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 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

Dance by the Canal by Kerstin Hensel

October 9, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jen Calleja. Peirene Press, 2017. Originally published in 1994. Purchased. Born the daughter of a famous surgeon and a society hostess, Gabriela von Haßlau is expected to fulfill the high expectations of her parents and, later, the Communist leaders of the East German town of Leibnitz. But Gabriela finds herself unable to please either power structure in her life. To her parents, she is a failure at the violin and at rubbing […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Jen Calleja, Kerstin Hensel

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

October 7, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. St. Martin’s Press, 2019. 320 pgs. Purchased. As a firefighter in Austin, Texas, Cassie Hanwell is accustomed to running into emergencies when others are running away. As one of the few female firefighters, Cassie is accustomed to people questioning her fitness for service during those tense moments. But there are two situations Cassie has always run away from: her estranged mother’s desire to spend time with her after leaving Cassie and her father for another man on […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: Katherine Center

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

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

September 30, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2017. Originally published 1931. 326 pgs. Purchased.  For the past two decades, the Stevens family has taken a two-week holiday in Bognor Regis on the southern coast of England. The family has their routine down; tasks and chores are handed out the night before in order to make sure they can leave their home at 22 Corunna Road in Dulwich in time to catch the train via Clapham Junction to their holiday destination. Upon arrival, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: R.C. Sherriff

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

Faces on the Tip of My Tongue by Emmanuelle Pagano

September 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis. Peirene Press, 2019. 128 pgs. The short stories included in this collection are connected through its shared characters, the shared setting of rural France, and the shared themes of dispossession, hitchhiking, and suicide. Some of these shared connections are stronger than others; there was, for example, little about the setting that stood out as distinctly French to me. If I had not read about the setting in […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, French, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Emmanuelle Pagano, Jennifer Higgins, Sophie Lewis