Writers recommend: Reading across the lines

I loved “Five Star Billionaire” by Tash Aw, a sprawling, multi-dimensional novel about contemporary China. And my favorite character was a woman, who was wonderfully drawn and human: ambitious, vulnerable, grasping, kind and unkind.

The Library of America reasserted its mission —publishing America’s best and most significant writing — with “Susan Sontag: Essays of the 1960s & 70s.” Page after page, Sontag enlightens with her provocative insights and delights with her compelling prose. These pieces at once evoke their era and prove to be timeless.

Percival Everett rocks! That’s all I can say. He can tell the heck out of a story, inside out, upside down, in ways you would never think of or expect. “Percival Everett” by Virgil Russell (Graywolf, $15 paperback) offers more than ample proof of that, not that if you needed it if you’ve been reading him for a while. He is the kind of writer who demands a lot from his reader, but he gives so much back, layers upon layers of narrative and language that leaves you both dazed and in awe, acrobatic plot lines, emotion, humor and just plain breathtaking brilliance.

Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being” (Viking, $28.95), no question. An exquisite, complex, heartfelt novel — three stories folded into one beautiful gift. A transpacific tale of Japan and its diaspora that reveals how resilience and love and confusion and hope and survival tie us all together across time and space. Funny and powerful.