Staff Pick
A collection of 21 essays from novelist David Searcy, Shame and Wonder covers an impressively wide range of subjects, but its salient feature is an entrancing command of language. Searcy's prose, handsome and undulating, could make even the most seemingly mundane topic be of great interest. In Shame and Wonder, he touches on disparate themes, yet each essay is marked not so much by what he's writing about, but how he's writing about it. Seeing as a multidimensional endeavor, imagining the lives of others, parsing nuance, essence, and meaning, Searcy's essays make clear that discovery is hardly the same thing as discovering. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com