Pick of the Month

I generally don't widely recommend books. Maybe because I never want to loan them out. Or maybe because - while I like seeing what employees at the local store recommend - I was once highly entertained by a comedian who mocked the fact that people take literary suggestions from someone making $5.75 an hour. But I just finished a great book called Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. It's a book I avoided for a few years because I had the wrong impression of it. Like many people apparently, I really wasn't interested in reading a book about a hermaphrodite. But it's an epic novel about so much more. It's about the narrator's grandparents who flee The Turkish burning of Smyrna in 1922, the immigrant experience in the United States, and white flight from decaying American cities. It's also about adolescence generally and serves as a little bit of a love letter to Detroit (where, some of you may know, I recently wandered about for a few hours while searching of a clerkship - the experience provided a small amount of recognition of the geography). It's almost three novels in one, with an enchanting short story about the narrator's present life weaved in between.

Anyway, Employee Kolzman places his recommendation card in front of a large stack of paperbacks. Do as you like.