Books

Something of Myself Rudyard Kipling Kipling last book, unfinished at his death, guarded about his private life and remarkably open about craft, including the Daemon he credited for his best work. 1 recommender Song of Solomon Toni Morrison Toni Morrison's novel follows a man nicknamed Milkman Dead as he leaves Michigan to trace his family's roots and finds a buried history. 2 recommenders Songs in Ordinary Time Mary McGarry Morris Mary McGarry Morris's novel follows a struggling single mother in 1960s Vermont drawn into the orbit of a charming con man. 1 recommender Sourdough Robin Sloan A San Francisco robotics engineer inherits a sourdough starter and finds her way into a whole new world. 1 recommender Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions Maurizio Isabella The 1820s revolutions in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, treated as one connected movement. 1 recommender Southern Honor Bertram Wyatt-Brown Why men in the antebellum South were prepared to kill over an insult, taken seriously as a system. 1 recommender Speak to Win Brian Tracy Tracy spent decades on stage before writing this. Public speaking treated as a learnable mechanic rather than a nerve to be conquered. Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov on a Russian childhood that ended in exile, and on the tricks memory plays while you are writing it down. 1 recommender Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946 W. Averell Harriman 1 recommender Spectacular Things Beck Dorey-Stein One sister is bound for the national football team; the other has spent her life making that possible. 1 recommender Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History From the Puritans to Donald Trump Molly Worthen American history retold through charisma, from Puritan preachers to Trump, with technology mattering less than expected. 1 recommender Spiritual Enlightenment Jed McKenna A blunt, iconoclastic book stripping spirituality of comfort and dogma, presenting enlightenment as seeing through illusion rather than achieving bliss. 1 recommender Stag Dance Torrey Peters A novel and three stories about desire and transition, including one set in a logging camp. 1 recommender Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Big Tale from a Little Cave Drew Beckmeyer Two rock formations grow toward each other across geological time. It is a love story and an honest account of cave formation, and the romance takes a hundred thousand years. 1 recommender Stamped Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi Jason Reynolds remixes Ibram X. Kendi's history of racist ideas in America for younger readers. Stamped from the Beginning Ibram X. Kendi Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning history of racist ideas in America. Standard Deviation Katherine Heiny A husband, his exhaustingly charming second wife, his first wife, and a club of origami obsessives. 1 recommender Starling House Alix E. Harrow In a dying Kentucky coal town, a woman takes a cleaning job at the cursed house everyone else avoids. 1 recommender Starry Messenger Neil deGrasse Tyson What the view from space does to earthbound arguments: Tyson turns the cosmic lens on politics, war, race and truth Starship Troopers Robert A. Heinlein Powered armour and interstellar war, wrapped around an argument about who has earned the vote. 1 recommender Starsight Brandon Sanderson Spensa goes undercover among the very aliens who have been bombing her people, and finds the enemy is not what she was told. Start With Why Simon Sinek People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it: the Golden Circle idea that launched a thousand mission statements Staying Tuned Daniel Schorr Sixty years of reporting, from Moscow and Watergate to NPR, by a correspondent who was never the insider people assumed. 1 recommender Steelheart Brandon Sanderson Ordinary people woke up with superpowers and promptly became tyrants. David saw Steelheart bleed once, and has spent his life planning to make it happen again. Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson Built from over forty interviews with Jobs himself, an unsparing portrait of the genius and the cruelty in equal measure Stigma Erving Goffman How people marked as different manage the way others see them, from the sociologist of everyday life. 1 recommender Still Born Guadalupe Nettel Two friends who swore off motherhood, and a novel that refuses to resolve the ambivalence. 1 recommender Still Lives Maria Hummel An artist who paints murdered women vanishes on her opening night, in a mystery with the art world's appetites in its sights. 1 recommender Stillness Is the Key Ryan Holiday The scarce resource is not information but the stillness to think, and it is harder than it sounds. Stinger Robert R. McCammon A dying Texas border town is sealed inside an alien sphere, with a relentless bounty hunter loose in its streets. 1 recommender Stolen Lives Malika Oufkir Malika Oufkir's memoir recounts twenty years her family spent imprisoned in the Moroccan desert after her father's failed coup. 1 recommender Stone Mattress Margaret Atwood Nine tales about people old enough to have outlived their own reputations, and what they decide to do about it. Stoner John Williams 2 recommenders Stones from the River Ursula Hegi Ursula Hegi's novel follows a dwarf named Trudi through a German town across both world wars, watching neighbors turn toward Nazism. 1 recommender Stories of Your Life and Others Ted Chiang Ted Chiang's collection of eight science fiction and fantasy stories, including the novella behind the film Arrival, in the 2016 Vintage edition. 1 recommender Storm of Steel Ernst Junger The First World War told by a German officer who found it terrible and, disconcertingly, exhilarating 1 recommender