I am mostly a lurker, but I love this thread and thought I’d offer up my favorite two books and some recommendations from the past few months.
I have mostly read non-fiction for almost 20 years, after realizing I couldn’t afford to stay up all night anymore (after having kids lol). My two absolutely favorite books are both by Victoria Sweet - God’s Hotel and Slow Medicine. They are incredibly well written, and very interesting, and the books are a window into a world I wasn’t familiar with at all. She is a doctor via a nontraditional path, and spent 20 years working in a charity hospital. I can’t recommend these highly enough.
I have read more fiction in the past few months than in the last 10 years, after realizing I didn’t have the bandwidth for serious stuff. Some of the things I liked:
The Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters. I read 17 of them in two weeks ?. I loved the tone and the historical setting and the character development as the books progressed.
The first two books of the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, also mentioned by someone else above. The premise is hard to describe. Kind of a Neville from Harry Potter as a police constable among the Muggles. Very funny books.
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. I loved her Deed of Paksenarrion in my younger days, and stumbled across this. I really liked the premise. An older woman decides not to leave with the rest of the colonists and ends up alone on a planet, and then ends up making first contact with an alien species. It was an absorbing story, with some interesting subtext on how older people can get treated so poorly. Mostly a relaxed, almost lyrical story.
Also read The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu over Christmas. So different, so powerful.
Anyway, sorry for the essay. Let me know if anyone is looking for more non-fiction recommendations. I read pretty widely, so my recommendations tend to be all over the place!
A thoughtful and well argued walk along the troublesome trails of today’s social upheaval. Well indexed so one can find and/or return to related detail… (very helpful for the older reader without the retention of our youth). His presentations are thorough and well argued without emotional extravagance.
It was so good, I did not mind a forced landing in the wrong airport!
@meemoe I love Elizabeth Moon. I liked the * The Deed of Paksenarrion , and the first two sequels, the rest of the series not so much. The Speed of Dark was a really interesting take on The Flowers for Algernon idea, but with autism. I loved the series that starts with Hunting Party. I downloaded a graphic novel version of * Rivers of Londonby mistake and it was unreadable, but I’ve been meaning to try it for ever. Also the Cixin Liu books.
I rarely read non-fiction and occasionally feel guilty about that!
@meemoe I loved the Brother Cadfael series. If you like off-the-beaten track detective series, try Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole books. @dragonmom If you liked the Nantucket setting of Elin Hilderbrand’s novels, then try Nancy Thayer. All her books are set on Nantucket and are well-written summer reads. Her newest is: Girls of Summer.
I just finished The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and thought it was terrific. It’s a great character-driven story that focuses on family, race, love and identity. Point of view switches throughout and the highly talented author (she’s young!) is able to move forward and backward in time effortlessly. Just really good contemporary fiction.
The Book Women of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is a wonderful historical fiction read.
The book is inspired by the true and historical blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service. The main character joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky. (description from Good Reads)
It covers similar material as The Giver of Stars by Jo Jo Meyers - I thought Meyer’s version was a bit lighter and both were equally engaging. I love books that provide a strong sense of place and time - must be why I love historical fiction.
I am now switching gears A LOT and starting Kevin Kwan’s newest book (author of Crazy Rich Asians) - Sex and Vanity.
The Crazy Rich Asian books were silly, but an awful lot of fun. I read them while we were in Hong Kong for a couple of months in 2018 and it was fun recognizing all the Hong Kong locations.
I didn’t know that Dorothea Benton Frank had died! I read most all of her novels as fun beach reads. She had a very sly, breezy writing style. I also picked up a book by Tony Horwitz “Confederates in the Attic” (still relevant) and googled him wondering what he’d written lately and found he died also.
I ordered the Barry book on the 1918 Spanish flu. Should be here soon.
Just finished a great book called “A Girl Returned” by Donatella Di Pietrantonio. It is an Italian book about a young girl in Italy and her family. Very well written (and translated by the same woman who translated Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan books). Everyone in book group liked it (which is fairly unusual).
I just read “This Life is in Your Hands,” written by Melissa Coleman. It’s the true story about her parents moving to a remote part of Maine in the late '60s to homestead. They had no running water or electricity. I thought it was excellent. Well-written and hard to put down. Not a happy book, though. Living off the land is hard!
One of my friends picked it for our next book club selection. When I told my husband about it, he reminded me that he had met the father, Eliot Coleman, and asked him to autograph one of his books. I also remembered long ago driving out to see where the Colemans and their mentors, the Nearings, lived. Talk about remote!
^^^I read Scott and Helen Nearing’s book, The Good Life. It was ages ago, but I still remember how much I loved reading about the way they structured their lives to be self-sufficient. I really wanted to do that.
I"m a light reader - as in not too heavy content though I’m always reading something!
Recently I read Evvie Drake Starts Over which seemed like was hugely popular. I liked it fine but didn’t quite get all the hoopla over it! I wonder if this was a case of the author selling the book (Linda Holmes) over the book content being the seller.
Just so happened that the next book I chose to read (and I’m 81% done with it) also features an “Evvie” - not a common name. I’m reading The Friends We Keep - really to me much better that “Drake”!