Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Young Adult/Dystopian
- Hunger Games (+ Catching Fire, Mocking bird)
- Divergent trilogy (insurgent is sequel) - similar to Hunger Games in dystopian view, strong female lead
- Daughter of Smoke and Bone (more fantasy-esque, but def young adult)
- Knife of never letting go - part of the Chaos Walking trilogy (really fascinating idea of if everyone could
hear your thoughts... super interesting)
- For Darkness Shows the Stars (a Jane Austen homage, a play on Persuasion set in a dystopian world)
- Throne of Glass (fantasy-esque, young female criminal)
- The 5th Wave (dystopian/sci fi)
Historical fiction
- Hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet
- The Distant Hours
- The Forgotten Garden
- Snow flower and the secret fan
- Pillars of the earth (one of my favorite books, an epic storytelling in the time of building cathedrals)
- Sarahs Key
- Suite Francaise
- Cutting for Stone (super fascinating, set in East Africa)
- Water for Elephants
- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
- The Oracle Glass (set in Paris around Louis the XIV)
- The Golem and The Jinni (set in turn of the century new york, part fantasy)
Cultural fiction
- The Help (South)
- Shantaram (India - semi autobiographical)
- State of Wonder (amazon rain forest)
- The Orphan Masters Son (set in north korea, really well written - 2013 pulitzer winner)
Nonfiction
- Unbroken (incredible survival story, world war ii era)
- Zeiton
-Paradise Built in Hell (looks at several natural disasters and how people treat each other based on how
they think about each other. In the aftermath of disasters people are basically nice and take care of each
other because all the social barriers are temporarily taken down versus elite panic i.e. gov/army views
certain people as bad and dangerous and order shoot to kill type laws (think katrina) instead of rescue
missions)
- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (biography of a brilliant and fascinating physicist)
- A Short History of Nearly Everything (loved the look at history of this)
- Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (fascinating look at how weve come to understand DNA and vaccines)
- Collapse or Guns Germs and Steel
- Legacy of Ashes (you may feel ashamed to be associated with the US after reading this account of the
CIA)
- World without us
- The Glass Castle (autobiography)
- I love yous are for white people (Vietnamese boat people assimilating into life in LA)
- Half-Broke Horses
- Man in the rockefeller suit (super interesting look at a guy who impersonated a rockefeller for
DECADES)
- The Female Brain
Contemporary fiction (almost always slightly depressing and usually some kind of award winner)
aka Cristins books
- Brief and wondrous life of oscar wao
- Freedom
- Unaccustomed earth
- Olive Kittridge
- Middlesex
- Shopgirl
- Let the Great World Spin
- Gilead
- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
- A Visit from the Goon Squad
- Sing You Home
-ROOM
- Ten Thousand Saints
- The sense of an ending