From Under the Reading Lamp

Co-owner and Editor Tara Huck shares: Option B: Acing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant I received Option B: Acing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Knopf, 2017)by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant in a used-book exchange last month. It came with a glowing recommendation. I was skeptical. However,…

Co-owner and Editor Tracey Koach shares: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robertson For over a month I have been a volunteer at a local elementary school reading with third-grade students. I enjoy sharing my love of reading books with everyone, especially young readers. Last week, one of the other volunteers, a retired teacher…

Co-owner and Editor Peggy Turnbull shares: Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc by David Elliott, a Young Adult Novel-in-Verse Voices is a novel-in-verse for young adult readers, a genre new to me, in which an author writes a series of poems to develop a book-length plot. In Voices, poems tell the story of…

Co-owner and Editor Tracey Koach shares: To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage When my calendar is full and life seems chaotic, I look for respite in a book. Normally, I will read nonfiction science books. Science has always been my happy place. However, my favorite reading material is rarely considered literature. So, when…

Co-owner and Editor Tara Huck shares: The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb I am drawn to authors who have a proven track-record of masterful writing, which often means I turn to the bestseller lists. Also, I return to authors who I have read in the past. I discovered Wally Lamb’s writing in 1992 when…

Editor and Engagement Manager Sophia Dramm shares: There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak I read There Are Rivers in the Sky a year ago and I still think about it. The book tells the stories of three characters: a boy in Victorian-era London (think: “Please, sir, may I have some more?”), a…

Co-owner/Editor Tracey Koach shares: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach One of our local indie bookstores had posted on Facebook a quote from Anna Quindlen that said, “Every reader, I suspect, has a book like this somewhere in his or her past, a book that seemed to hold within it, at…

Co-owner/Editor Tara Huck shares: Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid Taylor Jenkins Reid became a favorite author after I first discovered her through a book club pick of her novel Daisey Jones and the Six a few years ago. I went on to read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Malibu Rising,…

Editor and Engagement Manager Sophia Dramm shares: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston One of my favorite genres is narrative nonfiction. This is when a nonfiction story is written with a compelling, easy-to-follow narrative, making it feel like you’re reading a novel, often even a thriller. The Boys in the Boat,…