Last year we started asking ICPL staff to vote on their top books of the year. Check out our favorites from this year!
Also check out Top Picks from last year: 2013
All the light we cannot see : a novel
Anthony Doerr
FICTION Doerr Anthony
"From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work"--
A Paris apartment
Michelle Gable
FICTION Gable Michelle
"When April Vogt's boss tells her about the discoveries in a cramped, decrepit ninth arrondissement apartment, the Sotheby's continental furniture specialist does not hear the words "dust" or "rats" or "shuttered for seventy years." She hears Paris. She hears escape. Once in France, April quickly learns the apartment is not merely some rich hoarder's repository. Beneath the dust and cobwebs and stale perfumed air is a goldmine and not because of the actual gold (or painted ostrich eggs or mounted rhinoceros horns or bronze bathtub). First, there's a portrait by one of the masters of the Belle Epoque. And then there are letters and journals written by the woman in the painting, documents showing she was more than a renowned courtesan with enviable decolletage. Suddenly it's no longer about the bureau plats and Louis-style armchairs that will fetch millions at auction. It's about a life. Two lives, actually. With the help of a salty (and annoyingly sexy) Parisian solicitor and the courtesan's private documents, April tries to uncover the secrets buried in the apartment. As she digs into one woman's life, April can't help but take a deeper look into her own. When the two things she left bubbling back in the States begin to boil over, April starts to wonder whether she'll ever find--in the apartment, or in her life--just what she's looking for"--
And the dark sacred night
Julia Glass
FICTION Glass Julia
"Kit Noonan's life is stalled: unemployed, twins to support, a mortgage to pay--and a frustrated wife, who is certain that, more than anything else, Kit needs to solve the mystery of his father's identity. He begins with a visit to his former stepfather, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners Vermont outdoorsman. But it is another person who has kept the secret: Lucinda Burns, wife of a revered senior statesman and mother of Malachy (the journalist who died of AIDS in Glass's first novel, Three Junes). She and her husband are the only ones who know the full story: of an accident whose repercussions spread even further when Jasper introduces Lucinda to Kit. Immersing readers in a panorama that stretches from Vermont to the tip of Cape Cod, Glass weaves together the lives of Kit, Jasper, Lucinda and, ultimately, Fenno McLeod, the beloved protagonist of Three Junes (now in his sixties). An unforgettable novel about the youthful choices that steer our destinies, the necessity of forgiveness, and the surprisingly mutable meaning of family"--
China Dolls : a novel
Lisa See
FICTION See Lisa
"In 1938, Ruby, Helen and Grace, three girls from very different backgrounds, find themselves competing at the same audition for showgirl roles at San Francisco's exclusive "Oriental" nightclub, the Forbidden City. Grace, an American-born Chinese girl has fled the Midwest and an abusive father. Helen is from a Chinese family who have deep roots in San Francisco's Chinatown. And, as both her friends know, Ruby is Japanese passing as Chinese. At times their differences are pronounced, but the girls grow to depend on one another in order to fulfill their individual dreams. Then, everything changes in a heartbeat with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Suddenly the government is sending innocent Japanese to internment camps under suspicion, and Ruby is one of them. But which of her friends betrayed her?"--
Landline
Rainbow Rowell
FICTION Rowell Rainbow
"In New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell's Landline, Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it's been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply -- but that almost seems besides the point now. Maybe that was always besides the point.Two days before they're supposed to visit Neal's family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can't go. She's a TV writer, and something's come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her -- Neal is always a little upset with Georgie -- but she doesn't expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her. When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she's finally done it. If she's ruined everything. That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It's not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she's been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts. Is that what she's supposed to do? Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?"--
Lost Lake
Sarah Addison Allen
FICTION Allen Sarah
"Suley, Georgia, is home to Lost Lake Cottages and not much else. Which is why it's the perfect place for newly-widowed Kate and her eccentric eight-year-old daughter Devin to heal. Kate spent one memorable childhood summer at Lost Lake, had her first almost-kiss at Lost Lake, and met a boy named Wes at Lost Lake. It was a place for dreaming. But Kate doesn't believe in dreams anymore, and her Aunt Eby, Lost Lake's owner, wants to sell the place and move on. Lost Lake's magic is gone. As Kate discovers that time has a way of standing still at Lost Lake can she bring the cottages--and her heart--back to life? Because sometimes the things you love have a funny way of turning up again. And sometimes you never even know they were lost . . . until they are found"--
