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

Part Time Cowboy by Maisey Yates

January 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. HQN Books, 2015. 400 pgs. Library copy. A close friend raved about this book back in September 2017, saying that it completely changed her mind about the subgenre of cowboy romance novels. Such a claim was enough for me to add the eBook to my holds at the public library and wait for a copy to load onto my Kindle. I was on the hold list for over a month before either of us realized the […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Maisey Yates

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, 20BooksofSummer, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, Short Stories, United States • Tags: David Guterson

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

January 8, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harper Perennial, 2003. Originally published 1993. Print. 354 pgs. Purchased. Three years after the events of The Bean Trees, young Turtle and her adoptive mother Taylor (formerly known as Marietta) are on their way home from visiting the Hoover Dam when Turtle announces she saw someone go over the ledge of the dam. A little girl of few words, it takes Taylor some time to pull all the necessary information from Turtle. But she believes her daughter is telling the truth […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Adoption, Fiction, Indigenious Peoples, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

November 25, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Touchstone, 2013. 369 pgs. Library copy. A friend introduced me to Brosh’s blog of the same name several years ago, and I spent far too many hours laughing my way through the archives. Unfortunately, the blog has since gone on hiatus but one of her comics lives on an internet meme and some of the best stories from her site have been compiled in this book, subtitled “Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Comics, Nonfiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Allie Brosh

Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson

October 21, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Vintage, 1995. 460 pgs. Purchased. Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, Guterson’s novel is the most recently published novel on my list for the Classics Club. Off the coast of Washington on San Piedro Island in 1954, Japanese-American Kabuo Miyamoto is accused of murdering a local fisherman named Carl Heine Jr., who was found entangled in the drift of his boat out at sea. The accusation relies on the still raw history between Carl Jr. and Kabuo, between the Caucasian […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, AP Literature, Chunkster, Crime, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: David Guterson

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

May 26, 2013 by Christina

Nonfiction — Large print. Thorndike Press, 2013. Originally published 2012. 623 pgs. Library copy. Four years after losing her mother to cancer, watching her family scatter to the winds, losing her marriage to a man she still loves, and losing herself to drugs and liaisons with a series of inappropriate men, Strayed decides she has nothing more to lose and finds herself drawn to the idea of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the California-Mexico border to the […]

Categories: 2013 Reads, Chunkster, Nonfiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Cheryl Strayed

Seattle City Guide by Becky Ohlsen

July 27, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Lonely Planet Publications, 2004. 250 pgs. Purchased. I have been calling Seattle home for the last ten weeks after relocating here for a summer internship. Having only visited the city once before (and even then spending all my time visiting colleges and camping on the San Juan Islands), I knew I had to find a guide to the city in order to find something to fill my time off work. This guidebook — published in 2004 — […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Nonfiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, Travel, United States • Tags: Becky Ohlsen

The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould

June 1, 2011 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harvest House, 2011. 325 pgs. Library copy. A dusty carved box containing two locks of hair and a century-old letter regarding property in Switzerland, and a burning desire to learn about her biological family lead nurse-midwife Lexie Jaeger from her home in Oregon to the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country. There she meets Marta Bayer, a mysterious lay-midwife who desperately needs help after an Amish client and her baby die. I normally try not to spoil books […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Amish, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Leslie Gould, Mindy Starns Clark

A Bride in the Bargain by Deeanne Gist

June 30, 2009 by Christina

I sort have this weird fascination with the 1860’s mail-order brides, so when A Bride in the Bargain popped up on my radar, I immediately snapped it up. The story revolves around Joe Denton and Anna Ivey. Joe’s a lumberjack living near Seattle who desperately needs a wife, a scarce “commodity” in the Washington Territory. Because he doesn’t have a death certificate for his first wife, who died before she joined him out west, Joe stands to loose half his […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Deeanne Gist

Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke

April 29, 2009 by Christina

I used to watch the Hallmark movie version of Oke’s bestselling book over and over again, and I was interested in reading the original book. However, as I came to find out, the movie version is vastly different and much better. The characters in Oke’s book appear to be very one-dimensional — Marty refuses to be a bad wife and Clark is stoic and cold — in their marriage of convenience. And the plot as a whole was very simplistic […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Janette Oke

Odd Mom Out by Jane Porter

January 15, 2008 by Christina

Fiction — print. 5-Spot, 2007. 423 pgs. Library copy. Marta Zinsser, a transplant from New York City, clearly does not fit in with the fellow mothers of the wealthy Seattle suburb she and her ten-year-old daughter relocated to, but she’s perfectly fine with that fact. Her daughter, on the other hand, abhors the fact that her mother doesn’t wear sweater sheets, drives a Harley, and therefore doesn’t fit in. I selected Porter’s novel because of the bright colors on the […]

Categories: 2008 Reads, Fiction, North America, Pacific Northwest, United States • Tags: Jane Porter