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 The Architecture of Happiness
by Alain de Botton (Pantheon)
Anyone interested in their surroundings will appreciate this book. They will want to pick it up and peruse it again and again. De Botton brings everyday architecture to life and makes his readers more aware of what's around them and where they live and work. He explores how the buildings surrounding us affect our pleasure. De Botton walks us through time and teaches us how to see the world around us in new ways once again. -T. Taylor
 Blackstock's Collection: The Drawings of an Artistic Savant
by Gregory L. Blackstock (Princeton Architectural Press)
Whether outsider art gains its draw through the dearth of pretense or the peerless quality of the aesthetic, there's no question Gregory Blackstock is its current crowned head. He gathers objects both exotic and commonplace; organizes and clusters like with like; and eventually turns out a world of curious, entrancing, and surprisingly comforting lists. This book is a great gift not only for the art lover but, given the artist's self-taught credentials and savant status, for anyone who loves a good underdog success story. -P. Yearby
 The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life
by John Maeda (MIT Press)
A pioneering computer artist and MIT professor invites the reader into a conversation about the balance of simplicity and complexity in technology, business, art, and other aspects of life. "Subtract the obvious, add the meaningful," and pay attention to the seemingly peripheral, he begins. This powerful book penetrates the mind, teaching us how these leaps of imagination can lead to what feels like genius. -K.M. Allman
 Persian Girls: A Memoir
by Nahid Rachlin (Tarcher)
Nahid Rachlin’s moving account of her life as a young Iranian girl in the 1950s and ‘60s; as an immigrant college student in the American Midwest; and eventually as a writer, wife, and mother in New York is also the story of her sisters, who remained in Iraq during those tumultuous years. Persian Girls invites deep reflection on the fate of women, on relationships between sisters, and most significantly on the ways in which mothers and daughters can bridge the gap of ever-widening cultural differences. -K.M. Allman
 This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
by Aidan Chambers (Amulet)
Nineteen and pregnant, Cordelia Kenns decided to leave this record of herself for her unborn child. It is a portrait of her young self in the form of a pillow book. A pillow book records "impressions, daily events, poems, letters, stories, ideas, descriptions of people, etc."; it is a cornucopian view of Cordelia's world. This ambitious and beautifully written book does indeed have it all. Sophistocated teens and adults will love this large and open-hearted book. -G. Berry
 West Coast Cooking
by Greg Atkinson (Sasquatch)
Former Canlis chef Atkinson celebrates the tastes of the West Coast in this beautifully illustrated cookbook. Anecdotal and approachable, this nearly four-hundred-page cookbook covers everything from brewing the perfect pot of coffee to making a sourdough starter from organic grapes. Atkinson, a slow-food and organics advocate, brings his passions to light in these recipes, which focus on the bounty of our coast: Pacific Oysters, Oregon Blue Cheese, California Rolls, and recipes inspired by Wolfgang Puck, Canlis, Typhoon!, and other West Coast restaurant greats. -H. Myers
 The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within
by Stephen Fry (Gotham Books)
"I have a dark and dreadful secret," Stephen Fry says. "I write poetry." Why, he asks, is it acceptable to be a photographer, a gardener, a musician, anything but a poet?
Poetry, Fry says, is a skill that few are taught to acquire, but many to revere, analyze, and avoid. Presenting it as a craft that can be learned and practiced with pleasure, Fry makes meter, rhyme, and form enticing, in a way that is instructive, encouraging, and just plain fun. -J. Brown
 The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas
trans. by Richard Pevear (Viking)
Who can forget "All for one and one for all" from one of the great adventure stories of all time, The Three Musketeers? Do yourself a favor and introduce or reintroduce yourself to d'Artagnan and friends Athos, Porthos and Aramis, as they go up against their archenemy Cardinal Richelieu for the honor of their queen. Richard Pevear's new translation is wonderful! -G. Berry
 Paint It Black
by Janet Fitch (Little, Brown)
Set amid the trash-can glamour of early 1980s punk-rock Hollywood, Janet Fitch's sophomore novel is an exploration of loss and personal growth. In the aftermath of Michael's suicide, Josie grieves recklessly for her boyfriend in a blur of vodka, pills, and Gauloise cigarettes. However, Josie's spiraling demise slowly opens the window to self-discovery as she begins to examine the microscopic truth of the relationship that ended so violently. Any intelligent young woman will enjoy this substantial love story. -J. Darrah
 Water for Elephants
by Sarah Gruen (Algonquin)
Spectacular, spectacular, no words in the vernacular! Welcome to the Beninzi Bros. Circus, "The Best Show on Earth." And it is only spectacular, that is, until the tents go down, exposing the dark, twisted, lustful, and unpredictable underworld of the traveling show. In Water for Elephants, Gruen gives us a crazed world that we at the bookstore welcome one, welcome all, to experience. It's a masterpiece. -J. Kearns and T. Taylor
 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
by Haruki Murakami
trans. by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin (Knopf)
In the introduction to his book, Haruki Murakami likens short-story writing to jazz improvisation, each story taking him in unknown directions.
