Everyday I Write the Book - It'll help you figure out what to read.

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin

My book club met tonight, and it turned out that four of us had coincidentally just finished the same book (not the one we were discussing). That book is My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin, and out of the four of us, three of us loved it and one of us didn’t. I was – as usual – the contrarian, and I can’t figure out why I had such a different reaction to it than they did. Why I picked it up: I was intrigued by this new novel about a student-professor relationship at a small New England

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin

I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU by Rebecca Makkai

I was really excited when I heard that Rebecca Makkai had a new book coming out this winter. I *loved* her last one, The Great Believers, which I read in 2019, and when I learned that I Have Some Questions For You would be a campus novel, I was especially looking forward to it. I adored her writing the first time around, particularly appreciating how she immersed her readers in a pretty specific and remote

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE LAKESIDE SUPPER CLUB by J. Ryan Stradal

Saturday Night At The Lakeside Supper Club is EDIWTB fave author J. Ryan Stradal’s third novel. Like its predecessors Kitchens Of The Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota, Saturday Night at The Lakeside Supper Club is about food, complicated families, and how to escape – or lean into – one’s legacy. And, of course, it takes place in Stradal’s beloved Minnesota, with the setting and its quirks playing an important role in the

THE LIGHT PIRATE by Lily Brooks-Dalton

When it comes to climate change, I often wonder, “What will it take for people to finally do something about climate change?” Stats aren’t working, International policy summits aren’t working. Non-fiction hasn’t seemed to break through. Even photos of cute polar bears clinging to melting ice blocks haven’t done the trick. Could fiction do it? Can an intimate look at someone’s life that has been dramatically, inalterably impacted by climate change take root in people’s

THE NET BENEATH US by Carol Dunbar

The Net Beneath Us by Carol Dunbar is the story of Elsa, a woman living off the grid with her husband and two small children who faces new challenges when her husband is severely injured in a logging accident. Already a fish out of water in rural Wisconsin, Elsa is completely unprepared when her husband Silas is injured, leaving her and her son and daughter in an unfinished home without running water or a completed

MARY JANE by Jessica Anya Blau

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau is a coming of age novel set in the 70s about a 14 year-old girl named Mary Jane who lives in Baltimore with her strait-laced, conservative parents. One summer, she is hired by a neighbor family to take care of their 5 year-old daughter, Izzy. The Cohns – a psychiatrist and his wife – are much more liberal than Mary Jane’s parents, with a messy house and take-out dinners

SPARE by Prince Harry

My husband asked me recently why I like memoirs so much. I told him that I love getting the chance to understand someone else’s life so intimately, especially a life that is very different from my own. Hearing about someone’s experience in their own words – the challenges they’ve faced, the people who have shaped them, how they make sense of their place in the world – can be even more compelling than fiction, especially

ZORRIE by Laird Hunt

Zorrie, by Laird Hunt, is a quiet, old-fashioned (yet recent) novel about a woman’s life in Indiana. Zorrie is young when her parents die, and she is sent to live with an aunt who is cold and unaffectionate. Orphaned again when that aunt dies during the Depression, Zorrie leaves Indiana at age 21 with nothing to her name. After a brief adventure in Illinois, she returns to Indiana, where she lives for the rest of

A QUIET LIFE by Ethan Joella

A Quiet Life is Ethan Joella’s second novel, and it follows the same playbook as his first, A Little Hope: the story of a disconnected group of people in deep pain due to some sort of loss, trying to navigate their way toward acceptance, if not happiness. The book follows their journey through grief as their lives cross in unexpected ways. Why I picked it up: I liked A Little Hope, Joella’s first novel, quite

BULLY MARKET by Jamie Fiore Higgins

#MeToo may have dominated the news cycle in 2017, but the hits keep coming. Last summer, Jamie Fiore Higgins released a memoir detailing the misogyny and mistreatment she endured during her almost 20 years at Goldman Sachs working her way up to managing director, a rarity for women. Bully Market: My Story Of Money And Misogyny At Goldman Sachs, is a riveting and often infuriating account of Higgins’ time at Wall Street’s most prestigious bank.

CARRIE SOTO IS BACK by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I have a complicated relationship with Taylor Jenkins Reid (TJR) and seem to hold the opposite view of her books from most people. I really enjoyed some of her earlier novels – One True Loves, After I Do – and I liked but didn’t LOVE Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones And The Six (though I’d like to do that one over again on audio). And I really didn’t like Malibu Rising much at all, despite

FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK by Elissa Sussman

About twice a year, I get sucked in by the description of a romance novel, and then I decide I need to read it, and I enjoy it well enough, and then I am set for romances for the next 6 months or so. Well, reset the clock, because I just finished the first one for 2023: Elissa Sussman’s Funny You Should Ask. While it follows the typical romance pattern, it was a fresh take

WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS by Catherine Newman

My first book of the new year was We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman, a book I’ve been wanting to read ever since I heard about it last summer. The subject matter is heavy: Ash and Edi, best friends since childhood, face the end of Edi’s life together as she moves into hospice care. Although Edi has a husband and young son in Brooklyn, there are no spaces in hospice in New York,

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE by Claire Keegan

My final read of 2022 was Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, a short book that I read on the plane from Taipei to Tokyo on New Year’s Eve. An ARC of this book has been in my house for a long time – a year? – and I decided to bring it on the trip because the reviews were so positive (and because Keegan has another acclaimed book now making the rounds called

2022 Reading Year In Review

My reading year was mixed. Between the pandemic, two kids going through the college application process, complicated job dynamics and no beach vacation, my reading came in fits and spurts, with several dry spells mixed in. I haven’t been in the car as much either, which means fewer audiobook hours. (On the plus side, we adopted a dog in February who likes looong walks, so that helps with the audiobooks.) I had some success with