Jason Mott’s People Like Us, Åsne Seierstad’s The Afghans, and Elaine Castillo’s Moderation all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
1. Moderation by Elaine Castillo
(Viking)
7 Rave • 3 Positive • 2 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from Moderation here
“Sharply attuned to the costs of employment: financial, emotional, psychic … Castillo’s close third-person narration, and her unerring ear for social performance, make for a novel that is often baroquely funny, full of barbed observations that detonate like precision-guided bombs … Castillo favors long sentences that twist and kink like a delirious garden hose, delighted by the unruly spillage of thought … Succeeds in rendering visible the often invisible dirty work of the digital era.”
–Rhonda Feng (The New York Times Book Review)
2. People Like Us by Jason Mott
(Dutton)
7 Rave • 1 Positive
“Riveting … A hugely ambitious book. It takes big swings at topics many people like us are struggling to understand. It doesn’t always connect, but that barely matters in a work that insists we must keep trying to put together words that help each other make sense of the world.”
–Chris Hewitt (The Star Tribune)
3. God and Sex by Jon Raymond
(Simon & Schuster)
5 Rave • 1 Positive
Check out Jon Raymond’s “God-tier” books here
“This slim novel is ostensibly about a schlubby writer sleeping with his friend’s wife, but profound, ancient questions animate the book, and justify its oversize title. And these questions, which grow more urgent with every season of fire and floods, have haunted me since I finished reading it.”
–Sam Dolnick (The New York Times Book Review)
**
1. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson
(Doubleday)
8 Rave • 1 Positive • 3 Mixed
“This is an exceptional and important book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling. Anderson leavens his sweeping and complex chronicle with rich character portraits.”
–Mark Bowden (The New York Times Book Review)
2. The Afghans: Three Lives Through War, Love, and Revolt by Åsne Seierstad
(Bloomsbury)
5 Rave • 1 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Remarkable … Seierstad chronicles years of war and the rise and resurgence of the Taliban through the intimate, affecting portraits of three lives lived in history’s shadow.”
–Bridget Thoreson (Booklist)
3. Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama by Alexis Okeowo
(Henry Holt & Co)
5 Rave
“Insightful … [Okeowo] goes beyond the broad strokes that often represent Alabama to the rest of the U.S…to tell a more intriguing and much more complex story … With a keen eye for detail and a thoughtful big-picture perspective, Okeowo paints a layered portrait of a state.”
–Katie Noah Gibson (Shelf Awareness)
