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

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

June 13, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Algonquin Books, 2018. Print. 308 pgs. Borrowed from a friend. Celestial and Roy are a young couple in Atlanta with a marriage that can be both wonderful and rocky. Roy’s career in sales has afforded her the opportunity to chase her dream of making handmade baby dolls, and the two of them are contemplating having the child that both sets of parents long for. Their dreams are put on hold after a trip to Louisiana to visit Roy’s […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Tayari Jones

The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

May 30, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by the author. Penguin Random House, 2017. 7 hours, 15 minutes. Library copy. On September 11, 2001, Lucy is sitting in her classroom at Columbia University prepared to discuss Shakespeare when Gabe burst into the classroom tardy. Lucy is immediately intrigued by Gabe; so much so that she goes home to his dorm room after the TA arrives announcing that a plane has hit one of the Twin Towers. That day, as America and the world […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Jill Santopolo

Amy Lillard’s Wells Landing Series

May 23, 2018 by Christina

For the last four weeks, I practically devoured the six novels that comprise Amy Lillard’s Wells Landing series. The fictional Wells Landing, Oklahoma is home to a Beachy Amish community — Beachy because they utilize tractors due to the rocky soil of Oklahoma — and each of Lillard’s novels focus on a young member of the community. The first three novels focus on three close-knit friends — Emily, Caroline, and Lorie — while the next three focus on secondary characters from the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Amish, Audiobook, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Amy Lillard, Rebecca Mitchell

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

May 6, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Doubleday, 2016. 322 pages. Purchased. Whitehead’s novel won both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and the 2016 National Book Award, the first novel to do so since 1993. It also won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Given this lavishing of praise and accolades, I added Whitehead’s novel to my to-read list but shied away from picking up the novel until I […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Booker Prize, Fiction, National Book Award, North America, Pulitzer Prize, ReadDiverse, Science Fiction, United States • Tags: Colson Whitehead

The Longest Night by Andria Williams

April 29, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Rebecca Lowman, Hillary Huber, and MacLeod Andrews. Random House, 2016. 13 hours, 42 minutes. Library copy.  On January 3, 1961, a nuclear reactor in the small Idaho town of Idaho Falls melted down. It is the only nuclear disaster on U.S. soil to result in a fatality — three, actually — and yet the event has been largely overshadowed by the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979. Williams’ fictional […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Andria Williams, Hillary Huber, MacLeod Andrews, Rebecca Lowman

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

April 22, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Christine Avila, Ozzie Rodriguez, Yareli Arizmendi, Gustavo Res, Gabriel Romero, and Jesse Corti. Random House Audio, 2014. 9 hours, 12 minutes. Library copy. After their fifteen-year-old daughter suffers a traumatic brain injury, Alma and Arturo Rivera move from their home in Mexico and immigrate to the United States. The family ends up living in a rather dilapidated apartment in Delaware; grateful for the opportunity to come to America legally — Arturo insists at more than one […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Christine Avila, Cristina Henriquez, Gabriel Romero, Gustavo Res, Jesse Corti, Ozzie Rodriguez, Yareli Arizmendi