List the books (if any) you've read this year for pleasure. Choose one and in a sentence describe its impact on you.

  1. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

  2. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

  3. The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan

  4. Into the Forest by Jean Hegland

  5. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany

  6. The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery by D.T. Max

  7. Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity by Sharon Moalem

  8. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

  9. Her: A Memoir by Christa Parravani 

  10. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe


Susannah Cahalan’s memoir, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, chronicles Cahalan’s personal struggle with mental illness and the ingenious doctor who diagnosed her mystery ailment, not only captivating me through its use of shocking, yet honest glimpses of Cahalan’s fragmented memory but also teaching me to dig deeper to find solutions to seemingly impossible problems and the extraordinary value of creative thinking and innovation.