Lucky Socks

Author: Carrie Weston

Title: On Monday morning, Kevin put on his red socks.

Why you should read this book: An upbeat little tale about childhood superstition made more enticing to the young through the plot device of a pair of yellow underpants. Kevin's apparently natural clumsiness appears to diminish when he wears his yellow socks, but he can't find the auspicious garments on Field Day, and has to make do with yellow underpants instead. Although he fumbles and bumbles his way through the games, he still comes out ahead, attributing his success to his underwear.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You are a professional skeptic who has spent years browbeating children out of their bizarre delusions.

Becoming a Woman: A Biography of Christine Jorgensen

Author: Richard F. Docter

First line: On February 27, 1988, 150 cross dressers, many of them in shimmering floor-length formals, downed a cocktail or two in the gilded banquet room of Chicago's Ramada O'Hare Hotel awaiting Miss Christine Jorgensen, indisputably the world's most celebrated transsexual.

Why you should read this book: Although not the first person to use hormone therapy and surgery to effect a transformation of gender, in 1952 Jorgensen was the first to go public with her story, to insist upon a medical model for her experience, to provide material for voluminous newspaper articles and press conferences, or to take her act around the world with nightclub booking where she sang, "I Enjoy Being a Girl," and bantered with the audience. From her childhood as the lanky George Jorgensen through her transformation in Denmark, her career as an entertainer and the final years of her life, Docter takes the reader on an honest journey, acknowledging Christine's foibles as well as her triumphs. An interesting, easy-to-read academic-quality biography, with bibliography and many source notes as well as details from personal interviews and old documents.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't hold with any of those newfangled perversions in the pursuit of happiness and just assume that your creator wants people to be miserable.

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

Author: Brenda Maddox

First line: The family into which Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born on 25 July 1920, stood high in Anglo-Jewry.

Why you should read this book: Intensely researched and details, this book recounts the life of the extraordinary scientist, Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray evidence formed the basis of Watson and Crick's discovery of the shape of the DNA molecule, and whose other research into coal and viruses advanced the understanding of many other molecules. From her childhood as an "alarmingly clever" girl who did math problems for fun, to her war work on coal and carbon, her two-year stint working on DNA at King's College, her later work on viruses, and her untimely death from cancer at thirty-seven years old, Maddox paints a clear picture of Franklin's strengths, weaknesses, joys, and defeats. This is an intelligent, uncompromising biography that seeks to build on facts to dispel the positive and negative mythmaking that has transformed Rosalind into a caricature for some and a goddess for others.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You make a practice of borrowing others' research without their knowledge or consent.

Make Way for Ducklings

Author: Robert McCloskey

First line: Mr. and Mrs. Mallard were looking for a place to live.

Why you should read this book: The original children's classic, this was one of the first Caldecott Medal books, and still the most popular of the early winners. Like many intellectuals, the Mallards decide to settle in Boston, laying their eggs on the banks of the Charles River. When Mrs. Mallard decides to take her brood to the Public Gardens, no thoroughfare is too busy for a determined waterfowl, and with the help of Boston's finest, Mrs. Mallard, along with Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack are able to safely cross the street.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You don't even brake for pedestrians.

A Promise Is a Promise

Authors: Robert Munsch & Michael Kusugak

First line: On the very first nice day of spring Allashua said, "I'm going to go fishing. I'm going to go fishing in the ocean. I'm going to go fishing in the cracks in the ice."

Why you should read this book: For children who love creepy morality tales, this is story about a girl who breaks one promise and finds she has to keep another, much more terrible, promise. Allashua, a little Inuit girl, lies to her mother and falls under the power of the Qallupilluit, hideous child-stealing monsters who live under the cracks in the sea ice. When she sells out her siblings to save her life, her mother must outwit the creatures to save her family.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Your precious muffins would never tell a lie, and you don't want them to get any ideas, either.

Night Shift

Author: Stephen King

First line: Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.

Why you should read this book: Twenty classic King stories, many of which were made into movies, some of which didn't even suck. A few of these pieces are literary, without a hint of voodoo, psychosis, monsters, demons, or inanimate objects coming to life for horrific purpose, and the rest of them contain some combination of the above. By turns creepy and comedic, this book showcases the author's ability to construct well-drawn, interesting characters and then turn their lives into the ninth circle of Hell.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You accidentally saw thirty seconds of The Shining and you're still having nightmares twenty years later.

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

Author: James Watson

First line: I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood.

Why you should read this book: Chief among the earliest works of science as dramatic thriller, Watson's story of his youthful pursuit of fame in the form of a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA is a fast-paced tumble seen through the eyes of an energetic and self-confident American enthralled with the culture of Cambridge and its profusion of pretty girls as well as his own burgeoning understanding of life. Acknowledging the contributions of his partner, Francis Crick, as well as their colleagues Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, and their great rival, the famous Linus Pauling, Watson illustrates every step in the furious race to the prize. Although Watson is opinionated and often critical of ideas, individuals, and attitudes that rub him the wrong way on a personal or scientific level, his voice is honest in that it reflects the prejudices and beliefs of the man he was in the 1950s, when he conducted the research.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Delicate readers may feel the weight of Watson's prodigious ego crushing their very souls as they read.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Author: Elinore Pruitt Stewart

First line: Dear Mrs. Coney,--Are you thinking I am lost, like the Babes in the woods?

Why you should read this book: In 1909, a young, widowed single mother, seeking a cure for the grippe and the rigors of city life, relocates to Wyoming intent on demonstrating that women can homestead. With a clear head and a joyful heart, she throws herself into the rigors of country life, delighting in the natural beauty that surrounds her, while endearing herself to every sort of neighbor. Her letters to an old friend back home are written with spectacular description, fine humor, and an overall sense of the pioneer spirit that drives Stewart to overcome hardship and embrace love as she follows her dreams.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You belong to an outlaw polygamist Mormon sect. Also, some casual use of the n-word along with a few playful stereotypes of different European peoples.

Dreams from My Father

Author: Barack Obama

First line: A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news.

Why you should read this book: The author, raised by his white mother and grandparents in Hawaii and Indonesia, spends his life searching for his identity and chasing the shadow of his black father, with whom he spent only a single month in his childhood and then scarcely reconnected with shortly before the Old Man’s death. Through angry adolescence to his determined years as a community organizer in Chicago, he offers a thoughtful, optimistic, and realistic view of race, family, and society, picking up pieces of his own beliefs and history as he goes. Finally, on a trip to his father’s native Kenya, he meets his extended family, learns to reconstruct his father’s story, and comes to understand the trials of his past, joy in his present, and hope for his future.

Why you shouldn’t read this book: You don’t enjoy intelligent, finely-crafted memoirs that speak with warm candor about the structure of society and the construction of identity in an world of inequality and greed.

365 Penguins

Author: Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet

First line: On New Year's Day, at nine o-clock in the morning, a delivery man rang our doorbell.

Why you should read this book: An unknown person with a very strange sense of humor begins to send the family penguins, one every day, for an entire year. In all the craziness of a house full of penguins, young people probably won't even notice that they're actually getting a full lesson in multiplication as the penguins add up to larger and larger numbers. This is an adorable, engaging story with a satisfying, happy ending and an ecological message tacked on to a great math book.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You would have refused delivery.