My life carries absurd contradictions. A country kid and athlete, I fell in love with theater and literature. I hated school but became a teacher. An outdoorsman and environmentalist, I became a successful advertising executive and an entrepreneur. My novel Getting Huge has similar surprises: a 6’11” minister who hated basketball. He resented Concord, MA as a boy, but he returns to toil in his father’s church for 12 years. He’s never planted a thing, but discovers a passion for giant pumpkins and starts to be an entrepreneur who dreams way too big. I hope readers see how John Crackstone is (like many of us) humanized by comic contradictions.
This romp of a novel is for all who’ve worked with the wrong people in the wrong place.
Beaten down by his affluent deacons, Reverend John Crackstone finally cracks. He becomes obsessed with growing the world’s largest pumpkin, and entrepreneurial dreams spin up a pumpkin empire to create everything from snacks to toilet paper. While often comic, even laugh-out-loud funny,Getting Huge also shows how the pursuit of ill-defined success can override judgment until we are jolted into clarity and seek a sense of belonging where we are appreciated.
What I love about The World According to Garp is how it blends the humorous and serious.
Its quirky, engaging characters and how they react to the pressures of life made me laugh out loud. But I also admire the humanity of it with its serious messages about love and relationships.
As someone who also wanted to be a writer, I identified with the protagonist’s struggles and dreams.
I also identified as a man who loves and is surrounded by strong women and how they can often surprise you and help you see the world in new ways.
A masterpiece from one of the great contemporary American writers.
'A wonderful novel, full of energy and art, at once funny and heartbreaking...terrific' WASHINGTON POST
Anniversary edition with a new afterword from the author.
A worldwide bestseller since its publication, Irving's classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, struggling writer and illegitimate son of Jenny Fields - an unlikely feminist heroine ahead of her time.
Beautifully written, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP is a powerfully compelling and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers…
What I liked about Kevin Wilson’s novel Nothing to See Here is how it offers us a misfit outcast in Lillian who gets hired to nanny twins who are far-more dramatic outcasts.
They literally catch fire when upset. Yes, it’s absurd and funny.
On one level, the book is bizarre and entertaining, but on another level we see the challenges outcasts in our world, and Lillian gains perspective on the problems and weaknesses of the wealthy and popular around her.
Lillian also comes to care about these kids, and in the process she opens up emotionally in unexpected ways.
A New York Times Bestseller • A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, TIME, The A.V. Club, Buzzfeed, and PopSugar
“I can’t believe how good this book is.... It’s wholly original. It’s also perfect.... Wilson writes with such a light touch.... The brilliance of the novel [is] that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn’t see coming. You’re laughing so hard you…
In Writers and Lovers, set in Cambridge and Boston, Casey Peabody works a kind of lowly job while holding high aspirations—with dreams of becoming a writer.
But her waitress job leaves her exhausted and uninspired to finish her novel. She is grieving the recent loss of her mother, which contributes to sleepless nights and questionable decisions.
She also dreams of recapturing the passion she felt with a lover at a writer’s colony which steers her toward an older, famous writer as a lover. But his success and her brush with the author dream at the writer’s residency only serve to further leave her feeling hollow and self-disappointed.
When she becomes a teacher, she still holds the dream of writing, and, feeling her age, asks herself how long she can keep it up. Suddenly, while at the school, interest in the once-questioned manuscript arrives via phone.
In the end, this is a kind of coming-of-age tale. Despite grief, loss, doubt, shame from bad choices—perseverance wins.
#ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick A New York Times Book Review’s Group Text Selection
"I loved this book not just from the first chapter or the first page but from the first paragraph... The voice is just so honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life." —Curtis Sittenfeld
An extraordinary new novel of art, love, and ambition from Lily King, the New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria
Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller:…
What drew me in to The Dutch House is how Ann Patchett has compassion and empathy for her characters.
Even those who made terrible or damaging decisions have a human side, and those we root for also stumble and do things we wish they hadn’t.
Maeve and Danny’s mother abandons them to serve the poor in India, and their father, Cyril, falls for a younger woman who brings two young daughters to the house and holds no love for Maeve and Danny.
We see this world through Danny’s eyes, and we feel the pain of these two kids as adults looking back.
While some might see it as sentimental, I found it warm and engaging as these two ultimately can look back and take stock in their lives.
Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime - the unforgettable Sunday Times bestseller
'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian
Nominated for the Women's Prize 2020
A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN'T LET GO.
Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside.
In the…
The novel Anxious People is a mostly-comic novel that helped me, as a writer, think through how comedy is delivered.
Frederik Backman has a background as a standup comic and you can see it in the writing of the novel—and sometimes Backman’s clever quips get in the way of the story.
The situation is of a robbery gone wrong with a range of weird and wacky characters, but they are developed in a way that helps us care about them as their stories are revealed and common touchpoints emerge.
The father-son police team, the robber’s pains, the fractured relationships. In the end, I found myself caring about these people.
The funny, touching and unpredictable No. 1 New York Times bestseller, now a major Netflix TV series
'A brilliant and comforting read' MATT HAIG 'Funny, compassionate and wise. An absolute joy' A.J. PEARCE 'A surefooted insight into the absurdity, beauty and ache of life' GUARDIAN 'I laughed, I sobbed, I recommended it to literally everyone I know' BUZZFEED 'Captures the messy essence of being human' WASHINGTON POST
From the 18 million copy internationally bestselling author of A Man Called Ove _______
It's New Year's Eve and House Tricks estate agents are hosting an open viewing in an up-market apartment when…
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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