The written word: The gift that keeps on giving...

Every couple of years my friends ask me to write a book list. I'll admit it. I'm a book junkie. Literature is my crack. So here are my suggestions from books I've read in the last twelve months, some are old, others are new, all are excellent:

Nonfiction:

1. Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol -- Sad, true and still very relevant even though it was written in the 1990s.
   
2. The Working Poor by David Shipler -- Takes a moderate view on the causes of poverty and the plight of the poor.
3. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie -- A very powerful story about how a few people saved thousands of lives during WWII. Hallie was a professor of ethics and has a very interesting perspective on good v. evil
4. The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs -- Even if you don't have a background in economics this book is a good read. Sachs clearly lays out the reasons for poverty in the developing world, uses real examples to explain this underlying theory and rather than pointing fingers, he really embraces global poverty as a problem that can be solved.
   

Fiction:

1. The Book of Night Women by Marlon James -- This novel is powerful, poetic and a page-turner like I haven't read in ages. Simply put: I loved it. It's written in patois, so if you don't care for dialects it may not be for you.
2. The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb -- Lamb has a disturbingly good grasp of how people unravel after tragedy and try to put the pieces back together. Not his best work, but very, very good.
3. Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paula Marshall -- This coming of age story set in Brooklyn during the depression and World War I era is beautifully written and compelling story about the plight of immigrants then and now.
4. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini -- Hosseini has written two books and both are beautiful narratives, but I truly loved this book. You get two compelling heroines for the price of one and a sad story intertwined with the disturbing past and present of Afghanistan.
5. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides -- There's something a little mysterious about this story. It is a family history that overlaps with the history of Detroit, America's most neglected city.
   

Honorable Mention (good but not great):

1. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
2. All This and Heaven Too by Rachel Field
3. Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

Currently reading: The House at Riverton