Shea's Bookshelf

How do I even begin to tell you about The Book Thief by Markus Zusak? Do I start by gushing about the title? If you were perusing the aisles of your favorite book store, don’t tell me this one wouldn’t catch your eye, make you pause, have you drag your fingertips down the spine, whisper the name on your lips. Do I tell you the flash synopsis, that the story is about a little German girl caught in the middle of WWII who steals books like her life depends on it? But that tells you nothing…

The Henna Artist is a beautiful story of sisterhood, entrepreneurial spirit, and female agency. The drama lies in the relationship between Lakshmi and her younger sister, Radha; two generations of women raised in trauma whose lives intersect in heartbreaking ways. Lakshmi is a henna artist by trade, weaving her way into high society as she weaves promises of the future in her henna. Her clients adore her and are astounded by her heart. They say she has the gift of prophecy. But even she couldn't see what would happen when the teenage sister she never knew arrives on her doorstep…

Wild Boar in the Cane Field follows the story of young Tara who, orphaned as a baby, is raised by the proprietress of a tiny village in Pakistan and her servant. Though there are strict customs regarding a woman’s life, Tara is brought up by two women who have seemingly found a loophole to live their lives by their own standards…

Nancy Drew was the series I couldn’t put down when I was younger. While it wasn’t the book that got me into reading, it was the book that kept me reading and reading and reading until my mom told me I had to read at least one other book in between each Nancy Drew story…

This is the 21^st century The Scarlet Letter. This is the pigmented Unwind. This is The Handmaid’s Tale with agency. This is Fahrenheit 451 if the firemen were painters and V for Vendetta if Evie was V. I’m pretty sure when Jonas denounced his role as The Giver, he took to the Starless Sea, finding his good fortune and raising his granddaughter, Hannah…

Something sweet and light for our December holiday and the heck of a year we’ve had in 2020. Do yourself a favor and read John Green. Is it solitary boy meets dark and quirky girl in every book? Yes. But you won’t care because Green’s writing is easy to fall into. It’s like eating cotton candy. Simple. Lovely. Go get your blanket and curl up with your cup of steaming spearmint tea tickling your nose and dive into his works…

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is about Lia Lee, a Hmong child who Western Medicine has deemed epileptic, but whose parents are adamant that she has merely had a run in with an evil spirit who has caught her soul. As the mother explained, ‘Your soul is like your shadow…Sometimes it just wanders off like a butterfly and that is when you are sad that’s when you get sick’…

Thad Carhart felt a kinship with the piano and brought his love for the instrument into adulthood. His time living in Paris, France, allowed him the opportunity to reignite his passion. Walking home one day, he stumbled across the private workshop/studio (in France, called “Ateliers”) of Desforges Pianos. But trying to gain access to Desforges was like trying to find the opening to Narnia in the back of the wardrobe—one was only granted access if worthy… Pick up your copy at Crawford's Books and let yourself slip into the sweet, nurturing feeling of this journey.

Check out Ready Player One by Ernest Cline just in time for the release of his sequel, Ready Player Two! Ready Player One is set in a dystopic future where the world is a mess, so everyone escapes into the free virtual reality of the OASIS (sound eerily familiar?). In the OASIS, users can be whoever or whatever they want to be. When the creator of the OASIS dies…

I picked up this wonderful book on Independent Bookstore Day (see blog post Book Recommendation: Authors of Color on 9/1) at our last stop of the d...

If ever there was a body of people who were ghosts, stolen from their land by someone else’s war, stripped from their identity in the guise of assimilation, living on the peripheries of our notice, voiceless and visible only as a mild disturbance, it is refugees. Vu Tran, who immigrated from Vietnam as a young girl, in seeking to define a refugee, calls herself an orphan, a child who is pitied for her heroism and thereby receiving undeserved admiration, an actor who is interpreting a script, a ghost who is caught in the ‘space between real and imaginary…

Being that Thanksgiving is a national holiday here in the US, it only seemed right that the first set of voices I highlighted were those of Native American authors…Eating Fire, Tasting Blood is an anthology of essays edited and written solely by Native American authors. Besides illuminating me to the history I never learned and introducing me to a new set of writers, this anthology provides a bibliography at the end of each essay which provides guidance towards further reading. Moore has catalogued the anthology into six categories…