Some of our favorite books we’ve read this year
Arden Ryan
“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
You’ve never read a book quite like this before. Daniel Keyes’ 1966 novel traces the fascinating arc of a man with a cognitive disability who undergoes experimental surgery to boost his IQ. We witness Charlie Gordon’s dramatic rise in intelligence, narrated through successive diary entries that grow increasingly literate as the effects of the procedure take hold. But like his mouse friend, Algernon, who has received the same treatment and is seeing a remarkable jump in brainpower, Charlie is entering unproven ground, and only time will tell what becomes of him.
Cole Skuse
“This is How You Lose the Time War” by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
I saw this at Barnes & Noble and picked the book up because it looked like a fast read, had birds on the cover, and the description sounded interesting enough. I was right that it was a fast read, and I really wish it wasn’t! “This is How You Lose the Time War” contains such beautiful prose and a lovely, engaging story that I wasn’t expecting when I picked it up. I honestly don’t know what to say besides that it’s a book that will stick with me for a long time, and one I plan to reread (and it’s very rare for me to do that)!
Hailey Cohen
“On Beauty” by Zadie Smith
An excellent book about poetry, elite academic institutions, power, British people, family, and relationships. Smith is a fantastic writer, and I am so glad I started reading her books. Highly recommend.
H. F. Chacon Jr.
“The Hoods” by Harry Grey
Rarely is a gangster novel written by an actual gangster. Oftentimes, stories glorify the rise and fall, but hearing it from a self-described ex-hood, Grey breaks down a seemingly heartless person into a semi-relatable, semi-pitiful individual. I cannot recommend this book more. It is not spoken about enough.
Jaden Singh
“A Climber’s Guide to the Teton Range” by Leigh Ortenburger
Not sure I’d recommend it necessarily, but this is an amazingly comprehensive compilation of routes that covers practically any area of the range you could be interested in. Lots of great history is also included. A classic, classic guidebook.
Jennifer Bortner
“The Postcard” by Anne Berest
“The Postcard” is a French novel which portrays the ways memory is passed down and recovered in the wake of the trauma. This autobiographical novel paints a picture of the generations of Berest’s family affected by and in the wake of the Holocaust. In January 2003, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home in Paris. On the front is a picture of the Opera Garnier and on the back the names of her family members killed at Auschwitz. Years after the postcard is delivered, Anne decides to investigate who sent it and for what purpose. As she investigates, Anne explores the generations of her family in a beautiful, lyrical narrative that will leave you speechless.
Nina McCambridge
“Under Western Eyes” by Joseph Conrad
A beautifully written novel about political ideology. It’s about an ambitious mostly apolitical college student in Tsarist Russia whose terrorist acquaintance asks to hide in his apartment. It is likely based on his experience, as Conrad’s parents were Polish nationalist revolutionaries.
Sam Bates
“The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler
Easily one of the greatest and most important pieces of noir media ever, up there with movies like “Chinatown” and books like The Maltese Falcon (also a movie). If you have any craving for dialogue that sounds like it’s being spoken by Rod Serling or harshly lit trench coats and fedoras, “The Big Sleep” is for you.
Savannah Milam
“I Will Always Write Back” by Caitlin Alifirenka, Martin Ganda, and Liz Welch
One my favorite books of all time. It tells the true story of an American girl who becomes pen pals with a boy from Zimbabwe. They help each other through many difficult things as they grow up until they’re eventually able to meet — after many years of writing to each other. This book really opened my eyes up to what life can be like in other countries. It’s a heartwarming story that I feel anyone can benefit from reading.
Veronica Michaels
“Carnality” by Lina Wolff
I love unreliable narrator novels and this narrator is soooo unreliable. It’s one of the only books that has truly shocked me at the end, and I really enjoyed it.
William Curvan
“The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” by Michael Chabon
One of the only books I read this year (a fact I already advertised in the Novel-tea column when I wrote about it), this tells the story of a young college graduate living in Squirrel Hill trying to figure things out. Fun to read this side-by-side with Google Earth so you can try to find every location the narrator references throughout the story.
Zachary Gelman
“Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann
I bought this book on a lark during summer break, and read the whole book swiftly. This is highly unusual for me nowadays, as a busy, busy man who picks up books and reads them in rare spurts (I’ve been reading “Bleeding Edge” for over a year now). But I was so engaged by the true tale that author David Grann was weaving that I went cover to cover in less than two days. There’s nothing I can say about this book that other, more thoughtful people haven’t said already. I will say however that Martin Scorsese’s movie adaptation was lacking in some key elements that made the book so compelling and meaningful.
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