The invention of wings : a novel
Sue Monk Kidd
FICTION Kidd Sue
"The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. "The Invention of Wings" follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), Kidd allows herself to go beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters, both real and imagined"--
Small blessings
Martha Woodroof
FICTION Woodroof Martha
"Tom Putnam, an English professor at a Virginia women's college, has resigned himself to a quiet and half-fulfilled life. For more than ten years, his wife Marjory has been a shut-in, a fragile and frigid woman whose neuroses have left her fully dependent on Tom and his formidable mother-in-law, Agnes Tattle. Tom considers his unhappy condition self-inflicted, since Marjory's condition was exacerbated by her discovery of Tom's brief and misguided affair with a visiting poetess. But when Tom and Marjory meet Rose Callahan, the campus bookstore's charming new hire, and Marjory invites Rose to dinner, her first social interaction in a decade, Tom wonders if it's a sign that change is on the horizon. And when Tom returns home that evening to a letter from the poetess telling him that he'd fathered her son, Henry, and that Henry, now ten, will arrive by train in a few days, it's clear change is coming whether Tom's ready or not. For readers of Helen Simonson and Anna Quindlen, Small Blessings is funny, heart-warming and poignant, with a charmingly imperfect cast of cinema-ready characters. Readers will fall in love with the novel's wonderfully optimistic heart that reminds us that sometimes, when it feels like life is veering irrevocably off track, the track changes in ways we never could have imagined"--
Mr. Mercedes : a novel
Stephen King
FICTION King Stephen
"In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands. In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes. In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the "perk" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy. Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady's next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands. Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable"--
Perfidia
James Ellroy
MYSTERY Ellroy James
"A pulse-pounding, as-it-happens narrative that unfolds in Los Angeles over twenty-three days beginning on December 6, 1941. The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. The United States teeters on the edge of war. The roundup of allegedly treasonous Japanese Americans is about to begin. And in L.A., a Japanese family is found dead. Murder or ritual suicide? The investigation will draw four people into a totally Ellroy-ian tangle: a brilliant Japanese American forensic chemist; an unsatisfiably adventurous young woman; one police officer based in fact (William H. "Whiskey Bill" Parker, later to become the groundbreaking chief of the LAPD), the other the product of Ellroy's inimitable imagination (Dudley Smith, arch villain of The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz). As their lives intertwine, we are given a story of war and of consuming romance, a searing expose of the Japanese internment, and an astonishingly detailed homicide investigation. In Perfidia, Ellroy delves more deeply than ever before into his characters' intellectual and emotional lives. But it has the full-strength, unbridled story-telling audacity that has marked all the acclaimed work of the "Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction.""--
Some luck : a novel
Jane Smiley
FICTION Smiley Jane
"An epic novel that spans thirty years in the lives of a farm family in Iowa, telling a parallel story of the changes taking place in America from 1920 through the early 1950s"--Provided by publisher.
Grasshopper jungle
Andrew (Andrew Anselmo) Smith
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Smith Andrew
"Austin Szerba narrates the end of humanity as he and his best friend Robby accidentally unleash an army of giant, unstoppable bugs and uncover the secrets of a decades-old experiment gone terribly wrong"--
100 sideways miles
Andrew (Andrew Anselmo) Smith
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Smith Andrew
Finn Easton, sixteen and epileptic, struggles to feel like more than just a character in his father's cult-classic novels with the help of his best friend, Cade Hernandez, and first love, Julia, until Julia moves away.
The one
Kiera Cass
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Cass Kiera
"As her Selection approaches its finish, America must decide where her heart truly lies--and Prince Maxon must pick one winner to wear the crown"--
On the fence
Kasie West
YOUNG ADULT FICTION West Kasie
"Sixteen-year-old Charlie has always been a tomboy, but when she accidentally becomes a makeup model, her newfound feminity draws her into an unknown social world, complete with guy troubles she's never had before"--
Breathe, Annie, breathe
Miranda Kenneally
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Kenneall Miranda
To honor her dead boyfriend and cope with her grief and guilt, college student Annie trains for a marathon with athletic Jeremiah, who flirts with Annie on the trails and makes her feel alive and happy and guilty all at the same time.
