Spring!
Really, we know it's beautiful outside, but you should stay in and read a book. Or two. Or six.
Luckily, reading only requires sunlight and a book. Mother Nature will take care of the light, we'll provide the books.
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 The Book You Must Read This Spring
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
(Simon & Schuster, paperback, $14)
Green Apple Books in San Francisco made a video last year that inspired me to pick up Little Bee and see what all the fuss was about. (You can watch the video here.) Boy am I glad I did, because it quickly became the best book I read in 2009. Now it's in paperback (and e-book), so you have no excuse not to read it. I don't want to tell you too much about the book, but I promise you it does not disappoint. Don't take my word for it... here's what readers are saying about it this week (powered by Twitter): -This might sound over the top I am captivated by the writing in Little Bee.-Currently reading Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Its been a while since I've been so consumed by a book. Can't put it down... -I was so impressed by Cleave when I interviewed him last week. Thinking, innovating author... -Just a few pages into Chris Cleave's Little Bee and I'm just stunned. Read the First Chapter of Little Bee
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Let's Hear it for the Ladies!
If you're looking for a book to read for Women's History Month, here are a handful of worthy titles.  Normal People Don't Live Like Thisby Dylan Landis (Persea, paperback, $15.00) At the center of this startling fiction debut is Leah Levinson, a teen
at sea in the anonymous ordeals of a middle-class upbringing on the
Upper West Side in the 1970s. In ten installments, written from varying
perspectives, we witness her uneasy relationships with faster, looser
peers - girls she is drawn to but also alienated by. Book  Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement
by Sally G. McMillen
(Oxford, paperback, $16.95) In the quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, over the course of two
days in July, 1848, a small group of women and men, led by Elizabeth
Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, held a convention that would launch the
women's rights movement and change the course of history. Book
 Don't Cry
by Mary Gaitskill
(Vintage, paperback, $15.00) Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories-her first in more than ten years. Each story delivers the powerful, original language, and the dramatic
engagement of the intelligent mind with the craving body-or of the
intelligent body with the craving mind-that has come to be seen as
stunningly emblematic of Gaitskill's fiction. Book  Half the Sky:
Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
(Knopf, hardcover, $27.95) With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as
our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the
extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager
sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating
injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined
reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger,
sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. Book E-Book Flyaway
by Suzie Gilbert
(Harper, paperback, $14.99) Suzie Gilbert discovered her true calling when she began working at a
local animal hospital. Eventually, she started bringing abused and
unwanted parrots home, and volunteering at a local raptor
rehabilitation center. From there it was a short flight to her ultimate
commitment: Flyaway, Inc., the nonprofit wild bird rehabilitation
center she ran out of her own home. Book E-BookThe Talented Miss Highsmith
by Joan Schenkar
(St. Martin's Press, hardcover, $40.00) Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American
fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite
"hero-criminal," talented Tom Ripley. In this revolutionary biography,
Joan Schenkar paints a riveting portrait, from Highsmith's birth in
Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers On a Train, to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe. Book E-Book
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Get Growing!
Gardening books to inspire:
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 The Girl's Guide to Growing Your Own:
How to Grow Fruits and Vegetables Without Getting Your Hands Too Dirty
by Alex Mitchell
(New Holland, paperback, $14.95)
Aimed at beginners, this book has plenty of practical and seasonal information
for planning your edible Eden, delicious recipes, ideas for outdoor
entertaining and fun weekend projects for making your garden look great.
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 Lives of the Trees
by Diana Wells
(Algonquin, hardcover, $19.95)
The author of 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names turns her
attention to something bigger--humanity's deep-rooted relationship with
trees. Wells reminds readers of just how innately bound people are to
these protectors of our planet. Book
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 Sufficient: A Modern Guide to Sustainable Living
by Tom Petherick
(Pavilion, paperback, $19.95)
This comprehensive reference is designed to inspire, educate and
encourage a process of change towards a simple, gentle, and sustainable
way of living. Book
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 Alluring Lettuces:
and Other Seductive Vegetables for Your Garden
by Jack Staub
(Gibbs Smith, paperback, $16.99)
Seventy-five unusual and eminently beautiful vegetables are profiled in
this charming book by expert gardener and garden designer Jack Staub.
