Patrick's Staff Picks


Showing 1 - 16 of 16  There are a total of 33 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The Anthropocene reviewed"
Star rating for The Anthropocene reviewed
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this ... symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ... podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale--from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar"--
Book cover for "Black Swan Green"
Star rating for Black Swan Green
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times
...
Book cover for "The brothers Karamazov"
Star rating for The brothers Karamazov
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
The violent and vengeful lives of three sons are exposed when their despicable father is murdered, and each man struggles to come to terms with the guilt over his involvement in the crime.
Book cover for "The Count of Monte Cristo"
Star rating for The Count of Monte Cristo
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Description:
Edmund Dantes, unjustly convicted of aiding the exiled Napoleon, escapes after fourteen years of imprisonment and seeks revenge in Paris.
Book cover for "Crime and punishment"
Star rating for Crime and punishment
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Dostoyevsky's great novel of damnation and redemption evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur. It tells the story of Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, who wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be beyone conventional and moral laws. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a police...
Book cover for "Crying in H Mart"
Star rating for Crying in H Mart
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity."--
Book cover for "The galaxy, and the ground within"
Star rating for The galaxy, and the ground within
Series:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
When a freak technological failure halts traffic to and from the planet Gora, three strangers are thrown together unexpectedly, with seemingly nothing to do but wait. Pei is a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, torn between her duty to her people, and her duty to herself. Roveg is an exiled artist, with a deeply urgent, and longed for, family appointment to keep. Speaker has never been far from her twin but now must endure the unendurable: separation....
Book cover for "Howards End"
Star rating for Howards End
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:

Howards End is a masterful discussion of changing social class-consciousness. Three families from different levels of society become intertwined: the rich capitalists, the intellectual bourgeoisie and the struggling poor. Forster does not suggest that relationships between the classes are easy, but he does think them vitally important. The social philosophy inherent in the novel is significant and beautifully written.

Book cover for "Last night at the Telegraph Club"
Star rating for Last night at the Telegraph Club
Author:
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father--despite...
Book cover for "The long way to a small, angry planet"
Star rating for The long way to a small, angry planet
Series:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn't expecting much. The patched-up ship has seen better days, but it offers her everything she could possible want: a spot to call home, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy and some distance from her past. And nothing could be further from what she's known than the crew of the Wayfarer."--Page [4] of cover
Book cover for "North woods"
Star rating for North woods
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave--only to discover that the...
Book cover for "Notes on a silencing"
Star rating for Notes on a silencing
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Traces the author's healing journey after a traumatizing sexual assault at the infamous St. Paul's boarding school, describing how she helped police uncover proof of the school's institutionalized mandate of silence.
Book cover for "Pale fire"
Star rating for Pale fire
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Nabokov's parody, half poem and half commentary on the poem, deals with the escapades of the deposed king of Zemala in a New England college town "John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote According...
Book cover for "Roadside Picnic"
Star rating for Roadside Picnic
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty," something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend...
Book cover for "The song of Achilles"
Star rating for The song of Achilles
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
Patroclus, an awkward young prince, follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate. Set during the Trojan War.
Book cover for "A swim in a pond in the rain"
Star rating for A swim in a pond in the rain
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches...