The Great Believers

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow! Powerful, beautiful, sad book.
I felt like this novel continued the conversation that Andrew Sean Greer began in his National Book Festival interview about how the AIDS crisis took the people that would have been role models for how to be old and out. Makkai talks about writing this book, which is set in Chicago in an interview with New City Lit.

Loved it!

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this in November 2008 and wrote this review at the time: Wow! This is an amazing novel. I read it in a single evening and was very impressed. The story is a page-turner, the writing is beautiful, and the characters are strange and familiar at the same time. There are (of course) lots of reflections on marriage, but also on youth, and war, and courage, and race, and the Rosenbergs, and love, and how a house is a witness to our life.

“We think we know people, and dismiss the scenes as aberrations, as the lightning strikes of madness, but surely we are wrong. Surely these are the truest moments of their lives.” 

This is my contribution to the September Books You Loved Link Up.

10 Books I Recommend

The Book Blogger Recommendation Survey is being conducted at Reading with Tequila. 

Strictly speaking the survey asks for your favorite books of all time, ranked 1-10. I cannot even begin to say what that list would look like, for one thing there are the billions of books I haven't read yet.

I have compiled (and added to the survey) a list of mostly recent books that I really liked and can wholeheartedly recommend (the order is random).

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman (the audio book version with Gaiman reading is fantastic!)
• Soulless (Parasol Protectorate #1) by Gail Carriger
• The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer (kleenex may be required)
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• Julie & Julia by Julie Powell 
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf