If you liked "The Kite Runner" or the even better "A Thousand Splendid Suns", you'll love this tale of 17th C Persia (Iran).

This is an amazing memoir told in an honest, unflinching and always fascinating voice. I read it in one sitting because I simply couldn't put the book down. Loved it. It's my must-read of the year.

This is the beautifully written fictionalized account of the Mirabal sisters, three remarkable women murdered by the brutal Trujillo regime (Dominican Republic). A story well worth knowing and never forgetting.

This is an extraordinary read. From the very first page, I was totally gripped by this story -- a boy who survives a terrifying mass killing by Nazis and who ends up being adopted by an SS brigade at the age of five, serving as their "mascot" and, more than likely, their alibi -- and could not put the book down. I highly recommend this book. It's a true story and once more proves the adage, truth is stranger than fiction.

My favorite Brookner, though far less known than the Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac. This is a deep and incisive psychological portrait of mother-daughter relationships. Fantastic book.

CLASSIC Alan Bennett and absolutely NOT to be missed. This is just sooooooo bloody clever and it made me laugh out loud from the very first page.

One of my top three books of all time. This one's a stunner. (Or, if you're British, a stunnah.)

It's Roth. He's the most brilliant American writer of his -- and our -- time. I'd read a laundry list if he wrote it. This is a great rumination on what it is like to get old (it sucks) and what it means to be a writer, to be a man, to be a woman, to face mortality. The writing is, as ever, bloody brilliant; there are parts you'll want to read and then read again just to get the fullness of the almost unbearable truth.

Not Roth's best. No. That honor belongs to "American Pastoral," if you ask me. But still, a wonderful book well worth reading and savoring.

And, yes, the bits about George Plimpton are fantastic. As are all of the comments about the writing scene.

This is yet another brilliant book by the always wonderful (and now sadly deceased) Polish journalist/essayist, Kapuscinski. If you've never read him, I wouldn't start with this one. Save it. Go instead to Shah of Shahs and then work your way up to this magical, thought-provoking read. An absolute must for classicists and, frankly, for anyone interested in how we think about and view other cultures. Brilliant.