Staff Recommendations, Week of February 21, 2023

 

We've got a few recommendations for you this week, so let's get right to them.

First it's Daniel with his write-up of the latest from Pulitzer finalist Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers. Her new novel is I Have Some Questions for You, and of it Daniel says: "Bodie Kane arrives back at Granby, the New Hampshire prep school of her youth, to teach a short class on podcasting, and one of her students asks to take as a project the case of a student death where she posits that the wrong person is in prison. And being that Bodie was her former roommate, this unearths a torrent of memories, while at the same time confronting a #metoo case focusing on her separated husband. As the story unfolds, a panoply of sexism emerges, from microaggressions (who's watching your kids?) to abuse and assault, leading Bodie to question her entire school experience while also trying to figure out exactly what happened in this case. This a twisty and sophisticated take on psychological suspense - I dare you to stop reading!"

Kathy brings us a recommendation for a YA novel by Patricia Park entitled Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim. Kathy says: "I loved this often poignant, sometimes funny story that is full of insights about identity and the struggle to fit in. 18-year-old Kim doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere - not at her expensive private school, nor in her diverse Queens neighborhood, or even with her own family. A well-written exploration of the lives of people who immigrated to the US, people with multiple identities, the distance between the haves and have nots, and the frequent missteps of even well-meaning white people attempting to support people of other races and ethnicities."

And a middle-grade novel recommendation comes from Tim, who suggests Whale Done by Stuart Gibbs. Tim says: "Teddy Fitzroy would never have seen the whale explode if a kangaroo hadn't burned down his house, but this tends to be fourteen-year-old Teddy's world. He’s always in the middle of trouble while solving crimes involving bad things that people do to animals. He's good at it, and living at FunJungle Wild Animal Park, where both his parents work, gives him the desire and the opportunity to nail perpetrators. This time, he's far from his Texas FunJungle home, on a trip to Malibu with his rich girlfriend, whose parents own FunJungle. She cares a lot more about animals than money, and together it's time to figure out why anyone would want to detonate a massive, beached blue whale that already died, right in front of a bunch of mansions. There’s a lot to love about this book. The writing is smooth and fun, the characters are excellent, and I learned a lot. For example, rich people don’t like huge chunks of whale crashing through their obscenely expensive stuff, but more than that, Gibbs does a fine job of explaining nature and environmental issues without lecturing. I truly enjoyed learning from him while I was sailing through his story."

That's it for this week, we'll see you back here in 7 days with more staff recommendations from the Boswellians. Until then, read on.