Recommended Books

These are the books that have changed how I think, work, and live. I share what stood out, what challenged me, and why each one is worth your time.

Discursive, revelatory ... As fluent in the comic register as it is in the tragic ... The book is less a linear narrative than a neat pile of shattered glass, one shard picked up at a time, in no discernible order.

A Truce That Is Not Peace
Miriam Toews

This book might not be the coda that a reader of Eat Pray Love would expect, but in the end, Gilbert’s bumpy, less-expected journey is all the more fitting and human.

All The Way To The River
Elizabeth Gilbert
What We Can Know

The novel is at its strongest when McEwan returns to his forte of realism ... Delicately and poignantly rendered.

What We Can Know
Dan McEwan
The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny

Rich with old-fashioned storytelling and populated with fully fleshed, nuanced characters, this is a stunner worth savoring.

The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny
Kiran Desai
A Guardian And A Thief

A perfect short novel: 200 pages of tightly honed panic about life in a collapsing society ... Ominous.

A Guardian And A Thief
Megha Majumdar
The Wilderness

Flournoy is a master of nuance ... Flournoy has put her finger on the cultural pulse of the past two decades.

The Wilderness
Angela Flournoy
The Martians

Deeply researched and witty ... Baron...approaches his subject with clarity, style and narrative drive.

The Martians
David Baron
An Afterlife

Buoyant if somewhat boosterish ... Wade translates even Stein’s seeming shortcomings into strengths ... Wade draws on extensive interviews.

An Afterlife
Francesca Wade