Books

Miss Snell isn’t as fun as other third grade teachers. Come the last day of school before the Christmas holiday, she holds a regular class day. There are no treats to eat and no presents. What can the students learn from their disappointment? What are the larger lessons for the rest of us? Yvette Benavides and Peter Orner discuss “Fun with a Stranger” by Richard Yates.

Every year, we ask NPR staff and book critics to share their favorite titles in our annual Books We Love guide. Here are 8 fiction picks that were standout stars.

The village of Faha in Ireland in 1962 is the setting of the latest novel by Niall Williams, Time of the Child. The protagonist, Dr. Jack Troy, is a quiet, serious man who lives alone with his eldest daughter — and a world of regret. One December day, a baby is left in his care — and will make him re-think every silence and secret he’s ever clung to. Yvette Benavides shares a review of the novel “Time of the Child” by Niall Williams.

Prayers, grace, words of gratitude. Doesn’t it seem like Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday for poetry? Yvette Benavides, the host of 'Book Public,' shares some of her favorite poems about giving thanks.

On this episode of "The Lonely Voice," Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss the story “Love” by William Maxwell. A man recalls his fifth-grade teacher—a young woman who was kind and thoughtful. She becomes the center of a very hard lesson the protagonist learns in childhood about the impermanence of things.

An award-winning children's picture book, Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola, turns 50. The story about a grandma witch with her magically full pot of pasta still finds new audiences — even on TikTok.

The Art of Jacques Pépin celebrates the master chef and 99 of his all-time favorite recipes, paired with his signature artwork spanning the last 60 years.

Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss two stories by Lucia Berlin— "Panteón de Dolores" and "Emergency Room Notebook, 1977." In these stories we find family dysfunction and tragedy set against the backdrop of another country and its culture and rituals — or in a hospital, another place with its protocols and routines. Except within all that is expected in these settings there is something totally new to make us pay attention to situations and people to whom we might never have given a second thought.

Ada Limón served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Her latest book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, is a retrospective spanning two decades and also includes 21 new poems. The book is the poet's invitation to meet the world with an open mind — but also an open heart. She encourages us to embrace our "strangeness" and our tenderness, and to bear witness to the arc of all we know with hope and compassion.

The book tells the story of a library assistant who goes viral online by accident.