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Read
this post to see what this is all about. For more favorites, see
here.
Lisa Gardner, author of
Say Goodbye
- David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Love his humor!
- Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - The Guernsey Literary and Potato
Peel Pie Society
- Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I read the
ARC; book is due out Feb 2009.
John Hart, author of
Down River
- Every book in Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt series. I read the whole thing
in less than two weeks. Absolutely great stuff.
- Michael Connelly - The Lincoln Lawyer. I missed this when it
first came out, but totally loved it. Maybe it's the ex-lawyer in me,
but the book rocked. In fact, I just bought The Brass Verdict to
follow up.
- Orson Scott Card - Ender In Exile. I love this guy's stuff (and
he lives about a mile from me). This book, the sequel to Ender's Game,
was twenty years coming. How could I not be all over it?
David Corbett, author of
Blood of Paradise
- Richard Price - Lush Life. Price is justly prized for his command
of dialogue, but what few commentators discuss is that this grows out of his
profound, specific and generous insight into character. In truth, Price does
everything seamlessly -- introspection, transitions, description, pacing.
But his fundamental understanding of behavior, what people think and do --
and the often deceptive reasons they give themselves for what they think and
do -- reveals the hand of a sly, careful, fundamentally unjudging observer.
- Gabriel García Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera. Yes, I
know, I should have read this years ago. Jim Harrison has written that what
he wants is a fairy tale for adults. This qualifies. A brilliant, odd,
whimsical, poignant, sad, fascinating, profound and triumphantly human book.
Not even Oprah's imprimatur could spoil it.
- Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. At the heart
of this wickedly funny and darkly sad book is a subtle truth: that our
desire for an authoritative narrative -- religion, history, science --
inevitably leads us to embrace tendentious, ridiculous and even dangerous
errors, whereas the airy stuff of our imagining, the wiggy little fantasies
that startle us, make our hearts flutter, pull us out of our intractable
sorrows, might just bear all the truth we need, or at least have a right to.
Julie Hyzy, author of
Hail to the Chef
- Michael Connelly - Angel's Flight. Excellent. What else can I say
that hasn't been said about Mr. Connelly's work?
- John Kellerman - Obsession. I borrowed this on CD and listened to
it on my drive home from Albany, NY. Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis kept me
wide awake and happily alert during the solo 14 hour trip. I am forever
grateful.
- Diane Setterfield - The Thirteenth Tale. Recommendation from a
good friend. With its laboriously slow start, I expected to really hate this
book. Just finishing it now, and it's still slow, but I'm surprised at how
very much I've enjoyed the journey.
George Easter, Editor
of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine
- Stieg Larsson - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The second of
the series will likely be on my 2009 Best 3 List. This series will be
considered a classic one in ten years.
- Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake. It's amazing that tiny
Iceland could produce a writer of such power and scope.
- Kate Atkinson - When Will There Be Good News? She doesn't care
about the conventions of a crime novel and manages to write an eye-popping
one.
Charles Cumming, author of
The Spanish Game
- Robert Harris - The Ghost. A hugely entertaining thriller in
which Harris gleefully knifes his old friend Tony Blair in the back.
- Sebastian Faulks - Devil May Care. A pitch-perfect homage to Ian
Fleming in his centenary year which has sold by the bucketload on this side
of the Atlantic.
- Eric Ambler - Journey into Fear. An almost-forgotten master of
the spy novel who would himself have been 100 years old in 2009.
Marcus Sakey, author of
Good People
- Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke. A study of America at war, with
writing so good it made me ache.
- Willy Vlautin - Northline. A beautifully understated novel of
addiction and recovery, harm and hope.
- Richard K. Morgan - Altered Carbon. The most exciting sci-fi
writer I've read in a long time.
Allan Guthrie, author of
Savage Night and literary agent at Jenny Brown Associates
Leaving friends, clients and unpublished manuscripts out of the equation.
- Donald Ray Pollock - Knockemstiff
- Claude Bonnefoy - Conversations with Ionesco
- Ted Lewis - Plender
Patti McCoy Jacob, critic (Yorba Linda Star)
- Garth Stein - The Art of Racing in the Rain. Captivating up
through its unexpected ending. And as one who has three dogs of her own, I
felt Stein "got it right" when telling it from a dog's perspective --
thoroughly convincing.
- Anna Quindlen - Black and Blue. I read it in 2008, and it is one
of the most powerful and realistic books on the subject of abuse and the
psychology of those who tolerate the abuse.
- Temple Grandid - Four books: The Way I See It; Thinking in
Pictures; Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships and
Developing Talents. A woman with her PhD who has Asperger's Syndrome.
I've read a ton of books about Autism and Asperger's since my 8-year old son
was diagnosed five years ago, and although these four books address four
different areas, they complement each other perfectly and should have been
sold as a group. I recommend them highly as Grandid's advice and conclusions
are realistic and applicable to the real world of Asperger's and
high-functioning Autism. It is clear through her words that she knows
Asperger's firsthand, and therefore knows of what she speaks.
