Personal and introspective, essays cover a wide range of topics, styles, and moods. These essay collections are available to borrow from the Lititz Public Library.
Kitchen Yarns: Notes on Life, Love, and Food by Ann Hood
The author tracks her lifelong journey in the kitchen with heartfelt essays, each accompanied by a recipe.
Feel Free by Zadie Smith
Surveying important recent events in culture, politics and the author’s own life, the collection poses questions like, “What is the social network really about?” or “What why do we love libraries?”
What Are We Doing Here? By Marilynne Robinson
Focusing on the modern political climate and the mysteries of faith, the author discusses points such as how the work of great thinkers like Emerson and Tocqueville influence today’s political consciousness or the way beauty spreads through every aspect of daily life.
Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley
Whether scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, acting in a television series or sighting a chupacabra in Vermont, the author delivers unique points of view with humor and emotional insight.
The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry selected by Paul Kingsnorth
Collection celebrates a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky and argues that arrogance should be abandoned in favor of respect and care for oneself, one’s neighbors, and the land.
Figures in a Landscape: People and Places by Paul Theroux
Entries lead readers through a range of sights, characters and experiences with travel essays, literary criticism and a series of personal profiles, such as taking a helicopter ride with Elizabeth Taylor, surfing with Oliver Sacks and exploring New York with Robin Williams.
Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else by Maeve Higgins
A bestselling memoirist and comedian in her native Ireland, the author left the only home she had ever known in search of something more and shares funny and revealing stories about finding herself in New York City.
Bathed in Prayer by Jan Karon
Collection incorporates advice and inspiration from the author’s fourteen Mitford novels with reflections about how the books have impacted her own life.
The End of the Earth by Jonathan Franzen
A bestselling novelist and risk-taking essayist presents a collection that makes passionate arguments for his two great loves, literature and birds, by presenting a moving celebration of their beauty.
RISK!: True Stories People Never Thought They’d Dare to Share edited by Kevin Allison
True tales of secrets and off-the-wall adventures present portraits of transformational personal moments, such as accidently harboring a teen fugitive, assuming someone else’s identity in a social experiment gone awry or pushing drugs for a Mexican cartel only to end up kidnapped and nearly killed.
A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety by Donald Hall
Before his passing in 2018, the author delivered this collection of self-knowing, fierce and funny essays on aging, the pleasures of solitude and the sometimes astonishing freedoms arising from both.
Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces by Michael Chabon
Sincere, humorous and insightful essays illuminate the meaning, magic and mysteries of fatherhood.
The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great Loves and Endeavors by Charles Krauthammer
Known for his penetrating wit and ability to identify hidden moral truths, the collection showcases the author’s philosophy on politics and life.
One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of the Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
With razor-sharp humor, the author shares the fears, outrages and mortifying moments of her life, such as a shopping trip gone awry, overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world, dealing with Internet trolls and more.
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
Collection of wildly different personal essays from sixteen bestselling authors range from funny to romantic to thoughtfully somber and reflective.
March 1, 2019