Fan art
Sarah Tregay
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Tregay, Sarah
"High school senior Jamie has a crush on his best friend and finds ways to share that news with the help of several friends"--
Far from you
Tess Sharpe
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Sharpe Tess
"After Sophie Winters survives a brutal attack in which her best friend, Mina, is murdered, she sets out to find the killer. At the same time she must prove she is free of her past Oxy addiction and in no way to blame for Mina's death"--
Vango : between sky and Earth
Timothée de Fombelle
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Fombelle Timothee
Becoming a fugitive when he is wrongly accused of murder, an aspiring young priest embarks on a transcontinental journey by train, boat, and airship in search of answers about his shrouded past.
One man guy
Michael Barakiva
YOUNG ADULT FICTION Barakiva Michael
"When Alek's high-achieving, Armenian-American parents send him to summer school, he thinks his summer is ruined. But then he meets Ethan, who opens his world in a series of truly unexpected ways"--
The book with no pictures
B. J. Novak
jE Novak
"In this book with no pictures, the reader has to say every silly word, no matter what"--
Brown girl dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
jBIOGRAPHY Woodson, Jacqueline
"The author shares her childhood memories and reveals the first sparks that ignited her writing career in free-verse poems about growing up in the North and South"--
The glass sentence
S. E Grove
jFICTION Grove S. E.
In 1891, in a world transformed by 1799's Great Disruption--when all of the continents were flung into different time periods--thirteen-year-old Sophia Tims and her friend Theo go in search of Sophia's uncle, Shadrack Elli, Boston's foremost cartologer, who has been kidnapped.
A library book for Bear
Bonny Becker
jE Becker
Although he sees no need for more books to read, Bear agrees to accompany Mouse to the library.
The way to the zoo
John Burningham
jE Burningh
Discovering a magical door in her bedroom that leads her to the zoo, a little girl is tempted to bring one little bear back to her room, and then a menagerie of smaller animals, and then a medley of big animals, until pandemonium ensues.
Hermelin the detective mouse
Mini Grey
jE Grey
A mouse with typewriting skills secretly helps the people of Offley Street find lost items, and eventually saves the day.
Revolution
Deborah Wiles
jFICTION Wiles Deborah
Struggling to adapt within her newly blended family in 1964 Mississippi, young Sunny witnesses increasingly scary community agitation when activists from the North arrive in town to help register African Americans to vote.
Cartwheeling in thunderstorms
Katherine Rundell
jFICTION Rundell Katherin
"Will must find her way after she's plucked out of a wonderful life in Zimbabwe and forced to go to boarding school in England"--Provided by publisher.
Gabriel Finley & the raven's riddle
George Hagen
jFICTION Hagen George
Eleven-year-old Gabriel, with the help of the young raven Paladin, which whom he has a magical bond, travels to the foreboding land of Aviopolis, where he must face challenges and unanswerable riddles to rescue his long-missing father.
The misadventures of the family Fletcher
Dana Levy
jFICTION Levy Dana
Relates the adventures of a family with two fathers, four adopted boys, and a variety of pets as they make their way through a school year, Kindergarten through sixth grade, and deal with a grumpy new neighbor.
Puddle pug
Kim Norman
jE Norman
Loving puddles but unable to find the perfect puddle to play in, Percy the pug discovers just the right puddle already being enjoyed by three friendly piglets, whose protective mother chases him away.
Space case : a moon base alpha novel
Stuart Gibbs
jFICTION Gibbs Stuart
"Dashiell Gibson, who lives on Moon Base Alpha, has to solve a murder of one of the moon's most prominent doctors"--
A snicker of magic
Natalie Lloyd
jFICTION Lloyd Natalie
The Pickles are new to Midnight Gulch, Tennessee, a town which legend says was once magic--but Felicity is convinced the magic is still there, and with the help of her new friend Jonah the Beedle she hopes to bring the magic back.
The return of Zita the spacegirl
Ben Hatke
jGRAPHIC NOVEL Hatke Zita
"Zita the Spacegirl has saved planets, battled monsters, and wrestled with interplanetary fame. But she faces her biggest challenge yet in the third and final installment of the Zita adventures. Wrongfully imprisoned on a penitentiary planet, Zita has to plot the galaxy's greatest jailbreak before the evil prison warden can execute his plan of interstellar domination!" --
Sparky
Kate Klimo
jFICTION Klimo Kate
"A firedog from the Maxwell Street fire station tells the story of the Great Chicago Fire"--
Quest
Aaron Becker
jE Becker
Two children are swept up in an imaginative quest to save the king and his realm from dark forces when the king emerges from a magical door at the park and presses a map and strange objects into their hands before being captured and disappearing.
