August Staff Picks

Haley says:

“Hill is a polit­i­cal con­trib­u­tor and award-win­ning jour­nal­ist. In Nobody, he looks at school sys­tems, labor and hous­ing mar­kets, and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to uncov­er pat­terns that allow some cit­i­zens to be dis­em­pow­ered and dis­en­fran­chised. He walks us through our nation’s past to show how we reached our cur­rent lev­els of mass incar­cer­a­tion and state-sanc­tioned vio­lence. Hill has a way of bal­anc­ing sta­tis­tics and emo­tion that makes for an edu­ca­tion­al yet vul­ner­a­ble read. I rec­om­mend it to any­one who has asked ​‘Why does every­thing have to be about race?’”

Mandy says:

“When I picked up Cur­tis Sit­ten­feld’s Show Don’t Tell, I failed to notice the word ​‘Sto­ries’ writ­ten in a sneaky lit­tle scroll under the title. I’m not usu­al­ly wild about short sto­ry col­lec­tions – I often get too attached to the char­ac­ters to enjoy a brief fling. But this one hooked me from the get-go with its charm­ing­ly flawed and very relat­able char­ac­ters, and even a cameo appear­ance by Lee Fio­ra (from Sit­ten­feld’s much ear­li­er nov­el, Prep), who is attend­ing her 30-year high school reunion in the sto­ry ​‘Lost but Not For­got­ten.’ Eleven oth­er sto­ries round out this col­lec­tion, and all rev­el in the awk­ward­ness of find­ing your­self mid­dle-aged. Fun­ny and sharp!”

Eliz­a­beth says:

“Read­ing a John Le Car­ré nov­el is like unrav­el­ing a tan­gled ball of string. The plots are so intri­cate, it can be dif­fi­cult to fol­low along. And, if you don’t have at least a cur­so­ry knowl­edge of 20^th cen­tu­ry British cul­ture, they are even more chal­leng­ing. Regard­less, Le Car­ré will draw you in. You have to keep read­ing because you have to know how all the puz­zle pieces fit togeth­er. You have to know how the sto­ry ends. This is the fifth book in the George Smi­ley series. I’ve read the first four and rec­om­mend them all. Tin­ker, Tai­lor, Sol­dier, Spy explores how orga­ni­za­tions of spies oper­ate. Who do you believe when every­one in the orga­ni­za­tion is trained to be duplic­i­tous? Who is telling the truth when every­one is a liar? The sto­ry­telling is excel­lent. Even minor char­ac­ters are ful­ly devel­oped. Atmos­pher­ic details give this book a cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty. By the end of the first chap­ter, I was hooked.”