February Wrap Up

       

I don’t know about you, but Feb. was a boffo month. Either I’m terrified I won’t make my goal for the year, or just inspired by all you readers out there, but I managed 11 books for the month which is 7 more than last year! 

To recap, from my favorite, to read if you want. 

📚’Know My Name’ by Chanel Miller. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Miller’s harrowing account of sexual assault and the grueling judicial system. A must read. 

📚’Real LIfe’ by Brandon Taylor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A young gay black man in graduate school at a mostly white university tries to find his footing with racial,gender, and sexual identity all converging during one weekend. Read it!

📚’Scythe’ by Neil Shusterman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 

In a future where death is a thing of the past two young people are chosen to be a part of an elite group in charge of population control. For fans of ‘hunger games’

📚‘Weather’by Jenny Offill ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 💫

Offill’s often funny story told by a working mother focused on the end of the world while distracted by motherhood, her marriage, and a mundane job, all on the eve of Trump’s election. Read it!

📚‘Gay Like Me’ by Richie Jackson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Jackson’s part biography part cautionary advice to his gay son.  

Read it!

📚‘Interior Chinatown’by Charles Yu ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

A young Asian actor growing up in LA’s Chinatown, in this part linear book, part screenplay, and one of the most original  stories this year. 

Read it!

📚’Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’by Olga Tokarczuk 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Part murder mystery, part fascinating character study of quirky locals and an animal rights protagonist in a remote Czech town. 

📚’Topics of Conversation’ by Miranda Popkey 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Conversations between different women in all walks of life, Popkey’s prickly narrator is not always likable, but nonetheless compelling. 

📚’Wanderers’ by Chuck Wendig 

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

It’s the end of the world as we know it thanks to a manufactured super flu. 

📚’Sundown Hotel’ by Simone St. James

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 

A ghost story thriller where the girls are  for once not written as hapless victims. 

📚’Out of the Woods’by Luke Turner 

⭐️⭐️

A Bisexual man, the son of a conservative minister grapples with sexual identity. 

January wrap up

I had my best January ever, reading ten books, three more than last year, which I feel like is a minor miracle considering this month and next are my busiest work wise.  I also felt so fortunate to hit on a really terrific group of books both new and back list titles. Not one stinker in the group. Not represented in the pic were three ebooks. 

📚“The Apartment’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Wayne’s exploration of lonliness through two roomates in Manhattan.

📚”Cleanness” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

A teacher in Bulgaria navigating romance and raw sexuality. 

📚“Dear Edward” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 

Heart wrenching but ultimately uplifting story of a young boy the sole survivor of a plane crash. 

📚” I Like To Watch” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Television critic Emily Nussbaum’s collection of fantastic essays on so many shows you love.

📚“Long Bright River” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Fantastic mystery/domestic story of two sisters on separate sides of the law and a predator on the loose. 

📚“In The Dream House”⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Carmen Machado’s briliantly structured story of her escape from an abusive relationship. 

📚“Such a Fun Age” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Race relations and privelege come to a head in this fantastic debut. 

📚“Ask Again, Yes” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

Two neigborhood families changed by tragedy over the course of thity years.  Listened to half of this one audio which was great!

📚“Lock Every Door” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Popcorn thriller of a girl housesitting in a posh Manahttan highrise that comes with a killer price tag. 

📚“Trust Exercise” ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Heady novel about two lovers in an acting class and what happens to them over the years when class has ended. 

Best Books of 2019

My Best Books Of 2019

Literary 2019 was a few things to me: The first being more amazing books than ever before, especially the last half of the year where the hits kept coming. 

But the biggest thing was the discovery of this whole new world of like minded people my daughter nicknamed: ‘BERDS’, short for Book Nerds! On Instagram I found myself sliding down a rabbits hole of people obsessed with a love of books or inflicted with what author Nicholas A Brisbane once termed, “A gentle madness” in his book of the same name. So I can only say it’s such a joy to discover so many of you out there similarly afflicted. 🤣 You’ve inspired me, gave me tons of suggestions, and made me up my game. This is the closest I’ve felt to my time being a manager at Borders book store once so very long ago. My favorite part of the job was hand selling to customers and having them return to ask you to help them again, having loved what you had recommended. 

So here’s to an even better, bookish 2020! I can also be found on Goodreads where I show what I’m currently reading, and Instagram @ bret2028

My final  choices were the ones that lodged in my brain, my guts, my heart or all three well after I finished. And although I could have picked more based on my post yesterday, these were for me, the best of the best. In no particular order. 

⭐️The Light Years: Remember the Vegas section of the “Goldfinch” and how f’ed up that was? Cross that with Burroughs “Running With Scissors”, drop a tab of acid and play “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane and you’ll be ready to enter the world of Chris Rush. A harrowing, sometimes funny decent into psychedelic America where drugs is the religion and money salvation. Set well before the current opioid crisis affecting the country today, this is the turbulent late sixties and early seventies, and Rush is effectively abandoned by his parents and learns to fend for himself courting death at more than one turn. It’s an unforgettable memoir, and additionally my favorite cover of the year. 

⭐️Boy Swallows Universe: I’ll be the first to admit the end of this book takes off into territory that barely resembles what precedes it, but this coming of age story that is loosely based on Trent Dalton’s own childhood in Brisbane Australia was a fantastic ride. Thirteen year old Eli Bell and his mute older brother are being raised by his Mother and her long term boyfriend, both of whom work for a notorious drug kingpin. His babysitter is an aged ex con who regales young Eli with his escapees from prison while Eli just dreams of escaping his life. Fantastic story that takes its time to last out the track to ultimate deliver the goods. 

⭐️Fleishman is in Trouble: Probably one of the more polarizing books of the year, and as I said in my original review pick this for a couple’s book club and see what conversation comes out of it. Taffy Akner has written an eviscerating portrait of a marriage that is anything but consciously uncoupling. Uncomfortable but terribly funny with it’s insightfulness of long term relationships this for me was one of the best of the year.

⭐️Correspondants : Set in war torn Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein, a female Lebanese/American journalist is embedded in the heart of the action and paired with a local interpreter terrified his darkest secret will be exposed. Tim Murphy has followed his excellent ‘Christodora’with another ambitious yet terribly  intimate story. And one that deserves high praise and even higher readership. 

⭐️The Dutch House: Ann Patchett’s modern fairy tale of two siblings set adrift following the death of their father once agin proves what a master she is at developing characters to fall in love with. Maybe it’s age, but I love her themes of sibling bonds, facing your past and learning to let go. 

⭐️Girl Woman Other: Wow. Twelve woman, predominantly black, spanning a variety of ages all living in or around London and many interconnected makes for a terrific read exploring ideas of race, gender, class and sexual identity and expression.

⭐️The Chestnut Man: I still hate the title. I mean I get it, but still makes me think of Christmas. It’s no surprise @netflix is making this a limited series. IMHO it’s the best thriller of the year, and if that’s your jam, you should get it immediately and make it your first of 2020. A missing politicians tween daughter and a string of murders that begin a year after she goes missing. Here’s the rub: Missing daughters fingerprints are on all the bodies signature item: A chestnut man. Ahhhhh, so that’s why the title. 

⭐️Olive Again: Again Strout takes tiny stops into the lives of the townspeople of Crosby Maine and her most memorable, Olive as she approaches the end of her final chapter. There are certain  books strike that you because of where you are in your own life, and this one was certainly that for me, and frankly for anyone who has an aging loved one. 

⭐️Lady in the Lake: True confession, I loved this book but part of my utter enjoyment and why I kept coming back to it after I had finished is that I listened to it on audio and the reader, Susan Bennett was masterful. If you like audio books I highly highly recommend. The story. Baltimore late 1960s. Madeline Schwartz is recently divorced and trying to forge a path as a journalist for a local paper. But when the body of an African American woman is pulled from the lake Madeline begins to connect the dots. 

⭐️Catch and Kill: Ronan Farrow meticulously investigates and exposes one of the biggest titans of modern media, Harvey Weinstein and years of sexual abuse. But he also shows the lengths the media went to to quell what he was doing and brush it all under the table. By the time the book is done the net falls even wider including anchor Matt Lauer (which this section was truly some of the most disturbing) to the current occupant of the Oval Office. A fantastic book that reads like a thriller, but is all unfortunately true.

⭐️The inheritance: Bonus cause technically a play, but a truly exceptional piece of literature, Lopez updates Forster’s, “Howards End” but in modern Manhattan among a group of gay men in their thirties. Spanning nine years over the course of two parts, thirty years after the height of the AIDS epidemic, it’s a moving memory piece, and a heart rending relationship drama between friends and  lovers past and present. Currently playing on Broadway and primed to sweep all the awards come spring. But! Even if you don’t see it, it’s a fantastic relevant read.

