Bibliophilia: the reading list for book lovers
Bibliophilia is a weekly post of recommended reading for law students and lawyers. The list will comprise both fiction and non-fiction books with as much variety as possible. We’re also happy to take reader submissions from you so get reading!
Title: Nani Palkhivala, The Courtroom Genius
Author: Arvind P. Datar, Solind J. Sorabjee
Genre: Non-fiction, law, history, biography
If ever a colossus strode across the Indian legal arena, it was Nani Palkhivala. After a brilliant academic career, he quickly became one of India’s most sought after lawyers and remained at center stage for five decades. Famous for his phenomenal power of concentration and persuasive advocacy, he was a supremely successful lawyer….This book chronicles Palkhivala’s journey as a lawyer and discusses the important cases in which he appeared and that changed the destiny of the country. The book provides a rare insight into his working methods and style of advocacy… [source]
Title: Power Conceded Nothing: One Woman’s Quest For Social Justice in America, from the Courtroom to the Kill Zone.
Author: Connie Rice
Genre: Non-fiction, memoir, history, law
…Connie Rice has taken on the bus system, the school system, the death penalty, the LAPD—and won. She has been at the forefront of dozens of major civil rights cases. In 1998, the Los Angeles Times designated Connie Rice one of the “most experienced, civic-minded, and thoughtful people on the subject of Los Angeles.” Rice literally wrote the report that has revolutionized the city’s law enforcement and outreach to gangs. Now, one of America’s most prominent and successful civil rights litigators, Rice illuminates the origins and inspiration for her life’s work in this extraordinary memoir…. [source]
Title: Courtroom 302
Author: Steve Bogira
Genre: Non-fiction, courtroom
…the fascinating story of one year in Chicago’s Cook County Criminal Courthouse, the busiest felony courthouse in the country. Here we see the system through the eyes of the men and women who experience it, not only in the courtroom but in the lockup, the jury room, the judge’s chambers, the spectators’ gallery…. From the daily grind of the court to the highest-profile case of the year, Steve Bogira’s masterful investigation raises fundamental issues of race, civil rights, and justice in America. [source]
Title: The Brethren
Author: John Grisham
Genre: Fiction, legal thriller, mystery
Trumble is a minimum-security federal prison, a “camp,” home to the usual assortment of relatively harmless criminals…And three former judges who call themselves the Brethren…They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a mail scam, and it’s starting to really work. The money is pouring in. Then their little scam goes awry….the Brethren’s days of quietly marking time are over. [source]
Title: Gods Behaving Badly
Author: Marie Phillips
Genre: Fiction, Greek mythology, humor,
…Yes, the twelve gods of Olympus are alive and well in the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in a London townhouse…And they’ve had to get day jobs: Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic, Aphrodite as a phone sex operator…Even more disturbingly, their powers are waning…Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind… [source]
Title: How We Decide
Author: Jonah Lehrer
Genre: Non-fiction, psychology, neuroscience
…There is something powerfully human in the act of deliberately choosing a path; other animals have drives, emotions, problem-solving skills, but none rival our capacity for self-consciously weighing all the options, imagining potential outcomes and arriving at a choice…Explaining decision-making on the scale of neurons makes for a challenging task, but Lehrer handles it with confidence and grace….In part, the neuroscience medicine goes down so smoothly because Lehrer introduces each concept with an arresting anecdote from a diverse array of fields… [source]
Title: Jerkbait
Author: Mia Siegert
Genre: Fiction, LGBTQUAI, young adult, contemporary
Even though they’re identical, Tristan isn’t close to his twin Robbie at all—until Robbie tries to kill himself. Forced to share a room to prevent Robbie from hurting himself, the brothers begin to feel the weight of each other’s lives on the ice, and off…Tristan starts seeing his twin not as a hockey star whose shadow Tristan can’t escape, but a struggling gay teen terrified about coming out in the professional sports world…Between keeping Robbie’s secret and saving him from taking his life, Tristan is given the final call: sacrifice his dream for a brother he barely knows, or pursue his own path. How far is Robbie willing to go—and more importantly, how far is Tristan willing to go to help him? [source]