Skaugsetting
with Library Director Chris Skaugset
Here are my five favorite books published in 2016.
Happy Reading in 2017!
Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Sakamoto. This was a beautifully written, fascinating and heartbreaking, history of a Japanese-American family that found members on opposite sides of World War II.
Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi. The co-host of one of my favorite television show tells her fascinating story of how she became a model, her marriage to famed writer Salman Rushdie, and the face of Top Chef. She has led a fascinating life and proves herself to be an excellent writer.
The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson. This was a wonderfully, and beautifully, written novel of a young British woman who becomes the first female Latin teacher at a small school in England as war breaks out in 1914. It is part love story and part historical drama and was probably the best book I read last year.
Crosstalk by Connie Willis. Grandmaster Willis is perhaps my favorite writer and she doesn’t disappoint with this screwball comedy set in a very near future that talks about cell phones, telepathy, love, and everything in between. Even if you don’t like science fiction, Willis is a writer to try.
Everybody Behaves Badly by Lesley Blume. This is a history of the writing of Hemingway’s classic first novel, The Sun Also Rises. If you are interested in that book, Hemingway, the 1920s, or the real cast of characters that the book is based upon you should find this work illuminating and a lot of fun.
