Books connect us, don’t they?

I wrote last week about how I read to escape, even if just for a short time. In books, mysteries are solved, problems resolved, questions answered by the last chapter. Not like these times, when everything seems uncertain and open-ended.

Readers responded with suggestions of what I should read next. I started a list.

Because I like mysteries, Ernie Vitucci recommended Dick Francis, an English jockey turned author, and Tony Hillerman, a New Mexico journalist who wrote books set on the Navajo Nation.

Gerri Hether suggested author J.A. Jance, who was raised in Bisbee. Three of her series are set in Arizona. I’m starting with “Tombstone Courage,” a Joanna Brady mystery.

“The Book of Lost Friends” by Lisa Wingate. Elizabeth Berg’s “The Story of Arthur Truluv.” Anything by Neil Gaiman.

I mentioned reading sagas of families who live lakeside, and Peggy Snow asked, “Have you read ‘The Chesapeake Diaries’ by Mariah Stewart?” 

Charles Wallace sent me a spreadsheet of 51 books he’s read since March, his top recommendation Grace Elting Castle’s “A Time to Wail,” about a family on Oregon’s Siletz Reservation.

Teacher Jenny Beutner spent the summer on Nantucket, thanks to author Elin Hilderbrand, and traveled across the pond with Casey McQuiston’s “Red, White and Royal Blue.”

Barbara Hanigsberg loved “The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story” by Hyeonseo Lee. Dawn Jackson’s book club read Kate Quinn’s “The Alice Network,” historical fiction based on real-life women WWI spies.

Bobbi Illing suggested Nick Trout’s “The Wonder of Lost Causes,” writing, “I can’t resist a good dog story. Makes me think the world is still decent.”

For Suzanne Painter, Erik Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz” keeps suffering in perspective.

Neil de Grasse Tyson’s “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” reminded Kerry Fehr-Snyder that “the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”

Amen.

Reach Karina Bland at [email protected]. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KarinaBland.

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