Staff Picks from the Green Table: Kelsey
Our Inventory Manager Kelsey Recommends Nine All-Time Favorites
Each month, a different Literati Bookstore staff member curates a table of favorite reads and recommendations. For May, Inventory Manager Kelsey O’Rourke selected nine essential titles.
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
In my memory I can still feel the cover of my childhood copy of this book, a texture that registered as soft and rather peachlike to my small fingers as I curled up with my mom to read our nightly chapter. My love for otherwordly, imaginative fiction certainly began here — a lonely boy drops a bag of magic crystals, a peculiar and very peachy adventure ensues. Dahl is great fun, and while I know for a fact that my mom and I shared many books before this one, it’s James and the Giant Peach that comes to mind when I think of how she taught me to be a Reader.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate Dicamillo
My mom recommended this book to me by telling me that she loved reading it to her second-graders, that its many layers resonated with different kids in different ways, but that mostly the kids loved it because reading it aloud always made their teacher cry. And there’s something comforting to me about the idea that several cohorts of elementary school kids learned firsthand that while books are indeed made of plots and characters and ideas, ultimately their power lies in how they move us. There are many books written for children that get at the heart of life better than most books written for “adults;” this is one of those. Recommended for readers of all ages, particularly those who’ve felt a bit of sorrow and know that the purpose of heartbreak is to open the heart up to love.
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is one of my very favorite authors. I recommend all of his novels, his short stories, and the Sandman series, and also his essays on storytelling and the importance of libraries and books and Ray Bradbury, and also his writings about literacy and about working with Syrian refugees and about art and about how to love. I recommend his work because he writes with a deep respect for stories, and always with an eye for the magic in the world. Gaiman is incredibly prolific and there are many places to start with his work, but I found him through this small story about a boy raised by ghosts.
The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery
Equal parts memoir, science writing, and philosophy, this incredible book stuck with me long after I finished reading. I loved learning about the octopuses and Montgomery’s life as a scientist. But what really moved me was the respect that Montgomery has for animal intelligence, the idea that a creature so very different from us a recognizable consciousness as valid as our own if only we would slow down to notice it. This book is about Octopuses, but in a time when drastic climate change isn’t shaking our belief that humans are life on earth’s apex, this book works for a radical and important empathy for other sentient beings.
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
I read this novel for the first time in my freshman lit seminar in college. While discussing a pivotal scene of violence, another student slammed both the book and his mind shut, refusing to keep reading because he disagreed with a choice that a character made, calling the book unrealistic because he could never picture himself doing what she did. My professor asked us to look at our own lives, at the ways in which we were protected from ever having to make such a choice, to consider that other lives force choices that may seem unimaginable to us. For the first time I saw the potential for reading to cultivate empathy, how it can be used as a tool to break open our narrow perspectives and show us other facets of the human experience. Morrison’s writing is stunningly visceral, and I revisit this novel when I need a reminder of what incredible writing is and of what it can do. I hope that someday that student finished the book.
Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
I have deep envy for readers who get to experience the surrealism of Haruki Murakami for the first time, and he’s one of my favorite authors to recommend. The best thing that I can say about Murakami’s writing is that it is imbued with its own specific mood, one where a character eats an average dinner and then carries on a conversation with a cat with no change in tone. But Murakami’s writing isn’t just strange for its own sake, but rather uses the dreamspace to delve into the lives of his characters with a unique emotional intelligence. Kafka is a puzzle of interlocking narratives and strange occurrences, and is an excellent entry point into the worlds of both Murakami and magical realism.
Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays, by Michael Paterniti
Lovingly placed in my hands at just the right moment by a brilliant friend, this is the collection that made me fall in love with the essay. There is no simple way to describe the breadth of this book except to say that Paterniti approaches each of his subjects with such an incredible sense of empathy and genuine curiosity that I could feel his perspective on the world influencing mine. Heartbreaking and hopeful and in awe of the complexity of human stories, I find these essays surfacing in my thoughts often, a sure sign that this one left a mark.
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
I read this novel many books ago and it’s still the one that comes to mind when someone asks about the last book that I read that really blew my mind. I rarely use the words weird and lovely together, but this symphonic meditation on the ways that we live and love and must learn to let go glows bright in my heart and just might be the weirdest and loveliest book that I’ve ever read.
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, by Cheryl Strayed
It is no exaggeration to say that this book saved me during a very difficult time, infusing my life with a revelatory new perspective and a deep sense of empathy, for others but most radically, for myself. My go-to prescription for heartbreak, grief, and Big Feelings of all kinds, Tiny Beautiful Things explores the vast experience of human pain but ultimately holds a light to its dual nature: the power of hope and human connection.
