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Handpicked by Simon
October 2018
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Heartbreaker : a novel by Claudia DeyA daughter living in a cult community where everyone thinks it is perpetually 1985 frantically searches for her mother, who was the first non-resident to join the town and who may have become the first person to leave.
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News of the world by Paulette JilesA live news reader traveling the antebellum south is offered $50 to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, back to her family in San Antonio in this new novel from the author of Enemy Women. (historical fiction).
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Exploded view by Sam McPheetersIt's 2050, and LAPD Detective Terri Pastuzka has drawn the short straw with her first assignment of the new decade. Someone has executed one of the city's countless immigrants, and no one (besides the usual besieged advocacy groups) seems to much care. Even Terri herself is already looking ahead to her next case before an unexpected development reveals there's far more to this corpse than meets the eye. And a lot already meets the eye. In a city immersed in augmented reality, the LAPD have their own superior network of high-tech eyewear--PanOpts, the ultimate panopticon--allowing Terri instant access to files and suspects and literal insertion into the crime scene using security footage captured from every angle the day the murder occurred. What started as a single homicide turns into a string of unsolved murders that tie together in frightening ways, leading Terri down a rabbit hole through Los Angeles's conflicting realities--augmented and virtual, fantastically rumored and harrowingly true--towards an impossible conclusion.
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Greenland, one of the last truly wild places, contains a treasure trove of information on Earth's early history embedded in its pristine landscape. Over numerous seasons, William E. Glassley and two fellow geologists traveled there to collect samples and observe rock formations for evidence to prove a contested theory that plate tectonics, the movement of Earth's crust over its molten core, is a much more ancient process than some believed.
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Bending the frame : photojournalism, documentary, and the citizen by Fred RitchinThe older paradigm for photojournalists was to simply record events, with the hope--and frequently the expectation--that people and their governments would be moved to respond to the injustices pictured; as witnessed by the impact of certain images during the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. Given evolving media and political climates, however, including the billions of images now available online from all kinds of sources, the purpose and effectiveness of media, in particular of visual journalism, has been called into question. Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and Citzenship, by author and critic Fred Ritchin, addresses the new and emerging potentials for visual media to impact society. Ritchin examines the historical and contemporary uses of photography and related media to inspire social change.
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Things that bother me : death, freedom, the self, etc. by Galen StrawsonGalen Strawson might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly; he is a true essayist, in other words. With Montaigne Strawson also shares a particular fascination with the elastic and elusive nature of the self and of consciousness. Drawing on literature and life as much philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder.
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The dead eye and the deep blue sea : a graphic memoir of modern slavery by Prum VannakIn a testament to the lives of Cambodian fishermen trapped on boats in the Indian Ocean, the author, a survivor of human trafficking, shares his ordeal through raw, vivid, detailed illustrations, which serve as some of the first records of what happens to the men and boys who end up working on fishing boats in Asia.
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Fruit of Knowledge : The Vulva Vs. the Patriarchy by Melissa BowersFrom Adam and Eve to pussy hats, people have punished, praised, pathologized, and politicized vulvas, vaginas, clitorises, and menstruation. In this graphic nonfiction book, drawn in chunky, punky pen, Swedish cartoonist Liv Strömquist traces how different cultures and traditions have shaped women's health and beyond. Her biting, informed commentary and ponytailed avatar guides the reader from the darkest chapters of history (a clitoridectomy performed on a five-year-old American child as late as 1948) to the lightest (vulvas used as architectural details as a symbol of protection). Like humorists Julie Doucet (Dirty Plotte), Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant), she uses the comics medium to reveal uncomfortable truths about how far we haven't come.
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Spinning by Tillie WaldenA graphic memoir recounts the years Walden spent competitively figure skating, before her developing love of art and first girlfriend causes her to question the insular world of figure skating.
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The hunting accident : a true story of crime and poetry by David L. CarlsonIt was a hunting accident; that much Charlie is sure of. That's how his father, Matt Rizzo--a gentle intellectual who writes epic poems in Braille--had lost his vision. It's not until Charlie's troubled teenage years, when he's facing time for his petty crimes, that he learns the truth. Matt Rizzo was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face, but it was while participating in an armed robbery. Newly blind and without hope, Matt began his bleak new life at Stateville Prison. In this unlikely place, Matt's life and very soul were saved by one of America's most notorious killers, Nathan Leopold Jr., of the infamous Leopold and Loeb.
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