Humorous, romantic, tragic, and uplifting, Junot Diaz’s debut novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao hits all the right notes. The eponymous Oscar de Leon is one of the most memorable literary inventions of the past 25 years. The larger than life protagonist is an overweight, socially awkward nerd with quixotic ambitions. Fighting the fuku, a curse of bad luck that has run in his family for generations, the sheepish but endearing Oscar is determined to find someone to love against all odds and at all costs. There are secondary and tertiary stories that orbit and match the richness of Oscar’s own: one that explores Oscar’s mother’s abusive domestic relationship before she had a family, one that follows his sister’s dangerous romances and runaway escapades, and one that examines his grandfather’s politically perilous life. Footnoted to these stories is the tumultuous history of the Dominican Republic. The language of the novel is a streetwise and sensuous mix of English, Spanish and pop culture jargon that Diaz masterfully uses for both hearty laughs and heart wrenching moments.

Recommended by Dale

As literary events go, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is an absolute miracle of prose. Clocking in at almost 800 pages, occurring in a post WWII geography that sprawls over several continents, and featuring a cast of over 400 characters, each hustling and busting for whatever attention they can get (or in some cases, get away from), Gravity’s Rainbow is a work so wide-eyed in its vision and relentlessly thorough in its execution that it does not deny the reader anything except maybe the chance to catch a breath. Often lauded as one of the greatest books of the 20th century, and widely regarded as Pynchon’s best, Gravity’s Rainbow is the post-modern novel par excellence: it is a collision of worlds seen and unseen, a rumpus of ideas high and low brow, and a tumult of things deathly, humorous, and erotic.

For the sustained screaming that comes across the novel’s epic length, Gravity’s Rainbow is a novel without comparison. Easily the best book I’ve ever read, it is a reading experience no reader should pass up.

Recommended by Dale

This is a thoroughly researched and thoughtfully composed examination of the events leading up to the United States involvement in World War II. By using excerpts from a multitude of sources from newspaper articles to diaries, Baker has created a deeply moving work that allows the reader to re-evaluate what he or she knows about the war, and further, about our beliefs concerning human suffering and its counterpart, human empathy. A MUST READ!

Recommended by Dale