AWM Staff Picks: January 2026

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

From the publisher: “The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?”

—Christopher, Director of Operations

The Carektaker by Doon Arbus

From the publisher: “Following the death of a renowned and eccentric collector—author of Stuff, a seminal philosophical work on the art of accumulation—the fate of the privately endowed museum he cherished falls to a peripatetic stranger who had been his fervent admirer. This peculiar institution (The Society for the Preservation of the Legacy of Dr. Charles Alexander Morgan) is dedicated to the annihilation of hierarchy: peerless antiquities commune happily with the ignored, the discarded, the undervalued and the valueless. What transpires as the caretaker assumes dominion over this reliquary of voiceless objects and over its visitors is told in a manner at once obsessive and matter of fact, and in language both cocooning and expansive. A wry and haunting tale, The Caretaker, like the interplanetary crystal that is one of the museum’s treasures, is rare, glistening, and of a compacted inwardness.

A Collection by Third Eye Blind

In the summer of 2014, I was 13 years old, and a babysitter named Catie introduced me to Third Eye Blind. As the oldest of my siblings, I was slightly too old for a babysitter. Catie was a neighbor I like to view now as more of a friend. This month, I am turning the age she was when she played the song “Crystal Baller” for me. With that in mind, I decided to revisit Third Eye Blind’s 2006 release, A Collection. This album is a compilation of fan and band favorites from the late 90s to the early 2000s. Nostalgically listening through felt like a burst of summer in our frigid Chicago winter.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

From the publisher: “Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters…Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—but when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.”

—Carol, Assistant Director of Development

Deli Boys created by Abdullah Saeed

From Rotten Tomatoes: “When their convenience store-magnate father suddenly dies, a pair of pampered Pakistani American brothers lose everything and are forced to reckon with their Baba’s secret life of crime as they attempt to take up his mantle in the underworld…A tasty crime caper where the laughs come first, Deli Boys busts a gut with Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh’s bumbling chemistry and Poorna Jagannathan’s scene-stealing turn.”

—Andrew, Institutional Giving Manager

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

It can be a challenge to depict mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, with authenticity. Everyone experiences mental illness and its complications differently, but even so, Emily Austin has touched on something almost alarmingly relatable in her debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. The book follows Gilda, a 27-year-old woman with severe death anxiety, after she stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church. In her new career path, Gilda must hide her atheist and lesbian identities. While maintaining this charade, Gilda also feels compelled to uncover the truth about her predecessor’s suspicious death.

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

From the publisher: “One of Barbara Pym’s richest and most amusing high comedies, Excellent Women has at its center Mildred Lathbury, a clergyman’s daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those ‘excellent women,’ the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors—anthropologist Helena Napier and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next door—the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires.”

—Cassidy, Guest Services Manager

The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde by Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad

From the publisher: “The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation. Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment.”

We are thrilled to host Dr. Vesely-Flad for a free online discussion about this powerful book on January 29 as part of the AWM’s new American Prophets exhibit and programming series. Learn more and get your tickets here!

—Nate, Content & Exhibits Manager

Heated Rivalry created by Jacob Tierney, based on the book series by Rachel Reid

“I mean, SOMEONE had to say it, and I will be that someone. I have rewatched it 3 times. Best show I’ve seen maybe ever.” —Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate

“I grew up playing hockey. So when my partner suggested we watch this show, I thought it would be fun to watch some hockey action within the arc of the plot. It surpassed my expectations and is a great watch. While the hockey action is there, there is a lot more action off the ice…” —Nate, Content & Exhibits Manager

“For too long, the world has lacked a show mixing the sweat and aggression of hockey with the sweat and aggression of gay sex. Thanks to the folks at Crave, we have entered a new era of television which I hope we stay in for a very long time.” —Matt, Community Engagement Manager

The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low: A Curious Life in Independent Music by Rob Miller

From the publisher: “Rob Miller arrived in Chicago wanting to escape the music industry. In short order, he co-founded a trailblazing record label revered for its artist-first approach and punk take on country, roots, and so much else. Miller’s gonzo memoir follows a music fan’s odyssey through a singular account of Bloodshot Records, the Chicago scene, and thirty years as part of a community sustaining independent artists and businesses. Hilarious and hundred-proof, The Hours Are Long, But the Pay Is Low delivers a warm-hearted yet clear-eyed account of loving and living music on the edge, in the trenches, and without apologies.”

—Annie, Education Associate

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

From the publisher: “The mind-bending cult classic about a house that’s larger on the inside than on the outside. A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel.

Now made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices, the story remains unchanged…Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.”

—Hunter, Storyteller

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

From the publisher: “Almost two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, ‘Don’t Eat Before You Read This,’ by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now classic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Bourdain and his writing, check out our 2021 episode of Nation of Writers with Bourdain’s longtime assistant and writing partner, Laurie Woolever. At the time of recording, Woolever had just released her book Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, which features interviews with nearly 100 people from all facets of Bourdain’s life from childhood to his final years. Give it a listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

—Andrew, Institutional Giving Manager

The Likeness by Tana French

From the publisher: “In the ‘compelling’ (The Boston Globe) and ‘pitch perfect’ (Entertainment Weekly) follow-up to Tana French’s runaway bestseller In the Woods, Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad—until an urgent telephone call brings her back to an eerie crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Suddenly, Cassie is back undercover, to find out not only who killed this young woman, but, more importantly, who she was. The Likeness is a supremely suspenseful story exploring the nature of identity and belonging.”

—Maya, Marketing & Creative Associate

A Matter of Time by Laufey

From Pitchfork: “The Icelandic singer not only invokes the traditions of the Great American Songbook; she indulges, interrogates, and goofs on them, adding a welcome spark to her retro mannerisms.”

—Courtney, Assistant Director of Education

Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi

From the publisher: “How’s a queen to keep her head in the middle of a revolution? Marie Antoinette delights and inspires her French subjects with her three-foot tall wigs and extravagant haute couture. But times change and even the most fashionable queens go out of style. In the humorous and haunting Marie Antoinette idle gossip turns more insidious as the country revolts demanding liberté égalité fraternité!”

—Matt, Community Engagement Manager

The Mighty Nein created by Critical Role Productions

From IMDB: “Follows a group of criminals and misfits who are the only ones that can prevent the kingdom from plunging into chaos when an arcane artifact capable of reshaping reality falls into the wrong hands.”

The Mighty Nein is based on the second campaign of Critical Role, a web series in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons.

—Hunter, Storyteller

The Overstory by Richard Powers

From the publisher: “The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.”

—Nate, Content & Exhibits Manager

Pluribus created by Vince Gilligan

I binged watched episodes of this series! It’s an American post-apocalyptic science fiction series and it had me hooked from the get go! I am eagerly waiting for the second season now. I really enjoyed the series even though, weirdly enough, I liked and disliked the protagonist, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), at the same time. Despite my conflicting feelings, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it though.

—Sonal, Director of Education

Prince F by Jordan Tannahill

From the publisher: “In this meta-theatrical satire, an ensemble of queer, trans, and nonbinary performers reckon with how the forces of power, privilege, and colonization play upon their lives as the playwright offers a central provocation: what if queer people dared to imagine a future monarch having a life that resembled their own?”

—Matt, Community Engagement Manager

The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers by Stephen J. Stein

From the publisher: “The Shakers, once a radical religious sect whose members were despised and harassed by their fellow Americans, have in recent years become celebrated–and sentimentalized–for their communal way of life, the simplicity of their worship, their belief in celibacy, pacifism, and equality of the sexes, and not least, their superb furniture and handicrafts. This monumental book is the first general history of the Shakers from their origins in eighteenth-century England to the present day…Stein places the Shaker experience within the wider context of American life and shows how the movement has evolved to deal with changing times. Shattering the romantic myth that has been perpetuated about the quaint and peaceful Shakers, Stein portrays a group that is factious, practical, and fully human.”

—Hunter, Storyteller

Shrinking created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel, and Brett Goldstein

Binge seasons one and two before season three drops January 28, which sees Michael J. Fox joining the cast.

More from Rotten Tomatoes: “A grieving therapist who starts to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he thinks; ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making big changes to people’s lives including his own.”

—Annie, Education Associate

Split Fiction by Hazelight Studios and published by Electronic Arts

This couch co-op game follows two writers into the worlds of their imaginations as they fight against a company bent on taking their ideas from them. This game is a blast to play with a partner and the story is very fresh (if not a little scary in its implications.) Thanks Santa!

—Christopher, Director of Operations

Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television—and America—Forever by Alan Siegel

From the publisher: “The Simpsons is an American institution. But its status as an occasionally sharp yet ultimately safe sitcom that’s still going after 33 years on the air undercuts its revolutionary origins. The early years of the animated series didn’t just impact Hollywood, they changed popular culture. It was a show that altered the way we talked around the watercooler, in school hallways, and on the campaign trail, by bridging generations with its comedic sensibility and prescient cultural commentary…Through interviews with the show’s legendary staff and whip-smart analysis, Siegel charts how The Simpsons developed its singular sensibility throughout the ’90s, one that was at once groundbreakingly subversive for a primetime cartoon and shockingly wholesome. The result is a definitive history of The Simpsons‘ most essential decade.”

—Courtney, Assistant Director of Education

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

From the publisher: “A whimsical and heartwarming novel about a witch who has a second chance to get her magical powers—and her life—back on track…Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead…and was exiled from her Guild. Now she helps Jasmine run an enchanted inn in Lancashire…and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power. Enter Luke Larsen, handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and just might know how to unlock the spell’s secrets…Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone…and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all.”

—Annie, Education Associate

Your Daughters Will Prophesy: Religion and Rhetoric in the Nineteenth-Century Woman’s Movement by Lisa Marie Gring-Pemble and Martha Watson

From the publisher: “Caught between their identity as Christians and social norms that silenced them, American women used scripture to claim moral and then rhetorical agency. They reinterpreted familiar biblical passages, recovered previously ignored stories about women, and contested passages used to circumscribe women’s activities. By strategically adopting a rhetorical posture of dissent, these women became prophetic voices in American society. Gring-Pemble and Watson analyze the argumentative resources four women—Jarena Lee, Sarah Moore Grimké, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Frances Willard—used to counter gendered restrictions and gain access to platform and pulpit, catalyzing what became known as the woman’s movement.”