Feel-Good Reads
Books that will lift your mood!
January 19, 2021
eBooks
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Gabrielle Zevin
When his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A. J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life.
News of the World
Paulette Jiles
In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her family in San Antonio.
Self-Inflicted Wounds
Aisha Tyler
On the wildly popular podcast ‘Girl on Guy,’ comedian and actress Aisha Tyler asks her guests to recount moments from their lives when they’ve done something boneheaded, ill-conceived, dangerous, or just plain stupid–to themselves. In Self-inflicted wounds, Aisha turns the lens on herself–recounting her most egregious mistakes–to hilarious result.
Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury
12-year-old Douglas Spaulding lives a magical childhood in his Illinois hometown during the summer of 1928.
The Princess Bride
William Goldman
A tale of true love and high adventure, pirates, princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts-The Princess Bride is a modern storytelling classic. As Florin and Guilder teeter on the verge of war, the reluctant Princess Buttercup is devastated by the loss of her true love, kidnapped by a mercenary and his henchman, rescued by a pirate, forced to marry Prince Humperdinck, and rescued once again by the very crew who absconded with her in the first place. In the course of this dazzling adventure, she’ll meet Vizzini-the criminal philosopher who’ll do anything for a bag of gold; Fezzik-the gentle giant; Inigo-the Spaniard whose steel thirsts for revenge; and Count Rugen-the evil mastermind behind it all. Foiling all their plans and jumping into their stories is Westley, Princess Buttercup’s one true love and a very good friend of a very dangerous pirate.
Audiobooks
Confessions of a Domestic Failure
Bunmi Laditan
There are good moms and bad moms, and then there are hot-mess moms. Introducing Ashley Keller, career girl turned stay-at-home mom who’s trying to navigate the world of Pinterest-perfect, Facebook-fantastic, and Instagram-impressive mommies but failing miserably. When Ashley gets the opportunity to participate in the ‘Motherhood Better’ bootcamp run by the mommy-blog-empire maven she idolizes, she jumps at the chance to become the perfect mom she’s always wanted to be. But will she fly high or flop?
Keep Me Posted
Lisa Beazley
Convincing her sister, a flighty Manhattan wife and mother, to reconnect through old-fashioned letters instead of social media, Sid, a big-hearted ex-pat living in Singapore, is horrified when their private correspondence finds its way onto the Internet and goes viral.
Anansi Boys
Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman returns to the territory of his masterpiece, American Gods, to once again probe the dark recesses of the soul. God is dead. Meet the kids. Fat Charlie Nancy’s normal life ended the moment his father dropped dead on a Florida karaoke stage. Charlie didn’t know his dad was a god. And he never knew he had a brother. Now brother Spider is on his doorstep—about to make Fat Charlie’s life more interesting . . . and a lot more dangerous.
Loving Day
Mat Johnson
Warren Duffy has returned to America for all the worst reasons: his marriage to a beautiful Welsh woman has come apart; his comic shop in Cardiff has failed; and his Irish-American father has died, bequeathing to Warren his last possession, a roofless, half-renovated mansion in the heart of black Philadelphia. On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: in the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter and she thinks she’s white. Warren sets off to remake his life with a reluctant daughter he never knew and a haunted house and history he knows too well. In their search for a new life they struggle with an unwanted house and its ghosts, fall in with a utopian mixed-race cult, and inspire a riot on Loving Day, the unsung holiday that celebrates interracial love.
