Frozen Assets by Quentin Bates

October 14, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Soho Crime, 2011. Originally published 2010. 288 pgs. Library copy. Prior to the 2008 global financial crisis that bankrupted Iceland’s major banks, a blogger named Skandalblogger was insisting there was something between a minister in the government, his wife’s public relations firm, and plans to build a new power plant near Hvalvík, Iceland. When the head police officer of Hvalvík, a woman named Gunnhildur, is called to the harbor because of recently discovered body, few believe it […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Iceland • Tags: Quentin Bates

The Mothers by Britt Bennett

October 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Riverhead Books, 2016. 288 pgs. Gift from a friend. Grief-stricken over the sudden death of her mother, seventeen-year-old Nadia Turner starts acting out in the ways “The Mothers”, the older women of her church, disapprove of. One of those ways is her sexual relationship with the preacher’s son, Luke, who is older than her and still mourning the end of his football career. Luke wants to keep their relationship on the down low; Nadia thinks his request […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Brit Bennett

Shatila Stories by Omar Khaled Ahmad, Nibal Alalo, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safiya Badran, Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Samih Mahmoud, and Hiba Marei

October 9, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Peirene Press, 2018. Translated from the Arabic by Nashwa Gowanlock. Purchased. For Shatila Stories, the publisher commissioned nine Palestinian refugees — some born in the camp, some who fled to it from Syria — to tell the story of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. Their short stories were then interwoven together to create a narrative that follows Adam and his extended. Adam’s older sister finds liberty within the camp; the economic freedom of having her own job […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Arabic, Fiction, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Hiba Marei, Nibal Alalo, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Omar Khaled Ahmad, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Samih Mahmoud, Sefiya Badran

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

October 7, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harper, 2009. 508 pgs. Purchased. Young Harrison Shepherd is taken to Mexico by his mother in the late 1920s as she follows her heart — and her goal of marrying a more interesting and wealthier man than Harrison’s American father. There, Harrison falls in love with writing stories and keeping a diary of his experiences of his life in Mexico, of the Depression Era riots in Washington D.C., and of working for exiled Soviet leader Lev Trotsky. […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Chunkster, Fiction, Mexico, North America, United States, Women's Prize • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

October 4, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Harper, 2015. 288 pgs. Purchased. At the age of twenty-six, Jean Louise Finch — the famous “Scout” from To Kill a Mockingbird — returns to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama. Reunited with her her beloved father, Atticus Finch, and her Uncle Jack, Jean Louise is devastated to lear her father attends Citizens’ Council meetings where (male) community leaders deliver racist speeches against the black citizens of Maycomb. She thought her father stood for justice for all. Not the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Harper Lee

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov

September 30, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 2011. 128 pgs. Library copy. In a remote part of Kazakhstan, Soviet scientists and military personnel test atomic weapons as they race to catch up to the Americans. A young boy named Yerzhan lives near the test site with his mute mother, grandparents, and the daughter of their only neighbors. His grandfather discovers he is a child prodigy with instruments, including the violin, and […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Fiction, Peirene Press, Russian, Translated • Tags: Hamid Ismailov

Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indriðason

September 27, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Minotaur Books, 2015. Originally published 2012. 336  pgs. Library copy. Erlendur Sveinsson is a new patrolman working in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. Primarily assigned to the night shift, Erlendur’s police duties are largely constrained to arresting drunk drivers, corralling the city’s homeless population, and ticketing traffic violations. During one night shift, Erlendur crossed paths with a homeless man named Hannibal. The interaction was brief; Hannibal had been discovered living […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Iceland, Icelandic, Translated • Tags: Arnaldur Indriðason

Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson

September 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 2009. 112 pgs. Library copy. In the late 1870s, Thomas Davies works in the village of Downe in Kent, England as a gardener for the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. Davies does not believe in any given religion and refuses to attend church with the rest of the villagers at the start of the novella. Having recently lost his wife Gwyneth, Davies is […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Finnish, Peirene Press, Translated, United Kingdom • Tags: Kristina Carlson

Into Oblivion by Arnaldur Indriðason

September 9, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. Minotaur Books, 2016. Originally published 2014. 352 pgs. Library copy. In 1979, Erlendur is divorced, estranged from his young daughter, and working as a detective based out of Reykjavik. Like most of Iceland, he and his work partner, Marion Briem, are split on the presence of the American military at Keflavík. Icelanders have been told the Americans are needed; that the small, island nation would be at risk from the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Iceland, Icelandic, Translated • Tags: Arnaldur Indriðason

The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik

September 6, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 1999. 174 pgs. Library copy. The introduction to Ørstavik’s novella by the publisher, Meike Ziervogel of Peirene Press, is certainly an eyebrow-raising one. In it, Ziervogel recommends people who have read Fifty Shades of Grey read Ørstavik because the book: “…holds up a mirror to a part of the female psyche that yearns for submission. The story shows how erotic fantasies are formed by the relationship with our […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Norwegian, Peirene Press, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Hanne Ørstavik

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

September 2, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Francois Chau. Audible Studios, 2015. 13 hours, 53 minutes. Purchased. The narrator in Nguyen’s novel is a man serving in the South Vietnamese army as a caption and watching the collapse of his country in April 1975. He has grown increasingly disillusioned with the Vietnam War and the role of the Americans, whom he refers to as drug dealers now cutting off the supply. This disillusionment is further fostered by the fact the unnamed narrator […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Fiction, North America, Pulitzer Prize, United States, Vietnam • Tags: Francois Chau, Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

August 23, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Ann Arbor Media Group, 2006. Originally published 1826. 414 pgs. Purchased. Set in 1757 during the French and Indian War (or, Seven Years’ War for non-Americans), the second novel in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales follows two young women named Cora and Alice Munro as they travel through the woods from Fort Edward to join their father at Fort William Henry. The two women are escorted by Major Duncan Heyward of the British Army and a singing teacher named Gamut, and […]

Categories: 101 Great Books, 2018 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: James Fenimore Cooper