The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko

January 10, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Longstreet Press, 2001. Originally published 1996. 258 pgs. Borrowed from my dad. I grew up with the term “millionaire next door” in my vernacular. My mom (and, to a lesser extent, my dad) pontificated on the value of becoming an under-the-radar millionaire throughout my childhood. (Why buy new books when you can get them from the library from free?!?) Now that I’m an adult, I see how their understanding of this term has shaped how I approach […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Economics, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko

The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe

December 31, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribner, 2017. 416 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom”, Thorpe spent a year and a half in an English Language Acquisition (ELA) class at Denver’s South High School. The twenty-two students she shadowed arrived in America as refugees with little English comprehension from around the world, including Iraq via Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma, and El Salvador. Over this period of time, these students struggled to adjust to […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Asia, Book Club, Education, Middle East, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, South America, Thailand, United States • Tags: Helen Thorpe

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

December 23, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Japanese by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown. Amazon Crossing, 2018. 174 pgs. Free download from Amazon. Subtitled “One Man’s Escape from North Korea”, Ishikawa’s memoir is quite short – five chapters plus an epilogue – but it comprises one of the more moving and informative first-hand accounts of life in North Korea that I’ve encountered. I want to highlight the label of Informative because this the only book I’ve encountered that looks at […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Japan, Japanese, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Masaji Ishikawa

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

November 27, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by Will Patton, Ann Marie Lee, and Danny Campbell. Random House Audio, 2017. 9 hours, 4 minutes. Library copy. Prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s, a tribe of Native Americans known as the Osage were among the richest people in the United States. Their wealth was derived from the oil under their tribal lands in Oklahoma; lands they were pushed onto from Kansas and other Plains states by white settlers and the American government. […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, National Book Award, Native Peoples, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Ann Marie Lee, Danny Campbell, David Grann, Will Patton

Maria Fitzherbert by James Munson

November 20, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Da Capo Press, 2001. 320 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. One of the books I remember reading as a teenager with great fondness is The Secret Wife of King George IV by Diane Haeger, a fictionalized account of the love affair and marriage between a Catholic Marie Fitzherbert and the protestant heir to the British throne. After rereading that novel in 2009, I decided I wanted to read a nonfictional account of this scandalous event in British history. It took […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Nonfiction, United Kingdom • Tags: James Munson

Lost Connections by Johann Hari

November 13, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Bloomsbury USA, 2018. 336 pgs. Library copy.   Hari spent years taking anti-depressants under the belief that his depression was driven by a chemical imbalance in his brain. This is what his doctor told him when he was a teenager, and it is what he continued to believe as his depression remained and his dosage increased year after year. Eventually, though, Hari started to hear anecdotes that made him wonder if the theory his doctor sold […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Germany, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Johann Hari

I Was Told to Come Alone by Souad Mekhennet

October 28, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Henry Holt and Co, 2017. 368 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad”, Mekhennet’s memoir begins with a recounting of her childhood in Morocco. Born in Germany, Mekhennet was sent to live with her grandmother in Morocco while her mother and father worked as a cook and cleaner, respectively, in Germany. Her exposure to the language and to her family’s history as Muslims in North Africa may have set her apart from […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Book Club, Europe, France, Germany, Middle East, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, Religion • Tags: Souad Mekhennet

The Waste Land and Other Writings by T.S. Eliot

October 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Borders Classics, 2007. Originally published 1922. 151 pgs. Purchased. This collection of poems and essays includes a selection of Eliot’s poems written between 1917 and 1920, critical essays on poetry and the nature of criticism itself from 1917 to 1923, and “The Waste Land”, which was published in 1922 and is largely considered Eliot’s masterpiece. Poetry is not a particular love of mine; I often find myself caught up in cleverness of the rhyme rather than the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Classics, Classics Club, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry • Tags: T.S. Eliot

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

October 16, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. Vintage International, 1989. Originally published 1986. 203 pgs. Purchased. In Levi’s last book before his death, he sets out to examine the concepts of forgiveness, guilt, and memory in the context of his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz. He includes replies to his memoir from Germans, who struggle with how they should feel in light of what their parents did, and his reaction to children and adults from around […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Italian, Italy, Nonfiction, Poland, Translated • Tags: Primo Levi

Rick Steves’ Guidebooks for Berlin and Iceland

October 2, 2018 by Christina

Last month, my family and I spent a week in the capital of Germany followed by a week driving the Ring Road of Iceland. Whenever I travel to Europe, I like to utilize Rick Steves’ guidebooks as I find his books to be informative, well-formatted, and filled with walking tours of the featured destinations. The latter part is a particularly important aspect of a guidebook for me as I find walking to be one of the best ways to see […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Germany, Iceland, Nonfiction, Travel • Tags: Cameron Hewitt, Ian Watson, Rick Steves

Fear by Bob Woodward

September 25, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Simon & Schuster, 2018. 357 pgs. Purchased. When my uncle emailed informing me that he purchased this book for our shared Kindle account, he said it seemed wasteful to buy a book about how Trump is crazy when we already know he’s crazy. I shared his sentiment, but I was intrigued enough to pick it up because the author is Bob Woodward, the journalist who uncovered the Watergate cover-up. Subtitled “Trump in the White House”, Woodward’s […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Bob Woodward

Edith’s Story by Edith Velmans

August 12, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Bantum, 2001. Originally published 1998. 256 pgs. Gift from my mom. Subtitled “The True Story of a Young Girl’s Courage and Survival During World War II”, Velmans’ story begins in the 1950s with the birth of her twin daughters at a hospital in the Netherlands. She shares her hospital room with Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis and returned Anne’s diary to her father at the end of the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Edith Velmans