Today is our last day at RFPL Reads! We are shuttering this blog, but will soon be launching a new online reading service, and very much hope that you will visit us there. Be sure to watch this space — as soon as the new site is live, we’ll be posting a link.
Thanks for reading all this time! We look forward to seeing you in the new space!
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Kimberly says: “I borrowed the audio version of this from hoopla while I was doing some gardening and it kept me riveted for days. Macdonald is an effective reader of her own memoir–her British accent lending itself perfectly to the setting. She recounts the sudden loss of her father, her desire to raise a goshawk named Mabel, and her childhood fascination with birds, falconry, and T.H. White’s book The Goshawk. It is a good deal of material for one slim book, but she weaves all these threads beautifully. Her descriptions of grief are insightful and just about everything she describes relating to hawks was completely new information to me. It was fascinating.”
Let’s be less stupid: an attempt to maintain my mental faculties by Patricia Marx
Kimberly says: “This book is a very funny and yet insightful look into the middle-aged angst of declining mental faculties. Marx, who has written for Saturday Night Live, probes her own experiences when it comes to forgetting keys, names, and other important stuff. She includes some zany quizzes to test your own capabilities, but it never gets too serious.”
Author George RR Martin — he of Game of Thrones fame, and author of the just released A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a GoT prequel — maintains a very lively blog (ironically titled “Not A Blog”) on which he often makes book recommendations. So, what does the creator of today’s biggest fantasy franchise read? It turns out he reads a lot of non-fantasy. Here are a few examples:
To read more of Martin’s thoughts on this titles, click here — and to read some of this thoughts on other fantasy authors? Click here.
The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan
Janice Kaplan decided to spend a year “living gratefully,” drawing on advice from psychologists, academics, doctors, and philosophers to gain a fresh outlook that ultimately transformed her relationships, work, health, and daily life. She chronicles that year in The Gratitude Diaries.
Joanna says: “I enjoyed Kaplan’s work and particularly enjoyed how such a simple thing as saying thank you (something we often forget to say or take for granted) can change one’s outlook on life and improve relationships and attitudes.”
Murder at the Brightwell by Ashley Weaver
Dana says: “Murder at the Brightwell is a cozy mystery set in 1930s England with just the right amount of romance, the first book in a series — and the second [Death Wears A Mask] comes out this month!”
Amory Ames is a wealthy young woman questioning her marriage to notoriously charming playboy Milo. Looking for a change, she agrees to help her former fiance, Gil Trent, not knowing she’ll soon be embroiled in a murder investigation that will test not only that friendship, but upset the status quo with Milo. As the stakes grow higher and the line between friend and foe becomes less clear, Amory must decide where her heart lies and catch the killer before she, too, becomes a victim.
Author, journalist, and recently-named MacArthur Fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates has been on The New York Times bestseller list since the publication of his latest book, Between the World and Me, a work that weighs some of the biggest issues of the American story through the lens of a father’s love for his son. A passionate reader himself, Coates was asked by the Times about the books that have left the biggest mark on him. Here’s part of what he said:
To read the rest of Coates’s list, click here.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent six decades writing a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author’s tale of gothic strangeness — featuring beautiful and willful Isabelle, feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.
For years, stand-up comedian and actor Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation) has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, he decided to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and the two designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys, and enlisted the world’s leading social scientists; the result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before. In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.
Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins by Susan Casey
Humans have long felt a kinship with the dolphin, an animal whose playfulness, sociability, and intelligence seem to mirror our own. We’ve learned that dolphins recognize themselves, count, grieve, rescue one another (and humans), adorn themselves, deduce, seduce, and call themselves by name. We still have much to learn about their sophisticated navigation and communication, and complicated brains.
While swimming off the coast of Maui, New York Times bestselling author Susan Casey found herself surrounded by a pod of spinner dolphins. The profoundly transporting experience inspired a two-year global adventure to explore dolphin’s natures, and their complex relationship to humanity.
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