Wolf Hall: A Novel
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Wolf Hall: A Novel

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 57 seconds

Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel is the first book in a three-part series on Thomas Cromwell. I am an amateur historian, and one of the characters I have always wanted to know more about was Cromwell. Although I might have achieved that by reading actual history textbooks, this three-part series seemed like the perfect next book for me to read. With a vast array of characters overflowing with incidents, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political were separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power, but a single failure means death.

At least this time, I am reading book one first instead of last. I highly recommend this book.

The Goodreads overview provides more details.

In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII’s court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king’s favor and ascend to the heights of political power.

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe oppose him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Civil war could destroy the country if the king died without a male heir.

Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer, and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters overflowing with incidents, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political were separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power, but a single failure means death.

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The Book of Goose

Read: October 2022

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The Book of Goose: A Novel

by Yiyun Li

The Book of Goose: A Novel by Yiyun Li; is a gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End. The Book of Goose: A Novel is a story of disturbing intimacy, obsession, exploitation, and strength of will. I highly recommend this book as it was not only a page-turner but a novel that helped me on my grief journey. 

The novel focuses on many issues that interest me and intrigue me during my grief journey. Jan was anxious that she was not as successful in her work or personal life. I always reassured her not to be concerned. 

After Jan died, I had similar feelings. Over time, I have heard words of wisdom and regained my self-confidence.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised–the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves–until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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The Rest Is Memory: A Novel

Read: January 2025

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The Rest Is Memory: A Novel

by Lily Tuck

Today, I dove into “The Rest Is Memory: A Novel” by Lily Tuck, and it’s already leaving a powerful impression. This poignant tale follows a young Catholic girl’s harrowing journey to Auschwitz, woven in a captivating Rashomon-style narrative showcasing Tuck’s brilliance as a storyteller. Esquire has rightly placed it on their list of Best Books for Fall 2024, and I can see why.

In Tuck‘s skilled hands, “The Rest Is Memory” transforms into an unforgettable piece of historical reclamation, breathing life into an innocent soul who has long been remembered only through a haunting triptych of photographs. It’s a journey that promises to linger in my thoughts long after I’ve turned the last page.

In this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, we first glimpse fourteen-year-old Czeslawa riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle. Tuck imagines Czeslawa’s upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, she arrives at Auschwitz shorn and bearing the tattoo number 26947. Shortly after, she is photographed. Three months later, she is dead.

How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question Tuck grapples with in this haunting narrative, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the tragic context of the six million Poles who perished during the German occupation. A decade before writing The Rest Is Memory“, Tuck read an obituary of the photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who took over 40,000 pictures of Auschwitz prisoners—including three of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from rural southeastern Poland. Tuck cut out these photos and kept them, determined to learn more about Czeslawa. However, she could only gather the barest facts: the village she came from, the transport she was on, that she was accompanied by her mother and neighbors, her tattoo number, and the date of her death. Tuck crafts a remarkable kaleidoscope of imagination from this scant evidence, something only our greatest novelists can achieve.

Susanna Moore described the novel as “Beautifully written, all the while instilling a sense of horror.” Tuck’s language swirls around the reader, yet no word is out of place. The subtly rotating images tumble forth, accelerating as we learn about Czeslawa’s tragic time in Auschwitz, as well as the lives of real individuals, including the brutal Commandant Rudolf Höss, his unconscionable wife Hedwig, psychiatrist and child rescuer Janusz Korczak, and the sharp Polish short story writer Tadeusz Borowski. Although we know Czeslawa’s fate, we must keep turning the pages, thoroughly captivated by Tuck’s nearly otherworldly prose.

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Followers

Read: December 2021

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Followers

by Megan Angelo

Followers by Megan Angelo is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. Goodreads describes this as an electrifying story of two ambitious friends, the dark choices they make, and the stunning moment that changes the world as we know it forever.

Followers is a novel, but it could easily be read as history with all that has occurred with technology and social media. With the increased discussion of the Metaverse, how close are we to a significant spill of personal information? With the focus on followers defining our culture, how close are we to being manipulated by social media?

As a wannabe blogger, I am impressed by a handful of likes on social media and two comments on my posts. Although I can understand the temptation of Orla and Floss to manipulate the system for their benefit, it is something I know I would not do even if I had the skills.

