These are the books I have on my short list for reading this winter.  I should be able to read at least one or two of these over the Christmas holidays.  I’ve halfway finished “A Short History of Nearly Everything” at least three times.  I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get through it over the Christmas holidays.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The beloved American classic about a young girl’s coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness — in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience. {Amazon.com}

Lipshitz 6 or Two Angry Blondes

Cooper performs the unparalleled feat of addressing white rappers, Jewish heritage freaks and Charles Lindbergh fans with her second novel (after Some of the Parts). The story begins in 1907, when Esther and Hersh Lipshitz inexplicably lose their blond boy, Reuven, while disembarking at Ellis Island. They are fleeing the pogroms of czarist Russia and are headed for Amarillo, Tex., where Esther’s brother Avi lives. An indifferent mother, Esther gradually comes to believe that Reuven is, somehow, Charles Lindbergh. The last third of the novel jumps from Esther’s death to a gender-bending, self-reflexive coda. A male narrator and stalled novelist named T Cooper is working in New York as an Eminem-enamored DJ for bar mitzvah parties when his parents die in a bizarre car accident. T’s reluctant return to Amarillo to oversee the funeral and the estate rekindles his interest in writing about his grandmother Miriam (Esther’s daughter). Cooper the author bridges the obvious chasm between the atmosphere of Esther’s story and the attitude of the coda by reaching out to a larger history. She takes apart the usual Jewish heritage tale and the themes of assimilation, touching them with both postmodern parody and Chagallesque folk magic. {Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.}

A Short History of Nearly Everything

From primordial nothingness to this very moment, A Short History of Nearly Everything reports what happened and how humans figured it out. To accomplish this daunting literary task, Bill Bryson uses hundreds of sources, from popular science books to interviews with luminaries in various fields. His aim is to help people like him, who rejected stale school textbooks and dry explanations, to appreciate how we have used science to understand the smallest particles and the unimaginably vast expanses of space. With his distinctive prose style and wit, Bryson succeeds admirably. Though A Short History clocks in at a daunting 500-plus pages and covers the same material as every science book before it, it reads something like a particularly detailed novel (albeit without a plot). Each longish chapter is devoted to a topic like the age of our planet or how cells work, and these chapters are grouped into larger sections such as “The Size of the Earth” and “Life Itself.” Bryson chats with experts like Richard Fortey (author of Life and Trilobite) and these interviews are charming. But it’s when Bryson dives into some of science’s best and most embarrassing fights–Cope vs. Marsh, Conway Morris vs. Gould–that he finds literary gold. –Therese Littleton.

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

A powerful novel of three generations of American Indian women, each seeking her own identity while forever cognizant of family responsibilities, loyalty, and love. Rayona, half-Indian half-black daughter of Christine, reacts to feelings of rejection and abandonment by running away, not knowing that her mother had acted in a similar fashion some 15 years before. But family ties draw Rayona hometo the Montana reservationas they drew Christine, and as they had drawn Ida many years earlier. As the three recount their lives, often repeating incidents but adding new perspectives, a total picture emerges. The result is a beautifully passionate first novel reminiscent of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine and The Beet Queen , but a strong work which should be read and enjoyed for its own merits. Highly recommended. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale  {Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.}

Hurry Down Sunshine

On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad, Greenberg writes at the start of a remarkable memoir. Sally, fifteen years old, after weeks of reading poetry and scribbling with mounting fervor, whirls through Greenwich Village possessed by a belief that people are born with genius but gradually lose it. As Greenberg watches her progress under psychiatric care, he is plagued by multifaceted guilt. He has a mentally ill brother and wonders if his genes are to blame. A freelance writer in a gentrifying neighborhood, he worries about his ability to care for Sally; he doesnt have health insurance and the family is turned out of a below-market-rent apartment. He mulls, by way of Schumann, Lowell, and Lucia Joyce, the long association of art and derangement and imagines that his literary preoccupations have influenced his daughters. Poor, poor Father, she says in the psychiatric ward. Trying to get back your lost genius.  {The New Yorker}

All reviews found via Amazon.com

Any other suggestions?