Warm weather is here, and so are our suggestions for books to add to your library this month. With our readers spending more time at home due to the pandemic, we’ve got more reason than ever to push for our favorites. Jazz up the monotony by escaping into one of these amazing reads!
I read Toni Morrison’s Home over the course of a day because I couldn’t put it down! The narrative is delivered with such ease that you’ll find yourself captivated for hours in themes of racism, sexism, guilt, and healing. Frank Money, a Korean war veteran, serves as the novel’s protagonist and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The African American experience in 1950s America is emphasized as Frank travels across the country to Georgia to save his sister Cee who has become a victim of the Eugenics Movement. Before the novel’s end, both Frank and Cee must come to terms with ugly truths that had long been hidden in secrets. Together, they unearth the past and give it a proper burial in order to heal and live on.
A masterful work integrating themes of family, conflict, memory, and forgiveness, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler is a must-read. Pearl Tull has reached the end of her life after raising three children on her own after her husband left. Her oldest, Cody, has become a successful businessman but struggles to release his childhood envy towards Ezra, the middle child. Ezra, the more pensive and temperate of the siblings, takes over a diner with a constant desire for his family to make it through one family meal. Jenny, the youngest, becomes a nurse and is married three times. The narrative explores the passage of time, the complicated nature of familial love, and the repercussions of childhood trauma.
A timeless classic, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton will always be one of our favorites. Written when Hinton was merely sixteen years old, the narrative tells the moving story of Ponyboy Curtis, a greaser in 1960s America. Coming of age themes including social pressures, the quest for self-understanding, and reckless behavior abound as Ponyboy and Johnny run to escape murder charges resulting from climaxed tensions between the greasers and the Socs. The events that unfold are gripping and powerfully evocative, prompting readers to question social constructs and their impact on identity formation.
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