The Staff Shelf: Itinerant Literate
What are booksellers reading?
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 Itinerate Literate what they recommend.
SLIDESHOW: Itinerate Literate Staff Shelf
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- CHRISTEN (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: Kafka on the Shore A delightful cast of characters that range from a transient teenager to a sentient cat and everything in between populate a masterfully created world and navigate the often magical pitfalls of a contemporary Japan still grappling with the ghosts of the past. Don’t let the page extent trick you – this is a quick read that you will fight yourself to savor.
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- CHRISTEN (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: An exciting, perfectly crafted novel with addictive characters from writer/producer of Game of Thrones, David Benioff. Smart, funny, and historical but not pedantic or overly aware of the history that follows the actions of the book. This “perfect novel” is full of life, energy and high stakes that combine for a tragically quick but totally satisfying read.
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- JULIA (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: Will this book make you plan for the looming pandemic apocalypse? Yes, but it’s totally worth it. David Quammen explains the world of zoonoses and disease ecologists in an utterly fascinating, approachable way. More pertinent than ever after last summer’s Ebola outbreaks, Spillover (the event when an infectious disease transfers from an animal to a human) goes into the history, investigation, and containment theory of these emerging diseases.
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- JULIA (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: After Harry Crewe is sent to stay on the Homelander frontier, things get interesting when she’s kidnapped by the mysterious Hillfolk’s king, who, for reasons neither of them are quite sure of, is certain Harry is key to his people’s survival. McKinley’s world building is rich, yet sparse; when you finish, you’ll wonder how she crammed an epic into fewer than 300 pages.
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- JULIA (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: Cinder is the best mechanic in New Beijing, but as a cyborg, she’s treated as a second-class citizen. This imaginative retelling of the familiar fairy tale manages to diverge entirely in context and yet stay true in original storyline. And Meyer keeps the twists going through the entire Lunar Chronicles series. For fans of Once Upon a Time, Wicked, and of course the original Brothers Grimm.
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- CHRISTEN (CO-OWNER) RECOMMENDS: Part apocalyptic saga, political thriller and moral allegory, Red Moon is unapologetic, fun and smart. A great middle-ground between literary and science fiction, Follow characters from unbelievably disparate walks of life that embark on competing, intertwining journeys through a United States struggling to accept its newfound werewolf brethren, combat nuclear fall-out, and stave off political upheaval nationwide.