The Antiques
Kris D’Agostino
On the night of a massive, record-breaking hurricane, George Westfall, an upstate New York antique store owner and father of three, lays dying. As his wife Ana seals up the storefront, their adult son Armie hides from the outside world as he always does, immersed in woodwork and thoughts of the past. In New York City, Armie’s older brother Josef, a sex-addicted techie, is fighting to repair his broken relationship with his daughters. And out in Los Angeles their sister Charlie’s career as a Hollywood publicist is crumbling. For the Westfalls, Murphy’s Law is in full effect. Their patriarch dies as the storm hits town, flooding the store and ruining Josef’s business negotiations. Charlie is desperately trying to set a movie starlet straight, while handling her son’s expulsion from preschool and her wayward husband. And Armie, who’s still in love with his high school crush Audrey, can’t even muster the courage to leave his childhood home. Only when the children reunite to sell their father’s beloved heirloom painting do they discover their real fortune lies elsewhere.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: We solve the whole crime. We find the whole person. Phone today for the whole solution to your problem (Missing cats and messy divorces a specialty). Douglas Adams once again boggles the mind with a completely unbelievable story of ghosts, time travel, eccentric computer geniuses, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the end of the world, and-of course-missing cats.
How to Be a Woman
Caitlin Moran
Though they have the vote and the Pill and haven’t been burned as witches since 1727, life isn’t exactly a stroll down the catwalk for modern women. They are beset by uncertainties and questions: Why are they supposed to get Brazilians? Why do bras hurt? Why the incessant talk about babies? And do men secretly hate them? Caitlin Moran interweaves provocative observations on women’s lives with laugh-out-loud funny scenes from her own, from the riot of adolescence to her development as a writer, wife, and mother. With rapier wit, Moran slices right to the truth–whether it’s about the workplace, strip clubs, love, fat, abortion, popular entertainment, or children–to jump-start a new conversation about feminism.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Garth Stein
Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher’s soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe’s maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver.
My Man Jeeves
P. G. Wodehouse
The story of the relationship between Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves.
Movies
A Man Called Ove
Ove, a grumpy, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing block association rules and visiting his wife’s grave, decides to give up on life until an unlikely friendship develops with a boisterous young family that moves in next door.
Life is Beautiful
A charming but bumbling waiter who’s gifted with a colorful imagination and an irresistible sense of humor has won the heart of the woman he loves and has created a beautiful life for his young family. Then that life is threatened by World War II.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The classic story by James Thurber, about a daydreamer who escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of fantasies filled with heroism, romance, and action. When his job along with that of his co-worker are threatened, Walter takes action in the real world embarking on a global journey that turns into an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined.
Amelie
Amélie is a young woman who had a decidedly unusual childhood; misdiagnosed with an unusual heart condition, Amélie didn’t attend school with other children, but spent most of her time in her room, where she developed a keen imagination and an active fantasy life. Despite all this, Amélie has grown into a healthy and beautiful young woman who works in a cafe and has a whimsical, romantic nature. She decides to step into the lives of others around her to help them out.
Music of the Heart
A single mother with little more than talent and the determination to make a difference teaches violin to students in a tough inner-city neighborhood. Even after a decade of ever-growing popularity and countless success stories teaching music to inner-city youth, Roberta Guaspari finds her program may be cut.
Comics
Herding Cats: A Sarah’s Scribbles Collection
Sarah Andersen
With characteristic wit and charm, Sarah Andersen’s third collection of comics and illustrated personal essays offers a survival guide for frantic modern life: from the importance of avoiding morning people, to Internet troll defense 101, to the not-so-life-changing futility of tidying up. But when all else fails and the world around you is collapsing, make a hot chocolate, count the days until Halloween, and snuggle up next to your furry beacon of hope.
Adulthood is a Myth
Sarah Andersen
Adulthood is a myth confronts head-on the horrors, anxiety, and awkwardness of modern adult life. From the agony of holding hands with a gorgeous guy to the yawning pit of hell that is the wifi gone down to the eye-watering pain of eating too-hot pizza because one cannot stand to wait for it to cool down, Sarah fearlessly documents it all. Like the work of fellow Millennial authors Allie Brosh, Grace Helbig, and Gemma Correll, Sarah’s total frankness on extremely personal issues such as body image, self-consciousness, introversion, relationships, and bra-washing makes her comics highly relatable and consistently hilarious.