Alyson Inouye is a bookseller at a local Greenpoint Book Store. During the first few months of the pandemic, she taught herself to lightly animate her digital illustrations—because it was a skill she'd always wanted to learn, because it felt like the right way to chronicle the hazy experience of drifting days and looping time, and because it was something she could do while listening to audiobooks. Alyson listened to a lot of books since the start of the pandemic. During Inktober, she spun the official drawing prompts into book recommendations. The digital illustrations included here (for the prompts "rodent", "rocket", "chef", and "shoes") recommend Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, Eat A Peach by David Chang, and On the Come Up by Angie Thomas. You can find the other 27 recommendations saved as a highlight reel on her Instagram.

Alyson's Book Recommendations:

• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

• Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

• Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith

• Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

• A Deadly Education: (The Scholomance #1) by Naomi Novik

• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

• The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• Eat A Peach by David Chang

• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

• Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire by John August

• Strong Like Her: A Celebration of Rule Breakers, History Makers, and Unstoppable Athletes Book by Haley Shapley

• How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

• Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

• A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women): Profiles of Unstoppable Female Artists—and Projects to Help You Become One by Danielle Krysa

• Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz

• A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

• The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

• Dune by Frank Herbert

• The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Philosopher's War by Tom Miller

• The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance by Ruth Emmie Lang

• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

• Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

• The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson

• The New One by Mike Birbiglia

• Educated by Tara Westover

• Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

• These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card

• The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

• The Waves by Virginia Woolf

• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

• Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple