nomadreader

Dear Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers is your fourth book, but somehow it's the first one I read. I found this fact to be particularly confounding considering your debut novel, The Borrower , is about a librarian taking a road trip. That premise is completely perfect for me, a librarian who loves road trips and all kinds of travel (well, except camping and exploring nature, but I digress.) But, somehow, it's languished on my TBR like so many other wonderful books. I'm so glad I picked up The Great Believers . The premise is ambitious: "In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, his friend Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estra...

I like making lists, which, at least among my bookternet communities of readers, writers and librarians, is not at all unusual. Lately, however, I've realized that I don't enjoy crossing things off lists as much as others seems to. It seems, odd, right? Isn't the point of lists to finish them? Either I truly don't enjoy reaching goals or I have become a realist. Here's my secret: I don't think I've ever actually finished reading an entire list of books I've made. I am one book away from finishing the 2012 Orange Prize  (now Women's Prize) longlist (including the short list and winner.) But I'm also working on reading every book ever longlisted, shortlisted, and winners. (And by working, I mean I have many lists, one listing the ones I most want to read, one listing them in order from shortest to longest--achieve more faster!, one listing winners, one listing the one I most want to read for each year of the Prize, etc.) I've similarly attempte...