Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)

Recommended by Wilma Feliciano, Professor of Spanish
Call Number: PQ7298.15.S638 C66 1993


Set during the Mexican Revolution, Tita, the protagonist, starts a revolution for women's rights from the kitchen, heart and soul of the family. Her culinary wizardry unleashes uncontrollable forces with a mix of magical realism and quixotic characters. Intoxicating flavors of fantastic lust, grief, jealousy and passion permeate this sensual fanciful, earthy and sublime story that decries the limited options open to Mexican women. Poignant conclusion: Tita breaks tradition for herself and future generations with an ironic weapon: dishes that are sensual, ancestral and explosive.

Little Otik [videorecording]

Recommended by: Valerie Mittenberg, Librarian
Call Number: Media/Video PN1997 .O74 2002

From the city that brought us the Golem, comes another frightful tale of monstrous progeny. A childless couple and their nosey neighbors dwell in a cramped old apartment building in a city that could be Prague before the opening of the iron curtain. Oppressed by his wife’s obsessive maternal longing, the husband unearths a tree stump and presents it to her as a surrogate baby. The wife receives the stump with mad glee, and soon nurses it to life. Written and directed by surrealist Jan Svankmajer, Little Otik is an un-sanitized fairy tale that will fascinate and horrify you.

Bless Me Ultima / Bendíceme, última

Recommended by: Heather Whalen Smith, Librarian
Call Number: Stacks: PS3551.N27 B58 1972
Audio Book: Media/Audio: PS3551.N27 B58 2004c

In Spanish
Bendíceme, última
Call Number: Stacks: PS3551.N27 B5818 1994

Bless Me Ultima is the coming of age story of a six year old Chicano boy, Antonio Luna y Marez, growing up in New Mexico during and directly after World War II. The story starts with the arrival of Ultima, a curandera, to the Luna Marez household. Throughout the book, Antonio is faced with a number of tragedies, experiences the conflicting hopes of his parents and wrestles with issues of faith and doubt.

Not so quiet: stepdaughters of war by Helen Zenna Smith

Recommended by: Matt L., Student
Call Number: Stacks PR6031.R45 N6 1989

This novel, originally published in 1930, tells the story of Nellie Smith and her fellow ambulance drivers in the Volunteer Aid Detachment during the First World War as they transport wounded soldiers from the French battlefield, as well as find a way to cope with the agony, filth, exhaustion, and brutality of war they witness on a daily basis. At the same time, Nellie, the story's narrator, struggles with her family and their peers back home, who are extremely enthusiastic about the young women and their participation for the war effort. Anyone looking for a compelling war story should definitely check it out.

Orsinian Tales by Ursula K Le Guin

Recommended by: Jill S., student
Call Number: PS3562.E42 O7

While Ursula K Le Guin is well known for her science fiction writing (particularly Earthsea). This, however, is a collection of short stories that take place in the fictional eastern European nation, Orsinia. Each story follows an every day working person from the middle ages up to the 1960s. Her writing reminds me of Kafka or Anton Chekhov. It is a book that is probably overlooked by Earthsea fans since it is not science fiction or fantasy and also overlooked by those that don't like science fiction or fantasy since it is written by Ursula K. Le Guin, but both groups should read it!

Evening in the palace of reason: Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment by James R. Gaines

Recommended by: Stephan Macaluso, STL Librarian
Call Number: Stacks ML410 .B1 G28 2005

The legend is told in nearly every music appreciation class: King Frederick II (“The Great”) of Prussia—himself an amateur composer and flautist—practically falls over himself upon hearing that the great J.S. Bach has arrived to pay Frederick a visit. Gaines paints this meeting in much darker tones. History reveals Frederick to be a substantially more brutish, if not brutal, character. And so his challenge to Bach (that he compose a counterpoint to an unmelodic theme of Frederick’s) can be seen less as pleasurable Enlightenment discourse, and more as a stare-down. Bach’s response: The Musical Offering, a complete set of canons and fugues on the seemingly-impossible theme.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Recommended by Colleen Lougen, STL Librarian
Call number: Stacks PS3563.C337 R63 2006

Wonder what the world would be like after a nuclear winter? McCarthy skillfully creates a post-apocalyptic wasteland where a father and son are left to scavenge in a dark and barren land. Transcends any book that I have read in awhile. It will haunt you for many months to come.. Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.