The Book of Records

The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien is the best book I have read this year. 

A novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door.

Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.

Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina’s illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family’s tragic past.

As Lina confronts her father’s troubling admissions, she begins to reconceptualize the world around her, gaining a deeper understanding of how our individual futures are shaped by our political circumstances, and she relies on the collective joy of art and intellectual endeavors to carry her through difficulty. A novel that voyages between centuries, generations, and ideas, The Book of Records is an indelible testament to the migratory nature of humanity and our ceaseless search for a home—in the physical world, in cyberspace, in history, and in the imagination—in the wake of catastrophe.

Thien is a beautiful writer who pulls readers into the story. She must have a brilliant mind to be able to wrestle the time periods, philosophy, and poetry into a truly amazing book. Buy this book today.

Thien, Madeleine. (2025). The Book of Records. New York: WW Norton & Co.

The History of Sound

The History of Sound: Stories by Ben Shattuck is a must read.

A stunning collection of interconnected stories set in New England, exploring how the past is often misunderstood and how history, family, heartache, and desire can echo over centuries

In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.

The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.

What a joy to read this book. I love the structure of each story having a companion story, connected in some way. Ben Shattuck is a beautiful writer. 

Shattuck, Ben. (2024). The History of Sound. New York: Viking. 

Sudden Death

Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrigue is a writer who crafts a story like no other.

A daring, kaleidoscopic novel about the clash of empires and ideas, told through a tennis match in the sixteenth century between the radical Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, played with a ball made from the hair of the beheaded Anne Boleyn.

The poet and the artist battle it out in Rome before a crowd that includes Galileo, a Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw the world into flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII execute Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into those most-sought-after tennis balls. Across the ocean in Mexico, the last Aztec emperors play their own games, as the conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, fight and f**k, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the course of history. In a remote Mexican colony a bishop reads Thomas More’s Utopia and thinks that it’s a manual instead of a parody. And in today’s New York City, a man searches for answers to impossible questions, for a book that is both an archive and an oracle.

Álvaro Enrigue’s mind-bending story features assassinations and executions, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bawdy criminals, carnal liaisons and papal schemes, artistic and religious revolutions, love and war. A blazingly original voice and a postmodern visionary, Enrigue tells the grand adventure of the dawn of the modern era, breaking down traditions and upending expectations, in this bold, powerful gut-punch of a novel.

Enrigue, Alvaro. (2013). Sudden Death. New York: Riverhead. 

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu is an collection of amazingly well written, engaging stories that vary from historical fiction to science fiction. 

This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken's award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" (finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards); "Mono No Aware" (Hugo Award winner); "The Waves" (Nebula Award finalist); "The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species" (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalist); "All the Flavors" (Nebula award finalist); "The Litigation Master and the Monkey King" (Nebula Award finalist); and the most awarded story in the genre's history, "The Paper Menagerie" (the only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards).

If you are a fan of good writing, read this book!

Liu, Ken. (2016). The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. New York: Saga Press.

The Ministry of Time

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley:

A civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test whether time-travel is feasible.

Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, supporting and monitoring expat '1847' - Commander Graham Gore, a former Victorian polar explorer. Gore, an adventurer by trade, soon adjusts to this bizarre new world of washing machines, feminism and Spotify; and during a long, sultry summer the pair move from awkwardness to friendship to something more.

Bradley, Kaliane. (2024). The Ministry of Time. New York: Avid Reader Press.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson is a master class in riveting storytelling, as well as an important event in world history. 

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.

 Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.

If you have any interest in history, look to Erik Larson first! He is an amazing writer who brings history alive. 

Larson, Erik. (2015). Dead Wake. New York: Crown Publishing.

Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known

Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known by George M. Johnson

In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer – and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.

Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.

Great book! Should be in every library collection.

Johnson, George M. (2024). Flamboyants. New York: Farrar Strauss. 

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color by Caro de Robertis is a book queer folks have been waiting for!

So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.

De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.

de Robertis, Caro. (2025). So Many Stars. New York: Algonquin Books.

Night Owls

Night Owls by A.R. Vishny is the story of two folkloric Jewish monsters, Estries, who run a theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Clara loves rules. Rules are what have kept her and her sister, Molly, alive—or, rather, undead—for over a century. Work their historic movie theater by day. Shift into an owl under the cover of night. Feed on men in secret. And never fall in love.

Molly is in love. And she’s tired of keeping her girlfriend, Anat, a secret. If Clara won’t agree to bend their rules a little, then she will bend them herself.

Boaz is cursed. He can’t walk two city blocks without being cornered by something undead. At least at work at the theater, he gets to flirt with Clara, wishing she would like him back.

When Anat vanishes and New York’s monstrous underworld emerges from the shadows, Clara suspects Boaz, their annoyingly cute box office attendant, might be behind it all.

But if they are to find Anat, they will need to work together to face demons and the hungers they would sooner bury. Clara will have to break all her rules—of love, of life, and of death itself before her rules break everyone she loves.

Vishny has written an amazing genreblend of mystery, historical folklore, New York history, romance and more. Read this book! 

Vishny, A.R. (2024). Night Owls. New York: Harper. 

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie is a classic novel set in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. 

Two sons of doctors have been sent to the countryside to be re-educated in this novel of Mao's China.

This is a beautiful telling of being sent to the mountains to unlearn what was seen as Western ideas. Luo and Ma play tricks on the villagers, do manual labor, live in a barn, and meet a seamstress who distracts them from the situation they find themselves in.

As a bonus, the audiobook is read by D.B. Wong.

Sijie, Dai. (2001). Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. New York: Knopf.

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Earth's Past Mass Extinctions

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen tells the history of our planet from the End-Ordovician to the present, exploring the causes of the five mass extinctions that have occurred on Earth.

This book is a fascinating look at the life on our planet from the beginning. With each extinction event, different species developed or sometimes grew exponentially in size. From single celled organisms to life in the oceans and on land, to the dinosaurs to humans, this is a great books. Both filled with information and easy to read. 

If you live on this planet, this book is for you. 

Brannen, Peter. (2017). The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Earth's Past Mass Extinctions. New York: Ecco.

Daisy Jones and the Six

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is another great read by a wonderful storyteller.

Daisy Jones grew up in Los Angeles. Her parents were rich but paid very little attention to her - including not noticing her missing after she moved out for weeks as a teen.

Growing up going to all of the hip parties and bar, Daisy joined a friend's band on stage one night. Her voice and stage presence captivated the audience. This begins the tale of Daisy making music and becoming part of the most popular rock band in US history.

Reid's tale reads like the biography - including the highs and lows of being a rockstar, living through the 70s drug haze and finding your way in a strange world of fame while trying to live your life.

Read all of Reid's books set in this timeline. She is amazing.

Reid, Taylor Jenkins. (2019). Daisy Jones and The Six. New York: Ballantine Books. 

The Vanishing Half

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is the tale of twin sisters and their diverging lives. 

Stella and Desiree Vignes were born in Mallard, Louisiana in the 1950s. Most people born there stay their whole lives. 

At sixteen, their mother takes them out of school so they can help support the family. That is when they leave and move to New Orleans. From there they separate, creating very different lives for themselves.

Ten years later, Desiree moves back home, bringing her daughter Jude. She has not seen or herd from Stella in years. Desiree hires someone to track Stella to find out what happened to her.

Spanning forty years and the width of the United States, Bennett explores the history of passing, racism and identity in this beautiful family epic. 

Bennett, Brit (2020). The Vanishing Half. New York: Riverhead Books.

The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich is a beautiful story of people working together to stop politicians from steamrolling over them. 

Based on family stories of her grandfather, Erdrich tells of the 1953-54 Turtle Mountain tribe of Chippewa campaigning to defeat a bill before congress that would eliminate status of their tribe - dissolving the reservation in order to sell the land.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing factory on the reservation. During his quite nights he also takes care of tribe business and writes letters. 

His niece, Pixie, works at the plant. Women are better at the small, detailed work involved. Pixie would rather be called Patrice. When her sister who has been relocated to the city via a program for Indians goes missing, she tries to find her. 

Wood Mountain, a local boxer, agrees to a rematch to raise funds to send representatives to a hearing in Washington. 

Erdrich's novel is filled with memorable characters. Her writing is poetic and beautiful. After reading this, I will be reading all of her other works!

Erdrich, Louise. (2020). The Night Watchman. New York: Harper Collins.

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize winning title about black lives in the United States.

Starting around 1915 during World War I and going until 1970, more than six million black Americans moved from the South either north or west. An often overlooked factor in the history of the US, this migration influenced everything about our world today.

Following three people who represent some of the common stories of migration, Wilkerson tells of the reasons why people left the South and why they chose where to settle. 

In 1937 Ida Mae Gladney left Mississippi for Chicago. 

In 1945 George Starling left the orange fields of Florida for Harlem.

In 1957 Robert Joseph Pershing Foster left Louisiana for California.

These and many others, including the author's own mother, left the South to make a better life for themselves, to (hopefully) be treated like human being and citizens in their own country. The slow but huge exodus forced the South to address laws like Jim Crow that were causing people to flee. In the North, blacks were not welcomed with open arms - being forced into specific neighborhoods and jobs - creating tensions between them and European immigrants they were competing with for space and livelihood. 

This fascination part of our history should be taught in school. This book fills in the gaps in our education system. 

Wilkerson, Isabel. (2010). The Warmth of Other Suns. New York: Random House.

Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World

Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett tells the tale of the Grafton's shipwreck on the Auckland Islands, 285 miles from New Zealand in the year 1864.

Two businessmen in Sydney came up with the idea of a crew sailing to an uninhabited island in the frozen ocean south of Australia and New Zealand, find a rumored mine and fill the ship with wealth. Captain Musgrave, one of the men's nephew, and Francoise Raynal set about finding a small ship and a crew.

Joined by a cook and two seaman, the ship consists of men from 4 nations (England, France, Azores, and Norway), they embark on a get-rich-quick scheme that has them sailing some of the most dangerous waters on the planet.

