The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe

December 31, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribner, 2017. 416 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom”, Thorpe spent a year and a half in an English Language Acquisition (ELA) class at Denver’s South High School. The twenty-two students she shadowed arrived in America as refugees with little English comprehension from around the world, including Iraq via Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma, and El Salvador. Over this period of time, these students struggled to adjust to […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Asia, Book Club, Education, Middle East, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, South America, Thailand, United States • Tags: Helen Thorpe

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

December 30, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Ballantine Books, 2018. 352 pgs. Library copy. A man enters the premise at a women’s health clinic in Jackson, Mississippi and opens fire killing both the clinic’s owner and a nurse and wounding a doctor and a woman accompanying a minor. When the hostage negotiator, Hugh McElroy, arrives on scene, he learns the injured woman is his sister and the minor is his teenage daughter. Assuming his daughter, Wren, has an appointment at the clinic for […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Jodi Picoult

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

December 29, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Caroline Lee. Macmillian Audio, 2016. 17 hours, 20 minutes. Library copy.  Clementine and Erika have been best friends since childhood. While their lives have taken different turns over the years — Clementine has two little girls, Erika has always said she doesn’t want kids — the two women always make an effort to get together now and then. When Erika mentions that her neighbors, Vid and Tiffany, want to host Clementine’s family and Erika’s at […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Chunkster, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Caroline Lee, Liane Moriarty

The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indriðason

December 28, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Minotaur Books, 2017. Originally published 2013. 304 pgs. Library copy. During the 1940s, when Reykjavik served as a staging ground for the American military invasion of Europe, a young woman is founded murdered behind the National Theater. The area around the theater is known as the “Shadow District”, and the devious behavior conducted there often occurs without punishment. But this murder — and the American serviceman seen fleeing from the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Iceland, Icelandic, Translated • Tags: Arnaldur Indriðason

Fidelity by Susan Glaspell

December 26, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 1999. Originally published 1913. 358 pgs. Purchased. In 1900, Ruth Holland made the decision to leave her hometown of Freeport to be with the man she was in love with. Her lover, Stuart Williams, was married, and the scandal of Ruth’s actions — because women always carry the blame — divided the small Iowa town and the Holland family. “That part of her life had been cut away from her. With most lives the past […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Susan Glaspell

A Wells Landing Christmas by Amy Lillard

December 24, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Zebra, 2018. 352 pgs. Library copy. Years after he joined the Amish church yet traveled from Oklahoma to Florida, Zeb Brenneman has returned to the Amish community of Wells Landing to meet his twin brother’s new baby and spend Christmas with family. His joy over the season is dampened by the rumors he hears about the woman he once loved, Ivy Weaver. Ivy has largely retreated from her insular community, and she has done little to rebuke […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Amish, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Amy Lillard

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

December 23, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Japanese by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown. Amazon Crossing, 2018. 174 pgs. Free download from Amazon. Subtitled “One Man’s Escape from North Korea”, Ishikawa’s memoir is quite short – five chapters plus an epilogue – but it comprises one of the more moving and informative first-hand accounts of life in North Korea that I’ve encountered. I want to highlight the label of Informative because this the only book I’ve encountered that looks at […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Japan, Japanese, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Masaji Ishikawa

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

December 20, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Lorelei King. Random House Audio, 2014. 14 hours, 48 minutes. Library copy.  I purchased a printed copy of Smiley’s novel a little over two years ago, which is why I included the novel on my to-read list for 20 Books of Summer earlier this year. But the tiny print bothered my eyes, and I put the book aside until I could source one with larger print. I never did find an edition with larger print, […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, France, North America, United States • Tags: Jane Smiley, Lorelei King

Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius

December 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2010. Originally published 2006. 125 pgs. Library copy. In January 1943, a young, pregnant woman named Margherita takes a walk through the streets of Rome. Such a walk would be unremarkable where it not for the fact that she came to Rome to be with her husband, a member of the German Army fighting in North Africa. Her German nationality affords her certain benefits in Rome – a […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Italy, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Friedrich Christian Delius

A Love for Leah by Amy Lillard

December 16, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Zebra, 2018. 352 pgs. Library copy. Having returned to her hometown in Mississippi, Leah Gingerich has started a secondhand store in the community and agreed to raise her twin sister’s teenage son while Hannah works towards joining the Amish church. What Leah won’t do, though, is consider becoming Amish again. She and Hannah left nearly twenty years ago, and Leah has found her religious community among the more liberal Mennonite church. When Jamie Stoltzfus moves to the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Amish, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Amy Lillard

Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena

December 13, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis. Peirene Press, 2018. Originally published 2015. 196 pgs. Purchased. In Ikstena’s novella, the title refers to the emotional and physically nurturing (not) offered by the oppressive, political regime of the Soviet Union in present-day Latvia. A nameless mother and her nameless daughter serve as the narrators and central focus of the novella with Ikstena following them from 1969 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Latvian […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, Latvian, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Nora Ikstena

In the Woods by Tana French

December 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Steven Crossley. Penguin Audio, 2007. 20 hours, 24 minutes. Purchased. In 1984, twelve-year-old Adam Ryan is found clutching a tree in the woods of Knocknaree, a suburb of Dublin. This discovery would be unremarkable if Adam and his two friends hadn’t been missing for days and if one of Adam’s shoe wasn’t filled with blood. Adam is unable to remember how he ended up in the woods, and his two friends – a girl named […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Steven Crossley, Tana French