Mercantile Members' Must-Read Authors

Occasionally, we include a One-Question Survey in our weekly newsletter. (The newsletter goes out every Sunday, and is chock full of information about upcoming events. If you’re not getting it, let us know!) For our first question, we asked members who their must-read author was. We wanted to know what author had a permanent spot on their TBR list, the author whose grocery list they would excitedly read, the author who never ever let them down.

Dozens of members responded.

Every answer was unique. No two readers had the same favorite author, and we are delighted. Our membership reads widely and wildly. For every reader, there is an author who speaks directly to them.

We picked a sample of the must-read authors and a book by each that our staff would recommend:

• Curtis Sittenfeld: Eligible — a charming Cincinnati-based retelling of Pride & Prejudice
• Jenny Lawson, Broken — funny and relatable
• Louise Penny, Still Life — it’s best to start at the beginning with this massive and massively enjoyable mystery series
• Hilary Mantel, Bring Up The Bodies — if we must pick a favorite of the Thomas Cromwell series, this is it
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies — others might suggest her debut novel, The Namesake, but we can’t resist her short stories
• Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood — as so often happens, the first Murakami we read is our favorite
• Amor Towles, Rules of Civility — we’re risking the ire of fans of A Gentleman in Moscow fans will disagree, but this one is our favorite
• Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing — we couldn’t put this debut novel down

Keep an eye out in February for the next One-Question Survey!