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

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

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

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

The Country Ahead of Us, the Country Behind by David Guterson

August 5, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Vintage, 1996. Originally published 1989. 176 pgs. Purchased. Guterson’s collection of short stories are largely set in the Pacific Northwest and are focused on the transition from childhood to adulthood and the relationship between man and nature. There are another six stories in the collection for a total of ten, but the four recounted below are the ones that stood out to me as I was reading the collection and the ones that continue to remain with me […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, Short Stories, United States • Tags: David Guterson

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

July 19, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Free Press, 2012. 250 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “My Month of Madness”, Cahalan’s memoir recounts the sudden manifestation of psychosis, including intense bouts of paranoia, she experienced at the age of twenty-four. Concerned about her erratic behavior, Cahalan’s family and boyfriend pushed her — and, later, her doctors — to seek a diagnosis for her behavior, rejecting the suggestion that she is detoxing from too much alcohol consumption or presenting with preliminary signs of schizophrenia. The one […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, New York, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Susannah Cahalan

Dark Money by Jane Mayer

July 17, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Anchor, 2016. 464 pgs. Library copy.  Subtitled “The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right”, Mayer expands on her 2010 article for The New Yorker on the Koch brothers’ “war against Obama” and follow how the Kochs and other billionaire families in the United States, including the family of the current Secretary of Education, have reshaped the political landscape of America through campaign financing. “Presidents might surround themselves with Secret Service agents […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Chunkster, Economics, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Jane Mayer

The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

July 12, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Cady McClain and Grace Experience. Random House Audio, 2017. 9 hours, 38 minutes. Library copy.  When Lianna Ahlberg awakens one morning at her parents’ home in Vermont and realizes her mother, Annalee, is missing, she immediately feels the worst because Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction causes her to wander out of the house and into dangerous situations. Once, Annalee sleepwalked right on to the ledge of the bridge over Gale River, requiring Lianna to pull […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: Cady McClain, Chris Bohjalian, Grace Experience

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

July 1, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Simon & Schuster, 2017. 512 pgs. Library copy. Hillary Clinton received three million more votes than her opponent — a man who was vulgar, violent, and unqualified to be President of the United States — in the 2016 Presidential Election. Yet he won the 70,000 or so votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois needed to win the Electoral College, and Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. So what happened? At this point […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Chunkster, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Hillary Rodham Clinton

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

June 20, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Kirby Heyborne and Ariadne Meyers. Listening Library, 2015. 11 hours, 4 minutes. Library copy.  Quirky and unpredictable Theodore Finch counts his days forward from the last time he slept. Grieving Violet Markey counts her days down until graduation, until she can move on with her life after high school. Moving on, though, doesn’t look the way Violet always planned. The website she started with her sister, who didn’t survive the car crash she and Violet were […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Fiction, North America, United States, Young Adult • Tags: Ariadne Meyers, Jennifer Niven, Kirby Heyborne