This Year’s Book Recommendations
Friends and family often ask me for book recommendations, understandable considering the amount of time I spend reading and thinking about books. I keep a list of every book I read for easy reference.
Here are a few of my favorites from the past year:
Where’d You Go, Bernadette- Maria Semple
A fifteen-year-old girl, obsessed with visiting Antarctica, searches for her disappeared, agoraphobic mother. Quirky, though not overly so, and touching.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home- Carol Rifka Brunt
Following the death of her uncle, a famous painter, lonely June befriends his partner and tries to reconnect with her older sister. Haunting and beautiful.
The Orphan Master’s Son- Adam Johnson
This won the Pulitzer a couple months after I finished. Sprawling, complex, and fascinating. Part one is a little slow, but the story picks up in part two.
As mentioned earlier, Gillian Flynn’s novels have also been highlights of my year.
In non-fiction:
Brain on Fire- Susannah Cahalen
A memoir of a lost month in the hospital with a rare auto-immune disease. One of only a few known patients with the disease, doctors originally believed she might be suffering with schizophrenia. Callahan brings a journalist’s eye to piece together this lost month and recount her recovery.
Love Is a Mixtape- Rob Sheffield
A memoir about music, mixtapes, and his late wife RenĂ©e, who died at age 31. Sheffield recalls their romance and life together through the mixtapes they made and loved from the late ’80s to mid ’90s
Maphead- Ken Jennings
I’ve been obsessed with maps for almost all of my life. So much of this rang true for me. A fascinating read about why people love maps for those not similarly afflicted.