It's getting cold! Maybe we shouldn't be too excited about that, but we think Fall is the perfect chilly season to wrap up in a sweater and read a good book! Whether you listen to the audiobook, or get deep into a paperback, reading is the perfect way to take an adventure from the comfort of home. Carole Barrowman agrees! Although book clubs aren't meeting physically, it doesn't mean you and your friends can't get together virtually to discuss your favorite reads. Carole joins us to talk about safe book clubbing, and shares her two top books at the moment, and they're from local authors!
Here are Carole's Picks:
The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi (Henry Holt)
This novel is a puzzle mystery packed with lots of unexpected twists and turns. An editor visits a reclusive writer on an island in Greece to help him get a collection of his short stories in shape. If your book club is up for a delightful Agatha Christie read, this is the perfect pick. See if you can figure out what’s really going on!
The Department of Speculation by Jenny Offil
A completely absorbing novel that you can easily read in an afternoon. Really, you can! Plus it meets all my criteria for a good book club choice. It’s an intimate funny and deeply authentic story of a marriage, its highs and lows and everything in between. Your book club will experience all the feels. I highly recommend this one.
Gray Matters: Finding Meaning in the Stories of Later Life by Ellen Lem (author teaches at UW Milwaukee).
For lots of reasons this book spoke to me. I think it would be a great book club choice, especially if you have readers with “more wisdom” in your club. It explores all aspects of aging, and uses films, literature and television to take on many of the stereotypes about getting older.
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Akhtar is a Pulitzer prize winning playwright and a Brookfield Central grad. This is part memoir part fiction about what is was like for a Muslim Pakistani family in Wisconsin after 9/11. The book is elegantly written and incredibly candid. Lots of reviewers are already picking this as their book of the year. It’s in my top five right now.