Making it safely to the chosen island, there is no sign of a mine. To make up some of the revenue expended, the Musgrave and Raynal decide to stop in the Aucklands to hunt seals - something none of them has any experience with - to fill the ship.

A storm dashes them into the rocks of an island made of cliffs - scoured year round by wind and rain. Luckily, the ship remains partially intact, allowing them to make is safely to shore and take some supplies. What follows is a harrowing tale of survival accomplished by putting aside rank and focusing on needs, starting with building a shelter.

Told from survivor journals, and including the history of the Auckland Islands, the tale of the Grafton crew's two years on an inhospitable island is fascinating. The ingenuity of the crew and the ability to scavenge from the ship for materials to alter into tools is incredible. One of the best survival stories I have read.

Druett, Joan (2007). Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books.

Strangers and Cousins

Strangers and Cousins by Leah Hager Cohen is about a family coming together for a wedding - and so much more.

In Rundle Junction, New York (a fictional town) in the Catskills, Benita and Walter are preparing to have hordes descend upon their family home for their daughter's wedding. Benita is the fifth generation of her family to live in her house - which was once also a general store and post office.

The first to arrive is her great aunt Glad, picked up from her retirement home by Walter. She is 94 years old and lives as much in her memories as she does in the present. Through her we learn of the history of Rundle Junction and the famous pageant of 1927.

Clem their artistic, passionate eldest daughter will not let them help with any wedding preparations. They have no idea what to expect as her friends arrive all week long for the ceremony.

Told through many wonderful, and some annoying, characters this is the story of both family and society. Both the ghosts of the past and the present changes reveal the character of the town and people in general. The sections from the youngest son's point of view are rich and lush as he imagines his way through the jungles of the back yards.

Leah Hager Cohen includes some that other authors would ignore. She is really a master of story telling. This book was a surprise and a delight.

Cohen, Leah Hager. (2019). Strangers and Cousins. New York: Riverhead Books.

Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering

Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering by Maurice Isserman is the history of mankind trying to conquer nature. From a man in the first colonies on North America through the present, this history tells of the reasons, the technical advances and the exploration of the higher altitudes.

When a man in the Massachusetts Bay colony wanted to walk up a mountain, the native guides he hired would not join him in the land they believed belonged to the evil spirits. His fellow colonists thought him very odd. He was the first man to climb up Mt Washington, then called Agiocochook.

Filled with familiar names in history, Isserman has written a wonderful book of exploration, covering walking, hiking and climbing. If you are a hiker, this is your favorite book! If not, you will want to ge out in nature when you are done reading. Look for names like John Muir, Annie Peck, John C Fremont, Yvon Chouinard and more.

Isserman, Maurice. (2016). Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering. New York: W W Norton & Co.

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff is the tale of a series of plane crashes in Greenland near the end of WWII. As well as the current day plan to recover a Grumman Duck amphibious airplane lost on the ice with three Coast Guard men.

In WWII the United States had bases in Greenland, both to keep the Atlantic free of German boats and U-boats and used as a stop while ferrying planes to England. When a cargo plane goes down on the Ice Cap, a few search planes are sent to look for it. These planes include a B-17 bomber with 9 on board. Instead of finding sign of the cargo plane, the B-17 crashes. What follows is a series of rescue attempts in a climate not made for man or machine.

The B-17 will not be the last plane to crash in the Winter of 1942-1943. An amphibious plane called the Grumman Duck will also become lost – after one successful rescue of part of the crew of the B-17.

In 2012 an expedition back to Greenland was approved by the Coast Guard to find the Duck and bring back the missing men – the only MIA Coast Guardsmen unaccounted for. Zuckoff attaches himself to the expedition, becoming a subject in his own book.

The tale of the men trapped on the Ice Cap is one with the suspense of how and if they will survive. Zuckoff’s nonfiction tale flows with the narration of a good novel. If you are a fan of WWII, planes, extreme lands or daring rescues, this is the book for you!

Zuckoff, Mitchell (2014). Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II. New York: Harper.

The Nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is the story of two sisters in France during World War II.

France, 1939. Vianne Mauriac is about to say goodbye to her husband who has been call on to fight for France against a possible German invasion in the East. They have a daughter Sophie and live in the small town of Carriveau.

Isabelle Rossignol, Vianne's sister, is about to leave another boarding school. She has been kicked out of or run away from a few. Her family abandoned her after her mother died - first her father, and then her sister. But she keeps running back to Paris to try to have a family.

When Isabelle gets to Paris, her father sends her to her sisters. The Germans are invading and she will be safer outside of the city. But most of the city is fleeing, and the family she is sent with has no concern for her, only their own family.

When Vianne and Isabelle listen to first the new Vichy government leader (who says to be peaceful and let the Nazis take over) and then the WWI general de Gaulle (who says to stay rebellious), the sisters react in opposite ways. Isabelle immediately wants to help fight the occupation in any way possible. Vianne just wants to keep her daughter safe.

Hannah's book is a force. Beautifully written and crafted, this is both a triumph against they system and a heartbreaking tale (partly because it is so true of the time period). Read this book. Do not finish it in public - there will be crying!

Hannah, Kristin. (2015). The Nightingale. New York: St. Martin's Press.