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Staff Recommendations > Maia

sort list by title | author In Defense of Food An Eater's Manifesto Michael Pollan This book is as fascinating as all the reviewers keep telling us it is. Michael Pollan doesn't address every angle of every issue, but this book is a great starting point for thinking more critically and carefully about the foods we buy and eat... The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath A powerful, haunting story of youth and despair. —Recommended by Maia, City Lights Books. Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown... Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy Tolstoy's classic work, which Nabokov claimed was the best love story ever written, is beautifully rendered here in this subtle and lovely translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky. I think in Anna Karenina, more than any other of his works, Tolstoy... The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers McCullers has a way of making her straight-forward, richly Southern voice sound as if she is speaking profound truths about the world around her, that of the 1940's and 50's deep South. This is her first novel (written at age 23!) ... Everything Is Illuminated A Novel Jonathan Safran Foer With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous... The Passion Jeanette Winterson This book is a strange, inspired trip of love and lust. Perhaps the most unique thing about it besides Winterson's poetic voice is its universal, timeless quality though it is set in Napoleonic Europe. It is a great introduction... In the Skin of a Lion Michael Ondaatje Although not as well known as The English Patient, this novel showcases Michael Ondaatje's best writing-- vividly tracing the stories of several new immigrants navigating their way in 1920's Toronto... Collected Stories of William Faulkner William Faulkner Though the volume may be imposing, the discrete stories in this collection each create and inhabit a world of life and feeling. Faulkner's craft is at its best in his short fiction, and if I had to take one book of Faulkner with me to a desert island... Going to Meet the Man Stories James Baldwin Start with "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon." If the title of that story doesn't get you then you are lost anyway. —Recommended by Maia, City Lights Books "There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers McCullers has a way of making her straight-forward, richly Southern voice sound as if she is speaking profound truths about the world around her, that of the 1940's and 50's deep South. This is her first novel (written at age 23!) and it is widely... Too Loud a Solitude Bohumil Hrabal The main character in this story works and lives as a kind of subterranean paper crusher in Prague. Hrabal leads us along the bizarre and lasting corridors of his mind and world. Truly memorable. —Recommended by Maia, City Lights Books Lolita Vladimir Nabokov One of the most well-crafted books I've ever read. Not one word in this masterpiece isn't as it should be. My advice is to read it in big pieces, as it will take you into a world of Nabokov's making. The images and characters will stay with you...