Staff Picks Book Reviews
Porchlight is a company filled with voracious readers—talented, creative individuals who know books, and who excel at moving them. Whenever we can, we like to do that by telling you about the books we’re reading.
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Blog / Staff Picks
A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest
Book Review by Liam Dooley
Charlie J. Stephens' new book explores the inner life of a child finding escape from the harsh realities of life in a small Oregon town in the natural world around them.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Other People's Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End
Book Review by Liam Dooley
In her deeply personal exploration of grief, Lissa Soep examines how the words left behind by our departed loved ones continue to influence us.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes
Book Review by Liam Dooley
Slow Noodles is a powerful memoir that illustrates how food can preserve a Cambodian refugee's connection to her past and inspire hope for a better future.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant
Book Review by Liam Dooley
Fernanda Eberstadt sheds light on the lives of academics, artists, and activists throughout history, inspiring readers to learn from their stories of love, loss, and resistance.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—And How to Fix It
Book Review by Liam Dooley
If technology has made it easier to work more effectively, why do so many still feel overwhelmed? To uncover the answers, Malissa Clark guides readers through the landscape of modern workaholism.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Tell Me When It's Over
Book Review by Liam Dooley
Pediatrician and vaccine expert Paul A. Offit provides an informative and accessible guide to navigating our changed world in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Blog / Staff Picks
I Am Only a Foreigner Because You Do Not Understand
Book Review by Gabbi Cisneros
Despite the book's theme of being misunderstood, I find the sparse text of this graphic novel to make the author's feelings very understandable.
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Blog / Staff Picks
On an Ebbing Seafoam Tide
Book Review by Gabbi Cisneros
Alannah Radburn unabashedly shares pieces of herself that others might hide from strangers but that we should be more open about: the overly arduous fight for justice that women endure, the strength it takes to leave a bad relationship, a queer love story without stigma.
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Blog / Staff Picks
Without Children
Book Review by Gabbi Cisneros
Validating of my own experience as a soon-to-be-married woman who does not have or want children, Peggy O'Donnell Heffington’s new book is also very eye-opening to the difficulties and importance of motherhood and caretaker-hood, bringing much-needed empathy.
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Blog / Staff Picks
The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession
Book Review by Jasmine Gonzalez
For how important teachers are in the development of our children, teaching remains one of the most under-resourced, underpaid, and underappreciated professions in the United States. This is what writer—and substitute teacher—Alexandra Robbins explores in her latest book, The Teachers.
Categories: staff-picks