Bill Bryson can take any topic and spool it into the most entertaining thing you’ve ever read. He tackles diverse subjects, from hiking the Appalachian Trail (A Walk in the Woods) to, well—everything (A Short History of Nearly Everything). 

In his latest book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bryson divides the body’s various parts and processes into 23 chapters, with subject headings such as “The Heart and Blood,” “The Guts” and “Nerves and Pain.” Each relatively short chapter is chock-full of clear, in-depth explanations of the body and its components, focusing just the right amount of facts and attention on each area to keep the reader riveted and eager to dive into the next topic. 

As with his previous writings, Bryson demonstrates his gift for putting science in layman’s terms, deftly melding the most incredible statistics with wit to expose humorous and fascinating aspects of the human condition. He relates these nuggets of information to everyday life, such as when he compares a cell to a little room that is “of itself as nonliving as any other room.” Yet when combined with the busy, also nonliving things housed within its walls—such as proteins, DNA and mitochondria—life is created.

Throughout the book, Bryson highlights parts of the human physique that are mysteries even to doctors and scientists. He creatively intertwines amazing medical advances, such as transplant surgery and antibiotics, with topics that are still very much unknown, such as the immune system and allergies. It’s rather humbling to realize that there’s so much we don’t know about the place that houses all of our thoughts, feelings and physical attributes. As Bryson so effectively conveys in The Body, we truly are a work in progress. 

Jaquira Díaz’s Ordinary Girls reaches deep into your heart and seizes your emotions from the very first sizzling paragraph. And as it carries you into some of Díaz’s darkest shadows and out into variegated light, it refuses to let go. In staccato sentences, Díaz walks us through her community: “We were the girls who strolled onto the blacktop on long summer days, dribbling past the boys on the court. . . . We were the wild girls who loved music and dancing. Girls who were black and brown and poor and queer. Girls who loved each other.”

In fiercely honest prose, Díaz turns back every page of her life, starting with growing up in El Caserío Padre Rivera, the government housing projects in Puerto Rico, and sharing stories from there that she “never wants to forget.” In this world, Díaz learns about danger and violence and death, but she also learns about community. She yearns for a more loving family and home, but her mother and father can provide only a soundtrack of constant bickering and yelling. There’s no love lost between Díaz and her brother, who beats her and abuses her emotionally and whom she tries to kill with a steak knife.

When the family moves to Miami Beach, life looks a little sunnier because they’ve moved up financially, but only for a moment. Her mother and father split, and her mother sinks into addiction that’s exacerbated by schizophrenia. Díaz eventually escapes the violence through an early marriage, a stint in the Navy and enrollment in college and creative writing courses, though she never sheds her friendships, her family or her memories.

The stunning beauty of Díaz’s memoir grows out of its passion, its defiance, its longing, its love and its clear-eyed honesty. Díaz’s story hums with a vibrant beauty, shining a light out of the darkness that shadowed her life.