Need a good book to read? A Pulitzer winner has suggestions

We often get asked: Where you do find the best book recommendations? Authors are a great source, as evidenced by Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Twitter feed right now. As members who saw his lecture earlier this year know, Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer.

This month, in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Nguyen has been tweeting daily recommendations of books by Asian American authors. Some days, he’s tweeted out lists that give readers a slew of books by Asian American authors to consider. He has suggested books you might already know and love — that are worth a reread, he says — like The Joy Luck Club, The Interpreter of Maladies, Little Fires Everywhere.

He also has recommended excellent books by new authors — we loved R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries — and classics you, like us, might have missed. Thanks to his recommendations, we’ve added Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker to our to-be-read list this month. You’ll find all the titles above, including Nguyen’s own work, displayed on an A-frame by the windows.

You know, of course, that these A-frame displays are where you’ll always find the newest books in the Library, as well as staff picks, reader favorites, and changing collections of books we think might interest you. If you’re not sure what you want to read, we’re pretty sure you’ll find a good book on the A-frames.

See you soon at the Library!