If you’re anything like us, you perk up a little when you see someone reading in public. We do a double take, and sometimes we even backtrack to see what book has caught someone else’s attention. There’s nothing like the satisfaction of seeing another reader’s choices. Best of all, it’s a chance for a recommendation outside our own reading habits and comfort zones. Take a look at the books we saw in our travels this week. Descriptions cribbed from the publisher.
Queen of Babble Gets Hitched by Meg Cabot / Things are looking up at last for Lizzie Nichols. She has a career she loves in the field of her choice (wedding gown restoration), and the love of her life, Jean-Luc, has finally proposed. Life’s become a dizzying whirl of wedding gown fittings—not necessarily her own—as Lizzie prepares for her dream wedding at her fiancé’s château in the south of France. But the dream soon becomes a nightmare when the best man—whom Lizzie might once have accidentally slept with…no, really, just slept—announces his total lack of support for the couple, a sentiment seconded by the maid of honor; Lizzie’s Midwestern family can’t understand why she doesn’t want to have her wedding in the family backyard; her future French in-laws are trying to lure the groom back into investment banking; and Lizzie finds herself wondering if her Prince Charming really is as charming as she once believed.
The Santangelos by Jackie Collins / A vicious hit. A vengeful enemy. A drug-addled Colombian club owner. A coke-addicted young actress. A dynamic Italian family. And the ever-powerful Lucky has to handle them all. Then there’s Max, her teenage daughter, the new “It” girl in Europe’s modeling world and her Kennedyesque son, Bobby, who’s being set up for a murder he didn’t commit. But Lucky can deal. Always strong and unpredictable, with her husband Lennie by her side, she lives up to the family motto: Never cross Santangelo.
But when Lucky opens an expensive note card edged in gold, printed with the single word VENGEANCE, she knows she is in for the fight of her life…
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T Kiyosaki / Explode the myth that you need to earn a high income to become rich. Challenge the belief that your house is an asset. Show parents why they can’t rely on the school system to teach their kids about money. Define once and for all an asset and a liability. Teach you what to teach your kids about money for their future financial success.
All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders / Patricia is a witch who can communicate with animals. Laurence is a mad scientist and inventor of the two-second time machine. As teenagers they gravitate towards one another, sharing in the horrors of growing up weird, but their lives take different paths…When they meet again as adults, Laurence is an engineering genius trying to save the world-and live up to his reputation- in near-future San Francisco. Meanwhile, Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the magically gifted, working hard to prove herself to her fellow magicians and secretly repair the earth’s ever-growing ailments.As they attempt to save our future, Laurence and Patricia’s shared past pulls them back together. And though they come from different worlds, when they collide, the witch and the scientist will discover that maybe they understand each other better than anyone.
From Scratch by Allen Salkin / This is the definitive history of The Food Network from its earliest days as a long-shot business gamble to its current status as a cable obsession for millions, home along the way to such icons as Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, Mario Batali, Alton Brown, and countless other celebrity chefs. Using extensive inside access and interviews with hundreds of executives, stars, and employees, From Scratch is a tantalizing, delicious look at the intersection of business, pop culture, and food.
Pedro Pietri: Selected Poetry by Pedro Pietri / Pedro Pietri’s often playfully absurd poems chronicle the joys and struggles of Nuyoricans—urban Puerto Ricans whose lives straddle the islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan—and define the Latino experience in urban America. By turns angry, heartbreaking, and hopeful, his writings are imbued with a sense of pride and nationalism and were embraced by the generation of Latino poets that followed him. Pedro Pietri: Selected Poetry gathers the most enduring and treasured work among his published books, Puerto Rican Obituary, Traffic Violations, and Out of Order, along with a generous selection of his previously unpublished works.
The Year of Yes by Shonda Rimes In this poignant, hilarious and deeply intimate call to arms, Hollywood’s most powerful woman, the mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder, reveals how saying YES changed her life – and how it can change yours too. With three hit shows on television and three children at home, Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say no when invitations arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No. And to an introvert like Shonda, who describes herself as ‘hugging the walls’ at social events and experiencing panic attacks before press interviews, there was a particular benefit to saying no: nothing new to fear. Then came Thanksgiving 2013, when Shonda’s sister Delorse muttered six little words at her: You never say yes to anything. Profound, impassioned and laugh-out-loud funny, in Year of Yes Shonda Rhimes reveals how saying YES changed – and saved – her life. And inspires readers everywhere to change their own lives with one little word: Yes.
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke / One cruel night, Meggie’s father reads aloud from a book called Inkheart— and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. Meggie must learn to harness the magic that has conjured this nightmare. For only she can change the course of the story that has changed her life forever. This is Inkheart–a timeless tale about books, about imagination, about life. Dare to read it aloud.
Photo: Unsplash/Pixabay.
