Top Reads from O Magazine

Well, would you look at this? I'm blogging about Oprah Winfrey twice in one week! What's up with that?? Thought you might be interested in learning about the favorite reads of the year from O: The Oprah Magazine -- some pretty darned good books on this list, five fiction and five nonfiction:

FICTION

• Freedom, Jonathan Franzen (no big surprise there)
• Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson (just out in paperback this week!)
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans (short stories)
• A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

NONFICTION

• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Hellhound on His Trail, Hampton Sides
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
• Let's Take the Long Way Home, Gail Caldwell
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

We've written about several of these books in previous blog posts. (By the way, did you know you can search for titles/authors we've blogged about in the past using the search box on the right-hand side of the page?) The magazine lists several other books the staff thinks would make great gifts, including Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand; Life, by Keith Richards; Frank: The Voice, by James Kaplan; 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective; and Dogs, by Tim Flach. I'd have to say I would agree with these as well!

While I'm on the topic of Oprah, she just announced her latest book club reading selection, and it's a two-fer: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, two novels by Charles Dickens. The two novels are available together in a delightful newly published paperback version.

Having said all that, I think I'm Oprah'd out for the time being. [But did anyone catch yesterday's show with Jonathan Franzen? Sadly, I was at work and missed it.]