Juan's Picks

Juan is our Chief Operating Officer and helps curate the culture that Horizon is known for.   He enjoys the classics, mythology, philology and comparative religion .

Staff Pick Badge
A Season on the Mat: Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection By Nolan Zavoral Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9781416535539
Availability: On Our Shelves Now!
Published: Simon & Schuster - January 9th, 2007

DECEMBER 2023
The leaves are at peak color and the weather is becoming more inhospitable, it must mean the greatest season of all is upon us - wrestling season.

Across the country, kids of all ages will pour into high school gymnasiums, usually basketball courts lined with wrestling mats, to once again practice and compete in the oldest sport known to man. How does such an ancient and arduous practice also regarded as one of the most creative, beautiful sports? A complex game of physical chess like on other. Let Nolan Zavoral help you understand with his book A Season on the Mat.

Zavoral chronicles the dramatic 1996-97 wrestling season for the Iowa Hawkeyes’ team, with Dan Gable at the helm. Gable is easily the most decorated and best recognized figures, not just in wrestling but in general athletics.  He was even awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020 for his contributions to American athletics.

This book illustrates the accomplishments made by the wrestling icon as a competitor and coach but also the major battles this warrior of the mental game faced, such as his sister’s murder, the domestic violence he endured as a child and how seemingly, by the grace of pure mental alchemy he’s was able to defy odds on and off the mat.


$14.95
SKU: 9781943995219

FEBRUARY 2022

In the late 19th century there was a grizzly murder on Old Mission Peninsula. At the time it turned the lesser known small farming community upside down, placing one particular townie on the hot seat as the prime suspect.

While writing the book, Stephen Lewis, a professor emeritus of English, spent countless hours in erudition through the records of this nasty murder only to give the plot a healthy twist of fiction.


Piranesi By Susanna Clarke Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781635577808
Availability: On Our Shelves Now!
Published: Bloomsbury Publishing - September 28th, 2021

JANUARY 2022

 
Piranesi is an atmospheric slow burn enigma for the first three quarters of the novel, with the mystical characters and situations that Susanna Clarke is known for.  Our protagonist, Piranesi, is mysteriously cast into a gallery-like environment of large halls, some of enormous proportions with varieties of statues to match in stature. As the book unfolds we discover that things are not as they have seemed.  For how long and at the behest of whom...?
 
The setting is unforgettable, the dialogue is realistic and thought provoking.  However, the unfolding of Piranesi's  life is as awe striking as a classic whodoneit  and yet as vivid as a recurring dream.  Piranesi is the kind of book you find yourself thinking about months after reading it.  The echoes of the alabaster chambers and the sound of the ocean reverberate for a long time.


First Person Singular: Stories By Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translated by) Cover Image
By Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translated by)
$17.00
ISBN: 9780593311189
Availability: On Our Shelves Now!
Published: Vintage - April 12th, 2022

JUNE 2022

I liken reading Murakami short stories to eating dessert. You know it will be brief, sweet, sometimes a little funny with a tart edge, but it almost always ends too quickly.
 
At times it's unclear whether or not these essays are autobiographical but one thing that is certain is that Murakami loves jazz and distance running, as he writes about both and it is a pleasure to read about both, especially from him.


Staff Pick Badge
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) By Joseph Campbell Cover Image
$24.95
ISBN: 9781577315933
Availability: On Our Shelves Now!
Published: New World Library - July 28th, 2008

OCTOBER 2021

Ever since I can remember, mythology has influenced my life, both in my reading history and as a child. It was a compass for initially recognizing the arc of a story. However, it wasn't until I read Joseph Campbell during college that I began to understand the presence of a hero's journey motif speckled throughout our society.
 
Around the same time I read Jung's Man and His Symbols and I feel that Campbell and Jung's books are essentially rubrics for human understanding by the analysis of collections of recurring stories throughout time. Campbell unpacks with warmth the underlying utilitarian purpose for some of the most popular stories in mythology and the hope of a careful grandfather handing down an oral heirloom.


Staff Pick Badge
Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas By Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer (Translated by) Cover Image
By Roberto Bolaño, Natasha Wimmer (Translated by)
$30.00
Email or call for price
ISBN: 9780735222885
Published: Penguin Press - February 16th, 2021

SEPTEMBER 2021

Bolano writes visceral poetry, and his prose tends to be just as self-revealing, while also drawing on cryptic associations ranging from all subjects but mostly drawing on European history and South American first nations history.
 
Novellas are definitely his strongest suit. The reader can fully appreciate his mastery in creating a story with brevity, fully developed characters that singe slowly into the readers subconscious all the while maintaining the same fervor in which he punches through poetry.
 
I have read at least eight of his novellas and they all have something to offer in different ways. Cowboy Graves is no different.


Staff Pick Badge
Hear My Voice/Escucha mi voz: The Testimonies of Children Detained at the Southern Border of the United States By Warren Binford (Compiled by), Michael Garcia Bochenek (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Warren Binford (Compiled by), Michael Garcia Bochenek (Foreword by)
$19.95
ISBN: 9781523513482
Availability: Available to ship within 1-5 days
Published: Workman Publishing Company - April 13th, 2021

MAY 2021

Hear My Voice was easily the most heartbreaking children's non-fiction I’ve ever read. It depicts the bleak stories of children detained at the U.S./Mexican border during the years 2017 and 2019.
This book is illustrated through the collaboration of over a dozen Mexican artists and counterpoints the narrative sewn together by publicly available court documents taken from child detention cases. Hear my voice is cleverly split off into an English and Spanish version with the same binding. Although the cases are deeply bitter the stories are soulful and poignant. Above all, this powerful and beautiful book is a useful way to introduce young readers to the complicated and sensitive matter that detainment camps are a reality for human children in the year 2021.


Staff Pick Badge
I'm Sticking with You By Smriti Prasadam-Halls, Steve Small (Illustrator) Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9781250619235
Availability: On Our Shelves Now!
Published: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) - May 5th, 2020

MARCH 2021

I was immediately drawn to this book by a colleague and with good reason; I'm a sucker for illustrated reinventions of fauna in children's books. But even apart from the quirky, beautifully hand-painted illustrations, the story manages to steal the show. The relationship between these two unlikely friends results in humorous moments but also highlights the nature and characteristics of our true friendships: The inability to live without each other despite differences or obstacles, or, as in our protagonist's case, sheer size.


Staff Pick Badge
Tokyo Ueno Station (National Book Award Winner): A Novel By Yu Miri, Morgan Giles (Translated by) Cover Image
By Yu Miri, Morgan Giles (Translated by)
$25.00
ISBN: 9780593088029
Availability: Available to ship within 1-5 days
Published: Riverhead Books - June 23rd, 2020

DECEMBER 2020

A Japanese ghost narrates his existence as a wandering spirit through the parks and streets of Ueno, a neighborhood in Tokyo. A setting which the specter once inhabited as a homeless citizen decades earlier. Yu Miri's slim novel critiques the  imperialist culture of Japan, as she exposes the lesser known culture of Japan, as she exposes the lesser known culture of Japan's homeless population post WW2 through this lyrically rich and moving story.