100 books like The Bird Artist

Hata, a Korean, adopted by a Japanese couple, serves the Japanese Army as a medic in World War II. His job is to care for enslaved Koreans who serve as “comfort women” to Japanese soldiers. His experiences are the material of nightmares. Years later he leads a deceptively quiet life in a small town in New Jersey with his Korean adoptive daughter. It is deceptively quiet because his unresolved war experiences, presented in flashbacks, haunt him. I admired the abrupt manner in which Chang-Rae Lee interrupted Hata’s uneventful life with horrific memories.

The author’s method felt like the triggering of those who have suffered trauma and continue to relive events as PTSD. This approach of interweaving past with present inspired my depiction of a young German woman living a quiet life on a primitive Icelandic farm, milking the cows and raking the hay, while being repeatedly interrupted by memories of… show more.

Ocean Vuong writes in a poetic prose that transforms memories into fragments that linger in your mind. His choice to write this book as fictionalized letters to his mother was deeply beautiful and heart-wrenching. This is a book that took me on a journey through the Vietnam War, my first queer experiences, and the journey of finding out what it means to become American.

I’ve never read a book as quickly as I read this one. Our eponymous lead character is quirky and odd, but the story is written with so much empathy, depth, and humor that I was rooting for her from the start.

I loved how the relationship between Eleanor and Raymond plays out and avoids the predictable ‘boy meets girl’ ending. It doesn’t surprise me that the book is ‘in development’ as a movie, as the story plays out like a film when you read it. Definitely read this one first before you see the film! (It probably won’t take long as I couldn’t put this book down.)

I love books where I’m captivated by both the language and the characters, as I am in this startling novel told through the eyes of Violette Toussaint, the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Violette says there are two confessionals in the town, one in the church, the other in her cottage, and I am totally entranced by the stories she hears and what she divulges about her own surprising past. Perrin’s story is magical. 

I think Adunni might be one of my favorite heroines of all time. She’s so brave, loveable, and vulnerable. This book opened my eyes to what it’s like to live in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable, but it made me so hopeful, too. Adunni’s rebel spirit propelled me through the pages.

In a way, this book made me feel ten years old again–when I was reading, it was as though nothing beyond the book existed. Every time Adunni triumphed, I wanted to stand up and cheer. Most of all, it made me feel I could do my bit to change the world. I know that there are real children facing forced marriage, like Adunni. This book made me want to raise my voice and help.

Its setting in suburban Philadelphia (near my old house) drew me to this book. But I loved it for the way Patchett unwinds the event that upends everything two siblings understand about and expect from their lives.

I’ve experienced how a single accident or illness can change the course of the future. What I recognized and connected with was this book’s portrayal of what I call the Grief Cha-Cha, two steps forward, three steps backward, and how sometimes what you grieve isn’t so much the person you’ve lost as the person that loss makes you. 

I felt like I was transported to Newfoundland. It is now on my bucket list. The personal growth of the main character, Quoyle, is profound. At first you almost despise him for his failings, but the reader ends up loving him. The cast of characters is quirky but extremely entertaining. When the house was dragged across the ice and cabled to the rocks, I could tangibly feel the cables quiver. Beautifully written.

This depiction of a life of poverty in southern Appalachia around 1900 would be too sad to warrant its reading, were it not for its strong and sensitive narrator, Julie Harmon. The author describes the mundane details of butchering a hog or washing of a dead man’s feet within the context of the marriage of Hank and Julie, poor, uneducated, and perhaps mismatched young people who face one adversity after another. The details of ordinary life blossom into unexpected meaning in the interpretation of a sensitive narrator who not only cherishes details, but who is also exquisitely aware of her own feelings. She speaks in the straightforward language of an uneducated person rather than in the flowery prose of a voice attuned to expressing itself. Yet her presentation takes on the poetry of a clever woman gifted with a unique interiority.

Through Julie, the author renders nuanced feelings in a… show more.

I am in awe of the strength, determination, and hope of early pioneers. Imagine uprooting your family from what few comforts they know and travelling across the ocean to an unknown barren land to start over. Where survival means every member working hard day in and day out to build a place of shelter, gather and grow food, and fish the cold Atlantic waters in order to care for and build a life while struggling to survive harsh weather and dangerous seas. Would I be strong enough to endure such a difficult life?

A colleague (Thanks, Rob) recommended this to me because it deals with Newfoundland (my home) and with the romance and ambition of Premier Joseph Smallwood who led Newfoundland to join Canada. I recall Premier Smallwood arriving in my community to preside over a bridge opening. I, age nine, scampered through the crowd and stopped dead in front of a man in a black wool overcoat. I looked up: black fedora; black horn-rimmed glasses. Shocked at almost slamming into the premier, I ran. Only one thought occurred: he looked so small in that heavy coat. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams tells of this small man’s relentless quest for leadership: in the absence of roads, he campaigned by walking the railroad tracks in the dead of winter, ending up skin and bones and darn near dead. My road to my roots started with this reading.