Books like Listen

When I first read The Grapes of Wrath in high school, I was moved by the story of the Joad family’s poverty and desperation, and the lack of sympathy they encountered when they arrived in California. 

It is a very gritty description of their journey to California, and details how their dreams sour when they arrive, working as slaves for big orchard owners. This was the fate of thousands of farmers who fled the Dust Bowl. 

I now want to reread all of Steinbeck’s work. 

Obviously, Hannah is a brilliant writer.

She checks all the boxes that I hunt for in thirties fiction. The Great Depression, family, and the persistent drive of a protagonist (Elsa) to survive in the midst of harsh adversity. I love when an author paints vivid word pictures of this era, and Hannah does a superb job (as usual).

I want to feel the thirties, to actually mentally become a participant in experiencing what the characters experience. Hannah does just that.

I found This Tender Land, a tale of four orphans adrift on the Mississippi River in 1932, to be heartwarming, memorable, and compelling.

This slice of history—the years surrounding the depression, I knew little about—I learned next to nothing of this in school and Kreuger makes the time, settings, and conditions come alive.

This story has echoes of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn but with its own compelling story and time. This novel followed Krueger’s other book, which won the Edgar Award and which I also loved. But I enjoyed this story even more with its complex characters and even more compelling narrative.

What I loved about this nonfiction book is that it tells the history of the frontier West, farming practices, and the Dust Bowl in the style of a narrative, with details of towns and people that make the history come alive. 

The book gave me a sense of the dire situation of small-time farmers, trying to eke out a living on barren land. Early frontier settlements were not regulated. Farmers were not aware of the importance of trees or the dangers of soil erosion. They were just trying to survive. 

Egan’s description of “Black Sunday” in 1935, a huge dust storm that swept across the United States, which buried whole towns and caused hundreds of deaths from dust pneumonia, is chilling. 

Linka’s art-thriller is smart, compelling, and almost impossible to stop reading. Not only does it tackle being a first-year student in an art school in Los Angeles, it examines a subject that is often glamorized without being scrutinized: living in poverty as a homeless-at-times college student and artist. The myth of the starving artist is torn apart in this contemporary, empathetic, and intriguing story as we follow Sabine Reyes into the world where she thought she belonged, only to find out it’s not as picture-perfect as it seems. There’s some good romance in here, too and Linka’s sharp, penetrating stare at the character’s choices makes us, as readers, question what would we do? Who would we trust? And what happens when we’re wrong?

This book hooked me from page one. It’s technically a Young Adult novel but is so literary that it appealed to me as an adult reader, too.

The protagonist, Reece, is a fierce sixteen-year-old at that pivotal moment between being a teen and a young adult that so many of us females can identify with. The story itself is very plot-driven–Reece is living in a motel with her dad, and we get the impression they’ve been on the run.

As the story unfolds, we get a close-up look at the circumstances Reece and her dad find themselves in and the things he’s done to protect her (or is it himself…). These are characters that will stay with me for a long time!

Bo Mason drags his wife and two sons around the West chasing the next sure thing—Montana, Saskatchewan, Utah. Stegner grew up in that family, and you can tell: nobody writes the father this honestly who hasn't been the son.

What stops it being a simple indictment is Elsa, and the fact that the boys get something real out of the hard country even while it's costing them. I moved my family 2,650 miles on an idea of mine. The difference I'd claim is that mine was for them—and this book is the one that makes me check that claim. They are adults now, and I've checked with them.

If you've ever asked a family to follow you somewhere, Bo Mason and I are the warning.

A timeless, classic treasure and a personal favorite of mine.

Sounder is a fiction novel, that takes you on an unpredictable emotional roller coaster of unpredictable life events, adversity, and one young boy's unmerited love for his dog.

A saga of an African American sharecropping family conquering and overcoming its economic, financial, racial, and societal challenges of the 1960s after they are set out to fend for themselves after a “young boy's” father is imprisoned for theft.

This expressive fable engulfs you in thought and emotion surrounding limitless perseverance, in spite of. I can’t even tell you how many times I read this book over and over as a young adult. No dull c liché plots this book never gets old and is an overall great read.

The definitive book for understanding today’s social justice movements, and what needs to change for them to be successful. The brilliant women of color of INCITE come from a background of organizing and scholarship, and together they show the systemic flaw in left movements today, showing the ways that organizations become accountable to wealthy funders rather than the people they say they wish to serve. Read this book to learn what can be done to challenge this dynamic and build a better world.

Booth is an extraordinary writer and Tyrell is her signature story. Tyrell is a young man living under incredible pressure with a family that needs him to have both feet on the ground. But he's always on the verge of going the wrong way. Will the need for fast money put him in prison like his father? Booth is in complete command of her characters, story and pacing here. A marvelous book that will make you grateful for your own choices in life.