Best Books Of 2017

I tried to finish this yesterday, but New Years eve got in the way!
When narrowing down my choices I found it interesting that so many stories here dealt with outsiders as well as differences both racially as well as class.
Politically it was a year of massive upheaval, and non fiction seemed to address this head on. Ta-Nehisi Coates book, 'Between the World and Me' felt like it should be required reading for schools, while 'Hillbilly Elegy' was touted as the book to read to understand the Trump voter. I'm not sure it did that completely, however it did shed light on a pocket of the country that feels terribly overlooked.
My choices this year were the books that captured me fully, and resonated the longest. And as usual some weren't even from this year but for me was a fresh discovery.
Books I'm excited for in 2018 include new works from Meg Wolitzer, Tom Rachman, & Curtis Sittenfeld. Please pass on if there's something great you read, and at the end of this post I've enclosed a link to everything I read this past year. Happy Reading in 2018!

Brett




I absolutely loved this book! Boyne dedicates it to John Irving and it's no surprise why. It's structured like Irving with each chapter having a title, as well as touching on subjects Irving loved: writers and writing, sexuality,strong women and abandoned children all distilled through the conservative lens of post war Ireland. The epic story of Cyril Avery spans over seventy years moving across the sea to New York and then back again, each section of time jumping ahead seven years and intersecting with events like the AIDS crisis of the mid eighties and 9/11. Like Irving it's both uproariously funny, and heartbreakingly sad, but upon finishing left me feeling sated like I'd just finished a fantastic meal with a group of unbearably charismatic and compelling people. The book was my favorite of 2017.


 

I am absolutely in awe of Emil Ferris and her graphic novel. Having never read one before I had no idea what to expect except to know that there had been a bidding war for the rights to make the movie. What to say besides I think this is one of the most imaginative, inventive, beautiful and engaging books this year. After, I listened to the author get interviewed on fresh air I was blown away that at forty she contracted West Nile virus which resulted in encephalitis and meningitis leaving her paralyzed, unable to walk, with limited speech, and only partial mobility in her hands. Boy did she make a recovery! 
Chicago in the sixties on the brink of political and and racial upheaval is the back drop for young Karen Reyes, the young girl obsessed with all things horror who self identifies as a young werewolf on the brink of turning. Raised by her Mother and suave sexually active older brother, her life is suddenly interrupted by the murder of her upstairs neighbor Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor who has befriended the young girl. Armed with a pinned trench coat and a visual imagination that bleeds across the pages of what is the girls sketch notebook, Karen sets out to uncover the mystery of what happened to Anka while grappling with a series of events and circumstances that impact her life in profound ways. Unlike anything you’ll experience this year and an artistic tour de force.



Make no mistake this is not simply a monster tale, but an endlessly charming, beautiful romantic Victorian story, complete with fiercely intelligent women ahead of their time, an earthy,sexy man of God, unrequited love, religion vs secularism, and yes, the fear of the unknown in the guise of of a monstrous sea serpent. I found myself completely enthralled with the roughly nine or ten characters who inhabit these pages and had a hard time putting it down.

 

