It is still an unusual event when I choose to read a book about history. Even with my conversion by Doris Kearns Goodwin, I do not find myself naturally drawn to this genre. So again, I must celebrate being a member of the Bates Boston Alumna Book Club for forcing me to read books I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise.
Raven Leilani writes with a brilliant blend of urgency and humor in Luster. Her protagonist Edie finds herself sexually entangled with an older male colleague, who himself is in an open marriage. Edie is a twenty-something, Black woman and the married couple is older and white. Leilani explores the dynamics of this threesome across race and class and propels Luster to a level far beyond what could sound like a soap opera trope.
In Breath from Salt, Bijal P. Trivedi takes what could have been a slog through scientific detail and creates a fascinating read by weaving the medical research together with the stories of real families desperate to find a cure for cystic fibrosis (CF), a congenital disease that kills most of its victims before they reach adulthood. The reader learns the details of how the cure was found through a combination of decades-long research looking for the causes of, and potential treatments for, the disease with the support of determined parents who fundraised hundreds of millions of dollars towards that research.
Given the title of this book and the subject matter, it is a wonder that I ever chose to read it. But, it appeared on a list of two “must-read” books for people anxious to understand what has brought the United States to the point where insurrectionists storm the Capital building in Washington D.C. and why Americans are so severely divided that they can no longer even talk to onr another.
Like many readers I suspect, my only Zora Neale Hurston experience was reading (and loving) Their Eyes Were Watching God in high school. Although I remember truly enjoying the book, I didn’t remember much about the author, and so was glad to find this short story collection comes with a lengthy intro. It reminded me about her rise to fame at a time when Black fiction was scarce and Black, female authors almost entirely unknown.
Yaa Gyasi has been on my radar for a while, but somehow I have never read her award-winning first novel Homegoing. (It won at least four major literary prizes.). But now that I have read her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, I cannot wait to read her first. Gyasi was born in Ghana and raised in Alabama and draws on those experiences in Transcendent Kingdom. With prose so succinct and beautiful it reads like poetry, Gyasi tells the story of Gifty, a sixth-year PhD candidate at Stanford University.
With an author as prolific as Margaret Atwood, it seems I can always find another of her books to read. I don’t remember how this 2015 novel made its way onto my reading list, but it is a fascinating story with plenty of psychological tricks and thrills, like so many of Atwood’s better-known works.
I had never heard of this book until Kathleen, a friend of a friend and a reader of L & L, wrote my editor and me an email which included her favorite recent reads. It makes me so happy to hear from readers–and to get book recommendations. Please, keep them coming!
This beautifully written novel somehow manages to feel like a meditation or poetry while simultaneously spinning out the story of two lives over a sixty-year span. Yuki Oyama is a young Japanese girl growing up in New York in the 60s. When her parents decide to return to Japan, she chooses to stay with a friend to finish her high school years in America.
Every once in a while I like to read a really good social psychology book. I’m not sure that’s exactly how Adam Grant would describe his work. But for me, Give and Take is a succinct, data-driven manifesto on how we interact with and treat the people around us and how that can determine our success.
The author Margot Livesay has been on the periphery of my reading consciousness for a while and yet I had never read anything she’d written until The Boy In The Field. This, her tenth novel, is beautifully written and masterfully crafted, with a haunting story that has remained with me since I finished it weeks ago. I am always thrilled to discover an author that I enjoy who has written lots of other books for me to explore!
I had wanted to read Christie Tate’s Group for a while. Reviewers compared it to Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, a book about a psychotherapist’s experience being in therapy herself, that I enjoyed immensely and recommended to you in a previous L & L Review. (And my co-editor praised in a Second Helping.) Reese Witherspoon selected Group for her book club. Although I was nervous that the book couldn’t possibly live up to its hype, I can happily recommend Group with the highest praise.
Was there a more highly recommended book published this year than The Vanishing Half? It appears on everyone’s “Best-of 2020” reading lists and was recommended to me by friends and by my son. Naturally, I had very high expectations for the book, and it mostly came through for me. Bennett follows twin teenage sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes as they run away from their small, southern, Black community to the big city of New Orleans and a life of freedom together.
Just about one year ago, Random House put out its list of best books of the decade to celebrate entering the 2020s. Little did they know that this book about the AIDS epidemic in Chicago in the 80s would resonate so strongly as we all face a widespread and lethal epidemic in the first year of this new decade.
One of the things I have appreciated most in books this year is their ability to completely transport me to another place or time or culture. Although The Girl With The Louding Voice was not always a happy journey, I was completely absorbed and would emerge from each reading session dazed.
I take great pleasure in getting a book recommendation from a friend and finding that I love the book as much as they did. My friend, Jane and I almost always agree on books. So when she urged both my husband and me to read The River, I figured it had to be good. It is excellent. I love everything about this book.
Last month when I reviewed The Black Flamingo, I described how much I enjoyed its novel-in-verse format. By sheer coincidence shortly after writing that review, I read Clap When You Land, another novel written in verse for the young adult audience that offers plenty to adult readers too. I read this book cover-to-cover one rainy Saturday and found it an engrossing and entertaining escape.
Writers & Lovers is one of the best fiction books I have read this year. If you haven’t discovered Lily King (the author, not my co-editor), then you have a real treat awaiting you. Her previous book Euphoria was stellar and Writers & Lovers follows suit.
In Rodham, Curtis Sittenfeld uses historical facts to create a novel about Hillary Rodham and how her life might have turned out had she turned down Bill Clinton’s marriage proposal to pursue her own political ambition. What a fascinating premise! Not only is the idea for the novel great, but so is the execution.
Back in June when so many people were sharing lists of resources for those who wanted to educate themselves about anti-racism, this book appeared over and over. I added it to my library cue, but it was in such high demand, I didn’t get to check it out until this month. Although it is a difficult read, I am glad I finally got the chance.
