Before the calendar turns to July, I'm chronicling my top picks of the year, both in nonfiction and fiction.
Top Five Nonfiction Picks
Cherry by Mary Karr. This memoir captures the universal stage of adolescence with eloquence and craft. Ironically, I would not recommend it to too many teenagers, but would recommend it to parents. It brings you back to what it was like to be young and vulnerable.
Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni. Last year, I completed sent over 20 letters of recommendations to colleges and universities -- for one applicant. Um, I applied to three colleges. Bruni unpacks the college admissions mania. I loved the way that he shaped his claims around the interviews he did with his subjects. Most memorable would be his interviews with Condoleezza Rice and John Green. (Fun fact: A few months after reading this, I was delighted to discover that the author had visited my own college and praised it as a hidden gem.)
Rising Strong by Brene Brown. I loved how this book was both an extension of and a deeper dive into the concepts first developed in Daring Greatly. My favorite line:"Curiosity is a shit-starter. But that's okay. Sometimes we have to rumble with a story to find the truth." My favorite term: "badassery deficit." Only you, Brene Brown...
American Girls by Nancy Jo Sales. It scared me, it startled me, and it confirmed what I already suspected to be true. I await Sales' further research on the impacts of social media on adolescents, and enjoyed the exchanges with her on Twitter. I referred one of my students to Sales' work and the author was kind enough to comment on my student's blog.
Change of Heart by Jeanne Bishop. Short but certainly not sweet, the author shares her decades long journey of forgiving her sister's killer and the impact of that forgiveness on her family and career.
Top Five Fiction Picks
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. The cast of characters and the description of the setting captured my attention. The way that McCann believably wove together the narratives of each character was impressive. All of his other books are now on my read-next list.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. This was a fantastic crossover title, in that it could appeal to a young adult audience as historical fiction (wake-up call: historical fiction is now about the decade I was born. #old). Read through psychological, feminist and social justice lenses, the novel covers so many relevant corners.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I know that the novel alternates points of view between Ifemelu and Obinze, but I couldn't help but feel that the story belonged more to the female first person narrator. It addresses so much -- the immigration experience, what happens to the disenfranchised woman, and where home truly is.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Such beautiful writing on such a tragic subject. Yes, this novel has a clear plot, but I read it much more so for the beauty of its language and the depth of its characters.
We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach. Existential and incisive. The four main characters, all seniors in high school, two male and two female, must fundamentally ask themselves, "So what?" A meteor is headed for earth and likely to take out two thirds of the population. In six weeks. So, yeah, getting into the Ivies? All for naught.
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