I was so completely taken with the execution of this book, the sheer theatricality of it. When I first started I had no idea if this would be something I'd even key into to since it reads less like a novel and more like a play, and yet I found myself utterly and completely moved by not only what Saunders explores in terms of grief and death, but also of life, its value, and the rich rewards of experiencing the beauty in both the complex and the simple. Hannah Tinti has so artfully constructed a beautiful coming of age novel threaded with a classic quest story punctuated by bouts of terrific violence.  Samuel Hawley has spent his life running from his past, a past that has marked his body with puckered scars from a variety of guns. He does his best to shield his teenage daughter Loo from any of this, including the events surrounding her mothers death. But the past has a way of encroaching on the present, and soon Hawley's former lives and his present collide in a startling confrontation. Tinti is a incredibly visual writer, and each bullet Hawley takes is its own amazing,tense,and unforgettable cinematic like chapter which is why it's no surprise the book is being developed as a television series for cable. More than once I found myself holding my breath through their bloody conclusions. It's a fantastic story between a father and his daughter, a husband and his wife and and the lengths we go to protect the ones we love. What a spectacular conclusion to a simply terrific trilogy. Iles, between these three books that started with 'Natchez Burning', has written one of the most brutal,honest, and compelling stories of the deep south and the horrible spectre of racism that still exists today. There's not alot of reason to summarize the plot for if you've read the first two, you know that a large portion of this is dedicated to the trial of Penn Cages Father. But this is no dry court room retelling, and it wouldn't be an Iles book without plenty of twists, hair raising scenes of shocking violence, and the knowledge he's not afraid to dispense with any character if it enriches the story. One of the best books of the year and a great series for any literary collection. What if your child vanished. No trace, no call, no contact. You spend years with nothing. No confirmation of their death or life. You just hope. You keep their room the same and don’t touch anything. You attempt to work to try and move past something you don’t even know what it is. You life is cleaved into before and after. You see them everywhere but they’re nowhere. Every time the phone rings you answer it terrified and desperate for who’s on the other end.  And then, one day, years later, he’s found. And he’s alive.  This is what happens after. A pretty terrific first novel. Oats wades deep into the current (still!) political social issue surrounding abortion,as her latest opens with a man violently shooting a doctor and his escort outside a clinic in small town Ohio. Oats presents the first half of the novel largely through the killers eyes- A devout man of God unwavering in his belief that what he did was nothing short of stopping the killing of innocent souls. But Gus Voorhees, the doctor, also lives by his own moral convictions, and has continued to provide services for women despite numerous threats against his life before the final fateful day. Yet all of this seems to merely serve as prologue for a lengthy exploration of the tragedy's aftermath and the effect on both families, one ruled by science and intellect, the other by their faith in Jesus Christ and their interpretation of his teachings. My only beef with an otherwise excellent book is that after being so incredibly prolific, Oats still seems to fall back on familiar terrain most obviously her love and near obsession with boxing. Small quibbles for what could be one of Oats best works. Well this book definitely gets the 'clean your tear ducts award'. After devouring this in great meaty chunks I feel like I've just come out of a fever dream. . Halfway through this so funny, but oh so sad memoir I looked up Kit on Instagram and found myself so overwhelmingly grief stricken that this person I never knew was no longer among us. That's a testament to Ausiello, and his writing. I marveled at his blunt honesty not just in retelling what it was like to face the loss of the most important person in your life, but also who they were before the cancer struck. Warts and all Michael presents a modern, real, flawed, messy, complicated and most importantly loving relationship that feels instantly identifiable and so that much more of a gut punch as you follow their journey.I was lucky enough to attend a book signing event where Michael shared that one of the things that just broke his heart is Kit saying to him, "Don't forget me". How happy Kit must be to see that not only hasn't Michael forgotten, but has made him eternally alive and vibrant for the millions of people who never had the good fortune to meet him. Wonder is wonderful. With everything happening in the world right now. With politics, and hurricanes and earthquakes and fires, floods and famine it’s a challenge to just get through the day, and not simply pull your covers over your head. The message of this book that resounds is so absolutely necessary, and can be distilled down to a quote that is actually written by JM Barrie of ‘Peter Pan’ fame, and is referenced in the story. “......always try to be a little kinder than necessary”. We all have our deformities whether on the inside and out. RJ Palladio has written a hero in young August that will make you believe in the innate goodness of people. This is a beautiful book that now more than ever should be read and shared in households everywhere. In the upscale neighborhood of Shaker Heights, Ohio,in the late nineteen nineties, two very different families will come together and the results are at times funny, shocking and painfully honest. Ng has followed up her first book with a story that has enough biting social commentary to feel vaguely reminiscent of the Alan Ball's Oscar winning film 'American Beauty' while standing firmly on it's own and securing her as one of the best contemporary fiction writers going.  https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2725704-brett-benner?read_at=2017

Best Books of 2016

2016 closing out. And thank God before any more celebrities die. 

Interestingly, our of fifty three books I had less 'favorites' than ever before. 

The other thing I noticed which was obviously influenced by the election, is so many of the books I chose I called 'relevant' to what was happening in the country. That and I'm sure at times I got lazy in writing reviews. 

As always not everything was written this year, and the following are in no particular order.

2017 for me is definitely going to mean reading more, and spending far less time on social media than I have in the last year.  I wish you all a hopeful, safe, and loving New Year for you and yours.

And please let me know what books you've loved! You can find what I'm reading on Goodreads.

Best

Brett 

I loved this book and what a daughters senior year applying to Harvard does to what seems like the family who has it all. Nora and Gabe are both highly successful in their respective professions. They live in Marin County, have three beautiful girls, yet when their oldest, Angela begins to go through the process of applying to college, the wheels come off the bus. Over a year the narrative switches between members of the family with each of them struggling with their own individual hurdles. Fast paced, funny, and imbued with a load of heart this is the perfect summer read, and or book club pick.

https://www.amazon.com/Admissions-Meg-Mitchell-Moore/dp/1101910143/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483215050&sr=8-1&keywords=the+admissions

First time novelist Yaa Gyasi has knocked it out of the park with this literary debut. Effie and Esi are two sisters born into different tribes in Ghana. One gets married to a white man and begins a life of splendor, while the other is sold as a slave and shipped to America. Through alternating chapters we watch their descendants through the years as tribal clashes continue through Africa and in America wars lead to slavery to the great migration. This is a book to be swallowed in big gulps for maximum impact, with each generations story even more fascinating than the one preceding it. Gyasi is a truly writer to take notice of, and I can't wait to see where her imagination takes her next.

https://www.amazon.com/Homegoing-novel-Yaa-Gyasi/dp/1101947136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483215719&sr=1-1&keywords=homegoing




This summer I said that Nathan Hill had just written one of the best books if not the best of the year. For me it was all that. Big, expansive, and terribly funny, he satires everything from politics, to the Internet, to online gaming, and the media. Spanning fifty plus years the story centers on Samuel Andresen-Anderson, an unhappy college professor, struggling writer, and player of 'World of Elfquest'-a vaguely veiled, 'World of Warcraft' game. With his novel deadline now passed, and a publisher ready to sue for breach of contract, he desperately ends up turning to the one person who abandoned him over thirty years ago and is now at the center of the media firestorm for assaulting a conservative governor-his Mother. Despite Hill's book taking place in the sixties before the Democratic convention and in 2011 before the Republican one, Hill's commentary can't help but feel painfully relevant to today such as: "it's no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it's sanctimony", and when Walter Cronkite is watching the riots taking place in Chicago before the Democractic convention, 'Anyone who thinks television can bring the nation together to have a real dialogue and begin to understand one another with empathy and compassion is suffering a great delusion.' Hill is being compared to Irving and I think that's a legitimate claim, both in his absurdist humor and his touching way he threads the delicate and complicated lines between parents and their children. It's not just a great first book, but a great book period, that's soon to begin production on HBO with Meryl Streep as the estranged mother. 

https://www.amazon.com/Nix-novel-Nathan-Hill/dp/110194661X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483045710&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nix+nathan+hill



There were multiple times in Tim Murphys sprawling, ambitious, yet hugely intimate novel that I expected these characters to cross paths with Jude and Willem from Yanigahara's, 'A Little Life', or any one of Maupin's colorful cast of 28 Barbary Lane. And if, like me, you loved those two worlds then this should feel like visiting an old friend. Murphy's backdrop is the lower East side in the eighties at the start of the AIDS epidemic, and it's the disease that propels so many of these characters into inevitable intersections. It starts with a young bohemian couple who are both artists, Milly and Jared, who live in the Christodora, a rehabbed condo building adjacent to Tompkins Square Park. Their neighbor is a hunky gay latino whose personal tragedies move him to AIDS activism which drives the center of the story. The thread that links them is a young abandoned boy named Mateo whose mother died of the disease soon after she gives birth to him. The book stretches over fifty years as these people grapple with identity, family, life, death, drugs, and loss. And despite writing what could feel overwhelmingly depressing, Murphy manages to infuse a massive shot of hope into the story, leaving this reader more than satisfied

https://www.amazon.com/Christodora-Novel-Tim-Murphy/dp/080212528X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483051465&sr=1-1&keywords=christodora

The gay coming of age novel is pumped with new and invigorated life with the addition of Haddad's terrific and exciting debut 'Guapa'. Told over the course of a single day in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, young Rasa is not only trying to find his cultural identity in a country torn apart from war, but his awakened sexual identity, as he and his lover are discovered one morning by his overbearing and severe grandmother. Told over the course of one turbulent day with flashbacks, Haddad has written a story that feels overwhelmingly relevant with the current political discourse about Muslims, xenophobia, and homophobia, and one that deserves a broader audience than its limited target.



