March Staff Picks

Les­ley says:

“I enjoy ​“stunt” books, where the author defines a chal­lenge (buy­ing noth­ing new for a year, etc.) and then writes about the expe­ri­ence. Rose com­mits to read­ing all the nov­els on a sin­gle shelf (LEQ to LES) in the New York Soci­ety Library. She then does a deep dive on each book and the author. Library shelves make strange bed­fel­lows. It’s a lot of fun to fol­low along as she reads the orig­i­nal The Phan­tom of the Opera (Gas­ton LER­oux), cham­pi­ons one for­got­ten author (Rho­da LER­man), and writes per­haps the final words ever on anoth­er (William LEQueux). A delight­ful reminder of the serendip­i­tous plea­sures of brows­ing library shelves.”

Sarah says:

“In the Way­ward Chil­dren series, kids some­times stum­ble through hid­den doors into oth­er worlds. Maybe they’re search­ing for some­thing, or maybe they’re try­ing to escape. Each world is dif­fer­ent – they may be gov­erned by log­ic, non­sense, wicked­ness, or virtue – but some­how the doors know which world will be a good fit for each kid. When they return, some­times years lat­er, their fam­i­lies don’t under­stand where they’ve been or why they can’t return to their old life. If they’re lucky, the kids end up at Eleanor West’s Home for Way­ward Chil­dren. Even if none of the oth­er kids there under­stand each other’s worlds, at least they’re sur­round­ed by peo­ple who under­stand how it feels to not fit in, and know you belong some­where else. Mag­i­cal in a way that’s both dark and com­fort­ing, this series is for any­one who’s ever felt out of place or misunderstood.”

Kady says:

“The Great Believ­ers is a sto­ry of love, com­mu­ni­ty, art, and what lega­cy means. It’s also the kind of book where you think ​“oh, I’ll just read a chap­ter before I go to sleep,” and the next thing you know, it’s 2:00 a.m., you’re sob­bing incon­solably, and your cat is very con­cerned about you. The nov­el fol­lows two time­lines: One is set in 1985 Chica­go, where an unknown dis­ease is begin­ning to prey upon a close-knit com­mu­ni­ty of gay men, and the oth­er is set in the more or less present day, where a woman is search­ing for her miss­ing daugh­ter in Paris. In The Great Believ­ers, small human moments func­tion as big idea state­ments and cre­ate a sto­ry that’s both incred­i­bly spe­cif­ic and uni­ver­sal at the same time.”