Books like The Book of Records — picked by fans

Is a River Alive presents a journey through three extraordinary rivers, located in wilderness Ecuador, wilderness Quebec, and urban India. Macfarlane explores how important these rivers are in the lives of people and ecosystems. He writes stunning portraits of the rivers users and protectors. He magnificently depicts the remarkable ecological "lives" of the rivers; their moods and seasons, their narratives and histories. In so doing, he raises questions about what it means to be sentient and why a redefinition of natural rights is essential for ecological survival, political activism, and environmental learning. MacFarlane is an evocative writer, filled with compassion, wisdom, and insight.

Hannah Arendt was a deeply influential political philosopher who wrote cogently about freedom, history, civic life, democracy, and totalitarianism. Most importantly, she wrote about personal action and collective responsibility for responsible and ethical citizenship. Her philosophy was born out of her challenges as a refugee, fleeing Germany for the United States, and the extraordinary intellectual community intrinsic to her life. Lyndsey Stonebridge covers this ground with a deeply personal non-linear biographical portrait that directly describes Arendt's impact on her thinking. She shows how Arendt's political philosophy, historical inquiry and life experience provides wisdom for these times, prescribing thoughtful reflection and action. If you want a better understanding of how to live responsibly in challenging times, there is no better guide.

This is a sweeping saga, the kind I love because it keeps me turning pages.

Against a backdrop of 20th-century China, I was drawn into the fate of a cast of captivating characters. Split into two locales and timelines—Vancouver in 1991 and China from the mid-20th century to the tragedy in1989—the novel is a jigsaw puzzle of countless bits, revealed with skill and delicacy as the pieces finally fit together.

Here is the Cultural Revolution; there Tiananmen Square and in between I was caught up in the lives so cruelly marked by history. 

There is a reason Ann Patchett is lauded as one of our best authors. The opening scene, which unfolds like an Action-Adventure Triller is so well-written--not one wasted word, flowery description, dialogue chain--it left me breathless and so tense I had to get up and move. From there, Patchett sculpt characters we come to know, and care so much about--each and every one of them--I wanted them all to live on happily-ever after! As a reader, I was so caught up in the story, I wanted to read faster and faster. As a writer, I wanted to stop and dissect it as BEL CANTO is a master class.

I read this book while working on my own because Horwitz is a master of weaving a story with many characters about a complicated piece of the past. He provides ample detail about the lengths to which reenactors will go for their performances—and some of the methods are outright gross.

But I love that even when Horwitz is grappling with ways that modern interpretations can obscure the actual past, he never resorts to mockery when talking about his subjects. He might disagree with their perspective about the Civil War, but he listens and reports what they tell him. I recommend this for anyone trying to understand how the Civil War still plays such a prominent role in our world nearly two centuries later. 

What I appreciate most about David Mitchell’s novel is how he grounds the history in scenes full of well-developed characters. So, for example, we don’t begin the novel with a long note about the historical period or the lineage of the ruling class, but rather with the urgency of childbirth gone wrong in the house of a concubine in Nagasaki in 1799.

It’s from this rootedness in the sense-based that we move into a wider exploration of both geopolitics and the magical, which I absolutely fell in love with—this sense that there is an element of the supernatural at play in this otherwise very realistic historical world.

A very different type of read. ‘Sweeping’ is in this case a most apt description, covering nearly a century of the history of Koreans in Japan as seen through the eyes of one family. This was a topic I knew nothing about, as also I had no idea what pachinko was. I was totally engrossed following Sunja and her family as they navigate their way through the most dreadful of times to reach success, of sorts. It’s not a ‘can’t put down’ but the characters are very real and the tale beautifully told. Highly recommend.

I haven’t recovered yet from the way Hartman recovers the lives of young Black women through historical photographs. The images were made to rob these women of their individuality, make them fit “types,” letting them say Nothing about themselves.

But Hartman writes like she’s talking to them, and they’re wonderful. She messes with categories used by authorities who thought they “knew” these women by their transgressions. I was utterly transfixed by how she imagined these women’s lives and loves in the ordinary stairways and back alleys they called home.

The photos are gorgeous. You could talk about them for days and still have more to think about—like how when it comes to women being framed for doing something wrong, maybe Nothing has changed.

My husband and I have made a point of taking Black history tours when we visit U.S. cities. I loved Smith's perspective on the tours that he took of Monticello, Angola Prison, the Whitney Plantation, Blandford Cemetery, and Manhattan. Particularly insightful were his interviews with the tour guides who have taken on the responsibility of "passing the word."

I often find trauma novels hard to stomach. Reading THE KNOWN WORLD, which is a heartbreaking plunge into life during slavery in one Virginia county, I was amazed by how Edward P. Jones gave me the full experience of pointless suffering, outright maliciousness, slow despair, and intergenerational trauma while also caring for my tender heart. How did he manage it? I have five theories.

First, every character in this book, from those who kill others for fun to the Black slave owners to the punitive Black overseers to the good white sheriff to the supposedly insane older woman--every person is so complex and so much a victim of the institution of slavery, I began to feel my compassion accumulating as the story got violent. How remarkable!

Second, the only clear source of evil in this book is the social institution of slavery. Without the ability to point fingers… show more.