Readers’ Choice: The Top 10 Most Shelved Books in August

I’m a huge fan of what I call “group novels”—books that focus on a few people, usually friends, in a specific place and over a specific period of time. Mary McCarthy, Meg Wolitzer, and Kathleen Alcott are among my favorites, and this past year, Kristopher Jansma joined the fray. Set in New York in the early years of the financial crisis, WHY WE CAME TO THE CITY follows a group of college friends after graduation, and presents some of the most honest and beautiful portraits of relationships I’ve ever read (just read the first chapter—it’s insane). This novel is an unflinching, heartbreaking, and somehow uplifting story about how people change your life as everything else changes around you, and about how a place can do the same. —Julianna

On Wendy’s wish list

I would like to start my new year with a shot of creativity and write more than email in 2017. Elizabeth Gilbert’s curious and compassionate exploration of creativity is just the inspiration I’m looking for.

When a bedbug scare leads to a mass burning of the prison library’s books, the inmates memorialize the lost tomes. These include, in Poussey’s words, “All the David Sedarises.” His newest laugh-out-loud funny book is sure to be missed.

“My grandmother read every one of Clark’s novels, but I could see why she kept WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN? It is classic spine-tingling suspense; even David Foster Wallace kept a copy in his personal library and taught it in fiction classes at Illinois State University.”

Read Elizabeth Breeden’s review here.

This quiet novel moves from the hot and dry present of a quiet Canadian farm to a dusty, burnt past of hunger, war, and passion; from trying to remember to trying to forget. It is an astounding literary debut of unlikely heroes, lifelong promises, and last great adventures.