The Wild Inside by Christine Carbo

August 12, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Atria Books, 2015. 417 pgs. Purchased. In 1987, fourteen-year-old Ted Systead and his father were camping in the backcountry of Glacier National Park when a grizzly bear attacked Ted’s father, dragging him out of the tent and to his death. Ted managed to stay awake all night, starting a fire to keep himself warm and plotting how he would get help. But, in his delirious and anxious state, Ted tripped over a rock, smashing his head […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Animals, Crime, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, United States • Tags: Christine Carbo

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

August 9, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by Derek Perkins. Random House Audio, 2018. 11 hours, 41 minutes. Library copy. Based on the title, I assumed this book would provide 21 ways of how homo sapienswill need to adapt to life in the twenty-first century, as envisioned in Harari’s Homo Deus. Instead, Harari builds from one chapter to the next to explain how the current stories we collectively tell ourselves to orient our outlook and provide social cohesion are no longer accepted by […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Nonfiction, Religion • Tags: Derek Perkins, Yuval Noah Harari

Circe by Madeline Miller

August 5, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2018. 393 pgs. Purchased. In Homer’s The Odyssey, Circe is a witch living on a remote island who changes Odysseus’ men into pigs. In Miller’s retelling, we are introduced to the complicated backstory to this seemingly minor character, the daughter of the sun god Helois who is perceived as a threat to the fragile dominion of Olympus over Titan. Banished to the island by Zeus, Circe must confront the unintended consequences of her […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fantasy, Fiction • Tags: Madeline Miller

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

August 2, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Vintage, 2013. Originally published 2012. 299 pgs. Purchased. In 1915, Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria to help deliver food and medical aid to Armenian refugees. Women and children reach the city center in horrific condition, having been force marched across the desert without adequate food and water. Their husbands, fathers, and adult sons were accused of being traitors to the Ottoman Empire and killed in what would come to be known as the Armenian Genocide. Only […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Fiction, Genocide, Middle East • Tags: Chris Bohjalian

Prime Cut by Alan Carter

July 31, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Michael O’Mara Books, 2014. Originally published 2011. 348 pgs. Purchased.  While the rest of the world teeters on the precipice of what will be known as the Great Recession of 2008, the Western Australian town of Hopetoun is alight with quick money from the 50-year mine next door. Home prices have soared as miners from around the world flock to Hopetown in hopes of working in the mine, and the local police sergeant Tess Maguire is […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Crime, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Alan Carter

An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal

July 26, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Penguin Press, 2017. 412 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back”, Rosenthal’s book is neatly split into two parts: one answering how healthcare came a profit-maximizing business and another attempting to offer readers ways to control their own bills. The first section examines all the reasons Americans have been told their healthcare costs so much – cost of innovation, greedy pharmaceutical companies, doctors drowning in debt – and […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Economics, Nonfiction, North America, United States

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami

July 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Neil Shah. Audible, 2015. Originally published 2014. 13 hours, 18 minutes. Purchased. In 1527, the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez sailed from the port city of Sanlúcar de Barramedawith 450 troops, officers, and slaves and another 150 sailors, wives, and servants to the newly discovered island of La Florida (present-day Florida, which is obviously not an island). His goal was to claim La Florida for the Spanish crown and find Apalacha, a city rumored to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Africa, Audiobook, Europe, Fiction, Indigenious Peoples, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Laila Lalami

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

July 19, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Adjoa Andoh. Recorded Books, 2014. Originally published 2013. 17 hours, 29 minutes. Purchased. Fifteen years after leaving Nigeria to study in America, Ifemelu has decided to return home to Lagos. Everyone – her parents, her friends, even her hair braider in Trenton, New Jersey – think she is crazy to return after securing the necessary immigration papers to live in the United States indefinitely. Yet, Ifemelu has grown tired of navigating the fault lines within […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Africa, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Adjoa Andoh, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

July 17, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2009. Originally published 1945. 377 pgs. Purchased.  In 1939, the four Wiltshire children enjoy an idyllic summer holiday with their parents, a middle-class couple from central London. Their holiday – and, in fact, their comfortable lives – ends with the children being informed that the two oldest, Laurel and Tony, will be sent to boarding school while the two younger children, Kim and Tuesday, will be sent with Nannie to live with their paternal grandparents. […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Noel Streatfeild

You Would Have Missed Me by Birgit Vanderbeke

July 15, 2019 by Christina

Print – fiction. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2019. Originally published 2016. 154 pgs. Purchased. The early 1960s, a young girl arrives in West Germany from East Germany with her parents. The family is settled into a camp for displaced people where the little girl befriends a family unit consisting of a woman and two men, who instruct the little girl to refer to them as her aunt and uncles. Her parents attempt to sever this […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke, Jamie Bulloch

Assumed Obligation by Kara Louise

July 12, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Lulu.com, 2008. Originally published 2007. 244 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. In this sequel to Assumed Engagement, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are headed to Paris with plans to dedicate a portion of their honeymoon to visiting and learning about a school for the deaf. A tenant of Darcy’s has adopted a deaf child, and both Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam are eager to set up a similar school at Pemberley to aid their tenant and others in Derbyshire. Meanwhile, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Austen Inspired, Europe, Fiction, France, United Kingdom • Tags: Kara Louise

Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

July 10, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Norwegian by Felicity David. Mariner Books, 2005. Originally published 2004. 320 pgs. Purchased. Near the base of Kollen Mountain, a little girl leaves her friend’s home after a sleepover and sets out with her toys, including a baby buggy, for the short walk home. Along the way, the little girl encounters neighbors who hastily say hello as they head to work until one man stops to offer her a ride home. A few hours […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Glass Key Award, Norwegian, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Karin Fossum