World War I Fiction

In honor of Veteran's Day, today's post is about World War I fiction.  Yes, you read that right - I said World War I!  There is a plethora of great World War II fiction and I know a lot of people love to read it - I'm one of them and in fact I read enough of it that I could probably write a second post just updating my post on World War II fiction from Veteran's Day 2 years ago.  But believe it or not, there are actually some really good novels about World War I which I’ve read in the past few years as well, and I thought it would be interesting to showcase those.  And I think because I've read less books on World War I, I find them really interesting and even learn a lot from them - in fact I often find myself going on the internet to learn more during/after reading them because World War I is kind of confusing.  So here are the novels I most recommend about World War I.

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2015

Since I started this blog, I've been periodically looking back at my old top 10 favorite book lists, starting with 1999 when I first started compiling a list each year and working my way up towards the present.   If you don't remember the details, these are lists I made contemporaneously at the end of the respective years, made up of books I read in that particular year, not necessarily books published that year.  I started out sharing these lists with just a small group of people, and over the years started sharing with more and more people, and through more and more different means, including this blog!  One of my first posts on the blog was my top 10 books of 2017, so after today's post that means I have just one more to go!  (Unless I keep this blog going for so many more years that enough time goes by that I want to look back on 2017 and after, ha ha.)

Here's my list from 2015, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Visitors - Sally Beauman
The One That Got Away - Bethany Chase
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
The Last Camellia - Sarah Jio
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
The Lake House - Kate Morton
The Children's Crusade - Ann Packer
The Midnight Rose - Lucinda Riley
Who Do You Love? - Jennifer Weiner
Walking on Trampolines - Frances Whiting

For more random details about these books, keep reading!

Must Read Authors

As befits someone who reads a lot and is constantly amassing new books to read, I have a long, long list of must read authors.  I thought it would be fun to try to narrow it down to not just authors I love, but authors who I anticipate their books with great interest and try to read them ASAP when they come out.  Since there are actually a pretty enormous group of authors for whom that is true, to narrow it down, I'm going to give myself a few parameters:  (1)  they have to have written at least 3 books, and (2) I have to have read all of their books.  There are other authors who I love but I'm still working on catching up on all of their books - I'll cover those in a future post.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably recognize most of these names as I've discussed them in my posts on various genres, among other things.  A few I even talk about enough that I've already given them their own tag, so I'll start with those and go roughly in order from there.

2018 - The Best of the Rest, Part 1

Back when I used to read a lot fewer books a year, my top 10 list pretty much encapsulated the books from the year that I would really recommend, give or take a few.  But now that I read SO many books a year, I have a lot more than 10 books which I would heartily recommend.  So in addition to my Top 10 books of 2018, I wanted to share with you many more books that I read last year which I would recommend!  So if you read all the books on my top 10 list you're interested in and are looking for more, you can hone in on the categories that interest you.  There are way too many books for me to blurb them all without this post taking forever to write (and read!), so I'm just going to list titles and authors.

And because I have SO many books to recommend, I'm going to break this post into two parts.  This one will cover realistic contemporary fiction and historical fiction; more other genres will be covered in the next post.

Books are listed below by genre.

Jen's Top 10 Books of 2018

I'm very excited to share with you my 10 favorite books that I read in 2018!  I read a record amount of books in 2018, so this really is the cream of the crop - and it was SO hard to narrow this list down!  The top 5 were pretty easy, but narrowing down to the remaining 5 was a real challenge.  So I'm also happy to tell you that in the coming weeks you can look for "best of the rest" post(s) highlighting some of the other books I loved in 2018!

Anyway, for many many years - dating back to a time when I barely used the internet (1999!) - I have been compiling a list of my ten favorite books read in the year just ended and sharing with my friends, first by e-mail, then by facebook, and starting last year, on this blog.  It's not necessarily books published in the year I make the list, just books I read that year.  Here's my list for 2018, in alphabetical order by author's last name:

The Royal We - Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
This Is How It Always Is - Laurie Frankel
Force of Nature - Jane Harper
Queen of Shadows - Sarah J. Maas
The Clockmaker's Daughter - Kate Morton
Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld
What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw - Leah Stewart
Other People's Houses - Abbi Waxman
Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
The Female Persuasion - Meg Wolitzer


Traditionally, I used to just send around a list with no further comment on the books.  But now that I have more space, I want to tell you more about the books - first a little bit about each book itself, and then some general comments on the list as a whole.  Though if you've been reading this blog regularly, I think you have actually heard about most of these books in one post or another.  And I would love to hear what everyone else thought of these books, and what your favorite books of 2018 were!

Read on for more:

GCBC - Fall Reading Roundup

As I've mentioned a few times previously, I am in a book club of sorts that consists of just me and my friend Sarah, which we call, GCBC, which stands for Grand Central Book Club (since we usually meet for lunch at Grand Central).  We used to just pick a book to read occasionally when we had plans to get together, but earlier this year we decided that since we like to read so many of the same books anyway, we might as well coordinate reading them together.  Plus we both seem to derive perhaps as much enjoyment from planning out what we are going to read as we do the actual reading itself!  And since life has been busy and thus conspiring against us getting together, most of the book discussion these days is done over e-mail, which makes it pretty easy to turn it into a blog post to share our views!  So, following is a discussion between us of 12 books we both read this fall.

