Here are some of my favorite reads from 2013 that I think would be fantastic for book group discussion.
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
This debut features a fresh, unforgettable voice in June Elbus who navigates life after her beloved uncle dies of AIDS.
The Rules of Inheritance: a memoir by Claire Bidwell Smith
Read this before seeing the movie starring Jennifer Lawrence. Bidwell Smith tells the wrenching story of losing both of her parents and moving through grief to find herself. It is powerful, poetic and redemptive.
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
I found this novel harrowing, riveting and emotional as it looks into the Holocaust and how the past reverberates into the present. I think it’s Picoult’s best to date. It would be perfectly paired with a recently published nonfiction book, Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz by Thomas Harding.
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips
NPR recently did a piece on James Tiptree, Jr. calling her “the unlikely queen of sci-fi.” The woman who went on to write science fiction under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. was from a prominent Chicago family, went on African safaris in her youth, joined the Women’s Auxiallary Corps in WWII and worked for the CIA. A fascinating biography.
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