Good Books for Winter Reading

Well as we head into the chill of Winter here in Chicago I wanted to tell you about some good books. There is nothing quite like discovering a really good book that you savor and kind of hope that it never ends. First up is "The Rotters Club" by Jonathan Coe. It follows a group of boys and their parents from a boys private school in Birmingham, England, in the 1970s, pre Margaret Thatcher. It was just wonderful and quite real. The parents have affairs and the kids have adventures, struggles, crushes, fall in love, get in fights. It was all very real, good dialogue, and quite lovely. Honestly I didn't want it to end.

Two more are "The Absinence Teacher" by Tom Perrotta and "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz. The first one I didn't think I would like but the more I read the more I enjoyed it. A few of the characters I couldn't stand but they were very real and engaging and offset by the ones that I liked. It was good. The Junot Diaz has a dreamy, almost mythological quality about love, sex, ambition, fighting for what you want, and Destiny. I will read all of h is stuff now.