April 27-May 4 is Sustainaville Week, the city’s annual celebration of the environment and the fight against climate change. You can see a list of local activities and events here. Hannah Payne of the City’s Office of Sustainability and Environment kindly put together a list of topical books recommended by Somervillians. Below are some selected…
The Pisces by Melissa Broder Summary: Bottoming out after a dramatic breakup, doctoral student Lucy accepts her sister’s invitation to dog-sit at her home on Venice Beach for the summer, where she meets an eerily attractive swimmer whose Sirenic identity transforms her understanding of what real love looks like. All Summaries are taken from the…
I love reading published collections of letters. You get to see people at their frankest and most unguarded moments. And depending on when the letters were written, they provide a window into the past, how what we now call history looked to people as it happened. Of the many such collections we have in the…
Persuasion by Jane Austen Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish, spendthrift Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen, she fell in love with-and was engaged to-a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to…
Looking for something to read this Saint Patrick’s Day? Try one of the following: St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning Summary: Jamie seeks a way to prove that he is not too young to march in the big St. Patrick’s Day parade. Fiona’s Luck Summary: A clever woman named Fiona must pass the leprechaun…
Green Book When Tony Lip, a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley, a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on a book to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism,…
Less by Andrew Sean Greer Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this book is a must-read: Receiving an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding, Arthur, a failed novelist on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, embarks on an international journey that finds him falling in love, risking his life, reinventing himself, and making connections with the past.-…
Looking for a Valentine’s Day Read? Try the titles below: Unmarriageable : a novel “In this retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry–until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor in the Binat family have destroyed…
By Sarah Smarsh Sarah Smarsh writes a beautiful memoir about her life growing up in rural Kansas. She speaks to her future child wishing her child will learn from her life experiences and writes what she would have hoped for her child not to have experienced growing up in an area of America where it’s…
