Why am I passionate about this?

One of my favorite bits of praise for my books was Michael Silverblatt, of KCRW, saying, "There is no one else like her—she invents a new improvised form for her fiction." The last five books of fiction I’ve written (my total is nine) have been webs, spinning out from one character to another, across different times and places. It lets me be intimate and distant both at once. So I’ve naturally loved reading writers who’ve done this in various ways. People like to quote John Berger saying, “Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one,” and I’m in line with that. 


I wrote

Secrets of Happiness

By Joan Silber,

Book cover of Secrets of Happiness

What is my book about?

I love writing books that link webs of people. My most recent novel, Secrets of Happiness, begins with a young…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Great Expectations

Joan Silber Why did I love this book?

Dickens always has a fabulous range of characters—in this book the orphan Pip, who thinks he’s going to someday apprentice with his dear uncle the blacksmith, meets up with an escaped convict and then with a jilted heiress, and their roles in his fate are beautifully confused throughout. This is my favorite Dickens—it’s the most well-shaped—and it has held up for me. I had just re-read it in 2016, when I went to teach English in Laos for a month, and was thrilled to discover that one of my students, a novice Buddhist monk, was reading it, and Pip’s disasters on the borders of class made perfect sense to him.

By Charles Dickens,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked Great Expectations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'His novels will endure as long as the language itself' Peter Ackroyd

Dickens's haunting late novel depicts the education and development of a young man, Pip, as his life is changed by a series of events - a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - and he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'. This definitive edition includes appendices on Dickens's original ending, giving an illuminating glimpse into a…


Book cover of Disappearing Earth

Joan Silber Why did I love this book?

This novel takes place in Kamchatka, in Far East Russia, and begins with the abduction of two young sisters. Each chapter then carries us into the life of a whole other character, and we get engrossed in her fate, as events move through the course of a year. The shadow of the missing girls arises every so often, and then we forget them, until they appear with brilliant drama toward the end of the book. The novel becomes a whodunit—and I suppose all mysteries are tasked with connecting improbables—that links its sequences in deep and moving ways.

By Julia Phillips,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Disappearing Earth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

National Book Award Finalist
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize
Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award 

National Best Seller

"Splendidly imagined . . . Thrilling" --Simon Winchester
"A genuine masterpiece" --Gary Shteyngart

Spellbinding, moving--evoking a fascinating region on the other side of the world--this suspenseful and haunting story announces the debut of a profoundly gifted writer.

One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge…


Book cover of To Paradise

Joan Silber Why did I love this book?

The novel is set in three end-of-century time-frames—1893, 1993, and 2093. In the opening, set in a mansion on Washington Square in New York, we discover we’re in an America where same-sex marriage has been legal for a long time, and a young man is about to run off with a suitor his father distrusts (a new version of a Henry James plot). The next section is in Hawaii, the colonized Paradise, where descendant characters (with the same set of names, juggled) stumble and grab what they can of freedom and love. My favorite section is the last, where characters with those recurring names are in a New York of “cooling suits” and “decontamination chambers” and totalitarian rule. This is a wild and really quite brilliant book, whose sprawling parts are fueled by a searing vision.  

By Hanya Yanagihara,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked To Paradise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2022

'This magisterial follow-up to A Little Life offers three books in one . . . Yanagihara weighs up damage and privilege - social, emotional, political, colonial in a gripping, immersive ride through alternative Americas.' - The Guardian 'Best Reads For Summer'

'After the painfully affecting [A Little Life] To Paradise gives us three stories far apart in space and time but each unique in their power to summon the joy and complexity of love, the pain of loss. I'm not sure I've ever missed the world…


Book cover of Dear Miss Metropolitan

Joan Silber Why did I love this book?

In a novel inspired by the decade-long kidnapping of three women in Cleveland, Ferrell has crafted a story out of voices. We hear each of the young women—their inner obsessions and distractions, the details they live inside of—before, during, and after their confinement, and their joy in each other. But Ferrell has also included the Miss Metropolitan of her title, a nosy woman living on the same street, with her eager attentions misdirected, one of the neighbors who didn’t notice. There’s an extra ambition in the reach of that, a context that insists on including unexpected corners, picking up lots of loosely connected characters to get the full meaning of the story.

By Carolyn Ferrell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dear Miss Metropolitan as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
A finalist for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel

Introducing an extraordinary and original writer whose first novel explores the intersections of grief and rage, personal strength and healing--and what we owe one another.

Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts…


Book cover of In the Distance

Joan Silber Why did I love this book?

Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the story begins with young Hakan Soderstrom leaving Sweden with his brother Linus for a less blighted life in America. After they’re separated, Hakan tries to walk from San Francisco to New York to find his brother. Instead he meets up with a deluded Irish gold prospector, a toothless dance hall queen who dresses him in velvet, dangerous Civil War soldiers, a visionary naturalist, and a host of other fantastic characters, as he wanders for years. No line links these characters except the wild needs of this radically revised picture of the West, and I was surprised on every page.

By Hernan Diaz,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked In the Distance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.

Hernan Diaz is the author of Borges, Between History and Eternity (Bloomsbury 2012), managing editor of RHM, and associate director…


Explore my book 😀

Secrets of Happiness

By Joan Silber,

Book cover of Secrets of Happiness

What is my book about?

I love writing books that link webs of people. My most recent novel, Secrets of Happiness, begins with a young lawyer in New York learning his father has a secret family, a Thai woman, and two sons. The first chapter hones in on his mother, but I knew I wanted to follow the Thai family as well. Other branches went in their own directions from that, until I worked my way back to the opening family.  

Book cover of Great Expectations
Book cover of Disappearing Earth
Book cover of To Paradise

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Not So Little Things

By Kyle Ann Robertson,

Book cover of Not So Little Things

Kyle Ann Robertson Author Of White Picket Fences

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Kyle's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Not So Little Things by Kyle Ann Robertson unravels the meticulously crafted life of Tina, an artist engrossed in the intricate world of historically accurate miniatures. As she dutifully honors her deceased father's desire for her to follow in his artistic and historical footsteps, Tina's controlled existence is shaken by the emergence of long-buried secrets when she takes a commission to build a replica of Jake Martin’s family mansion.

Robertson navigates the delicate balance between Tina's devotion to her father's wishes and the disruptions caused by revelations from the past. The novel beautifully explores the complexity of familial expectations and…

Not So Little Things

By Kyle Ann Robertson,

What is this book about?

Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion. Raised by her loving, wheelchair-bound Aunt Liddy, her father's sister, 33 year old Tina has become a miniature room artist and cherishes the control she has over her life in Northeast Georgia as she works hard to please her beloved dead father's wishes of following in his footsteps in art and…


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