Thoughts on Three (More) Book of the Month Selections

October 23, 2019 by Christina

When I cancelled my Book of the Month subscription last month, the customer service representative asked why I was ending my membership after only one year. I hemmed and hawed, not quite sure how to explain that the monthly arrival of a new book was adding to my mountainous to-read pile rather than to my reading enjoyment. Despite making a point to try and read books as soon as they came into my apartment, I still had three unread books […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Caribbean, Chunkster, Crime, Danish, Europe, Fiction, New York, North America, ReadDiverse, Scandinavia, Translated, United States

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

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

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

August 21, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Riverhead Books, 2009. Originally published 1998. 480 pgs. Purchased. In the afterward to my Kindle edition, Waters sums up the plot of her novel in the most perfect way possible: “…oh dear, how lurid it sounded, how improbable, above all how niche — the tale of a Victorian oyster girl [named Nancy] who loses her heart to a male impersonator, becomes her partner in bed and on the music-hall stage, and then, cruelly abandoned, has a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, LGBTQA+, United Kingdom • Tags: Sarah Waters

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, Nigeria, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Adjoa Andoh, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett

June 24, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Gordon Griffin. Whole Story Audiobooks, 2013. Originally published 1986. 26 hours, 16 minutes. Purchased. Set in Bruges in 1460, the first book in Dunnett’s eight-partThe House of Niccolòseries introduces readers to Claes, a teenaged dyer’s apprentice who was raised from the age of ten by his employer, Marian de Charetty. Claes believes himself to be the legitimate son of Simon de St. Pol of Kilmirren, a Scottish lord who claims Claes (or, Nicholas van der […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Italy • Tags: Dorothy Dunnett, Gordon Griffin

The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

June 14, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Davina Porter. Recorded Books, 2002. Originally published 2001. 55 hours, 30 minutes. Library copy. The fifth book in Gabaldon’s Outlander series opens right at the conclusion of the proceeding book: Brianna and Roger have reconciled at the clan gathering in the colony of North Carolina where the Frasers have traveled to see Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta marry Jamie’s co-revolutionist from Culloden. The wedding, however, is interrupted by the arrival of the local magistrate, who proceeds to arrest […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Chunkster, Fiction, North America, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Davina Porter, Diana Gabaldon

The Buried by Peter Hessler

May 29, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Penguin Press, 2019. 480 pgs. Purchased. After years of living and working in China as a journalist for The New Yorker,Hessler moved with his wife, Leslie, and infant twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. The same year the Egyptian Arab Spring began, resulting in the overthrow of the dictator Hosni Mubarak and the election of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi. As Hessler documents in his book, Morsi would serve as president for barely a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Chunkster, LGBTQA+, Nonfiction • Tags: Peter Hessler

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

Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon

May 3, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Davina Porter. Recorded Books, 2005. 44 hours, 50 minutes. Purchased. As the conclusion of Voyager, Claire and Jamie Fraser found themselves washed ashore the coast of Georgia with Jamie’s nephew, foster son, and step-daughter turned foster-daughter-in-law. A hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean destroyed their ship and waylaid their plans to travel back to Scotland from Jamaica and return Ian Murray back to his mother, Jamie’s sister. At the start of Drums of Autumn, the fourth book […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, North America, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Davina Porter, Diana Gabaldon