Alas, summer is exiting stage right, but before we all cry a collective tear for the lazy, hazy days we are leaving behind, here is a happy thought: books are always in season. As other delights happily move to the forefront like comfy sweaters, roaring fires, and pumpkin lattes, we don’t have to put our proverbial favorites on the shelf. Heck, no! In fact, here is a list of books that will keep you great company through one of our favorite seasons. We dug deep for this list of our favorites, so each and every one of these is roaring-fire-latte-and-comfy-sweater-worthy. In fact, every last one of these books might make it on to your own list of favorite reads ever, we promise.
A book love
r’s dream, this first novel has the trifecta for a satisfying read: great well-developed characters, a dynamic and well-paced plot, and some nice curve balls to keep you guessing. Our protagonist Grace looks like a simple girl from Tennessee, but she can’t hide her complex and slippery character for long. You’ll root for her and want to wring her neck in equal measure. There’s a question that hangs over the novel from the beginning that’s begging to be answered and when Scherm finally gets around to it, you are grateful for the care she took in the build-up as well as the payoff itself. This is a debut that leaves you wanting more.
Moms of daughters, beware: this read will make you want to lock your girls up and throw away the key. But despite the dark cloud that hangs over this novel as a teen girl goes missing, there is so much to enjoy as well. Ng is a writer’s writer and she doesn’t so much document this family’s unraveling as their personal hell unfolds as invite you to pull at the fraying threads with her. At once, a novel about family, the mother/daughter dynamic, and cultural divides, this book is also achingly real and familiar. The truth hurts so bad in this one, but the reader is so grateful for every perfect note Ng hits. If the ship is going down, we might as well learn something from the trip. Ng makes sure she plumbs the depths so well that this is one dark corner now revealed.
Fall is the perfect time for a book that begs you to get lost between the pages. Towles evokes a time and place in his portrayal of 1930s Manhattan that would be fun to visit in and of itself, but the plucky, lucky every-girl Katey Content as the protagonist powers this past just another period piece. Katey is trying to make something of herself and we are enchanted by this girl on the edge of metamorphosis. When random events and people like the charismatic Tinker Grey change the course and temper of her future, we recognize Katey and her transparent yearning and root for her. We all have been that girl (or guy) on the cusp of possibility. This is a wonderful, buoyant novel about coming of age in a time and place with an enchantment all its own.
A lesser author might have made this story into a tragedy, but this book is laugh out loud funny. Winn’s daughter is getting married at the Kennedy-esque family compound, and his world of privilege is unraveling. He’s a man with everything but true happiness, and the three day extravaganza is primed to turn into a spectacle rather than the refined affair he desires. Even as Shipstead takes on the world of the well-bred with a sharp, biting wit, you will be swayed by her sidesteps into the heart of desire, the obligations of love, and what we must never surrender for fame, fortune, or a seat at the country club. This is funny with a super sized helping of smart, and it goes down smooth.
Absorbing, interwoven stories and beautifully drawn characters help you travel back and forth over fifty years in this tale. You won’t mind the trip a bit. In fact, you will be drawn into this world. From the lovely actress to the soulless movie producer, from the novelist to the innkeeper, each character dreams deeply improbable dreams and you can’t help but be carried away with them. This is a book to fall into and lose yourself a little.
So this might seem a funny one to suggest for curling up with by a crackling fire. End-of-life issues? Medical research? Um, ladies, you have done lost it this time. Pipe down over there. Gawande is the most gifted of storytellers who just also happens to be a doctor. Every book of his is a gem, but this one might be his best yet. His beautifully drawn anecdotes and stories create a lovely scaffold to hang this question: If medicine has now reached the stage where it can give us a good life, is it ready to give us a good end as well? A surprising page-turner, you’ll not mind the twists and turns and hefty research he sprinkles throughout to answer this question. This is a book you’ll want to share with your friends and loved ones.
This one might make you want to lock up ALL of your college aged kiddos, but you HAVE to read it. You know how we love to talk to kids about everything from sex to drugs to alcohol. Well, Krakauer lays out why we need to talk to our kids about alcohol and campus rape too. YIKES! But why, you ask? WHY?! We get that this is a tough read in many places, but Krakauer’s firm steady journalistic hand makes this one of the best, most important (but still immensely readable) things you can read this fall, especially if you have kids filling out college applications or even already cozied up in dorm rooms. It is a book that launched a thousand conversations for us. We are sharing it with you in the hopes that it will do the same in your family. A MUST read!
Erin has already shoved this book into the hands of every person willing to take a book from a crazy lady. But in all seriousness, this book knocked her socks off. The premise is that Mark Watney is left for dead on Mars after an ill-fated mission. But he is so not dead. Watney’s humor and humanity breathe life into this well-paced and thoughtfully constructed story about a man’s struggle for survival in an unforgiving environment. He makes us laugh, gasp, and root for his plucky ultimate underdog self. Add to this already amazing mix that this is a real science brand of science fiction and the result is unputdownable fiction. You can just thank Erin later or, at the very least, not run from her when she is shoving books at you.
