Daniel's Staff Picks

Here are some books that staff member Daniel enjoyed reading. Maybe you will too!

Showing 1 - 20 of 26  There are a total of 106 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The actual star"
Star rating for The actual star
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
Through the epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this book takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents where it demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate.
Book cover for "Airplane mode"
Star rating for Airplane mode
Description:
"The color of one's skin and passport have long dictated the conditions of travel. For Shahnaz Habib, travel and travel writing have always been complicated pleasures. Habib threads the history of travel with her personal story as a child on family vacations in India, an adult curious about the world, and an immigrant for whom roundtrips are an annual fact of life. Tracing the power dynamics that underlie tourism, this ... debut parses who gets to...
Book cover for "The argonauts"
Star rating for The argonauts
Average Rating:
2 stars
Description:
"A genre-bending memoir, a work of 'autotheory' offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. It binds an account of Nelson's relationship with her fluidly gendered partner and a journey to and through a pregnancy to a rigorous exploration of sexuality, gender and 'family'"--Page 4 of cover.
Book cover for "Detransition, baby"
Star rating for Detransition, baby
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"[A novel] about three women--transgender and cisgender--whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex..."--
Book cover for "Filthy animals"
Star rating for Filthy animals
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Description:
"In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group...
Book cover for "Freshwater"
Star rating for Freshwater
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
An extraordinary debut novel exploring the metaphysics of identity and mental health, centering on a young Nigerian woman as she struggles to reconcile the proliferation of multiple selves within her.
Book cover for "How long 'til black future month?"
Star rating for How long 'til black future month?
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories. Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying...
Book cover for "How not to drown in a glass of water"
Star rating for How not to drown in a glass of water
Author:
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"From the beloved author of Dominicana, a GMA Book Club Pick and Women's Prize Finalist, an electrifying and indelible new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story. Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market...
Book cover for "I have some questions for you"
Star rating for I have some questions for you
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past--the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers--needs--to...
Book cover for "I hope we choose love"
Star rating for I hope we choose love
Description:
"What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith? In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, acclaimed poet and essayist Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author's...
Book cover for "If I survive you"
Star rating for If I survive you
Average Rating:
2.8 stars
Description:
"A collection of humorous and harrowing linked stories following a Jamaican-American family as they seek stability upon moving to Miami."--
Book cover for "In the dream house"
Star rating for In the dream house
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
"A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties."--Publisher's description.
Book cover for "Kink"
Star rating for Kink
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Kink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by lauded writers R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, and featuring a roster of all-star contributors including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.
Book cover for "Libertie"
Star rating for Libertie
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
"Coming of age as a free-born Black girl in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn, Libertie Sampson is all too aware that her mother, a physician, has a vision for their future together: Libertie will go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie feels stifled by her mother's choices and is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother, Libertie has skin that is too dark. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be...
Book cover for "A little devil in America"
Star rating for A little devil in America
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A Little Devil in America is an urgent project that unravels all modes and methods of black performance, in this moment when black performers are coming to terms with their value, reception, and immense impact on America. With sharp insight, humor, and heart, Abdurraqib examines how black performance happens in specific moments in time and space--midcentury Paris, the moon, or a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. At the outset of this project,...
Book cover for "The many deaths of Laila Starr"
Star rating for The many deaths of Laila Starr
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Humanity is on the verge of discovering immortality, which means the avatar of Death is out of a job... or is she? Humanity is on the verge of discovering immortality. As a result, the avatar of Death is cast down to Earth to live a mortal life in Mumbai as twenty-something Laila Starr. Struggling with her newfound mortality, Laila has found a way to be placed in the time and place where the creator of immortality will be born. Will Laila take her...

17. Matrix

Book cover for "Matrix"
Star rating for Matrix
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, The Financial Times, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Vulture, Marie Claire, Vox, The Los Angeles Times,
...
Book cover for "The message"
Star rating for The message
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic 'Politics and the English Language,' but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories--our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking--expose and distort our realities. In the first of the book's three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern...
Book cover for "The moonday letters"
Star rating for The moonday letters
Description:
An effortlessly rich and lyrical mystery wrapped in a love story that bends space, time, myth and science, perfect for fans of Octavia Butler and Emily St. John Mandel. Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through...
Book cover for "The practice, the horizon, and the chain"
Star rating for The practice, the horizon, and the chain
Description:
"The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out among the stars. His whole world changes--literally--when he is yanked 'upstairs' and informed he has been given an opportunity to be educated at the ship's university alongside the elite. Overwhelmed and alone, the boy forms a bond with the woman he comes to know as 'the professor,' a weary idealist and descendent of the Chained who has spent her career...