Seeking your next good read? Emma Snyder, owner of The Ivy Bookshop at 5928 Falls Road in Baltimore, offers recommendations for must-read titles for adults and children.
Fiction
“The Colony” (Hardcover)
By Audrey Magee
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 384 pages, $27
In 1979, a French linguist and a British artist converge on a small island off the coast of Ireland. The result is a beautiful novel that grapples with essential questions around art, language, and the nature of independence.
“Either/Or” (Hardcover)
By Elif Batuman
Penguin Press, 360 pages, $27
It’s 1996, and Selin returns for her sophomore year at Harvard, consumed by Soren Kirkegaard’s Either/Or, and an essential question: How does one live a life as interesting as a novel? The result is a hilarious, aching novel of youth.
Nonfiction
“Black Boy Smile” (Hardcover)
By D. Watkins
Legacy Lit, 226 pages, $27
This beautiful “memoir in moments” provides snapshots from D. Watkins’s life — from a 9 year old boy on a corner in East Baltimore to a joyful father, husband and writer today. It’s about the ways boys are taught to wall themselves off from emotion, and about the liberating effects of love.
“A Scientific Revolution” (Hardcover)
Ralph H. Hruban & Will Linder, Pegasus Books, 311 pages, $29.95
This compelling examination of the evolution of medicine tells the often surprising stories of ten men and women — all affiliated with Johns Hopkins — whose contributions helped move medicine from a trade to a science.
Children
“Birding for Babies: A Numbers Book” (Hardcover)
By Chloe Goodhart, Illustrated by Gareth Lucas
20 pages, $9.99
A delightful book that introduces kids to both birds and numbers. Perfect for budding naturalists, and the parents who love them! Ages 0-3
“Room to Dream” (Hardcover)
By Kelly Yang
Scholastic Press, 305 pages, $17.99 (Middle Grades)
13-year-old Mia Tang helps in her parents’ motel, works on being a writer, and worries, about her friends and her neighborhood. A family trip to China offers a freelance gig at a Chinese paper, and the chance to grow in all sorts of ways.
The BCO, founded in 1984, will perform the works of Frank Zappa, Beethoven, Mason Bates and Karena Ingram.
Led by local Israel-American cellist Amit Peled, the Mount Vernon Virtuosi aims to inspire people beyond musical enjoyment.
Container vegetable gardening is a terrific option for people with limited space and/or time. Rebecca Brown and Norman Cohen share some tips.
Filmmaker Justin Schein looks at wealth and inequality through the very real story of his late father.