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
“There is Happiness: New and Selected Stories”
By Brad Watson
Norton, 288 pages, $29.99
Brad Watson was a remarkable writer — southern and western, lyrical and heartbreaking, full of what Joy Williams referred to as “freakish flair.” He died suddenly in the summer of 2020, and here is a final collection of his short fiction, which displays his prodigious gifts.
“Exhibit”
By R.O. Kwon
Riverhead Books, 224 pages, $28
When Jin Han meets Lidija Jung at a party in the hills outside San Francisco, they talk all night, and the resulting emotions raise questions about how Jin can and should live her life. At the heart is an essential question: How much of our lives, of our desires, are in our control?
Nonfiction
“A Call to Farms”
By Jennifer Grayson
Countryman Press, 193 pages, $28
Six months into the COVID lockdown, journalist Jennifer Grayson and her husband moved to Central Oregon, and she enrolled in an immersive farmer training program. The program opened her eyes to a burgeoning agricultural movement that is dedicated to small-scale solutions to climate change and social disconnection.
“Embracing Hope: On Freedom, Responsibility, & the Meaning of Life”
By Viktor Frankl
Beacon Press, 130 pages, $21.95
Holocaust survivor and brilliant psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl was dedicated to the idea that humans are meaning-oriented and that we are motivated by the stories we tell ourselves — and believe — about our own lives. This new collection of four previously unpublished essays, includes a lecture on how to approach life’s essential impermanence.
Children
“The Outsmarters”
By Deborah Ellis
Groundwood Books, 245 pages, $18.99
12-year-old Kate is living in a small town with her strict grandma, not entirely clear on where her mother has gone. Bored, frustrated with the adults in her life, and getting into trouble at school, she opens a philosophy booth next to her Gran’s junk shop, and begins to ask real questions. (Middle grade fiction)
“Pebble Without a Cause”
By Stephanie Campisi and Jiarui Jiang
Yeehoo Press, 40 pages, $18.99
A gentle, heartfelt book about a little pebble born into a family of boulders. Pebble doesn’t quite know where he belongs until a project his cousin is working on — a dam to create a swimming hole — springs a leak, and his stature is the answer. (Picture book, ages 2-5)
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.
For 35 years, the late Deborah Brodie, aka Bubbie Cookie, amassed a collection of over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she used to teach her Hebrew school students with special needs.
Conceived by Columbia resident Benjamin Kintisch, "Life Review: The Hospice Musical" offers a thought-provoking and occasionally amusing perspective on mortality.