“Langrishe, Go Down,” by Aidan Higgins, is the masterpiece of the Irish novelist who is 80 years old this year. It seems even more evocative now than when I read it first more than 30 years ago; the use of cadence and rhythm in the prose is a lesson to us all.

GARRY WILLS

Daniel Mendelsohn, “The Lost.” A profound and personal look at Jewish history, as well as at the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Douglas Wilson, “Lincoln’s Sword.” The master of Lincoln’s mastery over the word.

Robert Richardson, “William James.” An intimate look at a quintessentially American thinker.

EDWIDGE DANTICAT

I have a 2-year-old daughter, so my reading time has been considerably reduced in the past several months. A few weeks ago, however, after my daughter went to bed, I picked up J. M. Coetzee’s “Disgrace,” which I had been opening and closing and flipping through for nearly a year. Once I made my way into the first chapter, I simply couldn’t put it down. So many powerful questions are raised in this stunning and devastating tale of complicated relationships in post-apartheid South Africa. It made me want to read all of Coetzee’s work, which I hope one day to have time for.

In the meantime, I am reading more contemporary poetry, especially the work of Nikki Giovanni, one of my favorites. The poems in her recent collection “Acolytes” range from odes to the singer Nina Simone and the poet June Jordan to a meditation on the best midnight snack (something a sleep-deprived mother can truly appreciate). The fire, eloquence and lyricism in these poems show why Giovanni was able to turn tears into cheers at an April 17 convocation following the Virginia Tech massacre. In what seems like a direct address to writer-readers, in one poem she outlines a possible mantra:

We seek and hide

We break and mend

We teach and learn

We write

GARY SHTEYNGART

“The Last of Her Kind,” by Sigrid Nunez. Nunez, one of the most dizzyingly accomplished of our writers, delivers that rarely spotted animal, a literary drama about families that is also a page-turner. Few writers can tread the oft-explored terrain of class and race with the sophistication, grace and wit of this author. “The Last of Her Kind” explores the difficult friendship between two Barnard students in the 1960s; it also contains some of the most moving and devastating prison scenes to ever appear in American literature.

“Hotel De Dream,” by Edmund White (coming this fall). This brilliant portrait of an artist as a dying young man fictionalizes the last days of Stephen Crane and also contains a novel Crane never quite got around to — the chronicle of a disastrous love affair between a wealthy banker and a “painted boy” in turn-of-the-century New York. With a sure hand White ranges over the twin tragedies of love and death, while gleefully roasting literary luminaries like Henry James and Joseph Conrad.

“The Nimrod Flipout,” by Etgar Keret. The kind of work that makes you gently worry for the author’s mental health. This collection of stories manages to crawl back on my nightstand no matter how many times I try to return it to the stacks. Subjects include a girlfriend with some glandular difficulties — she turns into a fat, short, hairy man at night — and parents who shrink as their son grows. Keret lives in Israel, a country with its share of grief and uncertainty, but his tales are oddly buoyant, not to mention supremely addictive.