This month, I asked TPS students and alumni for oddly specific book requests and then selected several of them to include in the article along with my recommendations. I’ve listed the names of the students before their requests and followed them with the books I’m recommending. You can also post your own requests in the comments, and I’ll try to find the perfect book for you!
Jessie Jiang: an underappreciated book
STATELESS
by Elizabeth Wein
Elizabeth Wein, author of the best-selling book Code Name Verity, released another gripping but less well-known YA historical fiction novel this year. It combines Wein’s love for planes with murder mysteries and the political tensions of a continent on the precipice of war. In an attempt to unite the European nations, an international air race is held for its young pilots—among them is the protagonist and only female contestant, Stella North, “The Flying English Rose.” Yet behind the competition’s publicity stunts and ploys for peace, Stella discovers signs of sabotage and even murder when a pilot dies in what is pronounced an unfortunate accident. She and the unlikeliest of allies must work together to find out which one of the racers, each concealing their own secrets, is the killer among them.
Teshuah Decker: a book that encapsulates the Gilmore Girls theme song
HEAVEN TO BETSY
by Maud Hart Lovelace
I’ve never seen Gilmore Girls before, so take this recommendation with a grain of salt. In Heaven to Betsy, the fifth book in the Betsy-Tacy series, Betsy is entering her freshman year at Deep Valley High School. This and her family’s sudden move marks Betsy’s transition from childhood to young adulthood, in which she experiences the universal highs and lows of high school, girlhood, and first crushes. She joins a new friend group nicknamed “The Crowd,” throws lively parties and picnics, and tries to get her first real beau. While these adventures are by no means fantastical or thrilling, they do have the same earnest warmth of youth that can be seen in Gilmore Girls. Like the TV series, themes of family, friendship, love, and growing up are depicted in a way that evokes pure nostalgia and comfort.
Eliana Cetola: a book that makes you feel like you’re staring at a Renaissance painting in the Louvre
THE ENCHANTED APRIL
by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Enchanted April is a charming classic story of four British women who, dissatisfied with their normal routines, answer a newspaper advertisement for “people who appreciate Wisteria and sunshine.” Despite having vastly different backgrounds and personalities, each of the women want to escape from something—whether it be a miserable marriage, the shallow high society of London, or the quickly moving, isolating clock of time. Their wistful dreams become reality as they pool their money together to holiday at a medieval castle in Italy. There, surrounded by beauty worthy of a Renaissance painting, the women are finally free to rekindle passions previously extinguished by the drudgery of their everyday lives.
Judson Kim: a science fiction book that’ll take you on an unforgettable adventure
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
by Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles is not simply an adventure. Rather, it’s a sweeping space saga told chronologically in short stories and set in a strange futuristic world of “rocket summers” and Martian ruins. It follows humans’ first expeditions to, settling on, and eventual abandonment of Mars throughout the 2030s. This colonization has many thought-provoking parallels to actual historical events, like the first colonies in the New World, the Oregon Trail era of pioneering, and the American Dream. Bradbury’s collection of stories is an interesting, multilayered commentary on racism, colonialism, consumerism, and the destructive nature of humanity. Yet this ugliness is made beautiful and hauntingly poetic in his unique interpretation of space and the genre of science fiction itself.
Grace Kim: a book that your grandparents might recommend but is actually good
PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOM
by Shin Kyung-sook
Originally written in Korean, this bestseller tells the moving, heart-breaking story of a family searching for their missing mother. On the way from the countryside to meet her grown-up children in Seoul, So-nyo is separated from her husband and gets lost in the subway station’s crowd. Her children come together in desperation and guilt to try to find her, posting missing flyers and returning to the places of their past. While searching for her, they begin to realize that they never truly knew nor appreciated their mother and the sacrifices she made for them. These realizations come to each of the narrators in alternating perspectives as they reflect on their childhood, memories of their mother, and the smallest yet most significant of moments exchanged. Please Look After Mom is truly an eye-opening love letter to motherhood and family.
Works Cited
Wein, Elizabeth. Stateless. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2023.
Lovelace, Hart Maud. Heaven to Betsy/Betsy in Spite of Herself. William Morrow Paperbacks, 2011.
von Arnim, Elizabeth. The Enchanted April. Warbler Classics, 2022.
Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles. William Morrow Paperbacks, 2011.
Shin, Kyung-sook. Please Look After Mom. Knopf, 2011.
Photo Credits
Wow, I haven’t heard of any of these! I’m always on the lookout for recommendations…thanks!
Wonderful article anise! I haven’t read any of these so straight to the never-ending reading list they go!
PS: it has always been a dream of mine to have a library with a rolling ladder like the one in your featured image.
i have a bookshelf with a rolling ladder :PP
this is a super cool idea! though i cant believe you’ve never watched any gilmore girls 💔
ahhhh I love Heaven to Betsy!!! might be my favorite book of all time…
A book that should be famous but is not read by many?
I personally LOVE the casson family series and think it should be famous in the middle grade realm of literature. as for “grown-up books,” I would say… a cure for dreams, betty smith’s works apart from a tree grows in brooklyn, and the blue castle (which I’ve mentioned in an earlier article). but there are definitely more that I simply can’t think of right now.
Interesting – I haven’t read any of these, but just discovered Ray Bradbury (The Illustrated Man). Stateless looks interesting because I love planes, so I might check that out.
lol be warned that stateless has romance and is perhaps more targeted towards a young female audience
OH MY GOODNESS IT’S HEAVEN TO BETSY!! I absolutely looveee that book–the rest of the series is perfection as well. I would love “A Modern Book that Encapsulates the Lovely Feeling of a Jane Austen Novel.”
ooh, that’s a hard one because jane austen is in such a league of her own… but I would recommend the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society! it’s not quite as good as austen in my opinion, but it is quite lovely. and because I can’t help myself, I’m going to recommend several books that aren’t really “modern” but still were published after austen’s time. they are: a room with a view, the enchanted april (as seen in this article), cold comfort farm (I have yet to read it but I hear it’s fun and witty), and the pursuit of love (which I have read but would also like to warn of some mildly inappropriate content, though not too much).
Either “a book much better than its summary sounds” or “a book that shows a good couple both before and after marriage”.
Thanks for including mine! To the TBR everyone goes hehe