Tsundoku

Tsundoku is Japanese for the act of acquiring reading materials and letting them pile up in one’s home. We thought it a perfect heading for this section, as we’ll feature books that are new or popular in the store. If you’re like us, tsundoku is a constant state of being.

Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of the Planet, Ben Goldfarb, $30.00

From the book's intro: Our planet is burdened by three thousand tons of infrastructure for every human, nearly a third of the Eiffel Tower per person. The intro alone is packed with visualizing facts that mind-bend our perceptions of everyday infrastructure; imagine the richness to come when you read the full book. Goldfarb has a gift for narrative, so while this is still a deep dive into the ecological havoc of our car-obsessed culture, it flows along like the best moments of the classic American road trip.

Get in Trouble, Kelly Link, $17.00

A few months back, we overhauled our short story/essay section in the back of the store, at the end of the general fiction. We're mentioning it here because there's some great stuff in there, and we understand if you get lost in the store--we still do; book labyrinths are like that. Get in Trouble is one of the short story collections back there, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. Strange and unbound, this collection stretches the narrative form, pushing readers out of their comfort zone. If you're one for adventurous reading, this book promises a wild ride.

Tell Me How it Ends: an Essay in 40 Questions, Valeria Luiselli, $13.95

Two shelves directly below Get in Trouble sits this small book with the unassuming cover. Don't be fooled. Luiselli has crafted a sharp, elegant narrative within the framework of the United States' intake questionnaire for undocumented minors. Working as an interpreter with a New York City immigration court, Luiselli assisted children with completing the questionnaire. Her experience--fitting the children's experiences into the inadequate spaces provided--resulted in this vital, important book.

Blood Memory, Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, $40.00

This compendium of the history of the American buffalo is expansive, tragic, wild, enlightening, and bonus: it's illustrated; the vast array of imagery that accompanies the text is profound in and of itself. The buffalo, aside from simply being buffalo, acts as a measuring post for the way various cultures collided in this country's infancy and then shifted through time. This book is a fascinating lens to look at our nation through.