This is my first Turgenev, and what a glorious one at that! Vivid, impressive, and complex, ‘First Love’ is about 16-year-old Vladimir’s conviction that he has found the girl of his dreams in 21-year-old Zinaida. He first espies her in a garden surrounded by a gaggle of besotted young men all waiting to do her bidding, and...
I finally turned the last “page” of Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone yesterday night, on my Kindle, and I waited. For that empty feeling that comes when a tale well told comes to a finish. For that rush when you know that, that book’s sequel is coming soon. But I didn’t feel any...
In ‘The Emperor of Shoes‘ set in Guangdong, China, Spencer Wise tells us the story of Alex Cohen, a 26-year-old heir to a thriving shoe business. Of course, the shoe business thrives on the backs of underpaid Chinese workers, which Alex begins to see slowly. Wise turns the spool unhurriedly, the various threads interleaving beautifully....
Over the past week, I finished reading three books. Two of them were extremely slim volumes, and absolute pageturners, which made it very easy for me to finish them quickly. Here are my reviews. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson Train Dreams pulled me in right away with its opening lines, In the summer of 1917 Robert...
I had never heard of Henning Mankell but I had heard, and even seen a couple of episodes, of Wallander. I couldn’t take the glacial pace, and the perpetually pissed looking Kenneth Brannagh after two or three episodes so I didn’t go further. But when I began reading “The Man from Beijing” I was immediately...
Here I am with my book review of 2018, as promised, and I couldn’t have got a better book to begin with than Katherine Arden’s “The Bear and the Nightingale.” I am not one for fantasy or science fiction but I have promised myself that I will move beyond my beloved go-to’s like literary fiction....
I enjoy stories set in WWII and particularly those that are based on real events. Pam Jenoff’s “The Orphan’s Tale” immediately tempted me for the same reasons when Lisa offered it to me for a book review. There was friendship, romance, history. It couldn’t go that wrong, I thought. The story revolves around Noa and...
The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart It’s been ages since I wrote a book review. Save for the teeny two sentences on Goodreads, I haven’t been doing much writing recently. Probably because I have been drunk on life in a good and bad way. Highs and lows one after the other have kept me distracted....
I have one copy of Helen Maryles Shankman’s brilliant book of collected stories named “They Were Like Family To Me” to giveaway! All you have to do is comment on this post with the name of one book that has left an imprint in your memory and why. I will pick one lucky winner who...
I am on a racism roll since the past two weeks. Don’t get me wrong. Last week, I finished reading Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, the day before yesterday I saw the movie American History X, and today I wrapped up The Monster’s Daughter by Michelle Pretorius, a racing historical thriller. All of them were wonderfully wrought,...
