Robert and Maureen Gohstand Leisure Reading Room

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Gohstand Reading Room

The Robert & Maureen Gohstand Leisure Reading Room, located in the West Wing, second floor, provides an attractive space for the enjoyment of the quiet pleasures of reading and a collection of works intended to encourage reading for recreation and pleasure, for an appreciation of good and exciting writing, for introspection and insight, and for the acquisition of general knowledge.

Find a Special Book

Willful Creatures: Stories by Aimee Bender
Willful Creatures: Stories by Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman's children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

Call Number: PS3552.E538447 W55 2005 Map It!

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Call Number: PL856.U673 N4513 1997 Map It!

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.

Call Number: PQ8098.1.L54 C313 1985 Map It!

Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories by Gabriel García Márquez
Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories by Gabriel García Márquez

In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact. In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience.

Call Number: PQ8180.17.A73 D6313b 1993 Map It!

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury

Call Number: PS3503.R167 D3 1976 Map It!

Filed under: Magic Not-so-realism

Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno
Darth Plagueis by James Luceno

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise?

I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you.

Call Number: PS3562.U25417 S735 2012 Map It!