Skip to content The ‘Inside Your Library: Collections’ reading list from Helen Gutierrez and Justo Gonzalez – The Seattle Public Library Foundation
Click here to view the full program.

The Foundation hosted its latest episode of “Inside Your Library” June 23 with featured guest Helen Gutierrez, Collection Services Manager at the Seattle Public Library.

Helen spoke with Foundation Board Member Justo Gonzalez about discovering libraries and literature as Mexican-Americans and some of their favorite titles – as well as the origins of Peak Picks and some inner workings at the Library.

We’ve put together a book list of the titles discussed by Helen and Justo so you can check them out yourself. And, if you missed it, view the program here!

  1. Ijeomo Oluo – “Mediocre: the Dangerous Legacy of White Male America” and “So You Want to Talk About Race”
  2. Alejandro Ruiz – “The Food of Oaxaca”
  3. Victor Villaseñor – “Rain of Gold”
  4. Ryan Holiday – “Stillness is the Key,” “Ego is the Enemy,” and “The Obstacle is the Way”
  5. Marcus Aurelius – “Meditations”
  6. Michel de Montaigne – “On Solitude” (Contained in “The Complete Essays”)
  7. Gabriel Garcia Marquez“Love in the Time of Cholera”
  8. Isabel Allende – “House of the Spirits”
  9. Luis Alberto Urrea – “In Search of Snow” (not available at SPL), “Nobody’s Son,” “House of Broken Angels”
  10. Kirsten Valdez Quade – The Five Wounds”
  11. Jasmine Guillory – “The Wedding Date” and “The Proposal”
  12. S.C. Gwynne – “Empire of the Summer Moon”
  13. Jacob A. Riis – “How the Other Half Lives”
  14. Gabriela Garcia – “Of Women and Salt”
  15. Astrid Lindgren“The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking”
  16. Various Authors – Star Wars books
  17. JRR Tolkien – “Lord of the Rings”
  18. Betty Smith – “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
  19. Kimberly Brubacker Bradley – “The War that Saved My Life”
  20. Valeria Luiselli“Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions”