Book Recommendation Extravaganza

Emptying out the inbox.

Greetings from the campus of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where I woke up to temperatures just above freezing and a crispness to the air that triggered a sense of nostaligic memory as I breathed it in, not unlike Proust’s experience with his madeleine.

You can take the boy out of the Midwest, but I guess you can’t take the Midwest out of the boy. Later today I’ll be delivering a plenary address (note to self: look up what plenary means) at the Original Lilly Conference on Teaching and Learning on the topic of what AI means to the teaching of writing, a topic that regular readers of this newsletter know that I’ve had a thing or two to say about.

So without time to whip up some fresh book and culture related cogitation today, I’ve endeavored to empty the recommendation request in-box as a service to those looking for their next read and those who might see what others are reading and find something that looks intriguing to themselves. After the recommendations, I’ll also have some links for your perusal and enjoyment.

Recommendations

1. Trust by Hernan Diaz

2. Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

3. Piranesi by Susana Clark

4. The Employees by Olga Ravn

5. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

Augusta C. - Seattle, WA

I sort of wonder if Cloud Atlas is a book that people are still discovering. My personal sense is that it’s become a perennial contemporary classic, but I wonder if it’s still in the cultural mix as much as I think. Either way, it’s a book that I think will work well for Augusta.

1. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari  

2. Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfections by Kate Bowler, Jessica Ritchie

3. The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness by Gregory Boyle

4. The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the Toddler Years by Armin A. Brott

5. Surrender by Bono 

Matt C.

This is all nonfiction, so it may be a risk to recommend a novel, but there’s something about the themes of trying to figure out who we are in the world and fathers and sons that brings Tom Rachman’s The Italian Teacher to mind.

1. A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk

2. Jefferson's Vendetta by Joseph Whellan

3. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

4. The Road by Carmac McCarthy

5. All the World You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

David H.

A little different inspiration for this one in that seeing Leave the World Behind triggered an image of a movie trailer for the film version of that book, which brought to mind the movie trailer for another film adaptation that’s coming out soon, and once I started thinking about that other book, it seemed like a good recommendation for David. The book? Erasure by Percival Everett.

1. The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot

2. The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins

3. Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Fix It by John Abramson

4. The Division of Light and Power by Dennis Kucinich

5. Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy by Claire Provost and Matt Kennard

Tom H. - Carrboro, NC

Tom’s apparent interest to the forces working underneath the surface of our government and society brings to mind Brian Alexander’s telling of how private equity killed not just a business, but an entire town in its quest for profits: Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander.

1. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

2. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley

3. Crooked River by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

4. The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith

5. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Sarah L.

Sarah needs a nice, involving read with good pace and relatable characters. In the moment, for me that means Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin.

Want a bespoke book recommendation of your own? There’s a button right below this sentence that tells you how.¹

Links

This week at the Chicago Tribune I write about my appreciation for two recent novels by Ron Rash (The Caretaker) and Richard Russo (Somebody’s Fool). There’s something specifically nice about reading books by authors whose work you know, doing exactly what they do.

Time has released their “100 Must-Read Books of the Year.”

Kirkus has their own lists of the best books of the year. These are their selections for Fiction.

Vulture gets in on the act and shares their best books of the year.

Following some controversy, the National Book Awards were handed out this week ant a ceremony hosted by LeVar Burton.

A little seasonal humor from McSweeney’s this week courtesy of Wendi Aarons and Johanna Gohmann: “Quiz: Are You the Worst Person at Thanksgiving?”

And in the biggest news of the week, the Tournament of Books has announced this year’s long list of contenders from which the 16 finalists will be chosen.

Anyone got something they’re wondering about in terms of the world of books, reading, and the culture at large? Leave it in the comments and maybe others will have some thoughts of their own, or who knows, maybe I’ll kick it around the yard in a future column?

For all those who celebrate, please have a happy and restful Thanksgiving. I’ll be with you next week from the midst of my leftover food orgy.

John

The Biblioracle

1. All books linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and the Teacher Salary Project, which is advocating to establish a federal minimum salary for teachers of $60,000 per year. Affiliate income is $259.50 for the year.