February Books of the Month

March 20, 2020 by Christina

February feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? I know it was a busy month for me because my calendar is packed with book club meetings, dinner plans with friends, and an introduction to quilting class on Sundays. Yet, from the vantage point of mid-March, it feels unimaginably footloose and fancy free. What did I do when I could go and do whatever I wanted? Well, what I did was read an astonishing 17 books during this month thanks in […]

Categories: 2020 Reads, Amish, Animals, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Book Club, Canada, Caribbean, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Juvenile, LGBTQA+, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, Persephone Books, ReadDiverse, Religion, Travel, United Kingdom, United States, Women's Prize • Tags: A. J. Finn, Adam Darlin, Audre Lorde, Becky Ohlsen, Brendan Sainsbury, Catherine Bodry, Chris Chalk, Christopher Ketcham, Coco Morante, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward, Jia Tolentino, John Lee, Jon Krakauer, Kamila Shamsie, Kevin Harrison Jr, L. M. Montgomery, Linda Castillo, Marghanita Laski, Richard Thomas, Rutina Wesley, Shelly Frasier, Steven Higashide, Susan O'Malley, Sy Montgomery

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

October 25, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Europa Editions, 2016. Originally published 2015. 208 pgs. Purchased. Yolanda and Verla awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves in an unfamiliar room wearing “stupid Amish clothes” and under guard by two men in boiler suits. Neither woman knows how or why she ended up here; neither woman feels like they can really trust the other enough to ask. Perhaps, after all, they are on a demented version of ‘Survivor’ or ‘Big Brother’ where they […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Dystopia, Feminism, Fiction, Oceania, Stella Prize • Tags: Charlotte Wood

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

October 18, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. 305 pgs. Purchased. Beatty’s novel opens with the unnamed narrator – we later learn he is known as Bonbon – arriving at the United States Supreme Court for his case, Me vs United States. The case alleges that the narrator has violated a number of tenants of the United States Constitution, including the Thirteenth Amendment banning the practice of slavery within the country. Through his ambulance-chasing lawyer, the narrator-turned-defendant plans to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Paul Beatty

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

October 11, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Algonquin Books, 2018. Originally published 2016. 256 pgs. Purchased. What is art? How does it encourage people to form connections with others, to express their love towards those in their lives? These are the questions posed by Heather Rose in her fictional exploration of the very real Marina Abramović performance of The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Over 75 days, Abramović sat largely immobile in the MoMA atrium […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Art, Awards and Prizes, Fiction, New York, North America, Stella Prize, United States • Tags: Heather Rose

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

October 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Barrett Whitener. Blackstone Audio, 1997. Originally published 1980. 13 hours, 32 minutes. Library copy.  My public library’s catalog record for this novel describes Ignatius J. Reilly, the main character of Toole’s Pulitzer-winning novel, as “an obese, self-absorbed, hapless Don Quixote of the French Quarter, whose half-hearted attempts at employment lead to a series of wacky adventures among the denizens of New Orleans’ lower depths”. I first encountered Toole’s novel when Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company presented […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Barrett Whitener, John Kennedy Toole

Black Rock White City by A.S. Patrić

October 2, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Transit Lounge, 2015. 157 pgs. Purchased. Yugoslavian refugees, Jovan and Suzan Brakochevich, resettled in the suburbs of Melbourne after their two young children died in a UN refugee camp during the Balkan War. Both husband and wife blame each other – Suzan didn’t eat the poisoned food so perhaps she knew; Jovan didn’t leave Sarajevo when Suzan wanted them to – and themselves for the death of their children, leaving their marriage on shaky ground as […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Balkans, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Oceania • Tags: A.S. Patrić

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

September 11, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. 474 pgs. Purchased.  Marie’s father committed suicide in Hong Kong in the days after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre — duel sins referred to only in hushed tones. Ten-year-old Marie is unsure how she is supposed to grieve for the father than abandoned her and her mother back in Vancouver months before the protests were brutally ended. And her distance from mainland China leaves her unsure as to why her father […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Awards and Prizes, Canada, China, Chunkster, Fiction, Giller Prize, North America, ReadDiverse, Women's Prize • Tags: Madeleine Thien

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

August 23, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Zainab Jah. Books on Tape, 2017. Originally published 2006. 18 hours, 10 minutes. Purchased.  Set in the 1960s, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel focused on the impassioned struggle of the largely Igbo population to establish the independent republic, Biafra, in southeastern Nigeria. In the early 1960s, readers are introduced to fraternal twins, Olanna and Kainene, and the men whom they become irrevocably tied to during the later portion of the 1960s. There is Odenigbo, a black […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Chunkster, Fiction, Nigeria, ReadDiverse, Women's Prize • Tags: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zainab Jah

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

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

June 17, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003. Originally published 1991. 280 pgs. Purchased. On a cold January night, an elderly Swedish farmer awakens in the middle of the night to an eerie feeling. As his eyes and ears adjust to the faint light cast across the remote landscape, the farmer realizes the back window of his neighbor’s home has been broken into. Hurrying next door, the farmer finds his neighbor bludgeoned to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Glass Key Award, Scandinavia, Swedish, Translated • Tags: Henning Mankell

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

May 15, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Ryan Anderson, Johnathan McClain, Robert Younis, and Thom Rivera. Highbridge, 2014. 26 hours. Purchased.  On December 3, 1976, gunmen opened fire inside the Jamaican home of Reggae superstar, Bob Marley. The attack occurred against the backdrop of the looming general elections – a event the American government was afraid would sweep a pro-Communist government into power — and only two days before Marley was set to perform at a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Caribbean, Chunkster, Fiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Johnathan McClain, Marlon James, Robert Younis, Robertson Dean, Ryan Anderson, Thom Rivera

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke

May 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 1990. 112 pgs. Library copy. At the start of Vanderbeke’s novella, a mother and her two teenage children sit down to enjoy a feast of mussels, a meal laboriously prepared for the husband who loves mussels and is expected to shortly arrive home with news of a promotion. The scene is set to be one of domestic tranquility, of the home that every German […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke, Jamie Bulloch