Freedom: A Novel

By Jonathan Franzen

I wish I had a post to do this novel justice. All I can say is Jonathan Franzen rocks and I'm pretty sure he's the greatest living writer of fiction in the U.S. Read this book right now!


And if you still haven't read it, pick up the The Corrections.

Never Let Me Go

By Kazuo Ishiguro 

I read Never Let Me Go a few years ago when it was first published. I was reminded of the book when I recently saw the trailer for the upcoming movie (featuring Keira Knightley and the lovely Carey Mulligan).  I never read Remains of the Day, Ishiguro's most famous novel, but I was impressed by the books' understated style. 


The book takes place in a dystopian Britain and revolves around the boarding school Hailsham, where the students are all taught they are special and not like other children. Slowly, the reader is given clues regarding the children's role in society, gradually unfolding until the deeply unsettling end. 


Ishiguro's prose has a simplicity I have always admired in writers. Every word and every sentence is a choice, and those choices are made with great care. Ishiguro manages to create an eerie distance between the reader and the characters, never fully stating what is happening, but all the while managing to mimic the half-lives they are forced to live for the good of society. 

Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

By John Curran

For an Agatha Christie lover this book is a fantastic trove of information and insight into her writing process. Curran poured through over seventy notebooks in order to piece together Christie's plot developments, a task made even more challenging because Christie didn't record her musings in any sort of order.