Start the year with reads by notable authors: a Booker Prize winner, a National Book Award finalist, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
“The Greatest Sentence Ever Written,” by Walter Isaacson
President Joe Biden awarded Walter Isaacson the National Humanities Medal in 2023 for “elevating discourse and our understanding of who we are as a Nation.” Isaacson’s latest book is an inspiring way to celebrate the 250-year birthday of our nation. He analyzes the origin of one of the most famous sentences ever written – from the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths…” – one that defined our country’s foundational beliefs in equality and unalienable rights.
While Isaacson’s major biographies (“Franklin,” “Da Vinci,” “Jobs”) typically average close to 700 pages, this one is a mere 80 pages – in which he asks us to remember the revolutionary concepts that shaped our nation’s values and the American Dream.
The Founding Fathers understood that on contentious issues, the goal was not to triumph but to find the right balance. In Franklin’s words, “Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.” The book is a reminder of America’s civic beginnings and offers a hopeful reminder that this idealism can still resonate today.
“A Guardian and A Thief,” by Megha Majumdar
Megha Majumdar, who made a stir with her debut book “The Burning,” returns with another powerful novel – a National Book Award finalist and Oprah selection. “A Guardian and A Thief” is a haunting story of two lives that become devastatingly entwined.
Set in a not-too-distant future India ravaged by climate catastrophe, the book follows two protagonists: Ma, a woman preparing to flee to the United States with her elderly father and young daughter, and Boomba, a young man who escapes his flooded village for the city, desperate to find safety for his parents and younger brother. Their paths cross at the worst possible moment, derailing Ma’s fragile plans.
Both characters – driven by fear, hunger, and love – have turned to crime: Ma steals food and supplies from her employer, while Boomba breaks into homes in hopes of securing a future for his family. Their parallel quests for survival set them on a collision course, where each becomes both guardian and threat.
In a society crumbling under starvation and staggering inequality, Majumdar does not cast villains. Instead, she renders a heart-wrenching portrait of people forced to make impossible choices, where morality becomes a luxury and familial love becomes the last remaining compass.
“Venetian Vespers,” by John Banville
Booker Prize winner John Banville returns with another hypnotic atmospheric mystery, “Venetian Vespers.” It begins like his previous novel “The Drowned” – with the disappearance of a wife. This time, unlike the charismatic and enigmatic inspector of Banville’s Strafford and Quick crime series, the story unfolds through an unreliable, self-absorbed narrator.
It’s 1899, and struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman has married into a wealthy American oil family and expects a future of comfort and fortune. But when his father-in-law dies and his wife is unexplainably disinherited, his future darkens. Still, the newlyweds set off for Venice to celebrate their curiously unromantic union.
After their arrival at a rented palazzo owned by a local count, Evelyn’s wife vanishes. Haunted by strange, otherworldly visions, his state of mind becomes increasingly frayed. When a mysterious pair of twins – an insinuating brother and his bewitching sister – enter the scene, Banville’s tale deepens into a psychological and sinister gothic steeped in deception and desire.
“The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays,” by Harper Lee
For those for whom “To Kill a Mockingbird” holds a deep connection – and there are many, as it ranks second only to the Bible in books that have made a significant difference in people’s lives, according to the Library of Congress – the release of Harper Lee’s new book would be worth considering.
Before the Pulitzer-prize winning “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Lee wrote short stories and essays – some of which are newly discovered and never before published. These have been coupled with magazine pieces in a collection that provides a glimpse into the themes that she further developed in her inspirational book. The hallmarks of her classic novel – small-town upbringing, bigotry and race, and a complex father-daughter relationship – are present in her early works.
For devoted fans, the book sheds some light on the person behind the elusive literary legend with a very limited body of work, adding another layer of dimension to her legacy. Her only other novel, “Go Set a Watchman,” discovered and published to mixed reviews in 2015, was promoted as a sequel but is now thought to be a first draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
In the essay section of the collection, there is an amusing account of Lee meeting Gregory Peck on the set of the film that would earn him an Oscar. When she first saw him, she exclaimed that he had a “little pot belly just like my daddy” – a remark Peck reportedly found charming. In a 2006 letter to Oprah, Lee laments, “In an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.”
