The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion, 2005
Didion's precise, unsentimental account of the year following her husband's sudden death.
Consider: How does The Year of Magical Thinking handle loss: by facing it, avoiding it, or something in between?
A note from the concierge
Welcome
Memoir and fiction that hold grief and remembrance with great care.
These are not sad books so much as truthful ones. Choose according to your mood and your reserves.
The Concierge
6 books
The List
Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner, 2021
A musician and writer reconnects with her Korean heritage through food in the wake of her mother's illness and death.
Consider: How does Crying in H Mart handle loss: by facing it, avoiding it, or something in between?
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
An impeccable English butler takes a motoring holiday and looks back on a lifetime of service, and on what he never allowed himself to say.
Consider: What does The Remains of the Day suggest about the way we choose what to remember?
Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel, 2014
Years after a pandemic collapses civilization, a travelling troupe performs Shakespeare for scattered settlements, and old connections slowly surface.
Consider: What does Station Eleven say about why people make beautiful things?
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee, 2017
Four generations of a Korean family make their lives in Japan across the twentieth century, held together by stubborn love and quiet endurance.
Consider: Which relationship in Pachinko would you most like to understand better?
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021
An Artificial Friend watches the world from a shop window and then from a family's home, learning what it means to love.
Consider: What does Klara and the Sun ask us to think about the tools we build?
Practical
How to Read This List
Read together, these 6 books come to about 51 hours. That is a comfortable month at roughly 13 hours a week.
- Begin with the book that appeals most. There is no required order.
- Keep a pencil nearby for the questions in each entry.
- Finish one book before opening the next.
- When a book is not working, put it down without guilt and move on.
If you want more
Beyond the List
Readers who love this list tend to enjoy the following. Each is chosen for how closely it shares the mood and themes of the books above.
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson, 2004
An elderly Iowa minister writes a long letter to his young son, a meditation on grace, fathers and the ordinary beauty of the world. Shares literary fiction and melancholy with The Remains of the Day.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin, 2022
Two friends build video games together across three decades, and a partnership that is part love story, part creative rivalry. Shares literary fiction and melancholy with Station Eleven.
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013
A young Nigerian woman builds a life in America while her first love stays behind, and years later their paths cross again in Lagos, each changed by what it costs to belong somewhere. Shares literary fiction and thought-provoking with Pachinko.