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Booksellers Kat and Susan recommend books to each other—and to you!
Published in the 2011 Summer Newsletter.

One of the great pleasures of being a bookseller is that we get to talk about, recommend, and discuss books all the time. We tend to be a passionate bunch, so some literary conversations can get downright heated—but in the best possible way! Two of our staff’s most avid readers, Kat and Susan, are especially enthusiastic about advocating books they love.

Kat: So we both really loved The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier, which makes a lot of sense—it has beautifully formed, somewhat tragic characters and a premise that is brilliantly executed, which is basically everything we love in a novel. And I’m really glad that you loved it as much as I did, but I still can’t get over the fact that you haven’t read Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. The more I think about these two books, the more I realize how strangely alike they are—they are both structured around a magical, unbelievable occurrence, and both use their strange premise to get into the hearts and minds of incredible characters. Besides, almost everyone else has read Great World and most of those people loved it, making you almost the last person to get to it, which is driving me crazy. What are you waiting for?!

Susan: I know, I know, but in my defense it’s because I have been a Colum McCann fan forever and fell in love with his first book, This Side of Brightness, and I’ve been afraid that somehow Let the Great World Spin won’t measure up. It’s just me being stubborn; I promise I’ll read it now. But now it’s my turn. I know how much you loved Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton, which captured family ties and the endless strands that love travels. And, of course, the way she started the whole novel with a sea monster (I mean who does that and gets away with it?). So how can you love a book that is so much about character and love—with a dash of magical realism thrown in—and still not have read anything by Isabel Allende? I’m pretty sure that Groff reread Allende’s The House of the Spirits a zillion times before beginning her own book, and I’m telling you, if you liked The Monsters of Templeton, you have to promise me to read at least one of Allende’s books.

Kat: Okay, point taken. But, if there’s one thing I know you love, it’s quirky books. That’s why I told you to read Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, because a girl who can taste emotions in food is pretty strange. So you should read the quirkiest book I’ve ever come across: As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem. I have loved this book for years, and it’s weird that I haven’t forced it upon you yet. It’s about a scientist at a university who is dating a pretty physicist who leaves him for one of her projects: a void in the universe. Literally. The book still manages to be one of the most romantic books I’ve ever read, which is saying something.

Susan: Okay, I’m intrigued. Mention voids in the universe and oddness with space and time and you’re right, I’m hooked. I’m sure that’s why I liked The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. There is something about love that can travel distances that gets me each time. So here’s my last recommendation that has that same theme: Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philipa Pearce. The premise is a boy who dreams of visiting the very house he’s in, only in his dreams it’s decades before his lifetime. It’s a chapter book written for kids, but I find it poignant and absorbing even as an adult. This really good, quiet story about love, friendship, magic, time, and growing older, stirs the soul. Read it, please, oh please?