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Commuter Picks V: It’s time to practice your reading and riding!
Commuter Picks says welcome back for our FIFTH edition! By now, this blog has recommended 25 treasures from eager readers like you! When I take two trains and a bus to work, I ask fellow commuters to name a favorite book. If it’s in the DCPL catalog, I read it and recommend it. Today’s selections are all about exploring deep roots: of real human connection, dinosaur discoveries, urban fiction, hollow parental love and fabulous fungi. Want to share your favorite books? If we don’t cross paths on my commute, check out DCPL’s great new People’s Picks feature here and here.
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“That book saved my life,” said a resident concierge heading home on the Green Line from an overnight shift. “I’m getting choked up right now.” Daniel Black’s imagined letters from an estranged father to his son are based closely enough on the author’s life that you don’t know where memoir ends and novel begins. He delivers a master class in empathy for anyone whose parents only “wonder how in the world to fix you.” He doesn’t need fixing; he is a writer at the top of his powers as a scholar, a teacher, a poet, a storyteller and loving son.
Read! This! Book! Now! More than a million people have discovered this award-winning New York Times bestselling fanfare to fungi, and thanks to a commuter on the Red Line, you will too. Wait, did I just say FUNGI? Yep. Merlin Sheldrake, the ultimate fun guy of fungi, celebrates these “metabolic wizards” with mind-blowing facts and symphonic language. “They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.” And did I mention the fabulous fungi photography? Feast your eyes!
Does this book really have the line: “Her self-esteem was as low as a worm’s in the mud?” Yep. Hey, you want Shakespeare, read Romeo and Juliet. You want to discover where urban fiction pioneer Omar Tyree planted his literary flag? Open this bestseller and watch sassy and stunning Tracy Ellison grow from age six to 17. The commuter who told me this is his favorite book is in good company. Readers praise it for seeing themselves in the struggle for young selfhood. The Flyy Girl trilogy also includes Tyree’s best-known work, For the Love of Money, and Boss Lady.
On a quick Blue Line trip, a commuter and I discovered uncanny connections. So, it’s only fitting that she recommended this book. Noted commentator David Brooks was “determined to learn the skills that go into seeing others, understanding others, making other people feel respected, valued, and safe.” He is refreshingly honest about how clueless he was and makes a convincing case that anyone can—and should—learn these essential skills. "In every crowd there are Diminishers and there are Illuminators,” he says. Illuminators “shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up.”
“It’s fair to wonder how much of the history of life on this planet would remain unknown today had Barnum Brown never escaped the life that was set out for him on his family farm,” writes bestselling author David K. Randall. But Brown did escape and found the 60-million-year-old remains of T. rex, "the greatest predator that nature ever produced." Randall’s panoramic tale of Brown’s discovery proves that the most delicious line between two points is a far-flung adventure. Meander through the good, the bad and the ugly of science, museums and the unspeakably rich people who connect the two.
About the Author
Barbara Cornell is a Library Associate at the William O. Lockridge Bellevue Neighborhood Library. She grew up in Michigan, where the public library across the street from her house was a first declaration of independence. Since then, she has lived in five countries and always finds a home in books. She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Washington, DC.