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Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down
16
items I wrote about books for more than ten years. These are the titles I wasn't able to put down, including literary fiction, memoirs, biographies and more.
Sections
2
Fiction
Nonfiction
Fiction
This book is my Roman Empire, based on how often I think about it. It also won a Pulitzer Prize.
'A Visit from the Goon Squad' by Jennifer Egan
If you haven’t read the first installation in the four-book series, ‘My Brilliant Friend,’ stop what you’re doing and do so immediately. Documenting the decades-long friendship between two girls, Lila and Lenu, in post-war Naples, it takes an oft-dis...
'My Brilliant Friend' by Elena Ferrante
The uber-popular ‘Normal People’ follows two classmates in a small Irish town—one popular, one not. Despite their differences, they form an unlikely couple. They date, break up and make up—a few times over.
'Normal People' by Sally Rooney
An ideal blend of comedy and tragedy, it is, at its core, a marriage story. Particularly, it’s the marriage story of Lotto and Mathilde, who said I do at 22, after only a few weeks of dating. Following the couple’s 25 years of marriage through each p...
'Fates and Furies' by Lauren Groff
Fearless and entirely original, ‘Detransition, Baby’ is about gender, sex, relationships and all the messy, vulnerable aspects of each.
'Detransition, Baby' by Torrey Peters
Identical twins Stella and Desiree grew up in in the late ‘30s, in a small Louisiana town founded by a freed slave for light-skinned Black folks who were shunned by both the white and darker-skinned Black communities. After running away to New Orlean...
'The Vanishing Half' by Brit Bennett
This one centers on a group of friends who met at an exclusive arts camp in the ‘70s. Like teenagers sometimes do, they assume they’re bound for fame and greatness. Fast forward a couple decades and things haven’t gone as planned for some of the frie...
'The Interestings' by Meg Wolitzer
Sally is a 30-something who’s a writer at a weekly sketch comedy show a la ‘Saturday Night Live.’ When Noah, an ultra-popular and handsome musician serves as host and musical guest on the show, he surprises Sally by being smart, sensitive and suspici...
'Romantic Comedy' by Curtis Sittenfeld
Washington’s prose is sparse but affecting (some chapters are single sentences), and he beautifully explores self-destruction and self-discovery, queer love, what it means to heal and the power of personal connection.
'Family Meal' by Bryan Washington
When freelance writer Nik goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, whom she’s only been dating for five months, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. But saying no isn't the hard part—it’s having to face a stadium full of disap...
'The Proposal' by Jasmine Guillory
An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn't look like much. But to Rio, a young Black woman mourning the loss of her newborn child, it becomes more than a safe haven.
'The New Naturals' by Gabriel Bump
This rom-com follows Olive, who’s been estranged from her Italian, pseudo-celebrity chef father became estranged for 14 years since another chef, Leo, stepped in as his surrogate son and sous-chef. Olive is shocked to find out that not only has her f...
'Just One Taste' by Lizzy Dent
This is an epic that takes place over the course of a century and concerns seven generations of the Buendía family in the fictional Macondo. Marquez’s trademark magical realism shines as he explores isolation (the titular solitude), elitism, the circ...
'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In ‘Behodl the Dreamers,’ a Cameroonian immigrant moves to Harlem in search of a better life for himself, his wife and their 6-year-old son. The plot touches on immigration, the class divide, the false promise of the American Dream and the bonds that...
'Behold the Dreamers' by Imbolo Mbue
Nonfiction
You might know Michelle Zauner as the indie rock sensation Japanese Breakfast, but she’s also a lauded writer whose debut memoir, 'Crying in H Mart,' shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. In it, she opens up about growing up one of t...
'Crying in H Mart' by Michelle Zauner
In ‘Finding Me,’ Viola Davis reflects on family, love, motherhood and acting. From her childhood in a crumbling apartment in Rhode Island with an abusive, alcoholic father to her time at Juilliard to the present, she writes in intimate detail about t...
'Finding Me' by Viola Davis