A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

May 15, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Ryan Anderson, Johnathan McClain, Robert Younis, and Thom Rivera. Highbridge, 2014. 26 hours. Purchased.  On December 3, 1976, gunmen opened fire inside the Jamaican home of Reggae superstar, Bob Marley. The attack occurred against the backdrop of the looming general elections – a event the American government was afraid would sweep a pro-Communist government into power — and only two days before Marley was set to perform at a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Caribbean, Chunkster, Fiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, Johnathan McClain, Marlon James, Robert Younis, Robertson Dean, Ryan Anderson, Thom Rivera

Becoming by Michelle Obama

April 17, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by the author. Random House Audio, 2018. 19 hours, 1 minutes. Purchased.  In 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady of the United States after her husband, Barack Obama, was elected President. Prior to that, Michelle attended Princeton and Harvard Law and worked as both a partner-tracked lawyer for a prestigious firm in Chicago and as an administrator in the University of Chicago medical system. These impressive achievements were – and continue to be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Michelle Obama

Thoughts on Three Book of the Month Selections

April 3, 2019 by Christina

About four years ago, a number of the members of my book club in Boston joined Book of the Month, a subscription service that mails you a newly published book out of five options once a month. I passed on subscribing for two reasons: I was able to pick up a number of these titles as read (and unread) castoffs at book club meetings I figured a new book would arrive each month and promptly be added to my bookshelves […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Candice Carty-Williams, Etaf Rum, Yangsze Choo

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

March 18, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Vintage, 2011. Originally published 2010. 622 pgs. Purchased.   Subtitled “The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”, Wilkerson’s book follows three individuals in order to construct a larger narrative about the movement of black Americans between 1915 and the 1970s. Historians estimate roughly six million black Americans moved from majority black southern states governed by white minorities to northern and western states where racism had not (yet) been codified through Jim Crow laws. The three individuals profiled […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Mountain West, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Isabel Wilkerson

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayşe Kulin

March 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Turkish by John W. Baker. AmazonCrossing, 2013. Originally published 2002. 395 pgs. Free download. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Selva married Rafael Alfandari, a Jewish man whose family settled in Turkey after being expelled from Spain in 1492. Neither the Alfandari family nor Selva’s parents, Fazil Resat Paşa and Leman Hanim, support the marriage and, after being cutoff, Selva and Rafael flee to Paris in the hopes of finding a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Genocide, Holocaust, Middle East, ReadDiverse, Translated, Turkish • Tags: Ayşe Kulin

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

February 14, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Penguin Press, 2017. 338 pgs. Purchased. In the master plan community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, conformity is key. Mia Warren – an artist and single mother – arrives with her teenage daughter, Pearl, on the promise that she will stay in one place until Pearl graduates. In order to enroll her daughter in Shaker Heights’ award-winning school district, Mia rents the top floor of a duplex from Elena Richardson and takes a part-time job at a local […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Adoption, Fiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Celeste Ng

The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay

February 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Grove Press, 2019. 448 pgs. Purchased. Following her mother’s unexpected death, Shalini finds herself set adrift amid a life of privilege in Bangalore, India. She is unstimulated and unfulfilled by her job as an accountant for a nonprofit – a fact her boss has started to notice and comment on – and is no longer interested in the cycle of working and partying that her friends are engaged in. As she searches for meaning, Shalini remembers a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Fiction, India, ReadDiverse • Tags: Madhuri Vijay

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

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 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

Shatila Stories by Omar Khaled Ahmad, Nibal Alalo, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safiya Badran, Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Samih Mahmoud, and Hiba Marei

October 9, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Peirene Press, 2018. Translated from the Arabic by Nashwa Gowanlock. Purchased. For Shatila Stories, the publisher commissioned nine Palestinian refugees — some born in the camp, some who fled to it from Syria — to tell the story of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. Their short stories were then interwoven together to create a narrative that follows Adam and his extended. Adam’s older sister finds liberty within the camp; the economic freedom of having her own job […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Arabic, Fiction, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Hiba Marei, Nibal Alalo, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Omar Khaled Ahmad, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Samih Mahmoud, Sefiya Badran

Talking to My Country by Stan Grant

July 15, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scribe, 2016. 230 pgs. Purchased. Grant, an Australian television journalist for CNN and member of the Wiradjuri people, begins his memoir with three intriguing sentences: “These are the things I want to say to you. These things I have held inside or even worse run from. It is not easy, what I have to say, and it should not be easy.” These difficult things are centered around the historical and ongoing treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia. […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Indigenious Peoples, Nonfiction, Oceania, ReadDiverse • Tags: Stan Grant