My Favorite Books
Books are one of my greatest joys. I love recommending them, gifting them at cocktail parties, and finding the stories that spark deep conversations.
In this article are the four books that have made the biggest impact on me.
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world.
From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us.
This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
For generations, readers have been charmed by the special world of Green Gables, an old-fashioned farm outside a town called Avonlea. Eleven-year-old Anne Shirley has arrived in this verdant corner of Prince Edward Island only to discover that the Cuthberts–elderly Matthew and his stern sister, Marilla–want to adopt a boy, not a feisty redheaded girl. But before they can send her back, Anne–who simply must have more scope for her imagination and a real home–wins them over completely.
Anne of Green Gables–the inspiration for the Netflix series Anne with an E–is a much loved classic that explores all the vulnerability, expectations, and dreams of a child growing up. It is a wonderful portrait of a time, a place, a family…and most of all, love.
The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe
Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history.
Looking back at the last 500 years, they’d uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or “turnings”—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years.
The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization as traumatic and transformative as the New Deal and World War II, the Civil War, or the American Revolution.
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Plot is a psychologically suspenseful novel about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.
Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written–let alone published–anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.
Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that–a story that absolutely needs to be told.
Conclusion
Here is a quick rundown of my four favorite books:
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe
- The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Each one holds a special place in my life and has shaped the way I think and connect with others.
Looking for more recommendations? I share five recent reads that earned my highest rating in 5 Books That Earned My 5 Stars.
Want to see what I am reading right now, along with many of my other recommendations? Follow me on Storygraph to explore my current reads and discover more of my favorites.