My Latest Read

Here are some books I have recently read that I liked and would recommend. More to come because one thing can replace a good book: The next book.

(Description via Goodreads)

1. Purity

by Jonathan Franzen

Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters—Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists, and leakers—and follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the significant writers of our time.

2. Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action primarily unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small and big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

3. In the Midst of Winter

by Isabel Allende

Exploring the timely issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees, the book recalls Allende's landmark novel The House of the Spirits in the way it embraces the cause of "humanity, and it does so with passion, humor, and wisdom that transcend politics" (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post). In the Midst of Winter, it will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

4. Loving Frank

by Nancy Horan

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.

5. Educated

by Tara Westover

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and the grief that comes with severing the closest ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.

6. The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone, an epic novel of love, heroism, and hope set against one of America's most defining eras—the Great Depression.