David Litt’s Thanks, Obama will charm and entertain you from start to finish. With his self-deprecating humor, Litt relates his amazing story of becoming one of the youngest White House speechwriters in history.
CLARA CALLAN
As most of my family know, I have made it my goal since moving to Canada almost three years ago, to read more Canadian fiction. I like getting a sense of the country’s history without actually having to read a history book. So I was excited to receive Clara Callan, a winner of the Governor Generals Award, for Christmas this year.
THE BURNING GIRL
What goodness for Claire Messud, who consistently writes fabulous novels. Her latest, The Burning Girl, is no exception. In fact, I’m not sure how I managed to omit her from my list in December’s L & L Review of authors who I race to read whenever they publish new books.
MANHATTAN BEACH, A Novel
I loved this book and am so grateful to my friend Jane for recommending it! Described as having the atmosphere of a “noir thriller,” Manhattan Beach follows the life of Anna Kerrigan, from when she is a little girl and tagging along with her beloved father on some questionable business deals, through his disappearance when she is 12-years-old.
STIR: My Broken Brain And The Meals That Brought Me Home
I don’t read a lot of memoirs, and although we have about a million cookbooks on our shelves, I don’t spend a lot of time reading them either. But Stir manages to combine the two genres effectively and engagingly to create this quick-read book about healing, home and how our food defines us.
THE IMMORTALISTS, A Novel
The Immortalists is another fabulous book – this one recommended to me by my friend Linda. I agree with her endorsement. The story begins in the summer of 1969 in New York City. Four siblings, ranging in age from 9 to 13, are trying to escape boredom and decide to visit a mystic who claims she can tell each of them the date on which they will die. To say they are spooked as each meets with the woman individually, would be an understatement.
A LITTLE LIFE
I have been wanting to read this book for a long time, and I know I am quite late to the game in singing its praises. This book is a modern classic, and one of the best books I have read in a long time.
FURIOUSLY HAPPY; A Funny Book About Horrible Things
As the subtitle suggests, this book is a bit of a paradox, but I can honestly say, I have NEVER laughed out loud as much as I did reading Furiously Happy. I can perhaps blame the intensity of my reaction on pregnancy hormones, but my husband Dan came in to the room several times to check if I was alright to find me crying I was laughing so hard.
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
In a previous issue, I reviewed We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. I loved that book so much, that I gave it as a Christmas gift and found myself exploring what else Fowler had written. Happily, I found The Jane Austen Book Club, written nine years before We Are All Completely… Although very different from her other book, The Jane Austen Book Club is similarly innovative both in its story and in the way that Fowler tells it.
DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING
Right off the bat I want to say that this Giller Prize winner is deserving of the honor, and well worth the lengthy commitment. Thien’s prose is gorgeous and evocative and the story subject was one completely foreign to me.
TOWNIE, A Memoir
I read this book for two reasons: it had been recommended to me by a friend and I loved The House of Sand and Fog, Dubus’ breakout novel. To say I enjoyed this memoir would be an exaggeration. But it has stayed with me far longer than most books. I have thought about it and talked to other people about it many times since I finished reading it. For me, that’s proof of its power and perhaps even its value.
THE CIRCLE
Full Disclosure: This is the first Dave Eggers book I’ve ever read, so that fact that it is essentially a beach read is probably weird. The book opens with protagonist Mae Holland heading to The Circle for her first day at a new job. She is thrilled because this is the most important and respected company in the country, and probably the world.
TO THE BACK OF BEYOND
To The Back of Beyond was recommended to me by a friend and I whole-heartedly recommend this beautiful book to all of you. As I reflect on what makes it so compelling, I feel it’s not only that it's a poignant story about a young husband who suddenly and unexpectedly walks away from his happy marriage and two small children, but also the manner in which Stamm writes.
THE LIBRARY AT MOUNT CHAR
This was an incredibly weird book that has stuck with me over the last month much more than I expected. Set in a dystopian near-future, The Library at Mount Char imagines a set of gods or demi-gods who have controlled human history, and are in a moment of great upheaval.
DID YOU EVER HAVE A FAMILY, A Novel
I picked this novel up because it was a National Book Award finalist and was on a list of best books to read. From the opening scene, I was hooked and really couldn’t stop reading until I finished it. I keep recommending it to anyone who likes reading fiction.
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
Call me lazy, but I think one of the reasons that I don’t often pick up collections of short stories is because they take a bit more effort to read than a novel. I mean, you’ve just figured out who all the characters are and how they relate to one another and where the story is set and when, and the story is over and you have to start all over again with another story. Who wants to work that hard, right? Wrong! You must read Elizabeth Strout’s newest short story collection, Anything Is Possible.
WHAT WE LOSE
This debut novel was the choice for my October book club, and I honestly couldn’t put it down. At just over 200 pages, it is a quick read, but less because of length and more that the writer's thoughts carry you along as though she has taken over your brain. Her language is at once simple and poetic. It often feels like stream-of-consciousness, and yet she is always concise.
WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES
I loved this novel and am recommending it to everyone I know who reads fiction. I picked it up because it was a Man Booker Prize finalist. What an amazing find!
IN THE COUNTRY
I don’t often read short stories, and have read exactly zero books set in the Philippines, but I am extremely glad to have picked this one up! Each story centers around either a visitor to the Philippines, or a Philippino living abroad in places as far as Bahrain and as near (to us) as Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Alvar has the incredible ability to jump into her stories and make you feel as though you have had a 200-page intro to the characters and circumstances with which she presents you.
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS
will admit, this book took me a while to get into, but once I did, it was WORTH IT! The friend who recommendedSpecial Topics described it as Gilmore Girls meets murder mystery, and that’s a good place to start. The protagonist and narrator is a super-smart, teenage girl with a single parent. She doesn’t quite fit in at her new school, but is focused on her dream of getting to Harvard.