I read it when it first came out. Sort of know the author. I loved it at the start, but there were some things I had issue with, and didn’t think it ended as strongly as I thought it should. Love its mission, though.
Was sitting on a plane at MSP airport awaiting takeoff, reading the latest by John Sandford because it was vacation and I’ve been saving it, and realized I just ate at the restaurant mentioned in the book. Love summer reading.
What restaurant?
Stone Arch in the mall area of the airport.
The Orphan Master’s Son. Simply Riveting!
The WaPo says:
“A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That’s the genius of The Orphan Master’s Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mâché creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable. This is a novel worth getting excited about, one which more than delivers on its pre-publication buzz… I haven’t liked a new novel this much in years, and I want to share the simple pleasure of reading the book. But I also think it’s an instructive lesson in how to paint a fictional world against a background of fact: The secret is research…It’s this process of re-imagination that makes the fictional locale so real and gives the novel an impact you could never achieve with a thousand newspaper stories. Johnson has painted in indelible colors the nightmare of Kim’s North Korea. When English readers want to understand what it was about — how people lived and died inside a cult of personality that committed unspeakable crimes against its citizens — I hope they will turn to this carefully documented story. The happy surprise is that they will find it such a page turner.” —The Washington Post
Thanks for reminding me of The Orphan Master’s Son. It was the last book I bought before switching over to the Kindle, and is still sitting in the bedside table, waiting.
I second The Orphan Master’s Son. It is a GREAT book, and obviously very timely.
The Lewis Trilogy by Peter May - 3 of my all time favorite books. Highly recommend. The narrator on Audible is excellent too. Finishing up Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein and also recommend. Another great narrator too.
Code Name Verity has a sequel, I just learned last week. Haven’t read the sequel yet.
“The Perfect Nanny.” It’s disturbing and sad but very engrossing.
I just read a Joseph Kanon novel that had escaped my notice, Prodigal Spy. It’s very good, not my favorite of his books, but it reminded me again what a super writer of spy/espionage/historical fiction novels he is.
I highly recommend him:
@Consolation Do you have a recommendation for where to start with Kanon? What is your favorite?
@intparent They aren’t linked, except by period, so you can theoretically start anywhere, but I would probably start with Los Alamos or The Good German.
My favorite book is the outiders
@Consolation I’m a sucker for any book about Los Alamos, fiction or non. I’ll start there. 
I just finished Chasing New Horizons by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon. It is about the 26 year struggle to achieve the flyby of Pluto that happened in 2015. I LOVED this book. Stern takes you along on the highs and the lows of trying to get the project funded, building, launching, preparing, and executing the mission. There were plenty of near misses and daunting challenges along the way, and spectacular scientific results from the mission. It was the project of a lifetime for Stern and many of his fellow team members. Highly recommended!
A few days ago I finished Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan. It is a remarkable book, with remarkable characters. Really, it is difficult to know how to describe it. Historical fiction, definitely. In some ways, it reminds me of DH Lawrence, specifically Women in Love, and of Edith Wharton; novelists who are “traditional” in form but who delve deeply into male and female sexuality and emotional/intellectual being in a more modern way than, say, the great Victorians who preceded them. I also found it to be really absorbing, a page-turner.
There is one thing she did throughout that is odd and interesting: she consistently used the contractions I’ve and I’d in ways that one does not hear in regular speech, at least not now. For example, when a person might realistically say “I have time for that” in answer to a question, she’ll have them say “I’ve time for that.” While “I’d” is usually heard in expressions such as “I’d rather go now,” she will have a person say, looking back, “I’d the money for that.” ALL of the characters do this. ALL of the time. Both men and women, of all social classes.
I’m not sure why she chose to do this. It does contribute to setting the world of the novel a bit apart. I’d be interested in hearing what others thought of this.
Anyway, this is definitely one of the best books I’ve read for quite a while.
I’m currently reading Ken Follett’s A Column of Fire, which is a sequel to Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. The action starts in 1558, with locations in fictional Kingsbridge, France (especially Paris), and Spain at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Like other Follett novels, this is absolutely fascinating. I’m learning a lot about politics and Catholic/Protestant dynamics at that time. And it’s fun to see how little Kingsbridge is developing!
Not a “best” book but it really kept my interest: “Class” by Lucinda Rosenfeld. A satire about a woman with a severe case of white liberal angst.
A “best” book: “The Recovering” by Leslie Jamison.
Just finished Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (he won the Booker Prize for The English Patient). This one of these beautifully written books – the writing reminds me of Donna Tartt, no sentence is unconsidered – but they never go to Las Vegas, so I liked it better than The Goldfinch! And by that, I guess I mean that the meanders that it takes end up meaning something in the plot of the book. There were a couple of sections when I thought it was a bit slow, but in general I liked it very much. And some of those slower sections turn out to matter late in the story.
Some elegantly written books are light on plot, but there was enough here to hold it together. It is a book that reveals as it goes along, so you only realize later what an earlier section was fully about. It might be interesting to re-read once you’ve read it all the way through, to look for the signs of what you learn later in the story.
General plot is a teenage boy whose parents leave him and his sister in the care of a stranger and his rotating cast of friends right after WWII in London. The story starts when he is 14, and the early portions are from that worms-eye view of a child who doesn’t fully understand what the adults in his life are doing. As he gets older, he is able to uncover more information and understand quite a few of the things that are mysteries to him (or unnoticed) during his teen years.