- December 26, 2024
Yes, another year has passed. It has been a year marked by strangeness and friction, disasters both natural and manmade, general tumult, and nonstop chatter about AI. But also, many nonfiction books were published in 2024. A number of them were even quite excellent, in my humble opinion. It is to those among the past ...
Read more… - December 18, 2024
In Strangers in their Own Land (2016) sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote of spending parts of 5 years getting to know folks in Louisiana, where pollution is devastating but the majority oppose environmental regulations. For Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, she spent part of several years with blue-collar men in ...
Read more… - December 12, 2024
In 2022 a school librarian spoke at a public library board meeting about book challenges and how there are policies in place for parents who are concerned about items. She was then maligned horribly online both by people she knew and by total strangers. In That Librarian, Amanda Jones talks about her experiences, her choice ...
Read more… - December 5, 2024
A subtle yet poignant sci-fi graphic novel about a teenage girl named Amy navigating a unique grief. Amy grew up on a mining colony in deep space, but after her father is suddenly fired from his job there, her family is forced to make the 30 year long journey back to earth. Cryo-sleep technology means ...
Read more… - November 27, 2024
PFL staff are reading up a storm this holiday weekend! Browse the list below and find something good to read while you digest and recover from all the festivities.
Naturally Sweet by America’s Test Kitchen
Mysticism by Simon Critchley
The Mighty Red (audiobook) by Louise Erdrich
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
Exit West by ...
Read more… - November 21, 2024
Margaret Atwood’s classic novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has been adapted many times, including film, television, and opera, and this recent graphic novel by Renée Nault. Though initially published in 1986, this speculative dystopian novel has unsettling themes that ring true still today.
The story of an oppressed woman under an authoritarian religious government somehow makes for beautiful ...
Read more… - November 14, 2024
Jo and her family are reeling after the sudden death of Jo’s older sister, Audrey, who was athletic, popular, destined for a scholarship to the school of her choice, and the center of their collective universe. When Audrey mysteriously reappears after her burial and finds Jo, she is confused, cold, and content to stay in ...
Read more… - November 6, 2024
Mysticism by Simon Critchley
The British philosopher Simon Critchley and I share a heroine, it would seem, in Julian of Norwich, the plague-era anchoress whose record of the visions she experienced during a bout of near-fatal illness at age 30 just so happens to be the first known book by a woman writing in the English ...
Read more… - October 30, 2024
In this follow-up to Bowring’s debut The Road to Dalton readers return to her titular Northern Maine town five years after the events of the first novel, with the suicide of Bridget Frazier still sending ripples outward. Dr. Haskell is lost in a cloud of guilt. Bridget’s mother Annette is lost in booze and shopping ...
Read more… - October 24, 2024
When outsider Samantha gets invited to her fellow MFA student’s exclusive “Smut Salon,” everything changes. The cohort- who call each other Bunnies- are up to something weird, something Frankensteinian, that might involve drugs, monsters, and actual bunnies.
I didn’t think I was going to make this a staff pick, but I can’t stop thinking about it. ...
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