World War II Fiction

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, but for some reason I haven't written about it much on here.  Today is Veteran's Day, and both my grandfather and Dan's grandfather served in World War II.  So today I thought I'd write about World War II fiction.  I know some people can't stand to read World War II fiction, but I generally find it really interesting and moving.  Holocaust fiction can certainly get very depressing so I don't tend to read a ton of it, but I also find myself fascinated by books set in London during the Blitz, occupied France, even the U.S. homefront.  So here are some of my favorite novels which are set primarily during World War II.

5 Star Review: The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton

Kate Morton is one of my favorite authors, as I've mentioned before on the blog.   It's been 3 years since she last published a book, so her latest book, "The Clockmaker's Daughter," was one of my most anticipated books of Fall 2018.  And, I'm happy to report that it did not disappoint, as it's one of her best.

GCBC - Summer Reading Roundup

As I've mentioned a few times previously on this blog, my friend Sarah and I have a book club that consists of just the two of us.  We call it GCBC, short for Grand Central Book Club, since ideally we meet in person to discuss the books, which we usually do over lunch at Grand Central Terminal.  We used to just pick a book to read together only when we planned to meet, but earlier this year we were discussing books we both wanted to read, and since we're both slightly crazy obsessive types, we compiled a list of books we both wanted to read and started aligning our reading so that we were reading more and more books at roughly the same time, as long as both of us either owned the book or could get it from the library!

So, from mid-June to the beginning of the September, we read a whopping 10 books together!  And unfortunately, various factors conspired against us so we were unable to get together for lunch to discuss.  So, we decided to do just a quick summary of our thoughts on each book, both to share with each other and for the edification of readers of this blog as well!

Anticipated Books of Fall 2018

Hard to believe when it's still so hot, but summer is drawing to a close.  Well, technically summer does not end until September 22nd, but to me, summer ends and fall begins when school starts.  For some of you around the country, that already happened weeks ago.  But here in New York, school starts after Labor Day, so my kids have just gone back to school.

With how hot and humid it has been in New York, I'm really looking forward to some nice fall weather.  But of course I'm also looking forward to fall reading!  There are lots of books being published this fall that I'm looking forward to, including some by a few of my favorite authors.  Here are some of them, listed in order of publication with the dates in parentheses representing the publication dates:

What To Read This Summer

As the weather starts to warm up (intermittently, that is), I'm thinking about what I'm going to read this summer.  I'm going to highlight some books that either were recently published or will be published this summer (May through August), and which sound like they'll make good summer reading.   For the purposes of this post, summer reading excludes anything that sounds too heavy or overly literary, but includes books that are either set in the summer or that sound like fun, juicy, reads.   Below you'll find some books that hopefully will fit the bill - a few books I've recently read, and other recent/forthcoming books that I'm hoping/planning to check out this summer.  Dates in parentheses are publication dates.

Historical fiction books with present/past stories

I can't believe I haven't written a post focused on historical fiction so far, especially because it's one of my favorite genres!  In fact, I read so much historical fiction that there's no way I can cram it all into one post, so I'm going to subdivide it into multiple sub-genres.  For today, I'm going to focus on one of my most favorite types of books - books that go back and forth between two time periods, usually a present day and historical story.  I don't know exactly what it is about this kind of book that appeals to me, but I tend to just LOVE books that are structured this way.  Plus I respect that it must be trickier to write these books, as the author ideally needs to make both story lines equally compelling, and also to find a connection between the two stories that makes sense without being too obvious/gimmicky.

Book club books

At Passover seder at my parents' house two weekends ago, my dear family friend Liz and I were discussing our respective book clubs and good book club books.  Conveniently, while this question was fresh on my mind, my book club met last week.  Since I happen to have a Goodreads shelf keeping track of all the books we've read as a book club, we also took some time to scroll through the list and talk about the books and discuss which ones were the best.

GCBC - "The Shadow Sister" and "Cocoa Beach"

A little later in this post, you will hear a discussion of the books "The Shadow Sister" by Lucinda Riley and "Cocoa Beach" by Beatriz Williams.  But first, I need to introduce you to Sarah Binder and our book club (which is just the two of us!), which we call "GCBC."

Sarah and I met many years ago at the law firm where we both worked.  Over time, we became close friends and we discovered our shared love of books.  (And those things were surely related, as our shared obsessive love of books definitely bonds us!)  So, back in 2012, we decided to start a book club at work, inviting a variety of our other friends at the office to join us.  But with everyone working hard, often people either didn't have time to meet to discuss the book, or didn't even get around to reading it, so it was often just the two of us and maybe one or two others.  Eventually, we started picking books for just the two of us, which was convenient when we both stopped working there!  Since Sarah lives in the city and I live in Westchester, we started meeting for lunch at Grand Central, and would generally pick a book to discuss when we were getting together, and finally gave our book club a name - Grand Central Book Club, or GCBC for short.  Sometimes we go months without reading anything together, sometimes we read a bunch of books in a very short period of time.  If we pick a book and don't end up meeting in person, we often end up discussing the book over e-mail.

This past month, we read two historical novels, "The Shadow Sister" and "Cocoa Beach," and we had a great back and forth about them over e-mail, which seemed like the perfect basis for a blog!  So without further ado, I present to you our conversation!