Recommendations - 1/13/2021

Reading infatuations

This week’s Chicago Tribune column is on reading infatuations, the writers or books that we have brief, highly intense relationships with that fade over time. It opens with an embarrassing confession about my musical tastes in 1985.

My reading infatuations include Infinite Jest and the My Struggle series by Karl Ove Knausgaard. If any of you have experienced a reading infatuation, please feel free to share it in the comments.

I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the President be impeached for the 2nd time and then I’m going to read the evening away, away from the news.

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If you’d like to submit a list of your recent reads for a book recommendation for yourself, the instructions for consideration are here.

Links to the recommended books take you to The Biblioracle Recommends bookshop at Bookshop.org. Affiliate income for purchases through the bookshop goes to Open Books in Chicago.

If you know anybody who might like to get once or twice weekly book recommendations, smash that share button.

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1. The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
2. The 9th Judgement by James Patterson
3. The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner
4. Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
5. Rage by Bob Woodward

Laura Z. - Buffalo Grove, IL

Everyone should read Patricia Highsmith, but she’s an especially good fit for Laura, The Talented Mr. Ripley.

1. Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris
2. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
3. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni
4. The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
5. Educated by Tara Westover

Julie P. - LaGrange, IL

I think Julie will take to Jami Attenberg who does complicated families better than just about anyone I can think of. All This Could Be Yours is the specific pick.

1. Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Nonfiction, by Brian Dillon
2. Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip
3. Death of a Fool by Ngaio Marsh
4. History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s by Timothy Garton Ash
5. A Dark Premonition. Journeys to Hieronymus Bosch by Cees Nooteboom

Yvonne L. - Seattle, WA

Here’s where the years of Biblioracling experience come into play because, full confession, I haven’t read any of these books or authors and fantasy is a particularly weak area for me. Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business mixes realism and myth in a way that I think Yvonne will find compelling.