Book Recs

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume is one of my favorite novels of all time. It is about girlhood, womanhood, and
female friendship over the years.
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier is an oddly satisfying book about a pregnant teenager who works as a pizza delivery girl. She delivers a pickle pizza to the same single mother and son every week, becoming fixated on them.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a novel that you will either love or hate. For my part, I have decided that I love it. There aren’t quite any other books like it thanks to Roy’s distinctive style. Reading it makes you feel like you are experiencing the scorching hot weather in India in monsoon season.
Not much else needs to be said about the novel that inspired the hit Netflix mini series, but The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis is an outstanding novel about addiction and genius, centered around the world of chess.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a mind-bender of a novel. It tells the story of a crime that happened years ago that never quite got resolved. The senselessness of a crime, what it means to be part of a community, and the culpability of bystanders all come out in this novel. The story is laid out so effectively, creating ambiguity as to what truly happened.
The start of my love affair with Gabrielle Zevin. Her writing is smooth and clear. She makes you care about people and things that you wouldn’t expect. In this case, its The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, a curmudgeony bookstore owner who adopts a baby girl that is left in his store one day.
Despite being about a woman who wants to die by suicide, The Wedding People by Alison Espach is never painstaking or desperate. Instead, it is about a woman finding her will to live again after joining up with a wedding party.
Assembly by Natasha Brown discusses racism in England from the perspective of a young protagonist who is dying of cancer and refusing to fight it. Brown has a beautiful, effortless way of writing.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld captures the pains and awkwardness of adolescence: the crushes, the insecurities, and the bad decisions that only present themselves as bad years later.
Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner tells the true story of The Japanese Breakfast frontwoman’s tumultuous relationship with her mother and her subsequent grief over her death. It talks about her connection to her Korean culture.
What is left to say about The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison? Plenty, I hope. This novel never strays away from the horrifying acts committed against children. It never sugar-coats or uses shock value.
What’s in a name? This, more or less, is the question at the center of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, a novel about assimilation in an Indian-American family.
Atonement by Ian McEwan shows how one lie can change countless lives and what it means to truly gain atonement. In this novel, set at the onset of the second world war, lives are upending by one little girl.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver tells a story that I have never quite experienced before of a white family doing unasked for missionary work in the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, and suffering many, many consequences.
You wouldn’t think that a book about a high school presidential election would be that interesting and yet Election by Tom Perrotta manages to be riveting. There are compelling characters with very real motivations.
The start of my love affair with Jeffrey Eugenides. The Virgin Suicides is a twisted novel about neighborhood boys who idealize the teenage sisters who live down the street from them and their suicide, which haunts them years later.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a graphic novel by The New Yorker’s Roz Chast, chronicling the end of her parents’ lives. It covers the difficulties of looking after aging parents, how it is often funny and heartbreaking in equal measure.
This early 2000s hit still packs a punch as you read about a depression-era circus from the perspective of the veterinarian cajoled into helping run it.

Coming Soon….