 https://www.amazon.com/Guapa-Saleem-Haddad/dp/1590517695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483140763&sr=8-1&keywords=guapa

 Spanning nearly fifty years in the lives of two families that come together after an affair, Patchett again shows what a terribly gifted writer she is. The non linear story telling shifts back and forth across decades focusing mostly on the various children and what happens to them over time. There's a beautiful simplicity to her writing, with characters I felt were so familiar and fully realized, from the beautiful Beverly who leaves her husband for her neighbor Albert, to the sons and daughters whose lives are now forced together and ultimately bound by tragedy. I absolutely loved these people and the places they inhabited.

https://www.amazon.com/Commonwealth-Ann-Patchett/dp/0062491792/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483055987&sr=1-1&keywords=commonwealth+ann+patchett
























Cries of black lives matter resound through this brutal history lesson told through the eyes of a young slave Cora who escapes from her hellish life on a Georgia plantation. Whitehead portrays the railroad as a literal thing with stations hidden under trap doors in houses or abandoned buildings many of which the young heroine works through in her attempt to escape the clutches of slave catcher Ridgeway. Whitehead has written a tough but necessary history lesson about race that continues sadly to play out on our modern landscape.

https://www.amazon.com/Underground-Railroad-National-Winner-Oprahs/dp/0385542364/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483216294&sr=8-1&keywords=the+underground+railroad

Nominated for the prestigious Prix Goncourt in France, this sexy, page turner follows two friends Samuel and Samir who are in love with the same woman, Nina. When Nina chooses Samuel, Samir moves from Paris and relocates to New York where he becomes a highly successful lawyer. But the story only begins there as we see what the next twenty years has in store for this threesome, and how time and circumstance shapes their futures both together and as individuals. So smart,darkly funny,and so utterly compelling, it's a timely read for what's currently happening throughout the world.

https://www.amazon.com/Age-Reinvention-Novel-Karine-Tuil/dp/1501125648/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483217986&sr=8-1&keywords=the+age+of+reinvention

"When you start to see the seedy underbelly of America, it makes you want to live in Canada." So says one of the characters in Jodi Picoult's provocative, emotional and timely new novel. Picoult's go to is tackling an issue with high emotional stakes and relatable characters caught in impossible and heart wrenching odds. This time she must have had a crystal ball to hone in on the current atmosphere of ugly white nationalism sweeping the country with the President elect. In Picoult's novel an African American labor and delivery nurse is asked to to care for a newborn in the hospital, the child of white supremacists. One incredibly busy night at the hospital leaves Ruth, the only available nurse on duty, watching over the child who has just been circumsized, and in a freak moment dies under her watch. What follows plays out as riveting courtroom drama, but the bigger larger discussion Picoult has at play here is race. And it's messy. And uncomfortable. Picoult has more success narrative wise with her chapters involving Ruth and her Public defender, an ambitious white woman named-subtly?intentionally?-Kennedy. Turk, the white supremacist is a hard character to feel sympathetic to and the author tries her best creating incidents in both his past and his wife's that have contributed to who they are today. Like any Picoult book there are moments thick with melodrama. Yet I have to praise the author for daring to tackle this subject so head on, and perhaps sparking discussions among people who might otherwise feel this has nothing to do with them.

https://www.amazon.com/Small-Great-Things-Jodi-Picoult/dp/0345544951/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483217291&sr=1-1&keywords=small+great+things

ALSO:

Best Bio: 

Because you know she can make you laugh your ass off, but she'll also make you cry like a baby. Listen to her read it on audio and tell everyone you read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Lower-Back-Tattoo/dp/1501139886/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483217679&sr=8-1&keywords=the+girl+with+the+lower+back+tattoo

Best Young Adult Book:

Because we're all sick of dystopian novels with star crossed angst, and McGee has essentially and smartly created The Jason Bourne story with teenagers.

https://www.amazon.com/Ryan-Quinn-Rebels-Escape-McGee/dp/0062421646/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483218228&sr=1-1&keywords=ryan+quinn+and+the+rebel%27s+escape

Best Trilogy Ending:

Because Stephen King deserves all the praise he gets for rising above so many genres and continuing to churn books out like butter.

https://www.amazon.com/End-Watch-Novel-Hodges-Trilogy/dp/1501129740/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483218344&sr=1-1&keywords=end+of+watch