2025 Plutarch Award Longlist
Are biographies your cup of tea? Then check the annual longlist of best biographies.
Memoir and Biography
Migration ID
133
Cabin: Off-the-Grid Adventures With a Clueless Craftsman
Patrick Hutchison,
read by the author
Wit's End isn't just a state of mind. It's the name of a gravel road, the address of a rundown, off-the-grid cabin, 120 shabby square feet of fixer-upper Patrick Hutchison purchased on a whim in the mossy woods of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. To say Hutchison didn't know what he was getting into is no more an exaggeration than to say he's a man with nearly zero carpentry skills. Well, used to be. You can learn a lot over six years of renovations.
On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer
Rick Steves,
read by the author
In the 1970s, the ultimate trip for any backpacker was the storied "Hippie Trail" from Istanbul to Kathmandu. A 23-year old Rick Steves made the trek, and like a travel writer in training, he documented everything along the way: jumping off a moving train, making friends in Tehran, getting lost in Lahore, getting high for the first time in Herat, battling leeches in Pokhara, and much more.
How to Share an Egg
Bonny Reichert,
read by the author
When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food. Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.
The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land In Between
Hisham
Matar
When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The Return is the story of what he found there.
Sweet Anticipation for February 2025
I was pleasantly surprised when gathering material for this month’s Sweet Anticipation. February tends to have the reputation as a tedious month, something to be borne between the highs of the holidays and the anticipation of springtime. But the memo apparently didn’t make it to publishers, who are releasing an impressive array of titles across all genres, making who would make the cut to this month’s list a tougher call than usual. On to the selections:
Too Good to Miss - January 2025
A review of New Titles
by
Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in library-world), it's a special collection of popular books that are truly too good to miss. Some are new and popular titles, others are older titles that might not have had as much media attention as a bestseller or celebrity book club selection but are still great reads that deserve another look.
Power where she could find it
A review of Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World
by
Emma
Southon
A bit ago I read Emma Southon's A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and loved the deep dive into how murder and assassination were viewed in ancient Rome. Not long after posting that review I heard about another book about ancient roman history. The podcaster mentioned how much they'd enjoyed a biography about Agrippina, a woman who was a descendant of Julius Caesar. She was also a sister, niece, wife, and mother to three other emperors.
Too Good to Miss - December 2024
A review of New Titles
by
Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in library-world), it's a special collection of popular books that are truly too good to miss. Some are new and popular titles, others are older titles that might not have had as much media attention as a bestseller or celebrity book club selection but are still great reads that deserve another look.
Too Good To Miss - November 2024
A review of New Titles
by
Every month there are new titles purchased for the Too Good to Miss collections at our libraries. If you're not familiar with TGTM (as we call it here in library-world), it's a special collection of popular books that are truly too good to miss. Some are new and popular titles, others are older titles that might not have had as much media attention as a bestseller or celebrity book club selection but are still great reads that deserve another look.