We're asking members of our Writers Council to recommend six of their favorite reads. Whether new or old, best sellers or hidden gems, grand tomes or quick novellas—these books will definitely be worth your time! Kicking off our recommendations is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley (and don't forget to check out her latest book, Golden Age, part of the The Last Hundred Years Trilogy).
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They Were Counted
By Miklos Banffy
Published by Penguin Random House
The first volume of The Transylvanian Trilogy, about the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as they played out through the final decades of the 19th century until the beginning of World War I. Fascinating characters and compelling events, but the best aspect is Banffy’s depiction of landscape in a world most Americans are not familiar with.
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The Sellout
By Paul Beatty
Published by Picador
This might be the edgiest book I’ve ever read, set in a black ghetto in Los Angeles, funny, daring, full of philosophical and stylistic contradictions ramming up against each other and daring the reader both to laugh and not to laugh. It won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, but more importantly, my undergrad students at UC Riverside, many of them from LA, loved it.
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36 Arguments for the Existence of God
By Rebecca Goldstein
Published by Penguin Random House
Her style is so effervescent and knowing that even if the reader has only the dimmest grasp of concepts that are perfectly familiar to Goldstein, she is carried along, and so 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is also an education in math, philosophy, academia, psychology, and Jewish culture. It is, in fact, a lovely dream. (From Smiley’s review in The L.A. Times.)
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The Moor’s Account
By Laila Lalami
Published by Penguin Random House
A brilliant reworking of the exploration (invasion) of the Spanish into the western hemisphere in the 19th century from the point of view of a Moorish slave. Precise, clearly written, and full of information that we were never taught in school. My undergraduate students loved this one, too.
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The Blessing
By Nancy Mitford
Published by Penguin Random House
I love all of Nancy Mitford’s books, but this one stands out for its unusual take on family life after the Second World War. An English woman has married a French man, and they have a son. They have split, would like to get back together, but the boy understands that his life is much freer and more fun if they remain apart. Mitford has a wonderful style, a great sense of humor and of paradox. Every one of her books is smart and observant.
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The War of the End of the World
By Mario Vargas-Llosa
Published by Picador
I always say that this is the book that War and Peace wanted to be—riveting and deeply insightful into the nature of cults and the motivations of authorities who want to stamp out dissent. Vargas Llosa is brilliant with both the big picture—the spread of the conflict—and the small picture, the effect of the conflict on those of all classes and persuasions who are caught up in it. It is the personal and the political perfectly meshed.
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