The pigeon needs a bath!
Mo Willems
jE Willems
"The Pigeon is dirty and he needs a bath, but he won't go willingly"--
The adventures of Beekle : the unimaginary friend
Dan Santat
jE Santat
An imaginary friend waits a long time to be imagined by a child and given a special name, and finally does the unimaginable--he sets out on a quest to find his perfect match in the real world.
Gaston
Kelly DiPucchio
jE Dipucchi
A proper bulldog raised in a poodle family and a tough poodle raised in a bulldog family meet one day in the park.
The lion and the bird
Marianne Dubuc
jE Dubuc
"A lion finds a wounded bird in his garden and decides to care for it through the winter. When spring arrives, the bird's flock returns. The bird goes off with its flock. Lion is sad. But autumn brings a wonderful surprise"--
Flora and the penguin
Molly Schaar Idle
jE Idle
In this wordless, lift-the-flap picture book, Flora and her new friend, the penguin, dance on the ice together and learn to treat each other with respect and kindness.
Rain reign
Ann M. Martin
jFICTION Martin Ann
Struggling with Asperger's, Rose shares a bond with her beloved dog, but when the dog goes missing during a storm, Rose is forced to confront the limits of her comfort levels, even if it means leaving her routines in order to search for her pet.
Mix it up!
Hervé Tullet
jE Tullet
Using no special effects other than the reader's imagination, simple directions lead the reader to experiment with mixing and changing colors on the printed page.
Flashlight
Lizi Boyd
jE Boyd
In this story without words, a boy explores the woods after dark with a flashlight.
Maple
Lori Nichols
jE Nichols
"A nature-loving little girl's favorite playmate is her maple tree, until the day she's surprised with a baby sister"--
Moo!
David LaRochelle
jBOARD BOOK Larochel
When Cow gets her hooves on the farmer's car, she takes it for a wild ride through the country.
Underwater dogs : kids edition
Seth Casteel
jE Casteel
Photographs and simple, rhyming text reveal what goes on beneath the surface as various dogs swim to fetch their favorite toys. Includes facts about the different dog breeds depicted.
Found
Salina Yoon
jE Yoon
Upon finding a toy rabbit in the forest, Bear tries his very best to return it to its home but by the time its owner appears, Bear has become attached to Bunny.
Lock in
John Scalzi
SCIENCE FICTION Scalzi John
"Fifteen years from now, a new virus sweeps the globe. 95% of those afflicted experience nothing worse than fever and headaches. Four percent suffer acute meningitis, creating the largest medical crisis in history. And one percent find themselves "locked in"--fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. One per cent doesn't seem like a lot. But in the United States, that's 1.7 million people "locked in"...including the President's wife and daughter. Spurred by grief and the sheer magnitude of the suffering, America undertakes a massive scientific initiative. Nothing can restore the ability to control their own bodies to the locked in. But then two new technologies emerge. One is a virtual-reality environment, "The Agora," in which the locked-in can interact with other humans, both locked-in and not. The other is the discovery that a few rare individuals have brains that are receptive to being controlled by others, meaning that from time to time, those who are locked in can "ride" these people and use their bodies as if they were their own. This skill is quickly regulated, licensed, bonded, and controlled. Nothing can go wrong. Certainly nobody would be tempted to misuse it, for murder, for political power, or worse..."--
The magician's land : a novel
Lev Grossman
SCIENCE FICTION Grossman Lev
"Quentin Coldwater has been cast out of Fillory, the secret magical land of his childhood dreams. With nothing left to lose he returns to where his story began, the Brakebills Preparatory College of Magic. But he can't hide from his past, and it's not long before it comes looking for him. Along with Plum, a brilliant young undergraduate with a dark secret of her own, Quentin sets out on a crooked path through a magical demimonde of gray magic and desperate characters. But all roads lead back to Fillory, and his new life takes him to old haunts, like Antarctica, and to buried secrets and old friends he thought were lost forever. He uncovers the key to a sorcery masterwork, a spell that could create magical utopia, a new Fillory--but casting it will set in motion a chain of events that will bring Earth and Fillory crashing together. To save them he will have to risk sacrificing everything"--
The dead in their vaulted arches
C. Alan Bradley
MYSTERY Bradley C. Alan
"Bishop's Lacey is never short of two things: Mysteries to solve and pre-adolescent detectives to solve them. In this New York Times bestselling series of cozy mysteries, young chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce once again brings her knowledge of poisons and her indefatigable spirit to solve the most dastardly crimes the English countryside has to offer and, in the process, comes closer than ever to solving her life's greatest mystery--her mother's disappearance.."--
Yes please
Amy Poehler
BIOGRAPHY Poehler, Amy
The actress best known for her work on "Parks and Recreation" and "Saturday Night Live" reveals personal stories and offers her humorous take on such topics as love, friendship, parenthood, and her relationship with Tina Fey.
