Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

April 5, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Harper, 2018. 464 pgs. Purchased. Kingsolver’s latest novel teeters together two stories set roughly 150 years apart through a shared locality, the planned community of Vineland, New Jersey. The present-day story is set late 2015 and early 2016 – the characters react to the rhetoric of Donald Trump’s campaign, although never refer to him by name – and follows the matriarch of Vineland’s newest residents, Willa. Willa’s husband recently lost his tenured professorship after the small, insolvent […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

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

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

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

November 5, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – print. Harper, 1998. Originally published 1988. 272 pgs. Library copy. Twenty-three year old Marietta buys a used car and sets her sights west leaving behind her small town in Kentucky and the single mother who raised her. Rechristening herself as Taylor Greer, Marietta has no plan as to where she’s headed or what she plans to do for money. All she knows is that a young woman in the 1980s named Taylor wouldn’t allow herself to be tied […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Adoption, Book Club, Fiction, Indigenious Peoples, North America, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

July 25, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. HarperCollins, 2008. 384 pgs. Library copy. Kingsolver’s memoir of “A Year of Food Life”came highly recommended by a favorite professor of mine. The book follows Kingsolver, her husband, and her two daughters from Tuscon, Arizona to their farm in Applachia. The family decides to swear off processed food, meat from CAFOs, and non-local fruits and vegetables. What’s more, they decide to eat only those foods currently in season for where they live which means no bananas (fine […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Food, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

February 12, 2011 by Christina

Fiction — print. Perennial, 1999. Originally published 1998. 543 pgs. Purchased. I knew only a handful of things about Kingsolver’s novel before picking it up: (a) the book was chosen as a part of Oprah’s Book Club, (b) it takes place in Africa, (c) it is the book people associate with Kingsolver best, and (d) it has sat on my bookshelf since at least January 2008. Oh, and based on the severely dogeared corner, not a single member of my […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Africa, Chunkster, Fiction • Tags: Barbara Kingsolver