Color is the Suffering of Light by Melissa Green. Green captures depression like no other. I know, I know, a valentine to depression? It is poetry. Read it and see!

--Kathleen Henry
Supporter and Former Member of WROB

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This book so succinctly tells a story about children who deal with things that every childhood is made of, while also witnessing issues way more sophisticated than any parent would want to expose their children. And yet, Harper Lee really captures the way that children always understand more than anybody thinks, on all levels. Spare, clear, multi-leveled, it's like a handbook on how to write the most elusive thing: perfect fiction

-- Elizabeth de Veer
Member of The Writers' Room of Boston

Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout. Reading this novel (which I did a few days ago) was one of the truly religious experiences I've had with a book. I smiled. I wept. I couldn't put it down. It is about faith as it is really lived--with all the accompanying confusion and sorrow and mistaken paths. Ultimately, the novel arrives at redemption, but in a denouement that takes your breath away in wonder. I can't recommend it highly enough.

--Pam Greenberg
Member of The Writers' Room of Boston

Them by Joyce Carol Oates. The first time I read Joyce Carol Oates, I threw the book across the room; I was so mad. Everything she writes hurts. In the best way.Obviously, I picked it up. And finished it. And read everything else she wrote.

--Ashley Chaifetz
Friend of WROB

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. This book is such a real and moving anti-war statement.

Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler. Read so many books last year, but this one (I know it's an oldie but I just found out about it) made me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh out loud. So thanks, Mordecai.

The Character of Rain, etc. by Amelie Nothumb. My latest literary love affair has been with Amelie Nothomb of Paris. I love her exquisite little novels. I love her free-spirited lifestyle and intelligence. She hardly edits and she probably doesn't even know the meaning of the word, "workshop." She publishes one small novel each year, to great acclaim in Europe, and she writes other novels,too, which she then hides in drawers because, she says, they're too private. Ah... to aspire to write so freely and so prolifically! She is my hero this Valentine's Day.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is one of a kind -- he knits the mundane (boiling water for pasta) and the fantastic (discovering a passageway to another world) together into a whole that somehow makes more sense than everyday life. And The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was written largely in Boston!

--Bob Dall
Member of The Writers' Room of Boston

Alice Munro packs a novel into every one of her short stories. There's seldom - if ever - a false move or stray word in any of her work.

--Maureen Rogers
Member of The Writers' Room of Boston