Staff Picks languages Books

Don't Miss

Visit Our Stores

Dont Read Poetry A Book About How to Read Poems

Stephanie Burt

Stephanie Burt is a talented poet who is really, really good at talking about poems, as she does in this friendly, informative guide to the pleasure of reading and interacting with individual poems, and by extension with “poetry.” With chapters like “Feelings,” “Wisdom,” and “Community,” this book provides a fresh approach that will inform those newer to poetry and will delight everyone.
Recommended by Marianne T

Whereas: Poems

Layli Long Soldier

Challenging, but wonderfully revolutionary in both content and form. Long Soldier shreds and scatters the language of American colonialism, combining the scraps with shards of Lakota and sculpting them onto the page with a masterful freedom.
Recommended by Kai B.

Essential Neruda Selected Poems

Pablo Neruda

This is a wonderful introduction to and a beautiful distillation of the work of Nobel Prize–winning poet Pablo Neruda. His poems express such loving, honest, awestruck attention to the world with dizzying beauty and powerful clarity of vision. This book spans forty years of Neruda's career and features translations by multiple scholars and poets, which provides a really interesting sense of his poetics. I love that this edition includes the... (read more)
Recommended by Claire A.

Next of Kin My Conversations with Chimpanzees

Roger Fouts

This book will break your heart and then put it back together again.
Recommended by Milo D.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan

If you liked the TV show Lost, you might like this book. It features a host of interconnected characters, not always honorable, but definitely entertaining.
Recommended by Maya M.

Exercises in Style

Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau's brilliant 1947 classic could have just as easily been titled Achievements of Ingenuity. Written more than a decade before he would cofound the "Workshop of Potential Literature" (Oulipo), Exercises in Style is one of the preeminent examples (and executions) of constrained writing. Beginning with a short account of an entirely inconsequential event, Queneau tells the same episode 99 times, but each... (read more)
Recommended by Jeremy G.

Many Subtle Channels In Praise of Potential Literature

Daniel Levin Becker

Ebullient to those already under the Oulipian spell and likely befuddling to those ingenuity intolerant, Daniel Levin Becker's Many Subtle Channels is a fascinating, engaging, and well-researched account of Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (translating loosely as the "workshop for potential literature"), a collective of mostly French writers and mathematicians that employ(ed) a range... (read more)
Recommended by Jeremy G.

Selected Poems Poemas Selectos

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Chicano/Apache poet Jimmy Santiago Baca served six years in federal prison (where he learned to read and write) before eventually winning the International Poetry Slam championship. He has since gone on to compose poems, short stories, novels, essays, and a screenplay. Selected Poems (a bilingual edition featuring poems translated into Spanish alongside their original English) is an absolutely devastating collection. Drawn from seven... (read more)
Recommended by Jeremy G.

Living Language Dothraki A Conversational Language Course Based on the Hit Original HBO Series Game of Thrones

Living Language

This language kit is the newest essential for any Game of Thrones enthusiast. If you've ever heard a friend or loved one proclaiming "my sun and stars" or "moon of my life," then this is exactly the holiday gift item they need. Hajas!
Recommended by Aubrey W.

Don't Miss

Browse by Subject

Browse by Staff Member