Six Odd and Obscure Books You May Love
The Cartel by Wayne Grady
“Grady takes eight classic stories, by such writers as De Maupassant, Chekhov, Kafka, Roth, and Grass, and does his own riffs on them. After each one, he explains why he chose that story, what he thinks about it, and why he took the approach he did. How do stories work? This is partly how. And yes, odd.”
-Margaret Atwood
The Librarian’s Way by Molly Guptill Manning
A biography of Ray Trautman who distributed nearly half a billion books to troops during WWII. He championed free access to reading for all Americans.
“A Librarian’s War reminds us that books anchor us to our humanity. In war, that anchor is worth more than we can measure.” -Book Post
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Greene
Books on Tuberculosis are rare. The author connects the history of Tuberculosis with who we are today.
“Definitely an eye-opening read, and I’m glad I picked it up.” -Michelle M.
Gilgamesh translated by Simon Armitage
A four-thousand-year-old epic. One of the world’s oldest surviving works of literature, originating in ancient Mesopotamia. It follows King Gilgamesh and his beloved Enkidu through friendship, adventure, and profound loss.
“I seem very drawn towards projects that appear impossible at the outset. I knew I’d never be able to learn the original language and that I’d need to work with a scholar. A kind of Gilgamesh and Enkidu joint enterprise! I guess there was a sense of adventure - as in the poem itself. Poetry as archaeology and exploration.”
- Simon Armitage
Fierce Attachments: A Life with Cats by Rosemary Sullivan
“It’s charming, insightful, and – for cat lovers – pretty darn irresistible, but what exactly is it? Part autobiography, part love story, part In Memoriam to two cats, plus a bunch of stuff about cats and their extraordinary sensory perception powers and their reasons for doing what they do that I (cat person over many years) did not know.” - Margaret Atwood
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
“It was like traveling through time and around the world. It starts in Rome with a bunch of Cardinals deciding who they are going to assign to the American Southwest to oversee an enormous diocese of tens of thousands of square miles after the Mexican-American war. What follows is a strange book unlike any I’ve read before. It has no huge scenes, but every page is somehow riveting and beautiful.” - Ryan Holiday