All About Love by bell hooks

March 29, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. William Morrow, 1999. 240 pgs. Library copy. This collection of essays by bell hooks analyzes the many facets of love — self-love, romantic love, parental love, greedy love — and how the lack of love (or, too much of “bad” love) can spread from the public sphere to the private sphere. She defines love as “as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. And hooks’ central thesis is that […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: bell hooks

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

March 28, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Noah Taylor. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2012. 10 hours, 21 minutes. Library copy. Stationed as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock off the coast of Western Australia, Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel live largely in isolation. Two miscarriages and one stillbirth have isolated the couple even further — both from their family on the mainland who are anxious for grandchildren and from each other. The arrival of a battered on the shores of Janus Rock […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, Oceania, Women's Prize • Tags: M. L. Stedman, Noah Taylor

Climate Changed by Philippe Squarzoni

March 18, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the French. Harry N. Abrams, 2014. 467 pgs. Library copy. When it comes to comics and graphic novels, I tend to be drawn to those on the nonfiction shelf. I find the format tends to make darker or complex topics more accessible and personalized than a long nonfiction tome. So I was intrigued by Squarzoni’s comic, which is subtitled “a personal journey through the science”, when I was browsing the library’s comics section. This book grew […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Chunkster, Comics, Europe, France, French, Nonfiction, Translated

Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín

March 15, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scribner, 2015. 400 pgs. Purchased. Set in Ireland’s County Wexford in 1969, Tóibín’s novel is focused on the efforts of the title character to reconstruct her life after the death of her husband, Maurice, from an unexplained illness. Life without savings and a smaller-than-expected pension, Nora must return to work as a typist after many years away in order to support herself, her two daughters away at school, and her two young boys still living at Much of […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Colm Tóibín

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

March 7, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Gareth Armstrong. Naxos Audiobooks, 2010. Originally published 2008. 5 hours, 23 minutes. Library copy. Set at the beginning of what would become a nearly four-year long siege of the city, four individuals are attempting to navigate the complex jungle that Sarajevo has become. A man named Kenan has left his wife and child to collect water from a clean, working source on the other side of the city while another man, Dragan, has left the safety […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Balkans, Book Club, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize • Tags: Gareth Armstrong, Steven Galloway

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

March 5, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition.  Riverhead, 2014. 568 pgs. Purchased. In the aftermath of World War I, twenty-six year old Frances Wray and her mother are obliged to take in paying guests — a more polite term for lodgers that allows Mrs. Wray and the neighbors to ignore the family’s rather spectacular tumble in social standing. Their room for rent notice is answered by a young, married couple from the “clerk class” named Lilian and Leonard Barber, and the Wrays and Barber have […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Crime, Europe, Fiction, LGBTQA+, United Kingdom, Women's Prize • Tags: Sarah Waters

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

March 4, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Rebecca Lowman and Sunil Malhotra. Listening Library, 2013. 8 hours, 56 minutes. Library copy. After living on the couch of her mother’s best friend for a year, Eleanor’s step-father, Richie, has finally allowed her to back into the family home with her mother and four younger siblings. The whole family walks around on tiptoes around Richie — afraid of being hit, afraid of being banished from the house — and as much as Eleanor hates her step-father, she […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, Young Adult • Tags: Rainbow Rowell, Rebecca Lowman, Sunil Malhotra

Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie

February 26, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Drawn and Quarterly, 2007. 105 pgs. Library copy. Nineteen-year-old Aya lives in working-class city of Yopougon (also known as Yop City) of the Ivory Coast in 1978. Aya’s father works for Solibra, a beer company, and is determined to establish a match between the young son of his boss and his daughter. As a studious young woman determined to become a doctor, Aya is neither interested in this match nor in the cousin of one […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Africa, Comics, Fiction, French, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Clément Oubrerie, Marguerite Abouet

The Exile by Diana Gabaldon and Hoang Nguyen

February 24, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Del Ray, 2010. 224 pgs. Library copy. This graphic novel covers the first third of Gabaldon’s Outlander novel from the point of view of her male protagonist, Jamie Fraser. Jamie returns from France with a bounty hanging over his head, and he plans to hide out from both the British Redcoats and his uncles from the Clan Mackenzie, particularly his Uncle Dougal who worries Jamie will be named his brother and laird’s heir. Meeting Claire Beauchump usurps these plans, and Jamie […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Comics, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Diana Gabaldon, Hoang Nguyen

Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me by Harvey Pekar and J.T. Waldman

February 23, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Hill and Wang, 2012. 176 pgs. Library copy.  Over the course of an afternoon in Ohio, Pekar interweaves the history of Judaism from Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac on the alter for God to expressions of the Jewish faith in 2011 with his own personal history as a Jew and a critic of Israel. Panels are devoted to depicting both histories — the personal and the publicly shared — as well as the time Pekar and Waldman spend […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Comics, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Nonfiction, North America, Religion, United States • Tags: Harvey Pekar, J.T. Waldman, Joyce Brabner

A Bride’s Story by Kaoru Mori (Volume Seven)

February 22, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Translated from the Japanese by William Flanagan. Yen Press, 2015. 191 pgs. Library copy. On his journey from present-day Mongola to India, the British wannabe anthropologist Mr. Smith stays for a period of time with a wealthy trader and his beautiful, young wife named Anis. As a Muslim woman, Anis is required to remain hidden from Mr. Smith and other male, non-family visitors to the home. Therefore, she often passes her days in complete solitude save for the […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Asia, Comics, Fiction, Japanese, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Kaoru Mori

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

February 19, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Matilda Novak. HighBridge, 2005. Originally published 1999. 6 hours, 15 minutes. Library copy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, Lahiri’s collection of nine short stories address the conflict between one’s identity as an Indian and the America in which the individual now lives. This common theme connects all nine of the stories irregardless of the exact identity of the central character (male or female, Indian or Indian-American or white American) or the location (Boston, […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Fiction, India, New England, North America, ReadDiverse, Short Stories, United States • Tags: Jhumpa Lahiri, Matilda Novak