The spill of personal information is described in a very plausible way. It is not just credit card data but private conversations, photos, and secrets that are spilled and alter the world as we know it. Is this possible? Hopefully not, but without adequate privacy regulations, we may all wake up one day to know that our most private secrets become known by everyone.

Marlow, the daughter of two mothers, along with Orla, provides an option of how we might all leave with less reliance on blue screens. As a secessionist nation in NJ, Atlantis was an interesting alternate reality.

Goodreads provides this overview if you are not convinced to read this book.

Orla Cadden is a budding novelist stuck in a dead-end job, writing clickbait about movie-star hookups and influencer yoga moves. Then Orla meets Floss ― a striving wannabe A-lister ― who comes up with a plan for launching them both into the high-profile lives they dream about. So what if Orla and Floss’s methods are a little shady and sometimes people get hurt? Their legions of followers can’t be wrong.

Thirty-five years later, in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities live every moment of the day on camera, a woman named Marlow discovers a shattering secret about her past. Despite her massive popularity ― twelve million loyal followers ― Marlow dreams of fleeing the corporate sponsors who would do anything to keep her on-screen. When she learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, Marlow finally summons the courage to run in search of the truth, no matter the risks.

Followers traces the paths of Orla, Floss and Marlow as they wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval. At turns wry and tender, bleak and hopeful, this darkly funny story reminds us that even if we obsess over famous people we’ll never meet, what we crave is genuine human connection.

I recommend Followers as not only a good read but an allegory of our technology-dominated culture.

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Happiness Falls: A Novel

Read: September 2023

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Happiness Falls: A Novel

by Angie Kim

I highly recommend reading Happiness Falls, a book authored by Angie Kim. The story is about a family’s search for their missing father, which leads them to question their beliefs and relationships. The award-winning author of Miracle Creek writes this thrilling and emotionally profound book.

We didn’t call the police right away.” These are the first words of an extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband go missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyper-analytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone and or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing, and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

Happiness Falls is a gripping investigation that centers around a father’s disappearance and the intricate dynamics of his family. As the clock ticks, the family’s deepest secrets come to light, raising questions about love, communication, and the human experience. This novel is a thrilling blend of mystery, drama, and philosophical exploration, showcasing Angie Kim’s remarkable storytelling skills that garnered her numerous accolades for her debut novel, Miracle Creek. Through the family’s journey, Kim offers a fresh perspective on the missing person story, creating a memorable tale of a family that goes to great lengths to understand each other.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Intermezzo: A Novel

Read: February 2025

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Intermezzo: A Novel

by Sally Rooney

Today, I dove into Sally Rooney‘s latest novel, “Intermezzo: A Novel,” which instantly captivated me. It’s a profoundly moving exploration of grief, love, and the intricacies of family life, with love at its heart. Reflecting on my journey through grief, I remember how Ms. Rooney‘s earlier work, “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” resonated with me during my second year of processing loss.

It beautifully highlighted love’s enduring nature and reminded me that, even in the depths of sorrow, love’s essence never truly fades. Intermezzo focuses on the fact that, aside from being brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

In this poignant interlude, we delve into the lives of two brothers grappling with their profound grief, accompanied by those who care for them. It’s a raw journey woven with threads of longing, heartbreak, and the flickering light of hope. Together, they navigate the uncharted territory of loss, uncovering how much the human spirit can withstand before it shatters.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

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Atmosphere

Read: June 2025

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Atmosphere: A Love Story

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Exciting, fast-paced, and emotionally charged, Atmosphere showcases Taylor Jenkins Reid at her finest: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and narrating a passionate and uplifting story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars. The book also explores themes of ambition, friendship, and the unknown, making it a compelling read for those interested in contemporary fiction and the exploration of space.

Joan Goodwin’s fascination with the stars has been a lifelong passion. As a thoughtful and reserved professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and a devoted aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, Joan’s life is content. However, her world is turned upside down when she stumbles upon an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan is filled with a burning desire to be among the select few to venture into space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts forge unlikely friendships and prepare for their first flights, Joan discovers a passion and a love she never thought possible. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything took a dramatic turn in an instant.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Carrie Soto Is Back, Malibu Rising, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

Enjoy a limited-time offer of 20% off your next book purchase at Bookshop.org!

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