I wanted to love Trust Exercise since so many have, but a few chapters in I was still bored so I abandoned it. Perhaps I quit too soon, but life is too short to not be engaged by a book after 50+ pages.
76
Although I miss Kakutani (and all due respect to the book review) this is still the list I wait for at the end of the year.
24
Given that how we resolve the immigration question is likely to define the 21st century, I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Daniel Okrent's masterly study of our previous Big Wave of immigration, "The Guarded Gate". Any resemblance between the xenophobes of the late 19th/early 20th centuries and the Donald Trumps and Stephen Millers of today is hardly coincidental.
39
Based on these descriptions, I hope many people will read this book:
‘ANTISOCIAL: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation’ By Andrew Marantz (Viking). Marantz writes about “web-savvy bigots,” “soft-brained conspiracists” and “mere grifters or opportunists,” but this book is also about his searching attempt to understand people he describes as truly deplorable without letting his moral compass get wrecked.
I am ordering a copy. This one seems urgently needed.
52
Mouthful of Birds, by Samanta Schweblin was good. Something different, for once.
9
Good choices. Of these, so far I've read and loved Lot, Normal People, and Say Nothing. I own and look forward to Night Boat to Tangier, Ducks Newburyport, Lost Children Archive, and Everything You Have Heard is True. And this article got me to take a second look at Solitary, which looks both important and readable and which I've added to Mt. To Be Read.
21
@Flora Of books that weren't mentioned here, I also loved How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell and The Ash Family, an overlooked cult novel by Molly Dektar. And I look forward to The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa and Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett.
8
Um, I think you forgot some important works: "On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous," by Ocean Vuong; the new novel by Ta-Nahesi Coates, "The Water Dancer"; and Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's collection, "An American Sunrise." And I can't wait to see Linda Hogan's new book, coming out next April.
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@S. Casey
An emphatic yes! -- for your suggestion of Ta-Hahesi Coates, The Water Dancer. I just finished it last night.
"But I wanted [my father] to know that I now knew all that he knew, that to forgive was irrelevant, but to forget was death."
I just ordered the new edition of William Still's The Underground Railroad Records, edited by Quincy Mills and with an introduction by Coates.
23