Foundation (Foundation, #1)
Isaac Asimov
Asimov's grand idea: a science that can predict the fall of a galactic empire, and one man's plan to soften the dark ages to come. Big, brainy, and surprisingly readable.
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Second Foundation (Foundation, #3)
Isaac Asimov
The hunt for the hidden Second Foundation, with the Mule still looming. Asimov's ideas carry you right along.
Foundation and Empire (Foundation, #2)
Isaac Asimov
The Mule arrives and blows up Seldon's tidy plan for the galaxy. The most gripping stretch of the trilogy.
★ 5Samuel Johnson Is Indignant
Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis can do more in two sentences than most writers manage in twenty pages. Tiny, strange, razor-sharp stories.
★ 5The Georges' wife
Elizabeth Jolley
The last of Elizabeth Jolley's Vera Wright trilogy, about a young woman who becomes maid to one sibling and mistress to another. Spare, tender, and quietly devastating — it swept the Australian book prizes for a reason.
★ 5Circle of Friends
Maeve Binchy
Binchy at her coziest, all friendship and first love and small-town Irish life in the '50s. Comfort reading that still has teeth.