How to Read Like a Fact Chief Nandi Rodrigo is the magazine's head of research. Book I'm reading now: I've just started Zadie Smith's "NW." I have read only her essays and short fiction. Last book I loved: "The Tiger's Wife," by Téa Obreht. This novel about a family in a postwar Balkan country was so beautifully written that I had to read more slowly. Sometimes I would read sections twice. And the events seemed so real. It was like reading poetry and history all at once. Unread book on my bedside table that gnaws at my conscience: "Cloud Atlas," by David Mitchell. So many friends have raved about this book that I've given it to other friends as gifts. But I still haven't read it. Three books that I highly recommend: "Let the Great World Spin," by Colum McCann. I loved the quiet power of all the interconnected stories in this novel. You could hear what the characters were thinking. The book really captured 1970s New York City. "The Last Life" by Claire Messud. Though the novel has been out for more than 10 years, I still recommend it to friends. The story is told from the point of view of a teenage girl who is uncovering her family history. It spans colonial Algeria, France and the U.S. I couldn't put it down, and I still remember the young narrator's mental state. "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" and "Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama," both memoirs by Alison Bechdel. I like reading memoirs in graphic form and these two are great. One is about Bechdel's relationship with her father and the other is about her relationship with her mother. There is a lot of painful probing of her parents as individuals, about the choices they made. It's as if Bechdel were a grown up critically looking at them even when she was a child. A new book that is high on my list: Pankaj Mishra's "From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia."