2019 is almost over, but we at BookTrib are still feeling nostalgic reflecting back on another year of showcasing tremendous books. It’s hard for us to pick favorites, but strictly looking at the number of views on stories we posted this year, we have curated a list of the top ten articles on our site (in no particular order). Are any of them some of your personal favorites?
Come Find Me by Terry Crews and Ken Harvey | Review by Rebecca Proulx
We know Terry Crews from his stardom on screen, but this famous actor and human rights activist is moving his passion and talents to a whole new medium, the pages of an innovative children’s book, Come Find Me (Amen & Amen Publishing).
20 years ago, Terry Crews and Ken Harvey were teammates on the NFL’s Washington Redskins. Harvey approached Crews with the idea for creating a book for his two young sons, Anthony and Marcus. The book was to feature two African-American boys playing hide and seek while imagining to be in different exciting roles like pilots, conductors and captains. Racial representation is highly important to Harvey. On the motive for creating the book he says, “I wanted to write a book where both boys could see themselves , but any other kids could see themselves too.” Read more…
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides | Review by Neil Nyren
Alex Michaelides grew up reading Agatha Christie “obsessively,” but she never wrote anything like this. The Silent Patient (Celadon Books) grips you immediately, but where it goes is completely unpredictable – and it takes you to dark corners of the human psyche you never knew existed.
“I love him so totally, completely, sometimes it threatens to overwhelm me. Sometimes I think –
“No, I won’t write about that.”
Alicia Berenson, a noted painter, is 33 when she kills her husband. Reported gunshots bring London police to a house where they find a man bound to a chair, shot several times in the face. A gun is on the floor, as is a bloody knife. His wife stands nearby, frozen, deep cuts across her arms. She refuses to speak. In fact, she never speaks again, not even at her trial. Read more…
10 Bestsellers of Philosophical Fiction To Expand the Mind | Article by Greg Hickey
Philosophical novels use fictional stories to explore thought-provoking questions that have stimulated and flummoxed readers for centuries. But the best of these books are not dry and incomprehensible tomes. Here’s my list of ten philosophical novels that include some of the most famous and commercially successful books ever written.
Read more…
My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing | Review by Neil Nyren
“This is what living with Millicent has always been like. Life goes along like it’s supposed to…And then suddenly the ground opens up into a chasm wide enough to swallow everything.”
This is the story of an extraordinary woman – and of the three women behind her. The first an author who wrote twelve books in twenty years and never submitted any of them, followed by an assistant editor just seven months on the job and finally an agent willing to take a chance on the editor and give her an exclusive. The ground opened up for all of them, in a good way.
My Lovely Wife(Berkley) begins one night when a deaf man named Tobias, an accountant, picks up a woman named Petra at a bar, goes to her place, and sleeps with her. Then he goes home to his wife, Millicent, who says, “Well?” He replies, “No, she isn’t right.” Read more…
Caging Skies by Christine Leunens | Author interview by Lee Pelletier
In WWII-era Vienna, a little boy named Johannes learns to be proud of his Aryan face and burgeoning strength. After joining the Hitler Youth, Johannes’ whole sense of purpose revolves around fighting for Adolf Hitler. That is, until he becomes disfigured in a bombing raid and then finds his parents hiding a Jewish girl in his own house.
There is no help for the reader: it is an aching journey, sometimes funny or heartwarming, other times horrific. Reading Caging Skies (The Overlook Press) traps the reader in the mind of Johannes as he ages, demonstrating that sometimes the things–and people–we love most become our cages.
As the book makes its U.S. release this month, with a film adaptation from Taika Waititi called Jojo Rabbit slated for October, we had the chance to ask author Christine Leunens about the book, the movie and their various themes. Read more…
Come to the Lake: Reflections On a Cottage Life by Anne Goodwin | Review by Jim Alkon
Rather than preach what may or may not work for somebody else, Anne has captured what works for her, and has shared it in her unusual memoir, Come to the Lake: Reflections On a Cottage Life (Pleasurable Pause Press). It contains the experiences and reflections from life on her family’s 1920s lake cottage on Pleasant Lake in southeastern Wisconsin. The book is a compilation of short vignettes, essays, poems, notes, images, thoughts, checklists, even recipes that are marvelously conducive to lakeside living.
