Rachel's Picks

Rachel is the co-owner of The Book Table with her husband, Jason.

Check out what else Rachel has read and what she's currently reading at: Rachel Weaver's book recommendations, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (read shelf)

 

 

Mr. Fox (Hardcover)

$20.75
ISBN-13: 9781594488078
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Riverhead Hardcover, 9/2011
Helen Oyeyemi is the jazz soloist of storytelling. Each chapter is a surprising, original new riff on the same motifs: men and women, love and violence, creativity and creation, all told through the somewhat distorted lens of the fairy tale. At turns funny, disturbing, and heartbreaking, Mr. Fox is so good that as I read it, I simultaneously wanted to race to the end, pause to savor every word, and flip back to reread from the beginning.

Turn of Mind (Hardcover)

$18.99
ISBN-13: 9780802119773
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Atlantic Monthly Press, 7/2011
Turn of Mind is that rare literary gem that also happens to be a gripping, compulsive, page-turning read. Like Room by Emma Donoghue, it is a remarkable feat of point-of-view, in this case chronicling the inner workings of a once-brilliant orthopedic surgeon whose mind is slowly--and then rapidly--faltering in the grip of Alzheimer's. Central is the question of whether or not she might have murdered her best friend and neighbor, but the murder-mystery premise is housed in a thoroughly original framework, and just as compelling--and heartbreaking--are the gymnastic leaps and turns of the narrator's thought processes as she degenerates further into illness.

Day for Night (Paperback)

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9780316077576
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books, 4/2011
Though each chapter of this brilliant novel is written from a different point of view, it's impossible not to become instantly absorbed in each character's story. Indeed, this is a story about storytelling, and Reiken is clearly a master of it. Near the end of the novel, one of our narrators writes, "Perhaps the meaning of the story is that you must look deep rather than far if you want to unlock any of the secrets of the universe, that once unlocked a secret loses its power unless a part of it is withheld." So goes the storytelling in Day for Night, the secrets slowly being unveiled as each narrator contributes his or her small, inward-looking piece of it, some willfully withholding parts, others incapable of looking deep enough to see all of the parts. Eventually, most of the parts of this story about trauma, family, and rebirth do fall into place, though not without ambiguities. But according to another narrator, "You must learn to trust these ambiguities. This is perhaps the most important thing I know."

Pym (Hardcover)

$18.99
ISBN-13: 9780812981582
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Spiegel & Grau, 3/2011
Part slave narrative, part Gulliver's Travels, this strange book is an important new addition to the literary contextualization of race in America, not to mention a funny page-turning adventure. The novel is largely structured in the slave narrative tradition, but add to that the fact that it is also partly a fictional academic study by a scholar (footnotes and all), and what you have is a an ingeniously self-aware book that performs a high-wire act between the bounds of fiction and literary criticism. A cerebral, fantastical, and thoroughly clever book that had me nodding my head, laughing, and gasping along the way.

The Tiger's Wife (Hardcover)

$19.99
ISBN-13: 9780385343831
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House, 3/2011
I don't often read books just because of buzz, and when I do, I generally give myself permission to stop at any time if I'm not feeling it. This book didn't sound like "my kind of book" and through about two-thirds of it, while I agreed it was a great book, I still wasn't fully converted. Then, in the final third of the book, it was like I joined a cult. And 24 hours after finishing the book, I have no desire to leave that cult. Honestly, I think I could read this book 10 times and still find something new that I missed before, and I have in fact, spent the last 24 hours going over it in my head, finding parallels in the text that I had missed. This book has one of the most powerful, complex, and bittersweet endings I have ever read. I still don't really know how to describe what it is that Téa Obreht does in this book, just that at the end, I was bursting with energy and amazement at her breathtaking creation.

$10.40
ISBN-13: 9780385340892
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Dial Press Trade Paperback, 10/2007
The sweetest, strangest, and saddest love story ever written. Quirky, funny, and filled with brilliant observations--the sort that make you elbow your nearest neighbor every five minutes to read out loud to them. It's one of the only books I've ever read that gave me the urge to turn back to the beginning and read it again as soon as I finished it.

