Category: New! (Page 8 of 12)

These are the newest books I’ve recommended.

‘HOW TO WALK AWAY’ – a good start for summer reading

June 11, 2018 /

I started through my summer reading list this week and am happy to recommend one book already: How to Walk Away: A Novel by Katherine Center.

Margaret is so close to having everything she ever wanted – a great job, a loving fiancé, and her whole life in front of her. One tragic event may take all of this away.

This book is notable because it deals with emotional and physical healing and how they intersect. It has elements of romance – somewhat predictable – and family drama – not so predictable. It is an inspiring read and a good reminder of what many of us take for granted every day. It has just the right amount of humor along with these deeper topics.

CIRCE – an enchanting book

June 5, 2018 /

I was intrigued by the book I’m recommending today after seeing a GIF on Twitter of the book cover sparkling in the sunlight (yes this is a beautiful foil cover). And I am thankful for this cover attracting my attention because I really, really enjoyed CIRCE by Madeline Miller, and now I can recommend it to you.

This is a tale of a misfit heroine set among the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. As the daughter of Helios, Titan god of the sun, Circe doesn’t quite fit in with the other gods and goddesses. She is not powerful like her father or alluring like her mother. When she turns to mortals for companionship she discovers she does have the power to use plants to create spells, pharmakis. Threatened and irritated by Circe, Helio banishes her to live out her (eternal) life on a deserted island.

But it is a beautiful island, and this is where Circe’s life really begins!
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‘Less’ – the gay Ulysses

May 25, 2018 /

I finished the new Pulitzer prize winner for fiction, Less: A Novel last night. The Pulitzer committee obviously went in a different direction this year to showcase humor – although last year’s winner, The Sympathizer, was also funny in parts.

The protagonist Arthur ‘Less’ is a gay man traveling the world to avoid his ex-lovers wedding. Less is a somewhat acclaimed writer; some of the international invitations he has accepted are prize ceremonies and other author focused events. He is anxious about turning 50 and being “the first homosexual ever to grow old” but he is (at the very beginning of the novel) also excited about his new book:

“But this new book! This is the one! It is called Swift (to whom the race does not go): a peripatetic novel. A man on a walking tour of San Francisco, and of his past, returning home after a series of blows and disappointments (“All you do is write gay Ulysses,” said Freddy); a wistful, poignant novel of a man’s hard life. Of broke, gay middle age.”

As a former Ulysses scholar I loved this reference to a “gay Ulysses” walking around San Francisco.

Me with a mojito in Havana, nearly 2 decades ago & the book that recently took me back there.

‘Next Year in Havana’ takes me back to Cuba

May 3, 2018 /

I’ve been to Cuba once, in 2001. It’s not something I talk about a lot (or have ever written about publically) because 1) Americans were not supposed to go there, and 2), it was a lifetime ago in many ways. What has stayed with me all these years is the beauty of the country. In fact, I remember thinking that if the place – Havana is the only place I really saw -was as beautiful as it could be (meaning the buildings were dilapidated etc.) I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

For nearly 17 years I have wanted to return to this beautiful and complicated place, and last week, I did, sort of, thanks to a new book by Chanel Cleeton Next Year in Havana.

“Ninety miles separate Cuba from Key West, the southernmost tip of the United States. Ninety miles that might as well be infinite.”

This book addresses all of Cuba’s complications, including its history and politics using a good story that includes mystery and romance! Moving back and forth between two time periods, (almost present day) and pre-Fidel, the story is told by two narrators:

‘The Room on Rue Amelie’ – new WWII fiction

April 12, 2018 /

It’s been awhile since I have been able to recommend new WWII fiction, but I just finished and enjoyed this new book by Kristin Harmel: The Room on Rue Amélie.

I have read A LOT of WWII historical fiction and keep a running list of the books in that genre that I recommend.

For better or worse depending on what type of books you prefer, Harmel’s new book is lighter reading than many of those in my list referenced above; it reads more like a romance, but its plot and themes are deeper being set in a turbulent and horrific time.

‘The World of Tomorrow’ is good for patient readers

April 6, 2018 /

As I finish up my Fall & Winter reading list, I can add The World of Tomorrow by Brendan Mathews to the books I would recommend. But this book I recommend only to patient readers.

This is an ambitious book. It starts in Ireland where two brothers ‘accidently’ steal a ton of money from the IRA. In disguise, they sail to New York where their other brother lives and set up camp in the ritzy Plaza hotel, living the high life off the bags of money. But soon we find out someone from their past is on their tail. The setting – on a micro level -includes the jazz joints of Harlem and the World’s Fair and all levels of New York society.

Though I got off to a slow start with this book and getting the background on all the characters was a bit exhausting, by the end I was fully invested in the characters and enjoyed all the places I had been taken.

“The Immortalists” is fantastic!

March 17, 2018 /

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin might be my favorite book of the year thus far.

This book is based on a creepy concept: In 1969 New York City, four siblings (ages 7-13) visit a traveling psychic who tells them the date they will die.

The book follows this family for the next five decades – to see how these propechies play out.

What is destiny and what is choice?

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

February 19, 2018 /

I was personally drawn to Kristin Hannah’s new book The Great Alone because it is set in the most beautiful place I have ever seen, Alaska. It is a novel of beauty and fear, love and heartbreak. The beautiful setting is also the source of some of the fear but not the worst of it.

Leni Albright is 13 when her dad decides to move their family to Alaska in 1974. He is a VietNam vet and POW and feels he needs the space and a new start. The family dynamic – they have moved around a lot inspired by the father’s big plans – reminded me some of the one portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Two kinds of folks move to Alaska, the book suggests, “People running to something and people running away from something.” This place can be “a Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next” to quote a character called Large Marge. But the epigraph (I love a good epigraph!) foreshadows there are more challenges to come for the Albrights beyond the long winters and hungry bears:

Favorite books of 2017

December 26, 2017 /

I read 44 books this year! Not nearly as many as I would have liked to read, but it’s more than I read last year, so I consider that a successful year of reading.

Like last year I’m going to wrap up the year by picking my favorite…but unlike last year I do not want to shout from the rooftops about the best book of the year (according to me:) Perhaps that book (for me) is still out there somewhere, and I just didn’t come across it yet.

My technique for picking favorites is imagining I can only keep 5 of the books I read in my bookcases – because a true test of the books I love is that I want to keep them in my collection.

So with the disclaimer that I did not read even close to ALL the books (who can??) here are my favorite books that were published in 2017 :

The Prague Sonata – a musical journey

December 10, 2017 /

Culturally and emotionally fulfilling, The Prague Sonata: A Novel is a quest set around music and war.

A young musicologist receives a gift of a hauntingly beautiful 18th century sonata manuscript, with the request she locate the other two movements to the sonata and put it into the hands original owner who separated it during WWII to protect it from the Nazis. The work is clearly the composition of a master composer but who?? And because the manuscript obviously has value she isn’t the only one trying to locate it.

Category: New! (Page 8 of 12)

‘HOW TO WALK AWAY’ – a good start for summer reading

CIRCE – an enchanting book

‘Less’ – the gay Ulysses

‘Next Year in Havana’ takes me back to Cuba

‘The Room on Rue Amelie’ – new WWII fiction

‘The World of Tomorrow’ is good for patient readers

“The Immortalists” is fantastic!

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Favorite books of 2017

The Prague Sonata – a musical journey

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