Ken Ilgunas

More and more, it's becoming a struggle to find a book worth reading. The classics no longer seem relevant to my life. Contemporary novels (half of which seem to be set among the cultural elite in NYC) don't do much for me either. Travel books all seem so wimpy and unambitious. Lately, I've had to resort to nonfiction science writing and biographies. For every four books I start, three are given up by page 30. I’d love it if someone, whose tastes are similar to my own, would

I spent about the first quarter of 2014 researching books on the Great Plains—many of which were great, but few of which would interest the general public, and therefore don’t make this list (with the exception of Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner). For the rest of 2014, I struggled to find a decent book. It used to be my policy to finish all books that I start, but with millions of books out there, why waste time on a book I clearly don’t like when I could be reading something