I’ve read some great books lately. Have you? Please share! Here are my own idiosyncratic recommendations:

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen – This won the Pulitzer for fiction, and although it’s sometimes hard to follow who’s doing what where, I found the milieu (post fall of Saigon) fascinating, and the uncertainty about levels of deception suspenseful. The writing was superlative. Not an easy read, but a rewarding one.

The House By the Lake, by Thomas Harding – A true account of a cottage on a lake about an hour from Berlin, from the 1920’s when the author’s great-grandparents built it, through 2014, when it was restored and placed on the Register of Historic Places. A microcosm of the history of Berlin during these years, the book brought to life all the changes during these decades in a very personal and compelling way, including the bike and running path in front of the house that used to be where the Berlin Wall was.

The Mothers, by Britt Bennett – This is for when you just want to speed read and not think too much. I thought this book was like a more current Jodi Picoult novel – lots of emotion, but with black characters and “the mothers”, the churchwomen who were like a Greek chorus to the events. A fun read! [Read more…]