Symposium Recommends: What's Hot at the Bookstore this Week

Looking for some book recommendations? There’s no better person to ask than a bookseller. They know what’s hot, what’s not and what should be but hasn’t gotten buzz for some reason.

Anne Marie Keohane, owner of Symposium Books in East Greenwich and Providence, is a pro at offering suggestions and she has agreed to offer a weekly list of recommendations for children, young adults and adults here on the Patch.

For more information, visit Symposium Books’ website.

Children’s:
Laugh-Out-Loud-Jokes for Kids, Rob Elliott.
The laughter won’t stop with Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids. With hundreds of one-liners, knock knock jokes, and tongue twisters, this book is sure to have kids rolling on the floor! These good, clean jokes are perfect for the young comedian in your family.

The Book With No Pictures, B.J. Novak
Here is how books work: Everything the words say, the person reading the book has to say. No matter what. What follows is an uproariously raucous time, with readers being forced to utter nonsense words (“blork,” “bluurf”) and phrases that will have young listeners in stitches (“And my head is made of blueberry pizza.”). Bold typefaces, lots of white space, and some color make this one of the nicest books we’ve seen for children.

Young Adult:
Papertowns, John Green.
Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers. This titles is coming out as a movie later this year. Get yours read beforehand!

Insurgent (Divergent Trilogy, Book 3), Veronica Roth.
One choice can transform you—or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves—and herself—while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. Also coming out shortly as a movie.

New/Popular in Fiction:
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins.
“There’s nothing like a possible murder to take the humdrum out of your daily commute.”—Cosmopolitan

If you liked Gone Girl, you’ll love this.

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr.
Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Norwegian by Night, Derek Miller.
This is the Read Across Rhode Island title for 2015. The author event will be held in May at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet, be sure to have it read by then! (Check our The Rhode Island Center for the Book http://ribook.org/rari/ for more information).

“A soulful, humane, and sparklingly funny novel. Spend some time with Sheldon and company in the Scandinavian wilderness and you just might make peace with your god, your ghosts, and yourself.” — Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story (which we also stock, btw).

The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah.
The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

New in Non-Fiction:
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson.
It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gwande.
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.

Gawande’s masterful exploration of aging, death, and the medical profession’s mishandling of both, is his best and most personal book yet. (Boston Globe)