I would also like to recommend I Am Malala. Quite by chance I read this book less than a month after finishing Daugher of Destiny. The two books make excellent companions.
THE WATER DANCER
I should have listened to my friend Carolyn who, over six months ago, told me I should read The Water Dancer; that our book club should read it; that Coates’ writing was poetic. She was so right. Now I am recommending that all of you read this beautifully written and expertly crafted debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
DAUGHTER OF DESTINY
I honestly don’t remember how this book got on my reading list, except I think it was mentioned in another book. Perhaps Hillary Clinton’s most recent? However it came to me, I picked it up knowing almost nothing about Bhutto, her family or Pakistani history. My only understanding going in was that she was the first female prime minister in the Muslim world.
SHANTARAM and THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH
What better time to tackle those huge tome-like books you have always meant to read than during an overlong quarantine? That was my thinking when I finally sank my teeth into Shantaram, which appears on many “all-time best books” lists and had been sitting on my shelf for years. After finishing that and recovering by reading several shorter books, I decided to take the plunge into The Pillars of The Earth, my first-ever Ken Follett book.
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
When I read (and reviewed) Americanahlast year, I knew I wanted to read more of Adichie’s work, and I was not disappointed by Half of a Yellow Sun. Once again Adichie creates a vivid world full of compelling and complicated characters, all of whom struggle to balance tradition and the hope for a more successful and just future.
THE WAR ON NORMAL PEOPLE
Best known for his 2020 presidential bid and his controversial “Freedom Dividend,” Andrew Yang provides a sobering look at the economic and sociocultural status of the United States in The War on Normal People. Yang, a former lawyer and entrepreneur, offers a statistics-backed look into the many problems plaguing the U.S. today: income inequality, wealth disparity, job loss, the opioid epidemic, and others. He tackles issues that many of us, including our elected officials, often minimize or ignore.
THE TRAVELERS
In The Travelers, Regina Porter offers an epic tale of two families, one Black and one White, over several generations. With a cast of characters so elaborate that she includes a reference at the book’s beginning, the stories of the Vincents and the Christies overlap and intersect at strategic points. Although there are quite a few characters to keep track of, Porter does an amazing job of making each of them come alive.
WASHINGTON BLACK
This completely original and unforgettable book will captivate you from beginning to end. Edugyan opens the book with young Washington Black (Wash) who is enduring life as a young slave on a sugar cane plantation on Barbados in 1830. Under the dominion of the ruthlessly cruel plantation owner, Erasmus Wilde, Wash struggles to understand how so little value can be placed on the slaves’ lives.
THE HATE U GIVE
When I read this book in March it felt painfully current. Sadly its relevance and timeliness have only grown over the past several months as we’ve seen police violence against Black Americans magnified a thousand-fold.
WHAT LOOKS LIKE CRAZY ON AN ORDINARY DAY
My first encounter with Pearl Cleage was as a playwright, when I took part in a pandemic play-reading group created and run by Northern Stage in Vermont. Her enchanting play, Blues for an Alabama Sky, set during the Harlem Renaissance, combined with hearing her speak about her work, made me immediately add several of her novels to my reading list. And I was not disappointed!
THE WONDER
Set in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, The Wonder fascinates with the story of Lib Wright, a nurse who trained with Florence Nightingale. She has been hired for two weeks to observe 11-year-old Anna O’Donnell, who claims not to have eaten for four months. Her parents and the local priest and politicians believe that she is a living miracle. Her fame has spread so widely that believers make pilgrimages to meet her. Lib believes she will uncover with ease and efficiency the deceit in the little girl’s and her family’s claim. Instead, she finds herself pulled into Anna’s saint-like aura.
THE NICKEL BOYS
You don’t need me to tell you that this book is a masterpiece. The Pulitzer Prize committee did that a few weeks ago when they awarded Colson Whitehead his second Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Whitehead’s phenomenal writing style simultaneously draws you into the world of his story, while illuminating difficult truths about his characters and our society.
SOMETHING WONDERFUL
I’m not usually a big biography gal, probably because I have read more than a few boring ones, often of playwrights I admire. So this book sat on my shelf for a while, despite my dad’s hearty recommendation. Lesson learned: listen to dad.
AFTERLIFE
Afterlife is a beautifully written, sensitive and realistic exploration of one woman’s struggle to come to terms with her husband’s sudden and unexpected death. The novel begins one year after Sam’s death and Antonia is still fixated on her final days with her husband. She has conversations with him in her mind as a means of keeping him alive. Antonia is grappling as well with how and when she’ll feel able to interact with her three sisters again. They have always been very close, but she’s found them barely tolerable since becoming a widow.
THE ALIENIST
As our first book, we decided to read The Alienist by Caleb Carr, a whodunit set in New York City at the end of the 19th century when both psychological analyses of criminals and forensics were in their infancy.
TRICK MIRROR
In Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino offers nine ori-ginal essays about the current state of the world we live in – as seen through the eyes of a whip-smart millennial with a feminist perspective. Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker who before working in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan, grew up in Houston in a family very dedicated to their evangelical mega-church. Through her essays we learn of her transformation from devout Christian and obedient daughter to independent thinker and commentator on her generation.
THE NIGHT CIRCUS
If magic, love stories and dramaturgy (the theory and practice of dramatic composition) excite you as much as they do me, this is the book for you. I had no idea what I was in for with this one, and I really loved it—a perfect escape book!
THERE THERE
I’ve been reading a lot of books since the COVID-19 quarantine began and There There is by far the most memorable. Orange artfully constructs the book around 12 characters, each of whom has different feelings about his or her Native American roots. The setting is modern day Oakland, California. The characters are at once exotic in their differences and empathetic in their humanity.
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
I know I am late to the Sally Rooney party, but I am thrilled to have finally joined. (And I will read Normal People as soon as it comes off the library wait list!). Conversations with Friends is witty, sexy and intelligent without any heavy-handedness. I enjoyed reading it, but it did not feel fluffy or light.
EXPECTING BETTER
It may seem unusual for a 60+ woman to be reading a book about pregnancy, right? Well, my daughter Maddie was so fascinated by this book and talked to me about it so frequently, that I told her I wanted to borrow the book when she was done.