“Early on at the lake, I started taking notes,” Goodwin explains. “These notes have been tucked away for years, with me occasionally feeling compelled to add to the pile. The pile evolved into a book.”
“Life at Pleasant Lake is a jumble of friends, families, adults, children, routines, traditions, activities, games and gatherings amid the magical backdrop of cottage lake life. It also conveys my singular relationship with nature.” Read more…
The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff | Review by Meagan Foy
A fresh, new and exciting tale of espionage, The Lost Girls of Paris (Park Row Books) by Pam Jenoff is engaging historical fiction that follows three women all at different stages in their lives but brought together in crazy twists of fate.
For Grace, World War II is over (it’s 1946) but the repercussions are all around her. A recent widow, she is trying to find herself in NYC and by chance finds a forgotten suitcase with old photos. In a moment of weakness, she takes the photos, only to guiltily attempt to return them later in the day, when the suitcase has disappeared.
Now, attached to the photographs that she has no claim to, she struggles to discover who owned them, who the women featured in the photos are and why they were so important to save. Throughout the novel, Grace understands herself more and more while finding friendship, acceptance and her own path. She moves out from under her parent’s wing, to her husband’s to independence and the photos help her reach a fully actualized self. Read more…
The Oysterville Sewing Circle by Susan Wiggs | Review by Sherri Daley
Susan Wiggs’ latest, The Oysterville Sewing Circle (William Morrow), is billed as a novel about domestic violence, but it is also a love story – and not the sturdy love between our protagonist Caroline Shelby and Will Jensen, her handsome, long-time childhood crush.
Underneath the more obvious storyline is the emerging love for two sweet little kids that Caroline, the career-obsessed fashionista who has sworn she’d never have children, finds growing in her heart, crowding out almost everything else. That love drives the plotline, creating a gentle, safe place when things get grave.
Wiggs has taken on the ugly job of talking about the brutality many women endure at the hands of men who profess to love them. Domestic abuse is one of society’s ill-kept secrets. Neighbors turn up the volume of their televisions to drown out weeping and angry voices; if the fighting happens in public, passers-by turn their heads, giving the couple privacy. No one wants to intervene; hence, the women are left with their feelings of shame and inadequacy and hopelessness; men, with a sense of power and invincibility. Read more…
5 Books That Will Make You Ugly Cry in Public | Article by Kathryn Craft
In my writing and my reading, I love those moments that move me to tears. Tears shake loose the things we hold the closest—and sometimes, those affinities even surprise us.
While I am a sensitive sort, I assure you I’m not necessarily an easy mark. As a developmental editor for a dozen years, it can be hard for me to turn off my critical brain while reading. The novels listed here flipped that switch, pulled me in, and made me feel deeply.
Forget about stuffing your pockets full of tissues—these ugly cries will be real as rain, so just sit beside an entire box. Yet spring showers encourage new growth, and if you’re anything like me, these reads will leave you feeling gloriously and gratefully alive. Read more…
Supermarket by Bobby Hall | Review by Rebecca Proulx
Bobby Hall, best known in the music world as the platinum-selling recording artist Logic, has made a habit of shocking the world with his talent and ambition. A high school dropout raised in a home crippled with substance addiction, many would have predicted that Hall’s inauspicious circumstances early on would sever him from any possibility of success.
Rising against all odds through key mentorships and pure motivation, Hall has written pervasive lyrics stemming from his humble beginnings to his ascent, connecting with a loyal and ever-growing fan base. Given this bit of history, it should be no surprise that Hall has surprised us yet again. This Grammy-nominated artist recently switched tracks from writing songs to penning a novel, the gritty and consuming psychological thriller Supermarket (Simon and Schuster).
The beginning of the story is brimming with chaotic charge. We find the protagonist Flynn standing over a dying man, knowing that he is responsible for his condition. We know very little else about either character. Flynn reveals that he used to be your typical guy, working at a supermarket before this violent turn of events. We only can define the man lying in a disreputable heap on the ground by Flynn’s contempt for him, without an explanation for these feelings. Read more…
