The Round House

Written by: Louise Erdrich

First line: Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation.

Why you should read this book: Joe Coutts's childhood comes to an end the summer his mother is brutally assaulted by an unidentified assailant on land that may or may not fall under the jurisdiction of tribal law. Distressed by his mother's trauma and retreat from the world and frustrated by the callous inefficiency of the justice system, Joe takes on his own investigation of the crime, aided explicitly by his three best friends and implicitly by his Ojibwe family and community and their history, shared and secret, old and new, and often hindered by his own adolescent sensibilities. Powerful, revelatory, upsetting, and important, this book shines a light on inequality, hypocrisy, the betrayals of the American government toward indigenous people, the power of unbroken tradition, and questions of morality in an immoral world. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: The plot turns on the violent rape and attempted murder of an indigenous woman. 

Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France

Written by: Naomi Lewis and Angela Barrett

First line: You know that in bygone times the Bretons made lays of the happenings in their land.

Why you should read this book: Over 800 years ago, French and British nobility went crazy for these fantastic stories of brave knights and fair maidens and bold romance and strange magic. Written in the twelfth century, but ostensibly based on older oral musical tradition, these "lays" offer a fairy tale picture of a nearly forgotten aesthetic of courtly love, which faithful knights should offer to beautiful ladies, without expectation of reciprocation (but with interesting results when it was returned). Including ancient examples of tropes known to modern readers (an adventure set in King Arthur's court, a werewolf hell bent on vengeance, twins separated at birth) and offering salacious details of forbidden intimacy, tragic deaths, and joyful reunions, these twelve historical tales still resonate with readers ready to step outside standard fare. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a jealous old man who married a beautiful young woman and then locked her away from the world but are still convinced she's betraying you. 

A Green Glow on the Horizon: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors

 Written by: Dawn Burns

First line: This is the story I'm learning to tell.

Why you should read this book: Beneath the structure of these surreal fictions, linked by the premise that  roadside tourist attractions leave bruises upon those who don't have the luxury of simply passing through the amusement, lies a series of hard truths about parents and children, and the disconnect and betrayal that comes from irrational adult beliefs that are too rigid to accommodate "sensitive" children. Metaphorically examining religious trauma through a uniquely American fairy tale lens, these stories showcase the reluctantly expressed pain of those (usually daughters) who feel diminished in the face of others' (usually their mother's) obsessions with strange, unyielding ideals that do not serve unbelieving children. From Roswell, New Mexico to Pedro's South of the Border in South Carolina, Iowa's Corn Palace, Arizona's The Thing to The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, and even stranger settings, surprising locations lead to surprising maladies, anger, introspection, and sometimes, recovery, and redemption.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You know your teenager is wrong about their own identity, needs, and beliefs, and if you just keep ignoring what she wants, she'll get better. 

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

Written by: Alison Arngrim

First line: The Los Angeles County Fair is probably not the first place you'd go if you were seeking to be forgiven of your sins, but I have a tendency to find strange things in strange places. 

Why you should read this book: If you were a kid in the '70s and '80s, you probably watched Little House on the Prairie and if you watched Little House on the Prairie, you probably hated that bitch, Nellie Oleson, and considered her the epitome of evil and deserving of any and all abuse heaped upon her by Laura and the show runners, but Nellie Oleson wasn't a real person; she was a conglomerate character brought to life by an earnest, clever, and dedicated child actress named Alison Arngrim, who spent her real life youth taking the lumps earned by a character she portrayed with such natural joy and intensity that people seemed to think Nellie was real and Alison didn't exist. This buoyant and fast-paced memoir tells all about what was going on behind the scenes of the popular, long-running show (Michael Landon never wore underwear, every adult in the cast and crew was drunk at all times, that wig was incredibly painful to wear, and the real bitch was the girl who played Mary) along with her own heart-wrenching stories of abuse and loss. Arngrin is candid and humorous, even when discussing the most painful memories, and illustrates how she managed to survive child stardom relatively unscathed and pivot into adult success in the entertainment industry without compromising her values and beliefs at all. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Trigger warning for candid discussions of child sexual abuse/incest including a somewhat disconcerting confrontation with the abuser in adulthood. 

Grimericks

Written by: Susan Pearson and Gris Grimly

First line: Dear Reader, please lend me your ear

Why you should read this book: A cute little gothy kids' book featuring twenty moderately amusing limericks about various creepy subjects (ghosts, ghouls, witches, and so on). The rhymes are clearly just vehicles for the delightfully demented illustrations of black cats with mismatched eyes dead little girls with birds nesting in their hair, and so on. Perfect for big kids with dark senses of humor. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't think there's anything funny about death. 