Broken hearts are good for one thing: creating some powerful books. In this case, Helen Macdonald has lost her dad and then her way. So she does what all grieving girls do: she decides to train a goshawk. Weaving together stories of her grief with her experience training the hawk and anecdotes about T.H. White who also trained hawks, Macdonald is spinning a special kind of magic here. Her vulnerability, her bare-faced honesty, and her well-researched and deftly placed bits about White mesh with her rich wells of talent to bring us something far more encompassing and satisfying than a memoir of her grief. This is writing at its highest level with sentences that hold up to re-readings. We are not grateful for her loss so much as deeply affected by it and the lovely piece of writing it spawned.
Erin laughed, cried, and ignored her kids for three days to finish this piece of book crack in the big, sloppy gulps it demands. You know from the beginning that there has been a terrible tragedy at the local school’s Trivia Night, because Moriarty leaves little crumbs at the end of each chapter. But that’s not the story here. This is NOT another legal thriller. A big, sprawling character study of modern moms, it may be. An ironic, funny take on modern parenting, it definitely is! It’s also a rollicking good time. You’ll laugh and cringe at just how right Moriarty gets all the characters hanging out in the school parking lot. A great read for fall while still reminiscent of that last joyful moment of summer indulgence.
11. Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline
Erin gobbled this one right up. She even took it backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. Nothing says “must read” like a willingness to cart those extra ounces up and down a mountain. In any case, the novel opens as stay-at-home mom Allison’s life is about to go off the rails. She goes to her childhood best friend’s book signing one night and has a little too much to drink. Mere hours later, she is involved in a fatal accident in which a child dies. The air you take into your lungs in the big gasp in the beginning takes this whole well-paced novel to be released. This may not be high literature, but it is a captivating read that makes you think. Like we said, you are gonna want to take big bites of this one.
Nothing warms the heart faster than a love story, and this one charmed us both. It’s a story of first love peopled with characters so real they could walk right off the page. Eleanor and Park are high schoolers the way we remember them and know them now. Funny, sweet, vulnerable, flawed, and deeply striving for love, acceptance, and independence, they are characters to cheer for, and you will. Erin walked around like a teen in love while reading it and couldn’t stop shoving it into the hands of any unsuspecting reader she could find. Don’t let the Barnes and Noble sales rack fool you: this is not a teen romance in the same way that War and Peace is not a book that concerns Russia. It IS a 24 hour read. Tops.
In one sense, you can think of this book as bread crumbs in the forest because essentially that is how this smart novel is written. Bee, the daughter, assembles emails, documents, letters et al after her mother Bernadette disappears in an effort to assemble the clues to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. The structure of the novel is just one intimation that this book is something special. After you read each document in its entirety, the full force and power of this novel is brought to light. Bitterly funny, satirical, and off-kilter in the best sense of the word, this send-up about all the things we mock and fear and revere in our modern society is the equivalent of a literary carnival.
Dork Alert: Fans of Arrested Development won’t be a bit surprised to learn that the author Maria Semple was also a writer for the series .
14. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Loss moves us in lots of ways. For Cheryl Strayed, loss meant literally moving. Away from her broken heart after losing her mother, away from the painful detritus of her failed marriage, away from a life veering off the tracks, she needed to get away in the realest sense possible. So she hit the trail. For her, healing meant lacing up her brand spanking new boots and setting her sights on a trip she honestly was unprepared for in every way. Strayed’s recounting of her time on the Pacific Crest Trail is riveting. Not only is she gifted with a steely resolve worthy of wonder and awe, but she has a wordsmith’s touch and a clear-eyed honesty that will captivate you. Can’t-put-down-able.
Three ye
ars after the loss of her son, Anna Whiston-Donaldson has crafted something beautiful out of the crazy, sad space left behind after the loss of her son. “Rare Bird” is exceptional in its power and inimitable in its voice. It is a rare and beautiful find on a dark road. Anna’s story is also a story of deep faith in the face of that which rocks one to the very core. Her poignant, painful, and sometimes funny anecdotes don’t just paint a picture of grief but gives it clear edges and hard corners. This new framework that grief imposes leaves her struggling to find in this new dark place the God that has always sustained her. But her straightforward open-hearted approach to this journey helps her see the new big God who is walking beside her in this place. A beautiful, big-hearted, clear-eyed, and ultimately hopeful and inspiring read.
There you have it: a big, honking stack of readable, lovable books to keep you warm and in reading all season long. We hope you love them all as much as we do!
Happy Reading!
-Erin and Ellen
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Check out our books, “I Just Want to Be Alone” and “You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth.”
by Rebecca Sherm
by Jess Walter
by Anna Whiston-Donaldson
