51 Comments
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Dan McGuire's avatar

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I liked a lot about that book.

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Donna Jones's avatar

I loved that book ... didn't want it to end.

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Tyler Sadlo's avatar

The Screwtape Letters

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Richard Gudino's avatar

A Gentleman in Moscow...liked it so much I'm going for a second read and loving it all over again!

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Jason Voltz's avatar

Fahrenheit 451. I read it for the first time this summer.

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Steve P Brady's avatar

Taught it for the first time this year. Seeing it through the eyes of 14 years olds was a trip. For some it was their favorite book of the year, for others, inscrutable.

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Jackson Oulch's avatar

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. Such an amazing story of Theodore Roosevelt's terrifying adventure through part of the Amazon river, definitely earned the 5-star review.

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Joe Waters's avatar

That was a good book! 4 stars for me.

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Elizabeth's avatar

Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow absolutely destroyed me in the best way. I just lied on my couch for an hour thinking after I finished it.

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Jason Tatum's avatar

I just finished it and now it’s my most recent 5 star. Loved every minute of it.

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Elizabeth's avatar

I can't stop thinking about it.

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Rute Barros's avatar

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid :)

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Abhishek Mukherjee's avatar

Making Habits Breaking Habits by Jeremy Dean. Also, anything by LeGuin.

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Josh Staley's avatar

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read this 10 months after the birth of my first son, so I think the book hit me harder than it would have if I read it at another point in my life.

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Ann Pryor's avatar

At some point I had memorized the final passage, which still haunts me.

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Joe Waters's avatar

Haven't gotten the courage yet to read it.

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Ralph Rice's avatar

Cloud Cuckoo Land. Three different story lines that take place in different times and different places: The past, the present, and the future. And they all center around an Ancient Greek story and book.

The other 5 star read for me thus far this year is Matrix by Lauren Groff, loosely based on Marie de France, a 12th century nun. It was one of our reads in the bookclub and not everyone liked it, to say the least. I thought it was one of the best books I have read this year.

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Colton Butcher's avatar

Just read Coraline for the first time back in May and loved it so much. It was a very quick but wonderful read.

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Kimberly Fox's avatar

Bad City by Paul Pringle

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Elizabeth's avatar

My next audio book!

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Nina V Lehman's avatar

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers

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Adam Farris's avatar

The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood can flat out write. Are her other books as good as this one?

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Natalie McGlocklin's avatar

I loved the Blind Assassin even MORE than Handmaids Tale - if you check it out, I hope you love it too!

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Bob Nelson's avatar

4000 Weeks by Burkeman. I am currently reading another 5-star-so-far that is kind of the Christian version of 4000 Weeks, You Are Not Your Own: How to be Human in an Inhuman World by Alan Noble. It's more philosophical than theological and dovetails well with Burkeman's secular take on many of the same issues.

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Molly S's avatar

Circe by Madeline Miller

4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

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Jeff Waters's avatar

The Song of Achilles by Miller is good too!

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Jason Tatum's avatar

Circe was five stars from me as well!

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Amy Dance's avatar

The Plant Hunter: a Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicine by Cassandra Leah Quave

I loved this memoir that combines Quave's personal story with her career as an ethnobotanist. She discusses the urgent need to find new treatments- especially for drug resistant bacteria. Quave learns about traditional medicines from village elders, then tests those treatments scientifically, trying to isolate the effective compounds to be used to produce mass market medicines. I learned so much!

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Jennifer Brogdon's avatar

A Gentleman in Moscow and Black Cake

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DCLawyer68's avatar

Brideshead Revisited, which I read for the first time this summer.

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Steve P Brady's avatar

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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Joe Waters's avatar

You know, Steve, I just could not get into that book. Not sure what it was. Finished it but left unsatisfied.

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Shannon Aaron Stephens's avatar

“Jack” by Marilynne Robinson

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Martin's avatar

Atomic Habits by James Clear. Honestly a really helpful book which helped me to stop biting my nails. Next goal: stop smoking permanently, wish me luck!

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Robert Walrod's avatar

Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources.

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V. C. Ackerman's avatar

My last 5-star read was "Haunted" by Chuck Palahniuk. It's one of the few books that I've read multiple times.

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Ann Pryor's avatar

Two books.

The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier, combining science fiction, thriller, and philosophy. It was deeply funny, wonderfully structured, and disturbed the hell out of me so much that I spent weeks reading up on __________ ______ (no spoilers). I had to go back and reread passages because they were marvelous.

My husband and I got into a heated argument over this book. How's that for an endorsement?

A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton. One family's reality is slowly undone. Nothing is what it seems. Love, family, friendships, the safety of your mind and body, even your idea of who you are, all of it is held together with invisible strings that can pulled apart thread by thread.

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Joe Waters's avatar

Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon

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David R. Grigg's avatar

The City & The City by China Mièville. Brilliant crime novel crossed with SF.

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Rodney Watson's avatar

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

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Natalie McGlocklin's avatar

The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter. It is one of the best researched crime thrillers I have ever come across. It's been really hard for me to do anything else except read that book...

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Marcos's avatar

The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha. Blew me away.

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Michael Johnson's avatar

The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara. It’s alt-history and a shockingly plausible near future for the planet.

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Dana Frazeur's avatar

Lessons in Chemistry

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Elizabeth's avatar

I'm excited for this one!

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Andy Hudson's avatar

Just finished the wonderful memoir-meets-history “Why We Swim” by Bonnie Tsui. Bought the book and was not a swimmer, but it’s a soulful and interesting read!

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Ezestreets's avatar

Song of Kali, by Dan Simmons. Horrifying!!

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Jason Tatum's avatar

The Lincoln Highway by Towles. Though I’m a third through the new Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow so far it’s shaping up very well.

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Josh Henderson's avatar

Radley Balko's "Rise of the Warrior Cop." Incredible and necessary research.

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Mark Fainstein's avatar

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner

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Steven Benjamin's avatar

Independent People by Halldor Laxness. Unforgettable story populated with memorable characters that takes place in early 20th century Iceland. Read it before recent Laxness article in the New Yorker, but agree 100%. Salka Valkha up next!

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