I love starting a book when I know that at the very least, it will be well-written and engaging, and with Ian McEwan, that is always a safe bet. The Children Act was no exception in his superb, always inventive and psychologically investigative collection of novels.
When you read a Julian Barnes book, you know that it’s probably not going to be a happy tale. But it will be exquisitely written – almost poetic. The Only Story is indeed not happy. As the Globe and Mail said, “Julian Barnes’s latest novel is for the person who likes to listen to sad songs after a breakup. The Only Story hurts while it comforts.”
It was exactly one year ago that I had my breakthrough and realized that there are well-written, non-fiction books about history that even I could enjoy reading. It was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals that opened my eyes. After Goodwin, I solicited ideas from friends and tried Jill Lepore’s These Truths and realized that not all popular history books would be to my liking. Therefore, when I read Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, I was thrilled to find it so accessible and entertaining.
This is not the kind of book I would normally pick out for myself, but my husband Dan saw Hadfield speak and brought his memoir home. His high praise of the man’s message and the book itself put it at the top of my list, and I wasn’t disappointed.
My co-editor and I so enjoy receiving book recommendations from our readers that we both read Born A Crime this month after our friend Jane Amara endorsed it. I was aware of the book, but unsure of its appeal. Thanks to Jane, I read it and recommend it highly.
I could not put this book down once I started reading it. At the same time, I didn’t want to read too much at one sitting because I wanted to absorb what I’d read and I didn’t want the book to end.
I could not have given this book a better title if I worked on it for the rest of my life. Never have I loved a book so much on the one hand and then completely lost interest on the other. The title, and my issues, stem from the structure of the book, which is essentially two short stories put together with a brief final chapter that sort of ties them together (sort of!).
Confession: I definitely chose this book for its cover. I was intrigued and almost bought it several times before finally getting it from the library after a long wait. But whatever I thought it would be about, The Birth House sucked me into a world and story that I never dreamed existed, and taught me some Canadian History at the same time.
The Blue Notebook is brutal to read, and yet I am grateful for the window it gave me into a world I knew nothing about. Levine has spent his life working with NGOs and non-profits all over the world to study and help children in extreme poverty. This is his first novel inspired by one moment in his travels.
I don’t know why WWII stories keep showing up so often on my reading list, but immediately after reading The Alice Network, I picked up this book with no expectations at all. Beneath A Scarlet Sky is the novelized true story of Pino Lella, who as a teenager helped Jews escape Italy, worked as a spy within the Nazi organization in Milan and assisted the Americans in removing the partisans once the war ended. It is an unbelievable tale, made all the more thrilling by the fact that it is true.
I confess, I had never heard of Richard Powers before my friend Jane recommended that I read The Overstory -- because it was good and because it had won the Pulitzer Prize. I’m not sure how I missed Powers, who has published 11 books prior to The Overstory. But now that I’ve read the book, I can understand why it won the prestigious prize.
Thank goodness for the twice-yearly “Authors on Stage” program at Wellesley College, which I’ve happily attended for years with my friend, Pam. If not for this wonderful series, which each time features three authors talking about their new books, I may never have found The Food Explorer. As the title suggests, the book tells the remarkable story of David Fairchild, an American botanist, who from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth, devoted his life to traveling the world in search of new plants and foods that he could bring back to America. He added a vast quantity of foods to Americans’ diets and increased by a huge amount the diversity of what farmers grow.
Although I have never reviewed Caleb Carr’s earlier book, The Alienist, I find myself recommending it all the time to people who want an engrossing, fast-paced and smart book. Its wide appeal is, I’m sure, why Amazon Prime made a series out of it. It took me a few years to read the sequel, The Angel of Darkness, but I was not disappointed.
This amazing book is the true story of the woman who created the Veuve Clicquot empire in France just after the French Revolution when women weren’t generally allowed to own property or run businesses. Upon her husband’s death when she was 27 years old, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin assumed leadership of the wine company she and her husband had run together. With genuine strength and a natural ability for business, she nurtured the company through multiple political and financial firestorms – to become one of the first and most successful business women of her time.
This debut novel set on the remote Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia tells the fascinating story of two young sisters who go missing one day and the year that follows as the search for the girls ensues. Each chapter is set one month after the previous one and examines the search from a different character’s perspective: the mother of the girls, a neighbor, a witness, a detective. This structure could have felt contrived, but instead added to the overall appeal of the book.
It’s hard to categorize this book, and I am sure I have never read another one like it. Part mystery, part thriller, part brain teaser, every page you turn the story gets weirder and more engrossing.
Maybe you know Liane Moriarity as the author of the book on which the amazing mini-series BIG LITTLE LIES was based – with a cast that included Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern. But Moriarity has written seven other novels as well, including her latest,Nine Perfect Strangers. Moriarity is a gifted storyteller, drawing readers in with realistic characters, spot-on dialogue and engaging story lines. Just when you think you know what will happen next, the author deftly throws a curveball and sends you some place unexpected.
Considering the list of “books I should have read, but somehow never did,” Catch-22 was at the top. Had it not been for my son and his self-generated challenge to read some of the books he had never read, I may never have tackled this one. Oh! And then Hulu recently produced Catch-22 as a six-part series starring George Clooney, which further incentivized me to read the book.
While not a memoir, this book takes a very close look at a young woman who was born male and her journey, along with her family, to transition to the gender she was meant to be.
I don’t read a ton of memoirs, but this one is GREAT! I devoured it, staying up way too late several nights in a row. Not only is the story completely hypnotic, the book is structured to keep you turning pages.
