Gayle's Picks

Sweet is a wonderful writer. With this book she will join the ranks of others like Oliver Sacks, Tracy Kidder, Abraham Verghese, and Jerome Groopman. She is a remarkable storyteller and her stories speak to our hearts and minds. Not only did I think it was the best creative non-fiction book that I had read in many, many months but my niece who is an intern at Georgetown Hospital in Washington DC told me that she thought it was remarkable and helped her remember why she wanted to be a doctor. Sweet reminded her that medicine can be practiced one patient at a time and that doctors learn from their patients how to treat the whole body and mind not just the diseased organ or ailment.

This is a story that is good to the last drop! I love his writing, his characters and the tension he creates in this novel set in Seattle in two eras--the 60s and the 2000s. There are no right answers; cities are built on dreams and graft and vision; humans have gifts and failings. We all want heroes but they are flawed when you dig deep enough. This is the perfect book to read thinking ahead to the presidential election. We wonder why the people who run for office do so knowing there is such peril to their families and friends and in a world of sound bites and innuendo circulated in 140 characters on the likes of Twitter, I wonder what, if anything, they think they can communicate. In spite of this, Lynch's book is a hopeful book--there are those men who, rather than seeing the world as bad and demoralizing, still can enjoy a ferry crossing the river, can imagine ripe blackberries and small boys and grown men comforting their mothers. Such a lovely novel.

When I finished this book, I felt like I needed to start it over immediately to figure out what I had missed the first time. I was confused, but in that wonderful way you sometimes are when you finish a great novel—did the author purposely add an element of mystery so that his protagonist, too, had to figure things out as the book progressed? Did he give him memories that betrayed him in the end? Do memories always betray us? Or do we change our memories to fit our notion of who we want to be? The writing is exquisite in this short novel—you’ll want to read passages out loud. Barnes won the prestigious Booker Prize for this novel, and I think he totally deserved it. —Gayle

"I loved it. It's been haunting me since I finished it. How did LaPlante figure out how to construct this novel so perfectly? I was pulled, pushed, repulsed, delighted." -Gayle

I avoid books about sociopaths who kidnap, rape and put women into escape-proof rooms for seven years. But I heard from several bookseller friends that this book was not one to miss in spite of the topic and saw that it was also nominated for a Booker Prize. It’s told through the eyes of a child, conceived & birthed in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The boy’s perceptions are insightful and there are enough plot twists to provide a dramatic arc of breathtaking suspense. It kept me reading late at night -- highly recommended. -Gayle

One minute she was there, walking the requisite four steps behind her husband, the next minute she had disappeared as he rushed to catch the subway. Where had she gone? Was she killed? Did she run away? Who was she anyway? Her daughter, her son, and her husband all have their own recollections about who this Mom was and she has her own story to tell as well. A compelling mystery set in the Korean countryside with visits to the big city, composed almost entirely in second-person narration, the writing is intensely moving. The characters continually battle with their own guilt for not taking better care of her while remembering the times when they were young, growing up in incredible poverty in the countryside. You will never think about a mother’s love for her family in the same way again. —Gayle

If you are a parent -- thinking you're doing all the right things -- you will never look at your children the same way again after you read Amy Chua's book. You'll find yourself questioning whether pushing then might have made them musical geniuses, math wizards, prolific writers, or all of the above. Pushing, prodding, threatening, demanding, and sacrificing -- but always loving -- your children in what Chua calls the "Chinese Style of Parenting" might have been their ticket to success. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is disquieting -- it is hard to read if you empathize with her children or you find yourself thinking about your children's abilities and potentials in a new light. I read this in two nights, and now I can't stop talking and thinking about it.

I'm very excited about Jeannette Walls' new book. Walls' descriptions of life in the early 20th century are like reading a wonderful history book filled with amazing people.  It is set in southern Arizona and features Jeannette's strong, resourceful, often funny grandmother who bootlegs liquor, rides horses and plays a mean game of poker. This is the prequel to Jeannette's unforgettable memoir, The Glass Castle. —Gayle

I love the Vegetarian Epicure—it’s still one of my favorite cookbooks. This new one, all soups, any time, any season, is wonderful and the 160 enticing recipes may charm even a die-hard carnivore. She also has recipes for breads, dips and spreads, salads and a collection of desserts, as well as sample menus at the start of each chapter that make it easy to plan a full meal. Before it gets too hot again, try some cool weather soups; perfect to keep in the fridge and warm up for lunch or dinner. —Gayle

