Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “Valentine” by Elizabeth Wetmore

2. “Writers & Lovers” by Lily King

3. “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett

4. “Pull of the Stars” by Emma Donoghue

5. “This Is Happiness” by Niall Williams — Kara G., Winnetka

I think Kara will connect with the care and kindness that Jessica Francis Kane brings to her characters in “Rules for Visiting.”

1. “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” by Ibram X. Kendi

2. “My Life, My Love, My Legacy” by Coretta Scott King

3. “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

4. “Severance” by Ling Ma

5. “The Country Girls” by Edna O’Brien — Karyn G., Wilmette

If Karyn can handle reading “Severance” a novel about a pandemic originating in China during a period where we’re living through a pandemic originating in China, she can handle the propulsive, but frankly unsettling new novel from Rumaan Alam, “Leave theWorld Behind.”

1. “A Complex Fate: William L. Shirer and the American Century” by Ken Culbertson

2. “The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America” by Sarah Kendzior

3. “Churchill and Orwell: the Fight for Freedom” by Thomas E. Ricks

4. “Spying on the South: an Odyssey across the American South” by Tony Horwitz

5. “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by John Carreyrou

— Gene V., LaSalle

Gene’s locked into a rich vein of nonfiction, and while I’m tempted to shake things up with a novel, I also don’t want to disrespect a clear preference. I am going to swerve just a bit from the history preference and go with a book that’s more urgent now than when it was first published: “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert.