Category: Recommended Read Page 4 of 8

This is the time of year I find myself reading a handful of what I like to call “Resolution Books.” Topics vary – get fit, get organized, get better habits, get calm, get centered, get a gorgeous complexion, get the clutter out, get your wardrobe straightened … I love them. Do I do what they say? Not necessarily, though I always get at least one new idea or life hack from them. It’s more a comforting ritual for the new year.

Any why just for the new year? Yes I know there is no time like the present when it comes to self-improvement but the fact is the first day of the year is like the first page of a new notebook. Second only to January 1 is the first day of any month. Followed by the first day of a week, though you have some wiggle room on whether

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Happy New Year’s Eve! This year will certainly be remembered for its many losses and disappointments, but a bright spot for me was the tremendous number of good books I got to read. And isn’t that what a good book should do? Take us out of reality for a bit?

Fall is always a busy time so while I was able to jealously guard my reading time (priorities!) I did not get a chance to sit down and write about some of the titles I enjoyed. Hopefully the new year will bring more free time – or better time management. Or time management books.

I hope the holidays have brought you books, and gift cards you can use for books. Here are eight of my recent favorites in no particular order, and if you don’t have book money I, of course, recommend you look for these titles at your Library!

Fans of Fitzgerald, Cheever, and other chroniclers of the woes of the upper class should enjoy these first two titles. I loved Anton DiSclafani’s debut novel “The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls” (2013) and

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The electrification of the United States wasn’t a simple matter, it was a fight. It was a fight in courtrooms and pressroms and boardrooms between big men with big ideas, egos, and bank accounts (or at least wealthy backers.) Beyond the eureka of discovery was the tedium of patent law, and the debate over whose current – Edison’s direct current or Westinghouse/Tesla’s alternating current – would illuminate the country. Moore’s historical legal thriller imagines the behind-the-scenes struggle for electrical dominance from the perspective of Paul Cravath, the real (and young in only his mid-twenties), inexperienced but ambitious lawyer that George Westinghouse tasked with defending him against a mountain of lawsuits from Thomas Edison.

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After 15 outings Paris PI Aimée Leduc gets an origin story.

It is 1989 and Aimée is not a confident crime solver, but a harried, heartbroken medical student. She is overwhelmed by the rigors of school, the cutthroat tactics of her classmates (often at her expense), and she is about to be unceremoniously dumped by her posh boyfriend (at least according to his mean-girl sister.) So it isn’t surprising that when her father leaves her in charge of his detective agency while he travels to newly-unified Berlin on a mysterious errand, Aimée looks for something to distract her.

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published May 3, 2016
Putnam

This utterly current debut about a group of over-educated, underpaid, and heavily-indebted executive assistants accidentally becoming champions of over-educated, underpaid, and heavily-indebted executive assistants everywhere is a great book to stash in your beach bag then pass on to a friend.

Tina Fontana is assistant to the head of a huge media conglomerate. She makes his reservations, takes lunch orders and minutes for meetings, slices limes for his scandalously expensive tequila. She is loyal, hardworking, discreet, and living paycheck to paycheck. When an accounting error would allow her to pay off her remaining student loan debt the temptation is great.

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April was absolute madness. Between my state Library association conference and, well, life, I got nothing written for The Inky Whisk. I was, however, reading. A lot. So I will start catching up on some recent favorites this month – Mystery May! (at least according to the ALA’s Booklist magazine, and I have no reason to quarrel with them!)

published April 26, 2016
Del Rey

This is classified science fiction but there is a big – gigantic, even – mystery at the heart of “Sleeping Giants.” This intriguing debut opens with 11-year-old Rose investigating a glow in the woods near her home. Next thing she knows, the earth disappears beneath her feet and she lands in the palm of a giant metal hand, buried deep underground.

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