Kelly

Current obsessions: fiction from Australian authors like Alice Pung, Sophie Cunningham and Richard Flanagan; and the poetry of Dorothy Parker and Edna St. Vincent Millay

Fiction: In Hovering Flight, The Brooklyn Follies, Unaccustomed Earth, History of Love, anything by Xiaolu Guo or Audrey Niffenegger

Non-fiction: The Professor and the Madman, The Art of Travel, anything by Bill Bryson or Jan Morris

Graphic novels: not exactly categorized as graphic novels, but I am in love with absolutely anything Shaun Tan or Emma Magenta creates.

Children's: Goodnight Moon, Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew, Tomie DePaola, Dr. Seuss

Recent staff picks:

Wanting by Richard Flanagan. Australian writer Flanagan has crafted a historical novel that is terrifically engaging, a definite page-turner. He weaves a passionate tale about desire that links Charles Dickens’ London and Aboriginal settlements in faraway Tasmania.  It was a pleasure to get caught up in the drama, a gripping story packaged in a small hardcover format with wonderful tattered pages, which added to the reading experience.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Brooklyn is a beautifully written novel, a quick and engrossing read. It’s the story of Ellis Lacey, who leaves Ireland for NYC in the 1950s, traveling alone, but with a job and lodgings waiting for her upon her arrival in the US. There are reasons she leaves, and reasons she eventually returns to her native Ireland — the reader is vividly invited into both these worlds, and left to contemplate the meaning of home, as this recent NYT Sunday Magazine article about Colm Toibin explores. My first introduction to Toibin leaves me craving more of this excellent writer’s work. (I’m going to try Mothers and Sons next.) And it leaves me yearning for all the romance of Friday night dances, nylons and pretty dresses, Ebbets Field & Coney Island in the summertime! 

Favorite places in Greenpoint: The Diamond, Champion Coffee and walking over the Pulaski Bridge to get here.