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9780375708466
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 9/2010
This book had me laughing unreasonably just minutes before making me sob, just minutes before suffocating me with the weight of grief, before slowly lifting me back on my feet again, and finally even laughing again. And that was just in the last 50 pages. Aside from the mood swings at the end, this book contains the most delightfully astute, clever, gorgeous writing I think I have ever seen. You can feel a playfulness in the language, through Moore's character's quips and linguistic foibles and gorgeously detailed descriptions. This book feels so real, its characters so accurate, you're sure you've not only met them before, but have known them all along.

Never Let Me Go (Paperback)

$12.00
ISBN-13: 9781400078776
Availability: Not in stock. Can usually be ordered within 1-5 days.
Published: Vintage, 3/2006
Ishiguro is a rare magician of a writer, whose prose is so deceptively simple and yet haunting. This book broke me and made me sob at the end. In a good way.

$11.15
ISBN-13: 9780618871711
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books, 6/2007
Forget that this is a graphic novel if that's not your thing. This is some of the best writing period that you'll ever read.

Await Your Reply (Paperback)

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9780345476036
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ballantine Books, 6/2010
So what are you going to do with your life now that Lost is over? Read this book. And then make all of your friends read it so you can have feverish discussions about it afterward. This book is a marvelous maze of plot twists that will leave you guessing until the end, and unlike Lost, I promise all of your questions will be answered This book is the best of all worlds, a page-turner that doesn't sacrifice good writing--in fact, this is some of the most exquisite writing you'll ever see.

The Unnamed (Paperback)

$11.19
ISBN-13: 9780316034005
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Reagan Arthur / Back Bay Books, 9/2010
In just over 300 pages, Joshua Ferris manages to write a story both epic in scope and microscopic in detail. A marvelously executed, heartbreaking love story.

Big Machine (Paperback)

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9780385527996
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Spiegel & Grau, 3/2010
To preface this review, I'll just say that I'm not good with the supernatural. I never read fantasy, sci-fi or horror novels, and I'm also an atheist. However, the fact that I still wanted to pick up this book after reading the description, and the fact that I can't stop thinking about it now that I've read it says a lot in my book. LaValle is doing a lot of different things here, from urban realism to allegory, from philosophical novel to mystical fantasy, and I would say that LaValle is about 95% successful. And those parts he's successful at?--he's 200% successful. I've mostly broken my college habit of marking up my books, but it was very hard to resist the urge with this one. There's so much to chew on here, and if I were a college English professor, I would go out of my way to build a course around this book. I particularly love the way the book looks at faith and doubt, not as opposites, but as a system of checks and balances to keep religious fanaticism at bay.

Mr. Peanut (Paperback)

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9780307454904
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 4/2011
You know that feeling when, in the middle of the day, you remember something that recently happened, only to realize that it was just a dream you had the night before? That's how reading this book feels. It's rife with moments when you are overcome with deja vu, like going in and out of a dream state. I was blown away by the subtle, clever craftsmanship of this novel and its raw emotional impact. By a mile the best book I've read so far this year.

The Anthologist (Paperback)

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9781416572459
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Simon & Schuster, 7/2010
The narrator of this book is by turns funny, vulnerable, frustrating, charming, haughty, brilliant, and pathetic. In other words, he may be the most lovable, authentic character ever to appear in American literature. This book continues to jangle around in your head for weeks after reading it, much the way a particularly catchy metered stanza might.

The Dream Songs (Paperback)

$15.20
ISBN-13: 9780374530662
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 4/2007
Berryman occupies a special place in my brain. He is quite simply one of the most startlingly original poets of the 20th century, and the fact that he isn't taught right up front in literature classes alongside T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath makes me terribly sad.

White Teeth (Paperback)

$12.76
ISBN-13: 9780375703867
Availability: Not in stock. Can usually be ordered within 1-5 days.
Published: Vintage, 6/2001
Rarely is a book so entertaining and hilarious, and yet dense and sprawling enough that you could write your dissertation on it. This book is simply brilliant.

$11.99
ISBN-13: 9781400030323
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 3/2007
I hate to say it, but Inspector Van Veeteren kind of leaves my beloved Kurt Wallander in the dust. This book is plotted to within an inch of its life, dense with clues to puzzle over. And Nesser doesn't sacrifice character development or good writing to move the plot forward. The characters are vividly painted without adding too many overwrought side plots the way so many mystery writers do. Nesser puts the mystery front and center, but manages with very little padding to develop a cast of funny, likeable, and wholly believable characters. Hakan Nesser has, with this book, put himself front and center in my lineup of favorite mystery writers.