Recent-ish books: Girl on the Train is a good mystery, very manipulative for the reader. Paula Hawkins is a journalist turned novelist and she is good at not waxing poetic. I admire that style.
I know this is blasphemy but I like Go Set a Watchman better than To Kill a Mockingbird. The last twenty pages, about how Scout idolized her father and made him into a god and not a man, is creepy given the response of the SJW's to the alleged 'tarnishing' of Atticus' character when you consider that it was written sixty some years ago. I can't believe Harper lee never wrote another novel.
Serial killer book: The Scribe by Matthew Guinn. A lot like Devil in White City but a novel set in late 19th century atlanta.
All the Light We Cannot See is a good WW2 read from the perspectives of a blind French girl and an orphan nazi who just wants to work on radios and escape the coal mines. Nothing earth shattering but well written all the way through.
Those who have not read Jamie Kornegay's 'Soil' are missing out BIGLY. Beautiful debut from a Mississippi writer. A little mystery, a little legal quandry, a dead dog, and a broken romance. Set in the Delta. Just a fantastic book.
NIGHT FILM is another great one from the last two years. Part Steven King (in style), part Infinite Jest (as far as enigmatic indie filmmakers with cult followings as main characters go), part treatise on the nature of belief, part journalistic soul searcher, it is thoroughly well written and invites a second reading.—"Does one ever truly get over having once believed?"
Sam Harris' Islam and the Future of Tolerance is interesting and current. It is a conversational book with Harris and a self proclaimed former radical Islamist.
There is a new biography of Hitler coming out in two volumes. Volume 1 takes you only to 1939. I have a friend who reads history like no other and he gives it the highest recommendation.
I myself have been re-reading Socratic dialogues. Truly fascinating that people are still making money off of questions that were seemingly exhausted 2,500 years ago. There is no topic in either eastern or western thought that is not covered in Plato. Whenever someone asks: "Where do we go after post modernism?" the answer is: "Back to Platonism!"
