For your reading pleasure: Spokane Is Reading’s ‘Writers Recommended Booklist’ is announced for 2021
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Spokane Is Reading has announced its “Writers Recommend Booklist” for 2021. Curated by a group of past Spokane Is Reading authors, the list features books that have brought them “hope, joy or laughter during the last year.”
The “Writers Recommend Booklist” for 2021 is:
“The Hearing Trumpet” by Leonora Carrington
When 92-year-old Marian Leatherby receives a hearing trumpet as a gift, she discovers that her family is conspiring to commit her. But the institution, she finds, is unlike anything she could have ever imagined. The “occult twin to Alice in Wonderland,” “The Hearing Trumpet” is a surrealist dream state crossed with a murder mystery.
“Washington Black” by Esi Edugyan
An 11-year-old field slave’s life in Barbados enters a whole new world when his master’s brother – an eccentric scientist and abolitionist – chooses him to work as his manservant.
“Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing
The harrowing, true story of British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic expedition and attempt to reach the South Pole.
“Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home” by Nina Stibbe
A collection of letters written by Nina Stibbe to her sister at home in Leicester chronicling the comical trials and tribulations of her life as a nanny to a family in London.
“The Souvenir Museum” by Elizabeth McCracken
A collection of short stories about family life from Texas water parks to the craggy hills of the Scottish Highlands.
“Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” by Rivka Galchen
A novel based on the astronomer and imperial mathematician Johannes Kepler’s years-long struggle to clear his mother’s name.
“Dear Committee Members” by Julie Schumacher
A long-suffering creative writing professor fights for the survival of his department in a series of increasingly passive-aggressive letters to the finance committee.
“I Came as a Shadow: An Autobiography” by John Thompson
Legendary Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson delivers an account of his life from growing up in the Jim Crow South to becoming the first Black head coach to win an NCAA championship.
“Writers and Lovers” by Lily King
From “Euphoria” author Lily King, “Writers and Lovers” follows Casey Peabody, a young author struggling to cope with the sudden death of her mother as she ends a love affair and begins another.
“Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman
A confused burglar holds a group of potential buyers (lovable idiots) hostage in the middle of an open house. The situation intensifies as investigators from Stockholm and internal squabbles threaten the local police investigation. As the story unfolds, relationships are tested, and lifelong friendships are made.
“Earthly Possessions” by Anne Tyler
Charlotte Emery’s otherwise quiet and uneventful life turns upside down when a trip to the bank turns into a hostage situation.
“Transcendent Kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi
Gifty, a daughter of Ghanian immigrants and a fifth-year neuroscience candidate at Stanford, turns to the hard sciences and away from her evangelical upbringing in Alabama in search of an answer to the endless suffering that has ravaged her family.
Copies of all the above are available through Spokane Is Reading sponsors, including Spokane Public Library (spokanelibrary.org), Spokane County Library District (scld.org) and Auntie’s Bookstore (auntiesbooks.com). For more information, visit spokaneisreading.org.