Graduates in wonderland : true dispatches from down the rabbit hole
Jessica Pan
302.34 /Pan
"Two best friends document their post-college lives in a hilarious, relatable, and powerfully honest epistolary memoir. Fast friends since they met at Brown University during their freshman year, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale vowed to keep in touch after their senior year through in-depth-and brutally honest-weekly e-mails. After graduation, Jess packs up everything she owns and moves to Beijing on a whim, while Rachel heads to New York to work for an art gallery and to figure out her love life. Each spends the next few years tumbling through adulthood and reinventing themselves in various countries, including France, China, and Australia. Through their messages from around the world, they swap tales of teaching classes of military men, running a magazine, and flirting in foreign languages, along with the hard stuff: from harrowing accidents to breakups and breakdowns. Reminiscent of Sloan Crosley's essays and Lena Dunham's Girls, Graduates in Wonderland is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of two young women as they embark upon adulthood. "--
Food : a love story
Jim Gaffigan
817.6 /Gaffigan
"Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet ('choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your lover') and decrying the worst offenders ('kale is the early morning of foods') ... [Now] he will give them what they really crave--hundreds of pages of his thoughts on all things culinary(ish). Insights such as: why he believes coconut water was invented to get people to stop drinking coconut water, why pretzel bread is #3 on his most important inventions of humankind (behind the wheel and the computer), and the answer to the age-old question 'which animal is more delicious: the pig, the cow, or the bacon cheeseburger?'"--
Year of no sugar : a memoir
Eve O. Schaub
613.28332 /Schaub
Schaub challenged her family to join her on a quest to eat no added sugar for an entire year. Along the way, she uncovered the real costs of our sugar-heavy American diet-- including diabetes, obesity, and other health problems. Here is what "kicking the sugar addiction" looks like for a real American family.
Fluent in 3 months : how anyone at any age can learn to speak any language from anywhere in the world
Benny (Brendan Richard) Lewis
418.0071 /Lewis
A new blueprint for fast language learning. Lewis argues that you don't need a great memory or "the language gene" to learn a language quickly, and debunks a number of long-held beliefs, such as adults not being as good of language learners as children. --
The essential guide to cultivating mushrooms : simple and advanced techniques for growing shiitake, oyster, lion's mane, and maitake mushrooms at home
Stephen (Stephen D.) Russell
635.8 /Russell
Learn to grow the most popular species - oyster, shiitake, lion's mane, and maitake - in controlled indoor environments at home. Beginning with the best ways to ensure success with a kit and proceeding through advanced techniques for creating sawdust spawn, working with liquid cultures and fruiting chambers, and much more, Stephen Russell covers everything the home grower needs to know. A trusted reference for market growers, this book is also the perfect companion for hobbyists craving a steady supply of dinner-table mushrooms.--COVER.
What if? : serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions
Randall Munroe
500 /Munroe
"Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there was a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last? In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, complemented by signature xkcd comics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. The book features new and never-before-answered questions, along with updated and expanded versions of the most popular answers from the xkcd website. What If? will be required reading for xkcd fans and anyone who loves to ponder the hypothetical. "--
Console wars : Sega, Nintendo, and the battle that defined a generation
Blake J Harris
794.8 /Harris
"In the tradition of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball, a behind-the-scenes business thriller about how the small, scrappy Sega, led by one unlikely visionary, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and changed the face of entertainment"--
The amazing thing about the way it goes : stories of tidiness, self-esteem, and other things I gave up on
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
814.6 /Pearl-McPhee
The Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes takes on the amazing in the ordinary in this side-splitting series of short commentaries. Pearl-McPhee turns her trademark wit and perspective to everything from creative discipline to a way you would never think about fixing your email situation. This book looks at everyday problems, and honestly, it won't do much to solve them, but at least you'll be laughing.
