The Staff Shelf: Greenlight Bookstore

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 Greenlight Bookstore what’s on their staff shelf.

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SLIDESHOW: Greenlight Bookstore Staff Shelf

: STAFF RECOMMENDS: A perennial favorite and one of the sources of our name, Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is always a staff pick at Greenlight Bookstore.

: JESS (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: Every time I read the essays in this book, I have to tap my chest afterwards to start my heart beating. Beard takes you through her childhood friendships, relationship to her siblings, the end of a marriage, the death of her mother, the boys of her youth, and near misses. And sometimes it occurs all in one essay. This is one remarkable collection of writing.

: DANTE (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: A fired professor of American literature Chris Jaynes, has an utter fixation with Edgar Allen Poe’s only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. When he finds a manuscript that confirms the reality of Poe’s fiction, he brings together an all-black crew of six to follow Pym’s trail to the South Pole. With little but the firsthand account from which Poe acquired his story, Jaynes and his crew embark on an epic journey that is funny, entertaining and highly compelling.

: JULIAN (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: Inspired by Borges’ mythical bestiary, Henderson’s fascinating cabinet of curiosities/museum-in-a book has as many interesting things per page as anything I’ve read. Each chapter starts with a (real) creature, then spirals into a blend of natural history and philosophy, illuminating subjects like the evolution of vision and the natures of memory and illusions. Endlessly rich and compassionate, with hundreds of margin-notes and allusions to literature.

: GEO (MANAGER) RECOMMENDS: An entertaining, engrossing pop culture study on one of Prince’s most complex and divisive albums (divisive when it first came out, at least—everyone loves it now). If you buy this book, and I’m the one at the register, tell me what your favorite track is.

: JESSICA (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: This is the story every adventurous, nerdy, smart, goofy, in-love-with-life girl should read. My grownup girlfriends are indignant they didn’t have it when they were younger, and my 3yo. daughter wants to be a Lumberjane when she grows up. There is not a token girl to round out the gang. They are (variously) good at math and kung fu and leadership and animal husbandry and problem solving; they are dressy or butch or tomboyish or punk or suburban; their dialogue is peppered with inside jokes about feminist icons and clever silliness a la Scott Pilgrim. Oh, and boys would totally be into it too, if they like things that are funny and smart and unexpected yet totally satisfying.

: ANNIE (OFFSITE SALES/SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS) RECOMMENDS: Angela Carter’s spin on classic fairy tales and beasts is terribly dark and terribly sexy, and her language is both gloriously poetic and primal. If you long to transport yourself back a few hundred years and hear ribald, uncensored versions of the tales you thought you knew, you cannot ask for a better companion that her.

: GRACE (RECEIVER) RECOMMENDS: Part literary scholarship, part memoir, Kate Zambreno’s Heroines explores the forgotten or oft-misremembered diaries, letters, and memoirs of literary wives, lovers, and artists from the modernist age. While freeing Jane Bowles, Zelda Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and co. from the silence placed upon their work by their male contemporaries, Zambreno, perhaps to her surprise, must face this same silencing when she starts an impassioned blog on the subject.

: JARROD (MANAGER) RECOMMENDS: Discovering Alfred Starr Hamilton is like finding a million dollar bill that’s been nestled deep in the cushions of obscurity for the last 40 years. A reclusive resident of a New Jersey boarding house who repaired gumball machines for a living, Hamilton possessed a bizarre poetics and perception of the world that was completely his own. Try to imagine the best elements of Emily Dickinson, Joseph Ceravolo and Richard Brautigan coalesced into a weird mystic hermit. All praises be unto The Song Cave for this comprehensive collection of Hamilton’s poetry. Open this dreambox immediately!

: ANGEL (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: This book is so good it will give you night sweats. Jones’ debut collection, Prelude to Bruise, is a cross between James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s room and a jukebox that plays only Nina Simone. Each poem radiates from unearthed insight into the history of sexuality, masculinity, repression and violence and how they encircle the black body. Both the devoured and the devourer, this book should be savored like the last slice of pie on earth. Get it in your life.

: ALEXIS (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: The story of Jean-Claude Romand tests the limits of believability. To all appearances, he led a comfortable bourgeois life with a good career as a doctor at the WHO and a nice family at home. When his family is murdered and he attempts suicide, the unraveling begins. Carrère crafts an eerie study in identity and evil in his telling of Romand’s unfathomable story.