The Neverending Story

Written by: Michael Ende

First line: This inscription could be seen on the glass door of a small shop, but naturally this was only the way it looked if you were inside the dimly lit shop, looking out at the street through the plateglass door.

Why you should read this book: If you think you know The Neverending Story because you saw the movie eleventy billion times in the eighties, you do NOT know The Neverending Story, because that movie ends less than halfway through this novel and the author hated it so much that he sued to have his name removed from the film. In the original version, Bastian does more than hide in an attic and scream the Empress's new name; naming the Empress is his passage into a magical land (here called Fantastica) where his use of AURYN helps him overcome every one of his numerous personality flaws, transforming him into a kid who wouldn't steal an antique book from an old man or hide from his bullies all day. It's a much more expansive and intelligent story than the movie shows, and Bastian is a much more flawed hero who requires much more from Atreyu, Falkor, the Childlike Empress, and the land of Fantastica than they ever needed from him.

Why you shouldn't read this book: The narration reminds us, over and over and over, that chief among Bastian's flaws (and he's a pretty flawed person: canonically, his only redeeming characteristic is his imagination) is that he is fat and bow-legged. 

Le Pater: Alphonse Mucha's Symbolist Masterpiece and the Lineage of Mysticism

Written by: Thomas Negovan

First line: Religion is symbolism

Why you should read this book: Alphonse Mucha's 1899 masterpiece doesn't merely illustrate the Lord's Prayer, it illuminates its universal meaning through the use of detailed symbolism, elevating it from a Christian staple to a pantheistic truth about the nature of spirituality. Negovan's massive (12"x16") tome not only reproduces these limited edition plates in stunning accuracy, but also includes preliminary sketches for every illustration as well as copious historical and cultural details situating Mucha's work in time and place. A complex and beautiful book about a complex and beautiful piece of art. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Now that I've read it, I don't know what to do with it, as it doesn't fit on my any of my bookshelves. 

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

Written by: Virgina Roberts Giuffre

First line: Picture a girl sitting alone on a curb, her face stained with tears. 

Why you should read this book: This is the brutal and hard-to-read memoir of one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims, who spent several years of her childhood being repeatedly sexually assaulted and trafficked by the notorious billionaire. Giuffre speaks with frank honesty about her history of abuse, beginning with her father and his friend, continued at the facility for troubled youth where she was sent when her psychological issues overwhelmed her parents, and furthered by a different rich man who picked her up by the side of the road before she eventually found employment at Donald Trump's Mar-a-lago resort and was collected by Ghislaine Maxwell. Sometimes, but not always, naming names, Giuffre recounts her painful truths in excruciating details, not only the crimes committed against her by wealthy, powerful men, but her escape from their orbit and her quest to bring her abusers to justice. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very heavy and almost everything that happens in it is terrible. 

Strange Animals

Written by: Jarod K. Anderson

First line: Green died and then he didn't. 

Why you should read this book: Following a very near-death encounter with a city bus, depressed and disillusioned city-dweller Green hauls himself off to Appalachia to reconnect with nature and encounters a natural world beyond the perception of most mortals. Following a terrifying encounter with not one, but two cryptids his first night outdoors, he finds himself apprenticed to Valentina Blackwood, presumably the world's oldest cryptonaturalist, and immersed in pursuit of a deadly killer. Green can see what others cannot see, so he can do what others cannot do, and with Valentina's help, he is determined to protect the natural world.

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's a great fantasy story, but I think I enjoyed this author's nonfiction work more. 

A World Worth Saving

Written by: Kyle Lukoff

First line: "A___! It's time to go! Are your shoes on?"

Why you should read this book: This powerhouse YA novel follows A, a fourteen-year-old trans masc kid whose progressive parents want to feminize him, forcing him to attend weird, cult-like anti-trans family meetings in a church, even though they're Jewish. When Yarrow, one of A's club friends, is taken away after an outburst at the meeting, A feel compelled to investigate, and is surprised to make the acquaintance of a trash golem, whose power helps him uncover an awful conspiracy: demons who feed off human misery and other demons who feed off trans kids. Suddenly, A is on the run with a girl from his meeting, meeting other trans kids who live on the street, uncovering new friends and new enemies, with the clock counting down for him to save Yarrow and return home. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: This is among the greatest Jewish YA fantasy novels you'll ever read; if you can't handle queer content, that's your problem.