The Staff Shelf: Elliott Bay Book Company

When we walk into a bookstore, the first place we go is the staff recommendation shelves—it’s how you get a quick sense of the personality of the store. The very best bookstores are merely a reflection of the eclectic, deeply felt opinions of the book-lovers who work there. As part of our Interview with a Bookstore, we asked the staff at Elliott Bay Book Company what they’re reading.

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SLIDESHOW: Elliott Bay Book Company Staff Shelf

: BRENDAN RECOMMENDS: How to Solve a Case: 1. Have a drink 2. Have too many drinks 3. Wait it out 4. Try again tomorrow

: HILARY RECOMMENDS: Forget Disney, fairy tales used to be straight up NUTS. And creepy. And awesome. This collection of old fairy tales made new is all of those things and more.

: DAVOR RECOMMENDS: It is impossible to describe or explain any part of this seminal work without ultimately revealing it. Even the book jacket has already given away too much… Instead, I will say that both Borges and Paz have called this the “perfect novel.” And that Casares manages to transcend all the literary genres he utilizes (the adventure story, metaphysics, science fiction…), in return creating one of the most influential, unclassifiable, and unforgettable stories of all time.

: KAREN RECOMMENDS: In 1971, Merle Miller (biographer of Ike Eisenhower and hardly a radical) was fed up with keeping silent in the face of constant slights, slurs, discrimination, and violence…so he came out in the New York Times. If you wonder why we needed a gay rights movement or if you think nothing changes, read this. The foreword is by Dan Savage. Thank you!

: SETH RECOMMENDS: Blanchet was a woman ahead of her time! widowed in 1927 with five children, she, her children and their dog cruised the unforgiving wasted waters of British Columbia in a twenty-five foot boat. Following the log books of Captain Vancouver, Blanchet sets out each summer into the wilds of the Northwest. Rich with experience, the family then turned their adventures into education by reading about all that they discovered.

: JUSTUS RECOMMENDS: In his newest novel, Joseph Boyden shapes a mosaic of culture, identity, and self in the mid-1600s as the aboriginal people and Europeans first come into contact. Through the tripartite narrative of the Wendat warrior Bird, the Jesuit missionary Christophe, and Bird’s adopted daughter, Snow Falls, Boyden skillfully negotiates a complicated and violent history. To read a book like The Orenda takes a relationshipof trust between author and reader, and Boyden is able to take readers to the darkest, most hurtful places in our history, our societies, ourselves, carrying them safely to the other side. This story will change you.

: CASEY RECOMMENDS: You know the old story: the musically-inclined artificial intelligence of a great space war ship that conquers planets by controlling thousands of dead humans called ancillaries gets separated from her ship and her soldiers and now inhabits one human body and tried to track down the person responsible in order to take revenge. Yes, it’s a tale as old as time it’s also one of the best science fiction novels that I’ve read in a long time. Leckie’s debut is smart, engaging and it delves into topics (class warfare, colonialism, gender) of great importance and with intelligence and creativity. I can’t wait for the sequel.

: JACOB RECOMMENDS: A remarkably deep and comprehensive view of American criminal justice, this book shines a light into the darkest corners of our broken system. I left this book heartbroken, but profoundly inspired. I wanted to read more and more, despite or because of the way I felt it remaking me-yes, sometimes painfully-into a more hopeful person. It’s a worthy companion to Gideon’s Trumpet, Dead Man Walking and The New Jim Crow.

: GREG RECOMMENDS: You won’t soon forget octogenarian Sheldon Horowitz. Miller’s book is funny and harrowing and ultimately redemptive. It is rare to come across a book as good as this one.

: JOHN RECOMMENDS: A sublimely unconventional portrait of the tender and ferocious love affair between Suzanne Mallouk and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Written in a highly poetic style reminiscent of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, the cascading images of sex, drugs, art, and love in 1980’s New York City are neither sensationalized nor sterilized. This is a memoir of raw beauty and defiant vision-it’s a heartbreaker, yet inspiring, and an essential companion to the unique genius of Basquiat’s paintings.