Top Book Picks
/Recently a girlfriend sent me a text saying: “I haven’t been reading lately but, want to get back into it. I want to start with something light - like a beach read. What can you recommend.”
I looked through the READING Folder on my phone which has every book I’ve read/listened to since 2016 in addition to the BOOKS Category I have here on the website. Then I decided I’d share my top picks in several genres.
Audio: Daisy Jones & The Six: The actors brought this incredible novel about the meteoric rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer to life. I saw the entire film in my head and I have no plans to ever watch the Amazon Prime Video Series.
Autobiographical: This is the Story of a Happy Marriage: Ann Patchett shares her life; from childhood to present day, it covers a multitude of topics, including relationships and charts the work and joy of writing and the unexpected thrill of opening a bookstore.
Beach Read: Summer Rental: Ellis, Julia and Dorie. Best friends since grade school now find themselves in their mid-thirties at the crossroads of life and love. Ellis, recently fired from a job she gave everything to is rudderless and now beginning to question the choices she's made over the past decade. Julia whose caustic wit covers up her wounds has a man who loves her and is offering her the world, but she can't hide from how deeply insecure she feels. Dorie has just been betrayed by the man she loved. A month in North Carolina's Outer Banks is just what they each of them needs.
Biography: Sister Parish: The Life of the Legendary American Interior Designer: Sister - as she was always called - was born Dorothy May Kinnicutt in 1910 and spent a privileged early life at all the right places. She was compelled to work during the Depression. Sister combined her innate design ability with her upper-echelon social connections and created a successful interior decorating business. The Parish-Hadley firm's list of clients reads like an American Who's Who. I am a huge fan of her work and of the current firms.
Children’s Classic: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: Winner of the 1968 Newbery Medal I finally read my son’s copy at the beach. When Claudia decides to run away, she planned to be gone just long enough to teach her parents a lesson. She will live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She saves her money, and invites her brother Jamie to come too - mostly because he has more money than she does. Claudia finds a statue at the Museum so beautiful she can not go home until she discovers its maker, a question that baffles experts. The former owner of the statue is Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Without her Claudia might never have found a way to go home. Additional options: Harriet the Spy and The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid
Classic: East of Eden: I asked my husband to gift me a hardcover for a milestone birthday - it is my favorite work of classic fiction. John Steinbeck created a masterpiece that is both a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis filled with the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love and the murderous consequences of love's absence. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.
Feel Good: The Other Bennet Sister: Mary, the bookish ugly duckling of Pride and Prejudice’s five Bennet sisters emerges from the shadows and transforms into a woman with choices of her own. What if Mary Bennet‘s life took a different path from that laid out for her in Pride and Prejudice? What if the frustrated intellectual of the Bennet family, the marginalized middle daughter, the plain girl who takes refuge in her books, eventually found the fulfillment enjoyed by her prettier, more confident sisters?
Historical Faction: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America: Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City". The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims.
Memoir: Fly Girl: A Memoir: When Ann Hood was young her family would pile into the car and visit the construction site of what became Washington Dulles International Airport which opened in 1962. Ann decided planes and travel were where she wanted to be. Graduating from college in 1978 Ann began the interview process and landed a coveted spot with TWA. She survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy where she learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen and stay calm no matter what the situation. I loved listening to Ann read her memoir of the skies… my first plane ride was in 1978 on TWA with my parents heading to California to visit Disneyland. It was a great flight!
Modern Fiction: The Dutch House: This Ann Patchett title is wonderful. This book carries with it all the meaning of home and asks what does a building hold of a family when you don’t have either. I originally read the book in March 2020 and first listened in February 2021 and I found it incredible - if possible more impactful than when I originally read it. I re-listened to it in March of 2022.
Mystery: Homecoming: Adelaide Hills, South Australia Christmas Eve, 1959 - at the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand mansion, a delivery man makes a terrible discovery. Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, a phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess has suffered a fall and is in the hospital. Jess will learn about the tragedy that shaped her family.
Noir: Rebecca: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..." The beautiful estate Manderley where our shy young bride finds herself after quickly marrying wealthy widower Maxim de Winter. She finds the influence of Rebecca the late Mrs. de Winter still rules and Rebecca has left her very polished mark on everything and everyone. Will the new bride ever fill her place or escape her vital shadow? A shadow that grows longer and darker as the brief summer fades, until, in a moment of climatic revelations, it threatens to eclipse Manderley and its inhabitants completely.
Thriller: We Were Liars welcome to Beachwood Island owned by Harris Sinclair in Massachusetts. His granddaughter Cadence Sinclair Eastman knows her family pretends to be perfect. Harris has three daughters, Cadence's mother Penny, and her aunts Carrie and Bess. Harris has built a home for each on the island; his is called Clairmont. The Sinclairs spend their summers on the island. Cadence and the other cousins Johnny and Mirren along with Gat Patil (the nephew of Carrie's partner Ed) are known by the family as "The Liars". The summer Cadence is fifteen, which she refers to as Summer Fifteen, Gat and Cadence fall in love and begin a relationship; she also suffers a serious head injury loosing most of her memories of that summer and begins to suffer from migraines. When she tries to reach out to Johnny and Mirren she is ignored. Rather than allowing her to go to the island for the next summer (Summer Sixteen), Cadence's mother forces her to go on a tour of Europe with her father. During Summer Seventeen, Cadence is allowed to go back to the island and is surprised to find that a lot has changed.
Now friends you know I could talk endlessly about books and I could write about them endlessly as well. I started thinking why to share this now. Because books make wonderful gifts. Gifts for others or a gift for yourself. Some of the titles I’ve shared here are not new and may not interest you but, what if it leads you to the next thing you read that you LOVE!?! Or you gift one of these titles to a loved one who thinks it delightful. Oh now that makes me so unabashedly deeply happy!
Want more titles… please read my ever updated article: Get Your Read On! Until next time be well friends and I’ll see you over on Instagram.
