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March Staff Picks

Every month we let you know what we’ve been reading and our monthly recommendations. You’ll get to see new titles with fabulous reviews from the Bay Books team. We’re sure you’ll love these fantastic books just as much as we do. We recommend a wide range of genres and themes. So get ready to explore more books!

Becky’s Staff Pick 

Real Americans by Rachel Khong

Rachel Kong weaves three generations, from three different perspectives, into a story of how we become who we are in a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance. Lily, an American born to two Chinese immigrants, is struggling in her career pursuits after college when she meets and falls in love with a white American pharmaceutical heir who is trying to live independently of his family’s wealth. The two struggle with cultural, racial and socio-economical differences in a twisted tale of complicated relationships. Can two people from such different backgrounds make a relationship work? What part do their parents play? And what about children? Along the way you get a taste of Maoist China and the cultural revolution, ethics in science research and an exploration of class and cultural differences. The question is: what does it mean to be a real American? Well worth the read, especially in this time when we look closely at cultural differences.

Tina’s Staff Picks

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

This story follows one family on their annual Cape Cod vacation, during which sandwiches are made, secrets are revealed, and the matriarch, Rocky, must face the realities of her future. Catherine Newman’s writing is so funny and sharp; I loved her insights into motherhood, marriage, and the passage of time (menopause, etc.!). Although it’s set during summertime, this would be the perfect feel-good read for any season.

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe

​In this roving, erudite debut study, Goffe, a professor of literary theory and cultural history at Hunter College, traces the attitudes and beliefs that undergird today’s climate crisis back to the racist, extractive systems of thoughts developed by European colonizers in previous centuries. Beginning with Jamaica and Hong Kong, the ancestral homes of her parents, she ruminates on the relationship between capitalist exploitation, racist hierarchies, Indigenous knowledge, and the land. In poetry and associative prose, which leaps from one idea to another in an ever-widening gyre, she surfaces searing details from around the world that exemplify how the landscapes of colonized countries became ‘primitivized” in the same measure as the inhabitants became ‘otherized’ and how these new racial hierarchies were embodied in one of the colonial ear’s most important extractive industries: the harvesting of bird guano as fertilizer. Much of Goffe’s narrative involves pointing out how deep these systems of thought run in foundational Western texts and ideas: for instance, in a canny reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s lyrical writing on how guano could bring agricultural abundance to the Great Plains, she notes that Emerson naturalized the fact of guano’s importation, thus ‘exemplifying how nature writing is often about colonial ambition.” This scintillating study bursts with keen insights and connections. This is another very cool perspective on why these things happened and are still happening. 

How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

If you’ve ever read Grady Hendrix, be prepared for the bizarre turn on the normal. Be prepared to start feeling uncomfortable as details unfold. In this book by Hendrix, a woman returns home to bury her parents only to find a spectacularly terrifying blast from the past waiting for her. Puppets. Yes, their parents were puppeteers, and the house is full of them and they seem to be looking back and looking for something. Read this horror story with a big, fluffy blanket! 

Wendy’s Picks

Odder by Katherine Applegate

This poignant tale from New York Times best selling author, Katherine Applegate is about a free-spirited otter, and was inspired by a real-life program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in CA, that pairs orphaned otter pups with surrogate mothers. Readers follow Odder’s journey through daredevil playfulness, struggle, bravery and resilience. Written in free verse and enhanced by scientific facts and sweet black and white illustrations, this is a wonderful juvenile fiction story that is accessible and engaging for young animal lovers who are reading at the 4th grade – early middle school level. 

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