Laurel's Picks
The Poet
(In no particular order)
Reading Style
I have an affinity for nonfiction, for learning, and tend to prefer fiction and poetry that leaves the reader with a sense of newness.
Literary Likes
01
Case Sensitive by Kate Greenstreet
Genres: Poetry
Greenstreet's highly original Case Sensitive posits a female central character who writes chapbooks that become the sections in this book. "What happens in the book I want to read?" Greenstreet asked herself. "And how would it sound?" Everything the character is reading, remembering, and dreaming turns up in what she writes, duly referenced with notes. Using natural language charged with concision and precise syntax, Case Sensitive suggests that there need be no divide between the associative connections of poetry and the extended thinking of the essay. This is a book full of luminous footnotes, details, and attentive readings.
02
Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations by Richard Wagamese
Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality
In this carefully curated selection of everyday reflections, Richard Wagamese finds lessons in both the mundane and sublime as he muses on the universe, drawing inspiration from working in the bush—sawing and cutting and stacking wood for winter as well as the smudge ceremony to bring him closer to the Creator. Honest, evocative and articulate, he explores the various manifestations of grief, joy, recovery, beauty, gratitude, physicality and spirituality—concepts many find hard to express. Within these pages, readers will find hard-won and concrete wisdom on how to feel the joy in the everyday things.
03
Eat Right 4 Your Type by Peter D’Adamo
Genres: Nonfiction, Health & Nutrition, Self Help
Building on his father's thirty year career, Dr. D'Adamo has spent the past fifteen years researching the connections among blood type, food, and disease. This book is a total resource for health, an individualized plan that's right for your blood type. This guide includes which foods, spices, teas, and condiments help someone of your blood type maintain optimal health and ideal weight; which vitamins and supplements to emphasize or avoid; which medications function best in your system; whether your stress is relieved better through aerobics or meditation; whether you should walk, swim or play tennis or golf as your mode of exercise; how knowing your blood type can help you avoid many common viruses and infections; how knowing your blood type can help you fight back against life-threatening diseases; and how to slow down the aging process by avoiding factors specific to your blood type that cause rapid cell deterioration.
Margaret Atwood, Malcolm Gladwell, Anne Carson, poetry, nonfiction, self help
Literary Dislikes
James Patterson, 50 Shades of Grey, Chick-Lit
What's on my bookshelf
Books on deck to read next
Goodbye Things by Funimo Sasaki
Kitchen Gardens by Mary Mason Campbell
04
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Genres: Historical Fiction, Saga, Cultural Fiction
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half sisters, separated by circumstance.
05
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Feminist, Satire
Set in a near-future New England, in a totalitarian state resembling a theonomy that overthrows the United States government, Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. But all of that is gone now. Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.
06
Awe by Dorothea Lasky
Genres: Poetry
If the book of Revelations had been scribbled in the diary of a precocious fourteen-year-old girl, the prophecies might look something like Awe. Lasky is a daring truth-teller, naming names and boldly pushing the boundaries of confession. The secrets she tells are truths we recognize in ourselves: “Be scared of yourself / The real self / Is very scary.”
07
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
Genres: Nonfiction, Travel Literature
The Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America—majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way—and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).
08
The Five Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger, Michael Starbird
Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Business
The coauthors are mathematics professors. Here, they “reveal the hidden powers of deep understanding (earth), failure (fire), questions (air), the flow of ideas (water), and the quintessential element of change that brings all four elements together. By mastering and applying these practical and proven strategies, readers develop better thinking habits and learn how to create their own successes.” The book offers real-life stories, explicit action items, and concrete methods that allow you to attain a deeper understanding of any issue, exploit the power of failure as a step toward success, develop a habit of creating probing questions, see the world of ideas as an ever-flowing stream of thought, and embrace the uplifting reality that we are all capable of change.
09
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell
Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology
Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, Blink changes the way you'll understand every decision you make. It is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?
10
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Genres: Poetry, Essays, Cultural
Citizen recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.