Within these pages, you'll discover produce not likely found at the
supermarket, including the Asparagus Bean, Chinese Rat Tail Radish,
Green Zebra Tomato, and Turkish Orange Eggplant. Staub presents the
charming history and lore surrounding the plants as well as
instructions for growing them outdoors or indoors in containers. Book
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 Talking Dirt
by Annie Spiegelman
(Perigee, paperback, $15.00)
Annie Spiegelman's down-to-earth wit and wisdom create the perfect
primer for anyone with a passion for home-grown veggies or fresh-cut
flowers, no matter what their skill level, location, or resources. Book E-Book
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 The Brother Gardeners
by Andrea Wulf
(Vintage, paperback, $17.95)
In 1733, colonial farmer John Bartram shipped two boxes of precious
American plants and seeds to Peter Collinson in London. Around these
men formed the nucleus of a botany movement, which included famous
Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus; Philip Miller, bestselling author of The Gardeners Dictionary;
and Joseph Banks and David Solander, two botanist explorers, who
scoured the globe for plant life aboard Captain Cook's Endeavor. As
they cultivated exotic blooms from around the world, they helped make
Britain an epicenter of horticultural and botanical expertise. The Brother Gardeners paints a vivid portrait of an emerging world of knowledge and gardening as we know it today. Book E-Book
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 Homegrown Whole Grains
by Sara Pitzer
(Storey, paperback, $14.95)
Homegrown Whole Grains includes complete growing, harvesting, and
threshing instructions for barley, millet, oats, rice, rye, spelt, and
quinoa, and lighter coverage of several specialty grains. Readers will
also find helpful tips on processing whole grains, from what to look
for in a home mill to how to dry corn and remove the hulls from barley
and rice. Book
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 Grow Your Own Vegetables
by Carol Klein
(Mitchell Beazley, paperback, $19.99)
Klein reveals all the tricks to becoming a successful small-plot gardener,
from preparing the soil, to deciding what to grow (and when to plant
and harvest), to coping with pests, weeds, and other common problems.
The book's second half is a veritable encyclopedia of the various
vegetables-delicate salad greens, hardy root vegetables, and everything
in between-that you might choose to grow. Book
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 The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
by David Grann
(Doubleday, hardcover, $26.95)
Each of the dozen stories in this collection reveals a hidden and often dangerous world and, like Into Thin Air and The Orchid Thief, pivots around the gravitational pull of obsession and the captivating personalities of those caught in its grip. Book E-Book
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 The Surrendered
by Chang-Rae Lee
(Riverhead, hardcover, $26.95)
With his three critically acclaimed novels, Chang-rae Lee has
established himself as one of the most talented writers of contemporary
literary fiction. Now, with The Surrendered, Lee has created a
book that amplifies everything we've seen in his previous works, and
reads like nothing else. It is a brilliant, haunting, heartbreaking
story about how love and war inalterably change the lives of those they
touch.
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 Backing Into Forward
by Jules Feiffer
(Nan E. Talese, hardcover, $30.00)
The award-winning cartoonist, playwright, and author delivers a
witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy
kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts. Book E-Book
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 Things We Didn't See Coming
by Steven Amsterdam
(Pantheon, hardcover, $24.00)
Richly imagined, dark, and darkly comic, these stories follow the
narrator over three decades as he tries to survive in a world that is
becoming increasingly savage as cataclysmic events unfold one after
another.
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 The Wild Things
by Dave Eggers
(Vintage, paperback, $14.95)
In this visionary adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic work, Dave
Eggers brings an imaginary world vividly to life, telling the story of
a lonely boy navigating the emotional journey away from boyhood.
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 Walking to Gatlinburg
by Howard Frank Mosher
(Shaye Areheart, hardcover, $25.00)
A stunning and lyrical Civil War thriller, Walking to Gatlinburg is a spellbinding story of survival, wilderness adventure, mystery, and love in the time of war from the author of A Stranger in the Kingdom.
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 Matterhorn
by Karl Marlantes
(Atlantic Monthly Press, hardcover, $24.95)
Thirty years in the making, Marlantes's epic debut is a dense, vivid
narrative spanning many months in the lives of American troops in
Vietnam as they trudge across enemy lines, encountering danger from
opposing forces as well as on their home turf.
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 The Big Short
by Michael Lewis
(Norton, hardcover, $27.95)
In this trenchant, raucous, irresistible narrative, Lewis writes of the
goats and of the few who saw what the emperor was wearing, and gives
them, most memorably, what they deserve. He proves yet again that he is
the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.
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 The History of White People
by Nell Irvin Painter
(Norton, hardcover, $27.95)
A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White
People closes an enormous gap in a literature that has long focused on
the nonwhite, and it forcefully reminds us that the concept of "race"
is an all-too-human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality
have changed according to a long and rich history.
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