These stories highlight Murakami's unique cadence and eye for the intricacies of the mundane, which he then gently pries apart to reveal the strangeness beneath, whether his characters ruminate about life over a whiskey or literally bear the burden of their obsession on their back. Each of these tales is an affecting, eerie, concise example of a lively imagination at play. -V. Verano
 R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country
edited by Stephen Calt and David Jasen
illus. by R. Crumb (Abrams)
Anyone who missed out on R. Crumb's trading cards in the '80s now has the opportunity to own all three sets of blues, jazz, and country musicians, reprinted in book format. For me, his blues portraits of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton were an initiation into a kind of music I had not yet learned to appreciate. This book, which includes a twenty-one song CD, is a perfect way to acquire a taste for Crumb as well as the "old timey" music he reveres. -T. Burns
 The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History and Culture of Clouds
by Gavin Pretor-Pinney (Perigee)
For many of us, our first scientific curiosity is kindled by clouds and then suffocated by the facts that strip away their magic. This book brings back the wonder we once felt by combining science with a sense of humor.
Explaining the formation of a cumulus cloud by using a lava lamp as illustration, describing the ordeal of a pilot who parachuted through a thundercloud, giving a definition of the "mackerel sky" produced by cirrocumulus clouds, this is a book that will jump-start imaginations. -J. Brown
 A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005
by Annie Liebovitz (Random House)
If you think you’ve seen Annie Leibovitz, think again. From her journey to Sarajevo in the early ‘90s to her relationship with Susan Sontag, this is Leibovitz at her best. We see her spending time with her children, giving birth, and watching her longtime partner Susan Sontag die of cancer. While sprinkled with the spectacular celebrity photos Annie is well-known for, this feels as though we are seeing Leibovitz for the first time. -T. Taylor
 The Week-End Book
edited by Francis Meynell (Overlook)
Our world may have no room for country house visits, but we can dream, can’t we? And dream we do, when we pick up this book, once found on bedside tables in every well-appointed guest room.
Filled with advice on conversational manners and the proper way to waltz; instructions for games, including "Human Sacrifice"; and a section on "The Law and How You Break It," this is a book that could supplant computer games and DVD rentals on lazy, gloomy Sundays. -J. Brown
 Farewell Summer
by Ray Bradbury (Morrow)
For Douglas Spaulding, summer is a season of self-discovery and
whispered magic. Now, in the phenomenal sequel to the classic
Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury revisits the mystical end of the summer of
1928. There is a civil war brewing between the elders and the youth
of Green Town, Illinois, and the stakes could mean the loss of youth
and even death! This novel, half a century in the making, recaptures
all the dark humor and unrelenting heartbreak of the original and
should not be missed. -C. Joyner
 Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska
by Michael D'Orso (Bloomsbury)
Alaskan villages are dark and lonely places in the winter. Basketball, played indoors when the temperature hovers around fifty below zero, is a ticket out of town for the team. Flying all over the state to compete in tournaments, the Fort Yukon Eagles race after the State Championship—and the girls from the nearby village of Tanana.
This is a book that captures the full flavor of rural Alaska. Its readers are sure to fall in love with these boys and their coach. -J. Brown
 The Art of Rough Travel: From the Peculiar to the Practical, Advice from a 19th-Century Explorer
by Sir Francis Galton (Mountaineers)
Nobody but Sir Francis Galton would tell readers how to build a fire with bones or how to quench thirst by eating butter. It's easy to regard this book as a charming historical curiosity, but closer inspection shows that it's still useful in our own disaster-ridden century. Instructions on how to make a candle, advice for avoiding dehydration when there is no potable water and "bush remedies" for illness and injuries make this a book to keep beside every household's first-aid kit. -J. Brown
 Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
by Bill Buford (Knopf)
Why would a sensible, literate man volunteer to work the lowliest kitchen station at Babbo, Mario Batali's famed three-star New York restaurant? Buford has no culinary training when he begins chopping duck and celery in the prep kitchen—heck, he doesn't even have knives. But through his journey, from prep to line cook, from New York to Porretta Terme to London, Buford explores not only the mythical Batali and the crushing work of a professional kitchen, but what it means to want to feed people. -H. Myers
 Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West
by Hampton Sides (Doubleday)
Hampton Sides has made a major contribution to the neglected history of the Southwest in the nineteenth century. Following the life of Kit Carson, Sides takes us from Kentucky to California to New Mexico. Along the way we encounter explorers, Indian American tribes, gold seekers, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the war between the United States and the Indians of the Southwest. In this wonderfully written narrative history, Sides gives us a well-rounded picture of how the U.S. government took control of the Southwest. -C. Kirchner
 Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes
essays by Richard Andrews and John Beardsley (Henry Art Gallery and Yale University Press)
Maya Lin's art pulls viewers into relationships with space, land, water, and other media, all shaped by her unique blend of intuition and analysis. This book, produced to accompany the recent Maya Lin exhibition at the Henry Art Gallery, is a window into the artist's map landscapes, earthworks, and sculptures, capturing some of the scope and vision of her work through photography and two analytical articles.
