Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate and The Road.
Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin.
I love lists 
Library Journal’s Best Books of 2011 (Look to the right hand side of the page if you want to look in different genres): [Best</a> Books 2011: The Top Ten ? Library Journal Reviews](<a href=“http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2011/11/best-of/top-10/best-books-2011-the-top-ten/]Best”>http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2011/11/best-of/top-10/best-books-2011-the-top-ten/)
Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2011: [Publishers</a> Weekly Best Books of 2011](<a href=“Best Books 2011 | Publishers Weekly : Publishers Weekly”>Best Books 2011 | Publishers Weekly : Publishers Weekly)
Just finished “Mao” by Jung Chang and Jon Haliday. DH bought it and read it years ago. Then DD read over Thanksgiving break and was obviously so absorbed that I dipped into it. Wow. It’s just hugely entertaining and interesting. Highly recommend.
I’m reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and really liking it.
Ok, don’t laugh – I found this one at a yard sale and thought, what the heck, I’m leaving on a trip the next day and need something for that 7-hour drive:
Jane Austen in Scarsdale: Or Love, Death, and the SATs
It was great! Plot centers on a guidance counselor at an upscale high school in Scarsdale, the various students with pushy parents, kids desperate to get into Brown or whatever top-tier school, parents who are navigating the college choice maze with their kids…just perfect timing for reading right now, when so many of us are going through the same things with our high school seniors. A little bit of romance, not too much, when the father of a new student turns out to be the GC’s old flame from her own college days. Fun read.
SJR- I read Jane in Scarsdale too, when we were going the process ourselves and found it absolutely laugh out loud funny. On our next college tour I had to hold myself back from asking questions such as the ones parents asked in the novel (is there lactaid in the dining hall?) that made their children cringe. It had some hilarious and true to life anecdotes on how students act on tours. She could’ve been writing about my son, who lurked in the back of the group with his head down, while I walked up front asking the tour guide questions. Very funny.
mommusic- glad you also loved Secret Daughter.
Just finished the new David Baldacci, Zero Day, which had different characters for the first time in a while and was very good. My engineer son also enjoyed, as he understood more of the physics that became a bit convoluted to me in the end. Also John Grisham’s The Litigators, which was mostly good but dragged in spots.
I am now plodding through Alice Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers. It is very interesting, but I am finding it slow going.
Any suggestions for what to go to next.
^ about 6 years ago when were going through the college searching process, the book that caused tears of laughter, was “Accept My Kid, Please” -----so funny at the time!
After you know where your own student is going, go read the Meta Thread for All of Us. Just not in a library or while drinking milk.
If you’re looking for non-fiction, and you’re of a certain age (about 46-52, like most of us parents of college-bound kids)–check out “Sybil Exposed” by Debbie Nathan. EVERYBODY our age was absorbed by the story in the early-mid 70’s, with the book and the made-for-tv movie…
Good read.
The New York Times has come out with its list of [The</a> 10 Best Books of 2011](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/10-best-books-of-2011.html]The”>10 Best Books of 2011 - The New York Times).
Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is one of the five fiction books on the list. I’m reading and enjoying that one now.
The Boy in the Moon, by Ian Brown, is one of the five non-fiction books. I recommended that book back in post #1322 on this thread, and it remains my favorite non-fiction book of the past year. I’d like to plug it again, and to note that the Times calls it an “exquisite book . . . at once tender, pained and unexpectedly funny.”
Well I prefer funny books, so I’ll look for “Meta Thread for All of Us,” and “Accept My Kid, Please.”
Haven’t read it yet because it doesn’t come out for another week but can hardly wait for PD James’ new mystery set in post-Pride & Prejudice Pemberley:
[Amazon.com:</a> Death Comes to Pemberley (9780307959850): P.D. James: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Death-Comes-Pemberley-P-D-James/dp/0307959856/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322847664&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Death-Comes-Pemberley-P-D-James/dp/0307959856/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322847664&sr=1-1)
I really liked 11/22/63 also.( I have a feeling King has an excellent editor)
I always liked reading the Best American anthologies, and was happy to see the Science & Nature writing essays in the ibooks store, so I am enjoying that.
I love Joan Didions essays, and want to read her new memoir Blue Nights, but don’t know if I am in the mood to read something so real.
[Joan</a> Didion on Her New Memoir Blue Nights’ – New York Magazine](<a href=“http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/joan-didion-2011-10/]Joan”>Joan Didion on Her Wrenching New Memoir, Blue Nights)
Big Didion fan here, too. Just re-read The White Album. Kind of like her earlier work the best.
I’m reading Amy Baltzell’s “Living in the Sweet Spot.” It’s an incredibly useful book for anyone. She is a former Olympian and now a sports psychologist, but she has useful advice to help anyone perform their best - at work, in school, etc.
I love Susan Orlean. Her latest, “Rin Tin Tin,” is on my Christmas wish list. I was surprised to find a re-issue of one of her first books at B&N last week - “Saturday Night.” It’s about the many ways Americans spend Saturday night. Or, more accurately, the ways they spent it in 1990. She has chapters on a quinceanera, an upper-crust New York society dinner party, a crime-of-passion murder in a small town, a church dance, and several others, including a really funny one on the Wellesley Saturday night bus to Harvard Square.
She’s such a quirky, insightful, engaging writer. The book is a terrific history lesson on some of the major changes of the past 20 years. A very enjoyable read.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Only because it’s ridiculously funny…
Swamplandia! made it onto the NYT best books list. I read it after reading a recommendation on this thread, sorry I don’t remember whose.
I apologize in advance if this book was discussed earlier. I am starting The Silence of Trees, and the first few chapters were quite intense in a sad way. Any opinions about continuing on?
Thanks for the recommendation of “Secret Daughter” in post 1370. I was needing a new book, got it from the library, and can’t put it down. Only a few pages to go and I’m at that point where I don’t want to continue reading because I don’t want it to end.