I dont always love every pick in the Reece Witherspoon book club. I often find that the stories are exciting, but the actual execution lacks skill, or the authors choose the easy way out with a topic that could have been so much more. Anita de Monte Laughs Last surpassed all expectations and Gonzalez has written a truly skillful, intelligent and emotionally fascinating book.
Julia Phillips has written her second novel and it is every bit as wonderful as her debut novel, Disappearing Earth (read review here). To have Ann Patchett provide a promotional blurb on the cover of the book and call the author a “brilliant writer,” pretty much says it all. (I believe that Ann Patchett is one of the best authors writing today.)
To undertake the retelling of Mark Twain’s classic book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn could seem an incredible act of hubris. But to rewrite the iconic story from the perspective of Jim, the Black slave who is as crucial to the story as Huck himself, was absolute genius. In James, Percival Everett has forever changed how readers will view the story of Huckleberry Finn.
After reading and reviewing Anxious People (read review here), I knew I wanted to read more of Fredrik Backman’s work, and several people recommended Beartown as it’s the first in a series. When I was down visiting my mom in Maine and saw it on her shelf it felt like the perfect opportunity.
It has been a while since I read or reviewed a book by an African author, but Medie’s captivating novel has reminded me that some of the best contemporary writers seem to be coming from Ghana and Nigeria. And for a debut novel, His Only Wife is a knockout.
I was definitely late to the Claire Lombardo party. Somehow, I hadn’t heard about The Most Fun We Ever Had until people started talking about her second book which was released this summer: Same As It Ever Was. I thoroughly enjoyed The Most Fun We Ever Had from start to finish and have her new book waiting for me in my stack of “To Be Read” books.
Wow! Can Amor Towles write! I found myself repeatedly amazed at his ability to craft a sentence, a paragraph and ultimately a short story. He is most assuredly one of the greatest living American authors writing at this time. For those of you who loved A Gentleman in Moscow (read review here), Rules of Civility and/or The Lincoln Highway (read review here), you are in for a treat with Table for Two.
When my friend Carolyn told me that she was reading On Pluto and what it was about, I felt an obligation to read it. Having a mother who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few years ago, I wanted to see whether O’Brien could help me better understand what she is going through. How unexpected and delightful then to find a book that is not only truly informative, but heartfelt and light-hearted at the same time.
I kicked off my beach reads a little early this year and devoured this book during an amazing weekend away for a friend’s wedding. A swirling mix of suspense, psychological mystery, romance and coming of age, there was nothing I didn’t love about The House in the Pines. Except maybe how stressed I got reading the last 75 pages!
If reviewing Curtis Sittenfeld two months in a row doesn’t convince you of my love for her books, I don’t know what will. A collection of short stories, Sittenfeld published You Think It, I'll Say It in 2018. We often mention in our reviews that we take it as the sign of a good book when we find ourselves thinking about the characters or story after we finish reading.
Because I thought Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers was such a great read (read review here), I couldn’t wait to read I Have Some Questions for You. Although the two books are very different, I Have Some Questions triumphs as well. Where The Great Believers uses historical fiction to develop a story about the AIDS epidemic and its effects on a network of friends, I Have Some Questions falls somewhere between a psychological thriller and a mystery.
Thinking about my favorite kind of novels, I must admit that mysteries fall towards the bottom of my list. I feel like I’m not good at keeping track of all the clues that should lead me to figure out “who done it” before the writer actually reveals the killer. I know I’ve said this before, but this is one of the reasons why I love being in a book club. We make our book selections and inevitably some of those books I would never have read on my own. And guess what? Sometimes I really enjoy the books. Louise Penny’s Still Life is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
I love reading a book that has been on my 'to read' list for so long that I can't remember how it got there. Although I wish I could go tell the recommender how much I loved it, it feels like a small gift when a great book like this just appears. Sorrow and Bliss is definitely a gift–a funny, weird, sad and heartbreakingly truthful gift.
I will start by saying this is a strange little book, and yet I want everyone to read it. I don’t remember who or how this book came to be on my list, but when it came in from the library it felt like fate. I had just finished purchasing tickets to a brand new play called Mad Madge by Rose Napoli and the subject is the same woman. Margaret Cavendish was an aristocrat from the early 17th century who was one of the first women to publish her own writing. And she wrote seven books!
I’m not sure how I happened to pick up this book. I hadn’t read Kim’s previous book Miracle Creek, but I’m definitely going to read it now. Happiness Falls is one of the best psychological thrillers that I can remember reading—ever. Written at a suitably fast clip, Kim had me exclaiming out loud several times, as well as rereading previous pages to make sure that what I thought had just happened had actually happened.
I was late to the party in reading North Woods by Daniel Mason. Having received a rave review from my friend Jane and positive comments from my husband, something caused me to put off reading it. I hate to admit it, because we all know that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” but the cover of this book made me think it was going to be a Young Adult kind of book. Ridiculous, I know. But there you have it.
Many of you will remember the glowing review my mother wrote of Edugyan’s novel Washington Black (read review here), which was one of my favorite books that year as well. So when I saw that an earlier book of hers had won the Giller prize, I scooped it up from the library immediately. A similarly sweeping historical drama dealing with race across several continents, Half-Blood Blues did not disappoint.
Speak with the Earth and It Will Teach You: A Field Guide to the Bible by Daniel Cooperrider is a tremendously impactful book I read this month. As some L&L readers may know, I’ve been a member of a Bible study group for over twenty years. In that time, we’ve explored: books that didn’t make it into the Bible; women of the Bible; the psalms; and many other topics. But Cooperrider’s book is the first time I’d looked at the Bible from the perspective of the environment.
I’ve mentioned before the odd coincidence when I feel that a theme or time period is suddenly everywhere in my life. Right now all of my media seems to be World War II related. Not the most uplifting moment in history, and sometimes downright traumatic. But even though I am feeling a bit inundated, Obasan stood out as a truly remarkable piece of writing.
I picked up this classic book published in 1960 because Natalie Goldberg, the author of Writing Down the Bones (read review here) said it was a must-read for anyone interested in writing. I found Hemingway’s essays about his years in Paris from 1921 to 1926, when he was just a struggling writer, to be utterly transporting. Included in A Moveable Feast are 20 pieces written by Hemingway, in which he illuminates the fascinating life he and his wife Hadley led when they lived in Paris.