The republic of imagination : America in three books
Azar Nafisi
813.009 /Nafisi
"A passionate hymn to the power of fiction to change people's lives, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her million-copy bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics to her eager students in Iran. In this exhilarating followup, Nafisi has written the book her fans have been waiting for: an impassioned, beguiling, and utterly original tribute to the vital importance of fiction in a democratic society. What Reading Lolita in Tehran was for Iran, The Republic of Imagination is for America. Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her in Seattle, where a skeptical reader told her that Americans don't care about books the way they did back in Iran, she energetically responds to those who say fiction has nothing to teach us. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite American novels-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Babbitt, and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, among others-she invites us to join her as citizens of her 'Republic of Imagination,' a country where the villains are conformity and orthodoxy and the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream"--
Pie school : lessons in fruit, flour and butter
Kate Lebo
641.8652 /Lebo
"Unlock the secret to baking the perfect crust, and everything else is easy as pie. Seattle literary and culinary darling Kate Lebo shares her recipes for fifty perfect pies. Included are apple (of course), five ways with rhubarb, lemon chiffon, several blueberry pie variations, galettes, and more. Learn the tricks to making enviable baked goods and gluten-free crust while enjoying Kate Lebo's wonderfully humorous, thoughtful, and encouraging voice. In addition to recipes, Lebo invites readers to ruminate on the social history, the meaning, and the place of pie in the pantheon of favorite foods. When you have mastered the art, science and magic of creating the perfect pie in Pie School, everyone will want to be your friend"--
Bad feminist : essays
Roxane Gay
305.42 /Gay
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue." In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.
The shelf : from LEQ to LES
Phyllis Rose
028.9 /Rose
"Phyllis Rose embarks on a grand literary experiment--to read her way through a random shelf of library books, LEQ-LES. Can you have an Extreme Adventure in a library? Phyllis Rose casts herself into the wilds of an Upper East Side lending library in an effort to do just that. Hoping to explore the "real ground of literature," she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES. The shelf has everything Rose could wish for--a classic she has not read, a remarkable variety of authors, and a range of literary styles. The early nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside those about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a picaresque novel from the seventeenth century. There are several novels by a wonderful, funny, contemporary novelist who has turned to raising dogs because of the tepid response to her work. In The Shelf, Rose investigates the books on her shelf with exuberance, candor, and wit while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf--those texts that accompany us through life. 'Fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels,' she sustains a sense of excitement as she creates a refreshingly original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise"--
Blood will out : the true story of a murder, a mystery, and a masquerade
Walter Kirn
364.1523 /Kirn
The true story of a young novelist who meets and befriends an eccentric, privileged New Yorker when he delivers a crippled hunting dog to him from an animal shelter, and later discovers that his friend was a serial imposter and brutal double-murderer.
Body counts : a memoir of politics, sex, AIDS, and survival
Sean O'Brien Strub
362.19697 /Strub
Sean Strub, founder of the groundbreaking POZ magazine, producer of the hit play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and the first openly HIV-positive candidate for U.S. Congress, charts his remarkable life. As a politics-obsessed Georgetown freshman, Strub arrived in Washington from Iowa in 1976, with a plum part-time job running a Senate elevator. He also harbored a terrifying secret: his attraction to men. As he explored the capital's political and social circles, he discovered a world where powerful men lived double lives shrouded in shame. When AIDS hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending "more funerals than birthday parties." Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism. Strub takes readers through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time. From the New York of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol's Factory to the intersection of politics and burgeoning LGBT and AIDS movements, Strub's story is a vivid portrait of a tumultuous era.--From publisher description.
The history of rock 'n' roll in ten songs
Greil Marcus
781.6609 /Marcus
Selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 that embody rock and roll as a thing in itself--in the story each song tells, inhabits, and creates in its legacy.
Can't we talk about something more pleasant?
Roz Chast
BIOGRAPHY Chast, Roz
A graphic memoir by a long-time New Yorker cartoonist celebrates the final years of her aging parents' lives through four-color cartoons, family photos and documents that reflect the artist's struggles with caregiver challenges.
Off the leash : a year at the dog park
Matthew Gilbert
636.7 /Gilbert
This is "a group portrait of dog people, specifically the strange, wonderful, neurotic, and eccentric dog people who gather at Amory Park, overlooking Boston near Fenway Park. And it's about author Matthew Gilbert's transformation, after much fear and loathing of dogs and social groups, into one of those dog people with fur on their jackets, squeaky toys in their hands, and biscuits in their pockets"--Dust jacket flap.