Staff Picks: Jessica Dartnell’s Favorites
Howdy! I’m Jess, manager of Premium Literacy Sales on Penguin Random House’s Special Markets team. Because my role is focused on literacy, most of what I read professionally are children’s board books and picture books through young adult novels. But when I’m reading for my own personal enjoyment, I’m an adult fiction junkie – gravitating especially to literary, rom-com, and historical novels – and am more of an aspiring nonfiction reader. My tastes are varied! When I’m not reading, you might find me scrolling social media for new recipes, hiking, attending concerts or theatre shows, frequenting a local brewery/winery/café/diner, or daydreaming up my next adventure. While I love to travel, a chunk of my heart is still with NYC, which I moved from in 2020. I love visiting new indie bookstores, and I’m always in search of and longing for more pretty, cozy third places to post up with a book. You can find me on Instagram @jess_dartnell.
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Add to BookshelfThe Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing
by Melissa Bank
This collection of linked stories is one I recall some of my college professors lauding, which I finally read a few years post-grad in my dear old Brooklyn apartment. To this day, it still has one of my favorite lines ever written. When it was published in 1999, it made a huge splash, and 25+ years later, it still resonates. And because I love a bit of publishing history, I highly recommend you read this New York Times article about Melissa Bank and the publication of Girls’ Guide following her death in 2022, as it may convince you to pick this one up even more than I could! You can also check out the Penguin Classics Deluxe 25th Anniversary edition, though I am personally partial to the tartan-clad 2000 paperback edition shown here.
Add to BookshelfPaperback
$16.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Fox 8
by George Saunders
Every once in a while, it’s nice to have a book you can read in one short sitting – but what Fox 8 lacks in pages, it does not lack in heart, humor, or depth. The story follows a head-in-the-clouds fox, looked down upon by his pack, who begins to learn human speech. When a new development puts the fox pack at risk for survival, he may be their last hope. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of David Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.
Add to BookshelfHardcover
$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
If I haven’t told you to read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, it’s probably because we haven’t talked recently. My quite probably most-recommended title in recent years tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant, no-nonsense scientist in the 1960s who just wants to do her research but faces a series of challenges (read: sexism) that alter her path. So much so that she one day finds herself out of her lab job and on-air as the host of a cooking show. This book made me feel all the feels while laughing, crying, and getting fired up. It is a knock-out debut that has me fully convinced to read anything else Bonnie Garmus writes.
Add to BookshelfPaperback
$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
