Explore Booksellers has some offbeat suggestions for holiday reading

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Explore Booksellers in Aspen recommends some political satire, a story built around a giant wooden crate and a late World War II adventure.

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From the publisher: An original and hilarious satire of both our political culture and those who rage against it, “The Book of Ayn” follows a writer from New York to Los Angeles to Lesbos as she searches for artistic and spiritual fulfillment in radical selfishness, altruism, and ego-death.

From Jason Jefferies, general manager: There are few authors who are more divisive than Ayn Rand, and Lexi Freiman exploits this fact with gleeful abandon. The protagonist of her story is canceled for writing an unflattering article about opioid addicts in the New York Times (her article points out that many addicts have missing teeth, and her father is an orthodontist…), and when she flees a party where she is shamed by her former editor, she stumbles upon an Ayn Rand tour group on the sidewalks of New York City. 

Ayn becomes our protagonist’s new muse — both an act of rebellion against those who have shunned her and an act of genuine curiosity — and her research on the virtues of selfishness results in the creation of an internet avatar that goes viral (Ayn Ram) and a pitch for a sitcom.  “The Book of Ayn” is a funny read and a fun read that is sure to help alleviate any pent up holiday-induced stress. 

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From the publisher: A tolerable, ordinary life: an adequate, if boring, freelance job; reliably irritating video calls with your sister; half-hearted plans for the future (a writing residency, a child); and, in the middle of your half-furnished apartment, an enormous crate. Unopened, delivered days ago, and getting in the way.

What’s inside is your estranged mother, and her arrival brings to a head the tentative motions you’ve made to examine the past and the subtle fissures in the life you’ve built. Semi-ordinary happenings take on an otherworldly cast when you look at them sideways, but nothing is stranger, in this place far from home, than the tenuous bonds of family that hold us together, or don’t.

From Emma Murray, bookseller: You think “The Delivery” is going to be about the giant wooden crate that’s been sitting out for days in the hallway of our narrator’s apartment. But really, the story — translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell — is about summoning the courage to open everything we’d rather keep shut. The nameless narrator, a freelance writer from Colombia living in Buenos Aires, does all she can to avoid the crate.

But important matters always find ways to emerge on their own, don’t they? By the day’s end, the crate has broken itself down and the narrator’s estranged mother is sitting on the sofa and complaining about being cold. What follows is a cerebral quest for belonging in a realm that has, up until then, been defined by futility, reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh and Joan Didion. As García Robayo’s third book to appear in English, “The Delivery” takes readers even deeper into the author’s Latin American roots.

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From the publisher: August, 1943. Fourteen-year-old Massimo is all alone. Newly orphaned and fleeing from Rome after surviving the American bombing raid that killed his parents, Massimo is attacked by thugs and finds himself bloodied at the base of the Montecassino. It is there in the Benedictine abbey’s shadow that a charismatic and cryptic man calling himself Pietro Houdini, the self-proclaimed “Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican,” rescues Massimo and brings him up the mountain to serve as his assistant in preserving the treasures that lay within the monastery walls.

But can Massimo believe what Pietro is saying, particularly when Massimo has secrets too?

From Jack Goodrich, guest of Explore Booksellers: “The Curse of Pietro Houdini” is a wonderful novel, full of heart and humor and stunning characters. Derek B. Miller’s prose is deeply compelling, and he layers in quite a bit of detail to make it all the more realistic. For fans of historical fiction, this is a great read. It’s exciting, but never strays too far away from a historical character drama, and is a unique perspective on the back half of World War II. 

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to a wide audience. I am not the biggest fan of historical fiction, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It is certainly one of my top reads from this year.  Those who pick it up will have a great time with it.

Type of Story: Review

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