Whether you're looking to add some (mostly) contemporary books to your winter reading list or Christmas shopping for a particularly well-read acquaintance, here's a quick (and cheap!) guide to some of the hottest books of this holiday season.
Becoming by Michelle Obama
"It's the moments when Obama tries to make sense of what she's seeing now, in the country, that are among the most moving — if only because she's so clearly struggling to reconcile the clear-eyed realism of her upbringing, brought about by necessity, with the glamorous, previously unthinkable life she has today." -New York Times
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
“At the center of 'The Library Book' is a seven-hour fire that raged through the Los Angeles Central Library on April 29, 1986, destroying or damaging more than a million books. In one of those weird coincidences that Orlean always manages to spot, a library official was meeting with the fire department that very morning to consider finally adding sprinklers to the building. When the smoke alarm went off, none of the 200 or so employees panicked. Given the old wiring and the unreliable systems, they were used to it. 'The fire alarm had come to possess all the shock value of a clown horn,' Orlean writes. Even the first responders — who didn't have a map of the building's dark, circuitous hallways — assumed that it was a false alarm. And when firefighters finally noticed smoke along a shelf of novels, they couldn't contact the command post; the library's thick concrete walls blocked radio signals." -Washington Post
The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons
“The idea for the story came to me literally in a dream. I had woken up from this dream in which I saw a woman injecting herself. And then I woke up with this sentence on my brain that said the opposite of having a baby is becoming a horse." -Amy Bonnaffons on 'All Things Considered'
A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
“As with Boyne's last novel, there is humor amid the darkness. He gently satirizes the publishing world, not least the vagaries of prizes, the insincerity of writers meeting on the festival circuit, and the endless array of new books requiring endorsements. In Maurice Swift, Boyne has given us an unforgettable protagonist, dangerous and irresistible in equal measure. The result is an ingeniously conceived novel that confirms Boyne as one of the most assured writers of his generation." -The Guardian
Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel by Jeff Jackson
“Jackson uses violence to illuminate a discussion about authenticity. When everyone is a 'creative,' he argues, money and fame are the goals, and bands outnumber fans, music becomes corrupted. A corrupted thing no longer works, so how do you fix it? In Destroy All Monsters, the solution is murder. Unfortunately, this remedy affects everyone: Those who favor aesthetics over content die, but so do those for whom rock and roll is life." -NPR
Band Sinister by K.J. Charles
“Sir Philip Rookwood is the disgrace of the county. He's a rake and an atheist, and the rumours about his hellfire club, the Murder, can only be spoken in whispers. Guy Frisby and his sister Amanda live in rural seclusion after a family scandal. But when Amanda breaks her leg in a riding accident, she's forced to recuperate at Rookwood Hall, where Sir Philip is hosting the Murder. Guy rushes to protect her, but the Murder aren't what he expects. They're educated, fascinating people, and the notorious Sir Philip turns out to be charming, kind — and dangerously attractive." -NPR
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
“Other essays have the kind of grandiose titles you'd expect from a more traditional book on craft: 'The Writing Life,' 'The Autobiography of My Novel,' 'On Becoming an American Writer.' And, really, why write a book about writing if you can't occasionally hold forth with such injunctions as 'Think of a dream with the outer surface of a storm'? Yet even at his most mystical, Chee is generous; these pieces are personal, never pedagogical. They bespeak an unguarded sincerity and curiosity." -New York Times
The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
“Ironic one moment, earnest the next, Vásquez presents himself as the central character of his own book. We learn about his career as a novelist, the state of his marriage, the birth of his daughters; we learn to be uncertain about what is fiction and what is not, what's history and what's debatable." -The Guardian
Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
“Francesca Hornak's debut novel Seven Days of Us perfectly captures this festive claustrophobia and the push-and-pull between sepia-tinted childhood memories and passive-aggressive adult resentment. Any other family may well have called it a day and scattered back to their preferred corner of the Earth by December 23rd, but the Birches – the 'us' of the title – are bound together, no hope of escape until the last of the turkey leftovers has been served." -Irish Times
French Exit by Patrick DeWitt
“'French Exit' tells the story of Frances Price, a sixty-five-year-old socialite who is infamous among the Manhattan élite for discovering the body of her husband in their bedroom and then going skiing for the weekend. Twenty years after the scandal, she has burned through her savings; she and her large adult son, Malcolm, decide to sell their remaining possessions and move to Paris, leaving behind Malcolm's fiancée (Frances dislikes her for ordering gazpacho out of season) but bringing with them close to two hundred thousand dollars in cash and the family cat, Small Frank, who is home to the spirit of Frances's dead husband. (DeWitt's surrealism is cheerful and matter-of-fact, making the novel feel as buoyantly insane as its characters.) In Paris, other oddballs wheel by, lubricated by wine and palaver: a private detective, a medium who can sense when people are about to die, an American dame desperate for Frances's friendship." -The New Yorker
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
“Of his many novels, Mr. Goldman was particularly fond of 'The Princess Bride,' which was published in 1973. But it took almost 15 years of missteps and false starts for his own adaptation of it to make it to the screen. It was ultimately directed by Rob Reiner, who was far less experienced as a director than Mr. Goldman was as a screenwriter. 'I was walking on air,' Mr. Reiner later recalled. 'William Goldman said it was O.K. for me to do this.'" -New York Times
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