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April Reading Recap

May 1, 2020

april

What to say about April? That I had very little clue the month was ending because I’m lucky if I can remember what day of the week it is? That, despite having nowhere to go I read fewer books this month than any other month this year? I have no answers, except that we’re not in Kansas anymore. Normal is another world and anyone who thinks they can click their heels when these ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Feature Tagged: literary, mini-reviews, mystery, thriller, women

If I Had Your Face

April 29, 2020

face

  I would live your life so much better than you if I had your face. Last week, I visited historical Korea when I read Pachinko. I learned so much about the country, but once again, fiction is taking me into an aspect of Korea I had no idea existed. I know about the South Korean beauty business. It’s highly innovative with yummy products. What I didn’t know is the ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: cultural, debut, literary, Riverhead Books, Southeast Asia

The Knockout Queen

April 27, 2020

knockout

Michael and Bunny are the unlikeliest of friends. Polar opposites in almost every way: his mother is in prison so he lives with his aunt, while she lives in a mansion with her father. He is less of a young man than he is supposed to be with long hair, a pierced nose, small and slender. He likes other boys, but no one knows. She is literally too much of a girl. Growing and ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, contemporary life, literary

The Beauty of Your Face

April 15, 2020

beauty

All of her career Afaf has been a teacher. Now, she is the principal of a Muslim school for girls in a Chicago suburb. She’s also face-to-face with the man who has gone through her school shooting her students.  As the minutes between life and possible death tick by in The Beauty of Your Face, her mind travels to her past and the event that tore her family apart—the ... Read More...

Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, literary, racism

Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore

April 6, 2020

five best

When you encounter a scene like the one that opens Elizabeth Wetmore’s novel, Valentine, and the words …she imagines him facedown in the dust, lips and cheeks scoured by sand, his thirst relieved by only the blood in his mouth. sear themselves on your brain you know you are in for high-intensity reading and immersion in a heartbreaking world. A world where a 14-year-old girl ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, Harper, literary

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

March 27, 2020

glass hotel

A young woman named Vincent is at the heart of The Glass Hotel, a novel that stretches its plot around the globe and into the world of high finance, hotels, restaurants, and even global oceanic shipping. It’s a complex brew of stories and people who meet, side- step, brush up against, or collide, with each other in ways that mean much more to the big picture than they ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Knopf, literary, mystery

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