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, 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

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

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

May 24, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Nan A. Talese, 2019. 337 pgs. Purchased. In McEwan’s alternative 1980s London, the British lose the Falkland War and Margaret Thatcher is pushed out of a power by a resurgent Labour Party led by Tony Benn. These events are minor, though, to the fact that Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, was never subjected to chemical castration for being a homosexual in the 1950s. As a result, Turning never committed suicide and the computer revolution of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Science Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Ian McEwan

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

They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple

April 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2005. Originally published 1944. 464 pgs. Purchased. When their mother died of influenza, eighteen-year-old Lucy abandoned her dreams to further her education and returned home to care for her father and siblings, including younger sisters Vera and Charlotte. Their sisterly bond morphed into one where Lucy took on the role of mother – protective, worrying, quick to correct and provide advice – and Vera and Charlotte shared secrets and jokes and excluded Lucy from their […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Dorothy Whipple

Thoughts on Three Book of the Month Selections

April 3, 2019 by Christina

About four years ago, a number of the members of my book club in Boston joined Book of the Month, a subscription service that mails you a newly published book out of five options once a month. I passed on subscribing for two reasons: I was able to pick up a number of these titles as read (and unread) castoffs at book club meetings I figured a new book would arrive each month and promptly be added to my bookshelves […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Candice Carty-Williams, Etaf Rum, Yangsze Choo

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

March 27, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Mulholland Books, 2018. 656 pgs. Purchased. The fourth installment of Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series opens with the wedding of Strike’s assistant turned junior private investigator, Robin Ellacott, and the fallout of Strike firing Robin at the end of Career of Evil over concerns for her safety.  Robin wants to go back to working for Strike as a private investigator, but Strike still hasn’t contacted her and her family, especially her fiancée Matthew, aren’t keen on the idea […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Crime, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: J.K. Rowling, Robert Galbraith

Minnie’s Room by Mollie Panter-Downes

March 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2002. 125 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes”, this collection of ten short stories presents the realities and dreams of the British people following the end of the World War II. Each story was originally published for the American publication The New Yorker between the years 1947 and 1965, a follow-up of sorts to her short stories from 1938 to 1944. Those wartime stories were published by Persephone Books in 1999 as Good Evening, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Mollie Panter-Downes

Lord John and the Hand of Devils by Diana Gabaldon

March 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Jeff Woodman. Recorded Books, 2007. 9 hours, 41 minutes. Library copy. Lord John Grey was first introduced in Dragonfly in Amber, the second book in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, as a young English soldier who attempts to save Claire from the wanted rebel Jamie Fraser. Jamie spares Grey’s life after he tricks the young boy into sharing information about the location of the English forces in the area. Grey and Jamie would cross paths again […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Crime, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Diana Gabaldon, Jeff Woodman

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

February 1, 2019 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Simon Vance. Blackstone Audio, 2005. Originally published 1855. 7 hours, 12 minutes. Library copy. In the fictional English county of Barsetshire, Septimus Harding serves as the warden of Hiram’s Hospital and Precentor of Barchester Cathedral. The hospital is supported by a charitable bequest from the Diocese of Barchester, and Harding draws a hefty salary for performing his duties as the warden. This hefty salary, though, attracts the attention of John Bold, a man who is […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, AP Literature, Audiobook, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Anthony Trollope, Simon Vance