Laura

Read in 2016
(I promise that having a titular article is not a weird sub-theme I'm pursuing.)

1. The Good Soldiers  David Finkel
2. The Martian  Andy Weir  
3. Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren*  Barbara Park
4. The Mark and the Void  Paul Murray
5. The Drowning  Camilla Lackberg
6. The Preacher  Camilla Lackberg
7. The Skeleton Road  Val McDermid
8. The Children Act  Ian McEwan
9. Slade House  David Mitchell
10. And When She Was Good  Laura Lippman
11. Death in a Prairie House  William Drennan
12. Arcadia  Lauren Groff





*****

By day I am a policy wonk here in Chicago focused on making the world (of Chicago) a better place to live. (That's going okay.) At most other times, I am reading or wishing I had remembered to throw that book/magazine/pamphlet/back-of-the-cereal-box into my bag. 

Fun fact: as a kid, my parents actually grounded me from reading because that was the only punishment that made me even a little bit sorry that I had just told my little brother that, yes, there really are monsters upstairs. 

Favorites are, naturally, impossible to pick. But my go-tos when answering this question are usually one of these:  

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan
• Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
• The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

That being said, at any given time, I am most likely to be reading a plot-driven mystery or thriller. I also dabble in nonfiction (usually with a disaster-bent, I'm realizing: The Great Influenza, The Sixth Extinction, The Good Soldiers...) and essay collections (mostly journalists: Joan Didion, Ernie Pyle, Martha Gellhorn, Hunter S. Thompson, Wendell Berry...). 

Totally stoked to be joining this group and to get all of the best book recommendations. 

Happy reading!,

Lw