Popular Books Collection

Need a break from your textbooks? Want to read something for fun? Have you noticed the Popular Books section in the Armacost Library? This small collection, located under the stairwell between the circulation desk and the reference computers, contains books for leisure reading. The Popular Books collection includes current best sellers, fiction and nonfiction, mysteries to historical drama, vampire tales to baseball exposés, and commentary on the war in Iraq to a photographic history of the Disco Era. Sound interesting? Come by the Armacost Library, take a look, choose a book and relax.

Here are just a few of the books you might find.

Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
A graphic novel/memoir, humorous but affecting, that relates Bechdel’s story of growing up with a father who is a high school English teacher, undertaker and closeted homosexual, and the effect his Proustian double life has on the formulation of her self and her own sexuality.



Blush, Steven. American Hair Metal. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2006.
A highly entertaining pictorial history of the major hair bands of the eighties and early nineties, complete with quotes from band members and essential track titles.



Buckley, Christopher. Thank You for Smoking. New York: Random House, 1994.
This book birthed the movie, a stinging satire of celebrity, government, and the results of voracious consumerism.



Covey, Jacob, Curator. Beasts: A Pictorial Schedule of Traditional Hidden Creatures from the Interest of 90 Modern Artisans. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2006.
Ninety acclaimed artists and cartoonists (Jeff Soto, Seonna Hong, Souther Salazar, etc.) contribute illustrations of mythical beasts once thought to exist, ranging from the grotesque to the comical. Included are brief descriptions of the looks, habitats and behaviors of the beasts.



Eggers, Dave, Ed. The Best American Non-Required Reading of 2006. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
A compilation of short stories, news transcripts, lists, any form the written word can take, ranging in tone from riotously funny to tragically serious and somewhere in between.



Riello, Giorgio and Peter McNeil. Shoes: A History From Sandals to Sneakers. New York: Berg, 2006.
This lavishly illustrated work recounts the history of shoes with entertaining essays that cover everything from the eroticism of ancient shoe lacing, medieval fears about long-toed shoes, and the role of shoes in religious ritual to the infamous Chopine with a 23-inch heel and the modern cult of shoe designers.