Maya Lin's Boundaries, a previously published volume about her earlier work, is now available in a new paperback edition. -K.M. Allman
 Unbowed
by Wangari Maathai (Knopf)
Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is not a prerequisite to writing a good book. Yet 2006 has seen two powerful works by such laureates. Earlier there was Shirin Ebadi's compelling Iran Awakening. Now 2004 Nobel recipient Wangari Maathai of Kenya writes the story of a life, a movement—both of women working together and on environmental causes—and a country, in her luminous memoir, Unbowed. Books such as these are vivid, inspiring reminders of how much time, work, and spirit it can take to effect real change. -R. Simonson
 Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape
edited by Barry Lopez (Trinity University Press)
Home Ground is an anatomy of the United States written by forty-five authors of various American backgrounds. Each author defines twenty cultural phrases we use to describe the particularities of our geographic landscapes. As you flip through the pages, you will not find a dictionary definition. You will find histories, references to literature, pen sketches, and a symphony of voices that awaken states of amnesia, dispel cynicism, and restore a sense of mature identity to the United States as a place and a people. -T. Radebaugh
 Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
by Neil Gaiman (Morrow)
Gaiman's first story collection in eight years gathers together his contributions to far-flung anthologies and projects. These stories show him moving into new territories in theme and invention, shifting in tone from confessional to satirical, fantastical to mundane, nostalgic to macabre—all this, often in the same narrative.
Whether you're a longtime fan or a newcomer to Gaiman's work, the rich, kaleidoscopic nature of Fragile Things reveals a sublime and original writer at the peak of his abilities. -V. Verano
 The Willow Field
by William Kittredge (Knopf)
Missoula's William Kittredge has been giving readers and Elliott Bay readings audiences memorable pleasures for decades. Many the time he has come over with honed books of stories, vivid Oregon Basin country memoirs, anthologies of Montana, and Western writing. At age seventy-four he is now in the world as a novelist for the first time with this grace-filled story that captures much history, much terrain, much romance, and much of the mixed and reckoned realities of the American West. -R. Simonson
 The Road
by Cormack McCarthy (Knopf)
A man and his son travel through a timeless, postapocalyptic landscape where the unspeakable is commonplace and hope is a luxury in Cormac McCarthy's unforgettable novel The Road. Survival is a distant dream for them, yet father and son both learn from each other that just remaining alive is not what will sustain them. This is a quietly devastating story told with precision, beauty, and gravity by a master storyteller. -K.M. Allman
 The Seattle Bungalow: People and Houses 1900-1940
by Janet Ore (University Of Washington)
For those who idolize the bungalow, love a bit of local history, or want to know more about their surroundings, this is the book for you. Ore strips down the bungalow to rebuilds it. She recreates the daily lives of the lower middle class who originally inhabited the bungalows sprinkled throughout Seattle. If you enjoy looking beneath wallpaper and paint, you will surely love this bit of history. -T. Taylor
 The Boy Who Loved Words
by Roni Schotter
illus. by Giselle Potter (Schwartz & Wade)
The Boy Who Loved Words is perhaps the best children's book published this year. This is a must for any child on your list who is in the early primary years and discovering the joy of words and language. The words literally float through the pages of this story about Selig, the boy who collects words, stuffing them into his pocket, sock, sleeve, hat, wherever. Of course the humor and illustrations will leave all readers "aflutter." -T. Taylor
 The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)
There are special places built into the hearts of children and those who are young in spirit for books such as this, like tiny bookshelves that house the things we most love. Edward Tulane is a self-absorbed china rabbit that loves no one other than himself. He is separated from the girl who loves him most, and must spend years of loss and humility to learn the value of love and redemption. Lessons abound in this heartbreakingly beautiful book, which deserves to become a classic. -C. Joyner
 Flotsam
by David Wiesner (Clarion)
A curious young beach-goer develops a roll of film from an old underwater camera that washes ashore, and the mysteries of reality and dimension reveal themselves through the astonishing film. The photos disclose an underwater world: brilliant mechanical fish, a luxurious sitting room hosting a squid family, giant tortoise transporters, starfish islands—all previously unfathomable. The last picture in the roll offers a glimpse of all those lucky enough to have found this particular flotsam. Perfectly illustrated, these pages will make you a believer too. -J. Schurk
 Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship
by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff and Dr. Paula Kahumbu (Scholastic)
What do you get when you put a dislocated baby hippo in the same wildlife sanctuary as a lonely 130-year-old tortoise? Friends! Owen, the hippo, had been rescued from the ocean after a tsunami took the rest of his family. Arriving alone and scared, he found refuge in the thing that most resembled a hippo—Mzee. Though usually grumpy, the tortoise eventually warmed up to the tot, and they've been inseparable ever since. A real lesson in making your own family, wherever you end up. -J. Schurk
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Alexandra Fuller
