The Staff Shelf: Writer’s Block 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 Writer’s Block Bookstore what they recommend.

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SLIDESHOW: Writer’s Block Bookstore Staff Shelf

: TAYLOR (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: This dystopian novel, published in 1953, imagines a future American society where books have become illegal. Any books that are found must immediately be burned by “fireman.” The author’s ability to predict modern day technology adds even more realism to this work.

: LAUREN (OWNER) RECOMMENDS: “The Children’s Crusade is an extraordinary tale of a physician, his wife and their four children. Set in Northern California, it is a coming-of-age tale of family as well as an American pastoral; the language is beautiful, painterly, even as it shows us how much of our adult identity has been fully formed in childhood. Ann Packer’s eye for detail, her genius at evoking an era with such faithfulness, and her mastery of story make us identify with and deeply care for her characters. This is a beautiful novel that will stay with me.” (Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone)

: GRACE (MANAGER) RECOMMENDS: Crafted with beautiful attention to detail, Brown lifts the much-needed yet often undervalued perspective of nurses in the conversation about healthcare in the U.S. A former English professor at Tufts University, Brown has the ability to explain and humanize complicated aspects of nursing pretty effortlessly. She perfects the balance of hilarious, depressing, and hopeful. Would recommend to any aspiring nurse looking for inspiration and insight.

: TAYLOR (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: What happens after we die? Neuroscientist David Eagleman makes great use of speculative fiction to weave forty creative, intelligent, and mesmerizing short stories that address that very question.

: EMILE (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: Nickole Brown’s Fanny Says is a poetic biography of the author’s grandmother Fanny, a raucous, bawdy woman “with hair teased to Jesus, mile-long false eyelashes, and a white Cadillac El Dorado decked with atomic-red leather seats.” In the process of re-telling Fanny’s hard truths, we gain another: Nickole Brown crafts a personal mythology that speaks also to a larger, decidedly not-pretty reality of racism, sexism, and class. The author’s voice comforts like southern women chatting around the breakfast table, then escalates with unbridled emotion. Fanny Says is a perfect read for lovers of oral history and anyone curious to meet an unforgettable character.

: EMILE (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: Full of grit and blood and dust, Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women is populated by forgotten people in forgotten places: amputees, alcoholics, pregnant teenagers, friendless children, cleaning women. Their varied tales are all connected by the intimate telling of she who had herself lived through so many powerful, haunting, and riddled experiences, each narrative crafted with savage wit and rawness. This selection of Berlin’s writing is a masterful work of auto-fiction, sure to be celebrated among the best short story collections.

: SAM (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: Roxane Gay’s take-no-prisoners honesty and hilarity make this collection of essays on race, sex, class–and of course, feminism–impossible to put down. Poignant, enlightening, and entertaining!

: SAM (BOOKSELLER) RECOMMENDS: Sarah Waters’ historical fiction has the ability to place you in any era with absolute legitimacy, and Affinity is no exception. It’s riveting story about a women’s prison in Victorian England and the relationship that develops between an inmate who claims to be a medium and an upper-class woman who volunteers there.