Why am I passionate about this?

My mother, father, and I were each born in different countries, and into different languages. In my childhood, we were a hybridized wonderā€”one part jetsam, one part flotsamā€”and a country unto ourselves. Our house was filled with all kinds of books, our dinnertimes with lively conversation (and occasional shouting), our plates with food cooked according to the recipes of family ghosts. I can honestly say that no other family was like ours, especially not in the American suburbs of the 1980s. As a writer, I have always been fascinated by the tug-and-pull of intergenerational trauma, and by the dislocation of immigration and exile.   


I wrote

The First Rule of Swimming

By Courtney Angela Brkic,

Book cover of The First Rule of Swimming

What is my book about?

Set both in New York and on a fictional Adriatic island, the novel follows two sisters. When Jadranka, the younger,ā€¦

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Courtney Angela Brkic Why did I love this book?

Vera and Nadezhda are sisters who must set aside their differences to ward off an interloper: a gold-digging ā€œfluffy pink grenadeā€ who gets her claws into their exceedingly difficult emigre father. The ensuing battle uncovers hidden chapters of a dark family history, and Lewycka is both masterful and unflinching in her treatment of traumatic history. I was expecting a light read from start to finish, and while the book is very funny, it is also disarmingly profound.   

By Marina Lewycka,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainianis bestselling author Marina Lewycka's hilarious and award winning debut novel.

'Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.'

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their emigre engineer father from voluptuous gold-digger Valentina. With her proclivity for green satinā€¦


Book cover of The Yield

Courtney Angela Brkic Why did I love this book?

When Augustā€™s grandfatherā€”the bedrock of a multi-generational Wiradjuri familyā€”dies, she must return to Australia, and to the town of Prosperous. There, she comes face-to-face with the things that have driven her out, a process that began long before her birth. The bookā€™s three narrators chart the casualties of colonialism: the loss of indigenous culture, the stamping out of language, the land that is taken and forever altered. But the book is so much more than a catalogue of losses, and Winchā€™s song is ultimately one of identityā€”and historyā€”reclaimed.  

By Tara June Winch,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Yield as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"A beautifully written novel that puts language at the heart of remembering the past and understanding the present."-Kate Morton

"A groundbreaking novel for black and white Australia."-Richard Flanagan, Man Booker Prize winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North

A young Australian woman searches for her grandfather's dictionary, the key to halting a mining company from destroying her family's home and ancestral land in this exquisitely written, heartbreaking, yet hopeful novel of culture, language, tradition, suffering, and empowerment in the tradition of Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Amy Harmon.

Knowing that he will soon die, Albert "Poppy" Gondiwindiā€¦


Ad

Book cover of Gunner Hobbs: WWII in the Pacific! Tulagi! Tarawa! Saipan!

Gunner Hobbs by Herb Marlow,

A WWII novel about a young Gunner's Mate - Max Hobbs - serving on a troop transport in the Pacific Theater.

Hobbs is a man with exceptional eye sight who earns a snipers designation in Gunner's Mate school. When he graduates he is assigned to an APA in San Diego,ā€¦

Book cover of Divide Me by Zero

Courtney Angela Brkic Why did I love this book?

For Katya Gellerā€™s mother, mathematics is the key to all things, a lesson she effectively imparts to her daughter. But when Katya learns that her mother is sick, she is transported into a past that no longer adds up. Her fatherā€™s death and her motherā€™s subsequent undoing, her childhood in the USSR, her arrival in the US, and her own restless history of love combine for a ride that is wild, hilarious, and deeply affecting. The novel is also a stylistic marvel by a writer unafraid to move in brave and unexpected ways.   

By Lara Vapnyar,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Divide Me by Zero as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times Editorā€™s Choice


As a young girl, Katya Geller learned from her mother that math was the answer to everything. Now, approaching forty, she finds this wisdom tested: she has lost the love of her life, she is in the middle of a divorce, and has just found out that her mother is dying. Nothing is adding up.


