Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Michael J. Collins

Subtitled "Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years," this book is the memoir of a doctor who struggled with shortcomings in his earlier education when he came to the Mayo Clinic in for his first year of residency. It is a fascinating glimpse into medical education and the hard lives lived by residents who do not earn very much money. Collins struggled not only with study, but also with supporting his ever-growing young family. He drove very old cars and moonlighted at a neighboring clinic in the effort to keep body and soul together. But his native optimism and cheerfulness carry him through the hard parts leaving in their wake a trail of stories well worth reading.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

In 1666 England was hit by bubonic plague. Year of Wonders is an wonderfully imagined story of what happened in a small town when the disease was brought there from London. It is based on the actual experience of the town of Eyam in Derbyshire. The fictional protagonist is a maid whose life takes fascinating twists and turns as she tries to help people around her who are dying. It is a crisis that brings out the best and worst of human behavior. Good read.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

I am not a Kingsolver fan. Her writing is excellent but she's a little too preachy and judgmental for my taste. But this non-fiction work was chosen by my book club so I diligently read it. It tells of the year that Kingsolver and her family decided to eat only locally grown food. They moved to a farm they owned in Kentucky and became growers of much of their own food and learned to participate in the kind of marketing the local farmers were doing. An interesting amalgam of research and personal memoir, the book also contains small sections written by the author's husband and daughter.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

A young Scottish woman running a vintage clothing shop suddenly discovers she is next of kin to a great aunt she never knew she had. For more than sixty years Esme had been kept in an insane asylum, never acknowledged or spoken of by her family. When the novel's protagonist, Iris, receives notice that she is now in charge of Esme, she is forced to deal with the closing of the asylum and placement of the seventy-year-old woman who is a total stranger to her. Iris, of course, wants to know Esme's story and is shocked to learn of the painful circumstances endured by her grandmother's generation. This novel is a great read.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

A love triangle that developed when the novel's main characters were at Brown University complicates things as the young people try to find purpose and direction in life. One is bumming around Europe, one is in biology, and one is a scholar of Victorian literature. The book is packed with literary references which makes it enormously fun if you're an English major, but which might put off others. This English major thought it was a terrific read.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The tangled relationships of three young men with each other and with a particular young woman weave a subtle mystery in this novel by Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes. The story is told in the first person by a character named Tony Webster who is looking back over the course of a long life at relationships that started before his years at Oxford. He sees the young men coming of age, plodding through middle age, and being reflective in old age. Barnes is brilliant as usual in his writing of this compelling tale.

The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter

Love in all varieties is featured in this wonderful novel which won a National Book Award for author Charles Baxter. Straight love, gay love, parental love, hot love, cool love, requited love, and unrequited love. For those with faith in literature as a pathway to truth, Baxter's novel with inspire insight. The author is smart enough to know that "The problem with love and God, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn't annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth. In this sense, love and God are equivalents." Excellent book.