Redbones Barbaque in Davis Square, (Somerville, MA) had a wheel of fortune style wheel over their bar. Each piece of the pie was a different beer they had on tap and adventurous (or merely indecisive) patrons like myself would tell the bartender to spin the wheel and let the beer gods decide which tap to pour from. In my many years of stopping in after work or for late night beers with friends, only once did I end up with what I considered an undrinkable beer.
Across the river in Brookline, there isn’t a wheel of beer, but there is the best “staff recommended” book shelf that I’ve come across in my travels. I thought about that shelf recently, thanks to Mortar Bend’s post on big box stores. It’s been a while since I’ve been into Brookline Booksmith (or its sister store, the Wellesley Booksmith) and I notice I’ve been dissatisfied with my own reading habits of late. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could teleport myself to Brookline, and somehow the most interesting of the picks on Redbone’s beer wheel and take a spin? What would the book gods think I should be reading?
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I was able to line up the most recent recommendations across the top of my browser.
My first pick was:
Love’s Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Yalom, Irvin D. ,
Description
The collection of ten absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. In recounting his patients’ dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist. Not since Freud has an author done so much to clarify what goes on between a psychotherapist and a patient.
I first encountered Yalom when a staffer picked his “Lying On The Couch” over 10 years ago and have been impressed by his writings ever since. I’ve only read his fiction, but I’d be willing to throw this up on the wheel.
Next:
Ten Little Indians by Alexie, Sherman
Description
Sherman Alexie’s Ten Little Indians, a massively acclaimed national best-seller, “serves up nine seamless stories formed in the gut and delivered from the heart, depicting Native Americans caught in contemporary cultural crosshairs” (Elle). In Alexie’s first story, “The Search Engine,” Corliss is a rugged and resourceful student who finds in books the magic she was denied while growing up poor. When she discovers the poetry of a fellow Native who vanished thirty years earlier after winning the Pulitzer Prize, she makes it her mission to find him. Although he does not prove to be the man Corliss needs him to be, his devastating story will help her in her own struggle to belong. In “The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above,” an intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her to the bewilderment of her only child, now a grown man who looks back at his life with equal parts fondness, amusement, and regret. “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” starts off with a homeless man recognizing in a pawn shop window the fancy-dance regalia that was stolen fifty years earlier from his late grandmother. As he tries to raise $1,000 in twenty-four hours to buy back the outfit, the man’s misadventure combines bittersweet wit and touching earnestness as only this author can. Even as they often make us laugh, Sherman Alexie’s stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candor that cut to the heart of the human experience. The result is a short-story collection that has been hailed as Alexie’s “best in years” (Austin American-Statesman) and “proves once again that he is a fearless writer” (Rocky Mountain News).
I really liked his first collection of stories, and the movie was fantastic, so I’d gamble on this one.
Then I’d pick:
Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Collins, Paul
Description
Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside-to move, in fact, to the village of Hay-on-Wye, the “Town of Books” that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants-and forty bookstores. Taking readers into a secluded sanctuary for book lovers, and guiding us through the creation of the author’s own first book, “Sixpence House” becomes a heartfelt and often hilarious meditation on what books mean to us.
Judging the book soley on the back cover - sounds interesting.
I’d throw this on the wheel, not because I’m a huge mystery fan (although I did go through a phase where all I read were lesbian detective novels) or that into Chinese history, but because a staff member recommended it.
The Skull Mantra by Pattison, Eliot
Description
The corpse is missing its head and is dressed in American clothes. Found by a Tibetan prison work gang on a windy cliff, the grisly remains clearly belong to someone too important for Chinese authorities to bury and forget. So the case is handed to veteran police inspector Shan Tao Yun. Methodical, clever Shan is the best man for the job, but he too is a prisoner, deported to Tibet for offending Beijing. Granted a temporary release, Shan is soon pulled into the Tibetan people’s desperate fight for its sacred mountain and the Chinese regime’s blood-soaked policies. Then, a Buddhist priest is arrested, a man Shan knows is innocent. Now time is running out for Shan to find the real killer…in an astonishing, emotionally charged story that will change the way you think about Tibet– and freedom– forever.
and finally, I’d add
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Solnit, Rebecca
Description
Written as a series of autobiographical essays, this volume draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit’s life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place.
Take a spin and pick a book for me, will ya?