With humor, intelligence, and unfailing honesty, Katya traces back her lifeā€™s journey: her childhood in Soviet Russia, her parentsā€™ great love, the death of her father, her motherā€™s career as a renowned mathematician, and their immigration to the Unitedā€¦


Book cover of The City of Good Death

Courtney Angela Brkic Why did I love this book?

Pramesh, a hostel manager, lives a quiet life with his wife and daughter. His job is to help guests who have traveled to the city of Banares in the hope of good deaths. But when a body is pulled from the Ganges, a complicated family history surfaces alongside it, one that threatens the joyful stability of the present. Champaneriā€™s prose is stunning. Reviewers have aptly called the book ā€œtranscendentā€, and I found myself entirely transported by this meditation of life, death, and things past.    

By Priyanka Champaneri,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The City of Good Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Priyanka Champaneriā€™s transcendent debut novel brings us inside Indiaā€™s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go.

Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: Indiaā€™s holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of aā€¦


Ad

Book cover of The Unlocked Path

The Unlocked Path by Janis Robinson Daly,

The Unlocked Path presents and embraces a "New Woman" of the early 20th century: educated, career-minded, independent. In 1897 Philadelphia, after witnessing her aunt's suicide, Eliza Edwards vows to find ways to help and heal. Rejecting her mother's wishes for her society debut, Eliza enters medical college at a timeā€¦

Book cover of The Widow's Children

Courtney Angela Brkic Why did I love this book?

Nobody writes complicated families the way that Fox does. The novel describes a going-away party that is an emotional crime scene of unvoiced (and voiced) resentments by neglected, grown-up children. The book (along with Foxā€™s memoir, Borrowed Finery) is not just an examination of dysfunction, it is a journey into the dark heart of family, and a portrayal of the damage that is perpetuated and never undone.  

By Paula Fox,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Widow's Children as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A classic American novel from the author of 'Borrowed Finery'.

On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura Maldonada Clapper and her husband, Desmond, sit in a New York City hotel room, drinking scotch-and-sodas and awaiting the arrival of three guests: Clara, Laura's timid daughter from a previous marriage; Carlos, Laura's flamboyant brother; and Peter, a melancholy editor whom Laura hasn't seen for over a year.

But what begins as a bon voyage party soon becomes a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. From the hotel room to the tiny restaurant to which the five embark, Laura presides overā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

The First Rule of Swimming

By Courtney Angela Brkic,

Book cover of The First Rule of Swimming

What is my book about?

Set both in New York and on a fictional Adriatic island, the novel follows two sisters. When Jadranka, the younger, leaves Rosmarina to work as an au pair in the United States and subsequently disappears, Magdalena must begin a search that leads her from the safety of Rosmarina to New Yorkā€™s thriving but unrooted immigrant communities. The book explores the legacy of a Croatian island where beauty is fused inextricably with hardship, where nonconformityā€”especially by womenā€”is stifled by cultural taboo, and where the lure of leaving is countered by the summons of family and home. It is part literary mystery and part meditation on what it means to remake oneself in a new world.  

Book cover of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Book cover of The Yield
Book cover of Divide Me by Zero

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,897

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

šŸ“š You might also likeā€¦

Book cover of Taken: A Mother's Secret

Taken by Dan Lawton,

Nine-year-old Chloe Janis is missing. Abby, her mom, is now faced with an impossible decisionā€”revealing seventeen-year-old secrets she's kept hidden, or losing her daughter forever.

Everything unravels after Abby receives a cryptic message from a man from her past, someone sheā€™d tried to erase from her memory. But now, heā€™sā€¦

Book cover of Her Little Secret

Her Little Secret by Julia Stone,

If youā€™re intrigued by the psychology of relationships this is the novel for you.

Described as a modern-day Rebecca, this is a story of a bereaved manā€™s obsession with his deceased married lover, Michelle. Determined to find out all he can about Michelleā€™s life when she wasnā€™t with him,ā€¦

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in women in mathematics, New York State, and New York City?

New York State 573 books
New York City 1,156 books