Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

December 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Random House, 2009. 349 pgs. Purchased. In August 1974, New Yorkers awaken to find a mysterious tightrope walker is traversing between the Twin Towers on a wire suspended a quarter mile above the ground. No one knows who the (wo)man might be; no one knows if this is a sales stunt or a suicide plan. In McCann’s novel, though, the tightrope walker is not the focus. Instead, the performer’s daring feat serves as a backdrop for exploring […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Colum McCann

She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

November 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Penguin Press, 2019. 310 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement”, Kantor and Twohey’s book recounts the events leading up to their October 5, 2017 publication of a piece in the New York Times outlining how Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexual harassed and abused women in his employment for decades. The two show how nondisclosure agreements silenced the women who did come forward, preventing them from sharing their stories or […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, New York, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey

The Time In Between by María Dueñas

September 27, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn. Atria Books, 2011. Originally published 2009. 626 pgs. Purchased.  After following her lover from Spain to Morocco, Sira Quiroga is suddenly left abandoned and penniless in the Protectorate at the start of the Spanish civil war. The illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, Sira is accused by her half-brother of robbing their father and faces prosecution should she secure the funds to return home. Using her wits and her […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Book Club, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Spain, Spanish, Translated • Tags: Daniel Hahn, María Dueñas

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

September 25, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by George Guidall. Simon & Schuster, 2012. 20 hours, 3 minutes. Purchased.  On a cold March night in 1896, New York Times crime reporter John Schulyer Moore is summed to the East River of New York City by his friend, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. As a psychologist – or, “alienist”, as the profession was then known – Kriezler has been brought in by the newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in examine the mutilated body and help […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Chunkster, Crime, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Caleb Carr, George Guidall

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

September 23, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. W.W. Norton, 2012. Originally published 1950. 292 pgs. Purchased.  On a cross-country train trip, Guy Haines makes the mistake of telling a stranger his business. Upon hearing how much Guy desires a divorce from his estranged, pregnant wife in small town Texas, Charles Anthony Bruno decides to murder the young woman and free Guy from her derailing his career as a budding architect. The offer originally sounds like a joke to Guy; something Bruno offers as […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Patricia Highsmith

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

September 4, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Knopf, 2015. 371 pgs. Library copy. Set in the not-too-distant-future, Bacugalupi’s novel finds the southwestern United States desolate and abandoned after a series of Category 6 hurricanes – a new categorization on our 1 to 5 scale – flattens coastal Texas and a massive, continuous drought has stopped the Colorado River from flowing downstream at the rate required by the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The details are sketchy as the story largely takes place in the […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Dystopia, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Paolo Bacigalupi

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

May 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Riverhead Books, 2013. Originally published 2012. 402 pgs. Purchased.  In the 1920s and 1930s, Louise Brooks became a famous silent film actress and dancer and was noted for her bob hairstyle, a unique take on the poplar flapper persona of the time. In Moriarty’s fictional account, Louise is a fifteen-year-old girl leaving Kansas for the first time to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Louise’s parents insist she be accompanied by a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Laura Moriarty

Becoming by Michelle Obama

April 17, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by the author. Random House Audio, 2018. 19 hours, 1 minutes. Purchased.  In 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady of the United States after her husband, Barack Obama, was elected President. Prior to that, Michelle attended Princeton and Harvard Law and worked as both a partner-tracked lawyer for a prestigious firm in Chicago and as an administrator in the University of Chicago medical system. These impressive achievements were – and continue to be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Michelle Obama

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

April 5, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Harper, 2018. 464 pgs. Purchased. Kingsolver’s latest novel teeters together two stories set roughly 150 years apart through a shared locality, the planned community of Vineland, New Jersey. The present-day story is set late 2015 and early 2016 – the characters react to the rhetoric of Donald Trump’s campaign, although never refer to him by name – and follows the matriarch of Vineland’s newest residents, Willa. Willa’s husband recently lost his tenured professorship after the small, insolvent […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

The Kurdish Bike by Alesa Lightbourne

March 1, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Self-published, 2016. 324 pgs. Library copy. When oil prices were high and ISIS had yet to sweep across Iraq and Syria, American teacher Theresa Turner was recruited to teach at an international academy in an autonomous region of Kurdish Iraq. Financially underwater from divorcing her unnamed husband, Turner had previously worked as an English teacher in Saudi Arabia and is eager to accept a job in a portion of the world where she might experience a bit […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Education, Fiction, Middle East • Tags: Alesa Lightbourne

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams

February 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Riverhead Books, 2018. 304 pgs. Library copy. Apricity is happiness, proclaims the company’s advertising slogan for a machine that reads your DNA from a cheek swab and provides three recommendations that will enhance your happiness. Its suggestions run the gambit; everything from arrange fresh flowers to cut off the tip of your middle finger, “Pearl had always marveled at this: to think that the solution to one’s happiness lay next to the residue of the bagel […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Dystopia, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Katie Williams

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

January 24, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Carrington MacDuffie. Blackstone Audiobooks, 2007. Originally published 1943. 16 hours, 17 minutes. Born in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn in 1901, young Francie Nolan has fallen in love with reading. She’s determined to read every single book in the small, public library, and has already made her way through the As when Smith’s novel opens. Along with a love of reading, Francie also possess a keen ability for observation, noticing the plant in the bowl […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Betty Smith, Carrington MacDuffie