"If you like fantasy I’m seconding The Goblin Emperor. TempeMom recommended it here - post #2674. (Thanks!) Definite thumbs up from me.
The Goblin Emperor is a nominee for the 2014 Nebula Award: http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2015/02/books/genre-fiction/sf-fantasy/out-of-this-world-reading-nebula-nominees-2014/ "
YES!!! I am reading it right now (I didn’t even know it was recommended on this thread)! Fantastic book!
I started The Interestings quite some time ago and just couldn’t get into it so put it down. I recently gave it another try and am enjoying it now. I can’t recall what other people here had to say about it.
Well, I finished The Goblin Emperor (and loved it - the world-building was amazing, indeed), and now, based on the recommendations here, I am going to start The Last Policeman!
Just finished * The Last Policeman.* Looking forward to book 2.
cartera, I read The Interestings a couple of years ago. I enjoyed it, some parts more than others. I seem to remember not liking some of the characters but loving others. I do recall that it was kind of difficult to get into at first.
I think we had mixed reactions. I finished it, but did not find them very interesting at all…
I liked but didn’t love it.
I liked The Interestings, mostly because I remember those intense feelings of being the first-ever amazing young people in the history of the world; that is, that the lucky of us get to feel like WE’RE The Interestings if we fall into a group of great friends during a certain phase of life. My ‘Interestings’ were never that accomplished. But I remember feeling indestructible, important, amazing. I liked that about the book, or maybe about the experience of reading that book.
Finished the Last Policemen series and liked it very, very much.
Just finished the MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood. Loved the whole series. I decided to go for another Atwood and just started “Alias Grace: A Novel”. So far I love it.
@EPTR, what kind of books are those? Mystery? Fantasy? Something else?
The MaddAddam Trilogy is a distopian plot. Futuristic apocalyptic sort of thing. A bit reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale, if you ever read that. Atwood is a master of intelligent writing with just a hint of ascerbic wit. Love her style. She does not condescend to the reader.
Alias Grace: A Novel is about a woman accused of murder in the 1850s in Canada. She doesn’t remember the crime and spends time in prison and in a sanatorium. I have just started it but it is also smartly written.
I worship at the altar of Margaret Atwood.
I started The Interestings quite some time ago and just couldn’t get into it so put it down. I recently gave it another try and am enjoying it now. I can’t recall what other people here had to say about it.>>>>>>>>>>
I, too, started it and put it down. Maybe I’ll give it another shot.
Recently finished the latest Anne Tyler, A Spool of Blue Thread. As usual, her portraits of people and how people act are great; didn’t add up to much of an actual plot, but I enjoyed reading it.
I’m in the middle of Jane Smiley’s newest, Some Luck, and also enjoying it. It’s quirky and virtually plotless–the story of a farm family from one year to the next, starting almost a hundred years ago. It’s the first of a trilogy which will progress up to present day. Even though there’s not a traditional story arc, it reads very smoothly and I am liking it more than I thought I might.
(Perhaps I am noticing a theme here–everything i’ve read in the last month has been less plot, more like the passage of time, and all have been good in different ways.)
Love Margaret Atwood. I have had the pleasure of meeting her several times, the first of which was when she was the featured speaker at my college graduation. She was only 35 years old!
For fans of Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts, The Devil in the White City), his newest is set to be published next week, called Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.
Excerpts from an interview I heard this morning:
If you liked “Mountains Beyond Mountains” about Paul Farmer (or your kids did), I just finished a book called 'To Repair the World", which was a series of speeches by Farmer. It includes graduation speeches (to medical students, public health students, and undergrad programs), and a few other speeches from other occasions. If you like Mountains Beyond Mountains, this is pretty interesting and broader look at his work and perspectives. It is inspiring (of course) and I found it quite thought provoking. I admit, it sat on my shelf for a long time before I read it (kids gave it to me as a gift a few years ago, and I just got around to it now). I didn’t go into it thinking it was something I would recommend, but I changed my mind. I would read Mountains Beyond Mountains first if you haven’t, though (and you just should read that anyway if you haven’t yet!). 
LasMas- I look forward to reading DeadWake. I have enjoyed all of Larson’s books. The Devil in the White City is one of my favorite books.
Just finished The Interestings. I think I’m starting The Last Policeman trilogy tonight.
I’ve read lots of Atwood but at the moment the description of Alias Grace made me think of Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time…about a woman who is insane and institutionalized (lots of the horrors of old institutional life IIRC), but is really off and on (just) in touch with the future. I read it during college and it made a big impression. Maybe time to pull it out again.