Book Recommendations

It is so difficult to recommend a 'good book'.  Not because I have any shortage of books that I think are good but, because a 'good book' is so subjective and I don't know what YOU will think is good.  For myself, the way I find out if I will like what someone else describes as a "good book" is to ask them to list some of their favorite books.  If I don't agree with at least a few of them, then we probably like different types of books.  I like a variety of books but mainly the books that make up my "best of" list consist of the following:

Good literary fiction, probably set in a foreign country and/or a little heavy.  I do occasionally enjoy a good beach-read/lighter book or a non-fiction book.

If you read any of these, please let me know what you think of them.  If you find you have similar taste, please feel free to recommend any of your 'good books' to me :-)

Some of the books I consider "best of" or "must reads" are:

Literary Fiction

• The Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

This is my latest book that I loved, loved, loved so I am going to type a bit about it.  This is the type of book that is difficult to stop myself from going up to complete strangers and insisting that they have to read it.  There are two things you need to be aware of with this book:

1.  Keep track of the year!  If you are reading this book on the Kindle, the date is in teeny tiny letters at the beginning of each chapter.

2.  There aren't many characters but, the unique way they are introduced can make them confusing so, here is a character list:
Akhmed -a failed physician
Ula - his bed-ridden wife
Dokka - Father of Havaa. Finger-less arborist.
Havaa - Eight year old daughter
Khassan - Father, writer.
Ramzan - Informant son
Sonja - Doctor and sister of Natasha
Natasha - Sister to Sonja
Deshi - Nurse and sister to Maali
Maali - Nurse and sister to Deshi

• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - the less you know about this book the better.  Just read it :-)
• Any Khaled Hosseini book:  A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Kite Runner, And The Mountains Echoed
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
• The Reader by Bernard Schlink
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Non-Fiction

• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrandt
• An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof

Lighter Books

• Me Before You by JoJo Moyes - ok, I guess 'lighter' is all relative as this does have some heavy topics but, I loved the humor in this book
• The Lost Husband by Katherine Center

Young Adult

• The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak
• Divergent by Veronica Roth
• Unwind by Neal Shusterman