Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
I remember hearing about Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Katherine Anne Porter
I stole this book from the responses to a friend’s request for book suggestions for my own reading list not too long ago. While trying to determine what to read next, I browsed some synopses and reviews and found this comment: “Katherine Anne Porter is a woman who spent a great deal of time fretting over semicolons.” That was the deciding factor.
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The Orphan Master’s Son
Adam Johnson
After no Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded last year, people who care about such things worried that it could happen again. Instead this novel set in North Korea was recognized for 2013, one of a few awards it’s garnered so far. Initially I wasn’t too intrigued by the reviews, but I guess I was swayed by the accolades.
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Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward
It’s hard not to think of Benh Zeitlin’s beautiful film Beasts of the Southern Wild while reading this book that is also centered around an impoverished bayou community bracing for an approaching hurricane. The heroines also have similar fierceness nestled in vulnerability and struggle with the absence of their mothers but the presence of wounded fathers.
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This is How You Lose Her
Junot Díaz
Partway into this collection, Teri tweeted a link to this comment thread on a Hairpin advice post, prompting a brief discussion of Díaz and how autobiographical his work might be. Since I haven’t read much about him as a person before, I wasn’t aware that his character Yunior, who is the centerpiece of this collection of stories, is really quite similar to him, making much of his fiction pretty true-to-life.
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Tenth of December
George Saunders
I always feel I should like George Saunders more than I do; when The New York Times emphatically declared this “the best book you’ll read this year,” I thought perhaps these would be the stories that would teach me to love him. The flaw in this thinking being that I read several of them when they ran in The New Yorker.
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The Round House
Louise Erdrich
For some reason I’ve never read any Louise Erdrich novels before, so I was glad to get to The Round House and later find out that many of her books are centered around the same fictional North Dakota reservation and the community there. It’s impressive to know that this book is grounded in a well-established history, but yet it can effortlessly draw in a reader unfamiliar with any of the preceding stories.
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Snow
Orhan Pamuk
Feeling pleased at the wintry theme at the time, I bought Snow with Winter’s Tale — now the association with Helprin’s novel is not at all flattering, but luckily they have little in common beyond cold weather. And whereas Winter’s Tale is best at the beginning, Snow felt rather tedious at the start and got better after the story was established.
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Winter's Tale
Mark Helprin
In 2006, a New York Times poll asked “a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?, and Winter’s Tale incredibly received multiple votes.
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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan
I imagine this quirky novel would be a talking point for people interested in the “digital humanities,” as it pits dusty, old books and their creaky scholars against shiny, electronic devices and their optimistic geeks. That’s definitely both exaggeration and simplification as there are characters that walk the analog-digital line, but then it’s also a lighthearted narrative in which many of the characters are archetypal.
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