Myriad Part 4
Explore 'Myriad Part 4'—your ultimate guide to a curated list of must-read books. Discover top picks, hidden gems, and literary treasures in this diverse collection.
Book
Nickel and Dimed
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.
Book
The Princess Bride
by William Goldman
A writer's views on life and art are revealed in his effort to edit the children's classic that shaped his literary ambitions.
Book
The Woman in the Wall
by Patrice Kindl
Anna is nearly invisible. At seven, terrified of school, shy little Anna retreats within the walls of her family's enormous house, and builds a world of passageways and hidden rooms. As the years go by, people forget she ever existed. Then a mysterious note is thrust through a crack in the wall, and Anna must decide whether or not to come out of hiding. Blending fantasy and reality, this is a novel readers will not forget. An ALA Best Book for Your Adults.
Book
Tam Lin
by Pamela Dean
This Scottish-based tale for adults offers a pregnant heroine who must rescue the man who seduced her in the woods from his captor, the Fairie Queen
Book
The Fox Woman
by Kij Johnson
In a novel set in medieval Japan, a young fox kit becomes enamored with a Japanese nobleman and will stop at nothing, even magic and sorcery, to win his heart.