This book is a book lover’s dream, and I am certain that it will become a classic and referred to by generations of readers. Abraham Verghese wrote The Tennis Partner several years ago and, although a work of non-fiction, it read like a novel. Attempts by skilled non-fiction writers to move into the realm of fiction often fail, but this is a glorious triumph. It is a saga of dedicated doctors and their passion for saving lives. It opens with a nun giving birth, in a third world country, to conjoined twins, and it is about family—fathers, sons, mothers, and community—convents, impoverished city dwellers, charity hospitals, war, and Ethiopia. It’s absorbing, wild, perilous, evocative, and tender. —Gayle

When you think the world is hopeless, this book might give you cause to be optimistic. What would it take to change the lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles—but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? Paul Tough's stories about Geoffrey Canada's bold effort to offer a cradle-to-college program for thousands of underprivileged children in Harlem is anything but dry theoretical rhetoric. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the dramatic ups and downs of the Harlem Children's Zone, a $58 million project encompassing 97 city blocks and serving 7,000 children, and includes personal stories of the staff, students, and their parents and teachers with expert opinions and the broiling debates over poverty, race and education. Geoffrey Canada is a driven, brilliant crusader argues that to change the lives of poor children, everything has to change—their schools, their families, their neighborhoods—all at once. Barak Obama says if he becomes president, he will work to replicate this amazing program in cities all over America. Read it and weep, laugh... and find hope. —Gayle

I’m a foodie and love books that talk about food lore, ingredients, and exotic tastes. I also read memoirs. This book combines all of these elements in a remarkable way. At the age of three, Kim Sunée was abandoned on a bench in a marketplace in Seoul, South Korea. A young GI and his wife brought her to the States, and she grew up in New Orleans amongst an extended family that included maternal grandparents who taught her how to cook. She never felt at home in her adopted country and, while still in her teens, moved to France where she continued cooking lessons under master chefs. This is her story, complete with recipes and anecdotes, of finding her rightful place in the world, and using food to lead her home. —Gayle

A literary mystery set in the late 1800’s with characters that stay with you long after you finish. The author’s screenwriting experience shows in this riveting novel told in powerful short takes. I read this book in one long, wonderful vacation day under an umbrella on the beach. What a treat! —Gayle

Men's friendships are at the heart of Carlson's latest novel. The characters are sensitively drawn, and their relationships begin silently and evasively. As three men work together creating a bridge across an Idaho gorge, they open up to one another, sharing their pasts and aspirations. Humor and anger are mixed with the work they do together—details of carpentry providing the basis for their interactions and weaving together the fabric of their past lives. In sharing their stories, the three come to understand themselves and allow the guilt they each feel about past transgressions seep away. —Gayle

Each section of this brilliant novel is told from the perspective of a different character in a different voice. Harrison has created complex characters dealing with loss and love in the landscape of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan and through the rituals of Native American life. When I finished this book, I immediately read it through for a second time. This is one of the best novels I've read in years. If you're discovering Jim Harrison for the first time, this is a great book to get you started on his work—you'll want to go back and read everything he's written. (This book is also strongly recommended by Bob.) —Gayle

"Can't cook but doesn't bite." This newspaper ad offering the services of a housekeeper draws the attention of a Montana widower with three sons in the fall of 1909. Ivan Doig is one of my favorite authors and his writing in this novel is exceptional. Like Wallace Stegner before him, he captures the West in his novels, and its landscape becomes one of the book's characters. It's an affectionate, heartwarming tale that also celebrates a vanished way of life. You will read this and then want to share it with all your friends. —Gayle

If you like Malcolm Gladwell, you’ll love Daniel Pink. Like Gladwell, Pink uses stories, websites, book recommendations, exercises, and his own philosophy to encourage us to use our right brains to understand our world. The eras of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a New World in which "right brain" qualities—inventiveness, empathy, meaning—predominate. That’s the argument at the center of this provocative and original book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for comprehending and functioning well in our daily work and play lives. —Gayle

This is one of my favorite books. I loved it so much that it sent me to museums looking for Vermeer paintings of which there are so few in existence. It begins with one of his masterpieces hanging in the private study of a school teacher. He knows that the painting came to his father in an unethical, if not immoral way, but he can't bear to part with it. We follow the painting backwards in time through a series of its owners to Vermeer, himself. The cast of characters we meet along the way is memorable and when you're finished reading, you have a history of the world seen though one work of art. -Gayle