Bread and Salt: Amor Towles

Imagine a luxurious family banquet table, filled with food. Slowly, the state takes away one luxury after another, until the only thing left on the table is bread and salt.

"There is a will to joy ... " he says. "If I get down to just bread and salt — which is a Russian term for it — the family will still celebrate. ... There will be laughter and love and compassion and problems as well around that table and so the book is kind of an exploration of that."