. Wylie

The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies Monkey King by Wu Cheng’en Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge Broken Stars by Ken Liu

The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung Headstrong by Rachel Swaby The Plant Hunter by Cassandra Leah Quave Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research by Caijian Jiang

Luster by Raven Leilani When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair Station Eleven by Emily St. John All Things Bright & Beautiful by James Herriot The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Orlando by Virginia Woolf Superflirt by Tracey Cox Justine by Lawrence Durrell Love by Toni Morrison

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant Color Your Style: How to Wear Your True Colors by David Zyla Mend! by Kate Sekules

The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World by Jamil Zaki The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson Deep Kindness by Houston Kraft The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales: A Memoir by Doreen Cunningham Listening to Whales: What the Orcas Have Taught Us by Alexandra Morton The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change by Charles Wohlforth When the Whales Leave by Yuri Rytkheu

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara LaRose by Louise Erdrich

• The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman
• Design Paradigms by Henry Petroski
• The Design Of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• The Monkey’s Wrench by Primo Levi

• The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think by Brian Hare
• Faithful Ruslan by Georgi Vladimov
• Bones Would Rain From the Sky by Suzanne Clothier
• The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

• Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish
• Sourdough by Robin Sloan
• Toast and Jam by Sarah Owens
• Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

• Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
• Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
• Frontier by Can Xue
• The Lost Daughter of Happiness by Geling Yan

• Stealing Cherries by Marina Rubin
• The Language of Cherries by Jen Marie Hawkins
• Some Bears Don’t Like Cherries by Laura Shenton
• Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

• The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
• Gods of Jade and Silver by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington
• How To Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann

• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• A Choice of Weapons by Gordon Parks
• Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith
• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

• Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America by Mary Otto
• To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
• The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces by James Wynbrandt
• The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli

• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• The Personal Librarian by Heather Terrell
• The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
• The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentil

• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

• Sleep Over: An Oral History of the Apocalypse by H.G. Bells
• Sleep by Nick Littlehales
• Why We Dream by Alice Robb
• Sleep Donation by Karen Russell

• Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades
• Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Poetry of Pop by Adam Bradley
• They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib

• This Is a Book for People Who Love Birds by Danielle Belleny
• Birds and Us: A 12,000-Year History from Cave Art to Conservation by Tim Birkhead
• H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
• Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

• Apples of Uncommon Character by Rowan Jacobsen
• Apples Are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared by Christopher Robbins
• The Apple Lover’s Cookbook: Revised and Updated by Amy Traverso
• The Orchard by Adele Crockett Robertson

• Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
• Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
• Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock That Shaped the World by Tom Zoellner
• The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time by Hugh Raffles

• We the Animals by Justin Torres
• Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson

• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis, Paperback
• The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin

• Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill
• The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
• What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet
• The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

• Tea by Helen Saberi
• The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
• Infused: Adventures in Tea by Henrietta Lovell
• Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea by Jeff Koehler

• Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk
• How to Make Friends in the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez
• Fires in the Dark by Kay Redfrield Jamison

• Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit
• On the Origins of Sports by Gary Belsky and Neil Fine
• The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel

• The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini
• Setting Free the Kites by Alex George
• Wind: How the Flow of Air Has Shaped Life, Myth, and the Land by Jan DeBlieu
• A Season On The Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration by Kenn Kaufman

• Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch
• Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King , et al.
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

• A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
• The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter
• Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
• To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose

• The Cable Car in America by George W. Hilton
• Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the Twenty-first Century (edited by Gloria Ohland and Shelley Poticha)
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Frida Kahlo: Painting Her Own Reality by Christina Burrus

• A Cure for the Common Word by K. D. Sullivan
• Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer’s Guide to Getting It Right by Bill Bryson
• Thesaurus of the Senses by Linda Hart
• The Great Passage by Shion Miura & Juliet Winters Carpenter

• The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson
• The Outlaw Bible of American Art (edited by Alan Kaufman)
• Outlaw Country by Willie P. Clayton
• Raw Creation: Outsider Art and Beyond by Roger Cardinal and John Maizels

• The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane
• Trudge: A Midlife Crisis on the John Muir Trail by Lori Oliver-Tierney
• The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
• 52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Abbs-Streets
• A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros

• Little Book of Hygge by Meik Wiking
• White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

• This Is a Book for People Who Love Hot Sauce by Matt Garczynski
• The Worldwide Hot Sauce Cookbook
• The Devil’s Dinner by Stuart Walton
• Hot Sauce Nation: America’s Burning Obsession by Denver Nicks

• Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
• The Art of the Handwritten Note: A Guide to Reclaiming Civilized Communication by Margaret Shepherd

• A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Solitude: A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr
• The Art of Solitude by Stephen Batchelor
• Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

• Temporary by Hilary Leichter
• Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
• Pastoralia by George Saunders
• Tooth and Nail by Linda D. Dahl

• The Seed Garden by Lee Buttala
• The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
• Diary of a French Herb Garden by Geraldene Holt
• Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time by Kapka Kassabova

• Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power by Ari Ezra Waldman
• The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam
• Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents by Ellen Ullman
• Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership by Lewis Hyde

• Frantz Fanon: A Biography by David Macey
• How to Be Animal by Melanie Challenger
• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

• The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis
• West with the Night by Beryl Markham
• Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington
• Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal

• Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza
• The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter
• The Art Thief by Michael Finkel 
• Affinities by Brian Dillon

• Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada
• Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

• Very Maple Syrup by Jennifer Trainer Thompson
• Maple Sugar by Tim Herd
• A Doomful of Sugar by Catherine Bruns
• The Sugar Season by Douglas Whynott

• The Migrant Chef by Laura Tillman
• How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee
• The Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• Notes on a Shipwreck by Davide Enea

• Hoarders by Kate Durbin
• The Day the World Stops Shopping by J.B. MacKinnon
• 7 Days of Christmas by Jen Hatmaker
• Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George

• The Time In Between by Maria Duenas
• When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà
• Nada by Carmen Laforet
• Seasonal Sangria by Dominique DeVito

• Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan
• Black Light: Stories by Kimberly King Parsons
• What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
• Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain

• The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
• A Certain Ambiguity by Gaurav Suri
• Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart
• The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone

• The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay
• A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
• The Witch Elm by Tana French
• Voices by Arnaldur Indridason

• White Out by Ragnar Jonasson
• The Sagas of Icelanders (edited by Jane Smiley)
• Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss
• The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness

• The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories (edited by Jessica Harrison)
• Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
• A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories (edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas)
• Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker by Gregory Maguire

• Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story by Angela Shelf Medearis and Daniel Minter
• Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture by Maulana Karenga
• Kwanzaa: An African-American Celebration of Culture and Cooking by Eric V. Copage
• Kwanzaa, From Holiday to Every Day by Maitefa Angaza

• On Immunity by Eula Biss
• The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
• Pandemic by Sonia Shah

• Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hessian
• Friendship by Lydia Densworth
• Fox & I by Catherine Raven
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

• Finish by Jon Acuff
• Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey
• Aging Well by George Vaillant
• The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

• How Baking Works: Exploring The Fundamentals of Baking Science, by Paula Figoni
• The King Arthur Baking Company’s All-Purpose Baker’s Companion
• The Baking Soda Companion by Suzy Scherr
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield