June Staff Picks

Sebas­t­ian says:

“Celebri­ty mem­oirs are a dime a dozen, but few present them­selves with the raw, unflinch­ing hon­esty of Demi Moore’s Inside Out. Famous­ly a mem­ber of the 80’s ​‘Brat Pack’ and at one time the high­est-paid woman in Hol­ly­wood, Moore was also known for her mar­riage to super­star Bruce Willis, a ground­break­ing Van­i­ty Fair cov­er in which she was pho­tographed nude and very preg­nant, and her May/​December romance with Punk’d star Ash­ton Kutch­er. Less known was her dys­func­tion­al upbring­ing by emo­tion­al­ly imma­ture par­ents, her strug­gles with sub­stance abuse and body dys­mor­phia, and the ongo­ing jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery that cul­mi­nat­ed in her recent big-screen tri­umph, 2024’s The Sub­stance. Once again Moore is will­ing to bare it all – only here it is with the intent of show­ing read­ers who she was, who she is, and who she hopes to be.”

Jamie says:

“Wendy is a 30-year-old trans woman in Win­nipeg, Cana­da. When she dis­cov­ers that her late Men­non­ite grand­fa­ther may have also been trans, it prompts a hunt to dis­cov­er the truth about her fam­i­ly’s past. Casey Plet­t’s Lamb­da Lit­er­ary Award-win­ning debut nov­el depicts the every­day lives of trans women in a provin­cial city, explor­ing some­times dif­fi­cult themes such as pre­car­i­ous employ­ment, alco­holism, and sex work. For decades, lit­er­ary accounts of trans­gen­der life have focused on the phys­i­cal, men­tal, and social expe­ri­ence of tran­si­tion and sought to pro­mote accep­tance through relat­able, sym­pa­thet­ic pro­tag­o­nists. Lit­tle Fish offers a por­tray­al of trans life that does not cater to the cis­gen­der gaze. Plett does not seek to pro­vide ​‘Good Rep­re­sen­ta­tion’ of the trans com­mu­ni­ty. Rather, she offers a com­pelling account of the chal­lenges and joys of liv­ing our lives in the open.”

Mary M. says:

“In a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry rel­ic trade teem­ing with frauds and fakes, Dis­mas is a pro­fes­sion­al rel­ic hunter with morals, unwill­ing to traf­fic in arti­facts he doesn’t believe are authen­tic (although some might find his leaf from the Burn­ing Bush ques­tion­able). That is, until now. On the eve of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, with Mar­tin Luther’s hereti­cal ideas threat­en­ing to destroy the rel­ic mar­ket, Dis­mas unex­pect­ed­ly finds him­self flat broke and allows his best friend, Ger­man Renais­sance painter Albrecht Dür­er, to talk him into sell­ing the evil Car­di­nal of Maintz a ​“new­ly dis­cov­ered” bur­ial shroud of Christ, a shroud that Dür­er him­self cre­at­ed to rival that of Turin. Of course, things do not go as planned, send­ing Dis­mas and Dür­er off on a hilar­i­ous quest through the Holy Roman Empire. This is a fun read – espe­cial­ly for fans of art his­to­ry – that sat­is­fies #74 (a book about art or an artist) in the 100 Years, 100 Books Read­ing Chal­lenge.”