Anthony Marra | Fiction 2022, 416 pages The story is about a young woman who emigrates from Italy to the US and, in 1941, is hired at Mercury Pictures. It sounded interesting! But I did not survive. The average reading level of best-selling books, across genres, is 7th-grade. While many novels (especially) are dumbed down…
John Boyne Novel 2017 | 580 pages I am struggling a bit to write this review. I guess it is because this book is more of an epic than a novel. It is large and deep and bold. Thank you, Pam, for recommending this book. Cyril’s mom is 16 and pregnant when she is thrown…
Kristin Hannah Historical Fiction 2024 | 480 pages The longest wait at the library finally came to an end! After months of moving up the wait list, I finally received a library copy of the immensely popular The Women. It was worth the wait. I thought it was a non-fiction book until I brought it home…
Scott Alexander Howard Fiction 2024 | 290 pages In this debut novel by Scott Alexander Howard, an intriguing premise is set. The valley where the townspeople live is surrounded by mountains. But the mountains are very unique. If you pass over them to the east, you will be in the same town twenty years ahead in…
Barbara Davis Fiction 2023 | 425 pages Thank you, Donna, for suggesting this fun book, The Echo of Old Books. Ashlyn is the proprietor of a rare books store and is gifted with psychometric abilities that allow her to read the vibrations of old books and sense their previous owners’ feelings. When she picks up an…
Kevin Kwan Fiction 2024 | 467 pages I loved this book from page one. I don’t know why books about superbly rich people keep showing up on my bookshelf these days but Lies and Weddings just seems to have none of the ostentatious excess of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post. The super-rich characters in…
Celeste Ng Fiction 2022 | 235 pages The three pillars of PACT: Outlaws promotion of un-American values and behaviors. Requires all citizens to report potential threats to our society. Protects children from environments espousing harmful views. It is Cambridge, Massachusetts, just about a decade after PACT was passed by the House and Senate and became…
Kazuo Isighuro Fiction 1989/ 245 pages The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel-Prize winning British author Ishiguro. (See my blog post on another Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun.) The protagonist in Remains of the Day, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a fictitious stately home…
Joyce Maynard Fiction 2023 | 404 pages The Bird Hotel is a visual extravaganza. Reading it, I can see the flowers, the birds, the lake, the volcano, and the 100 steps down to the hotel, La Llorona, that Maynard writes about so masterfully. I am very moved by an author who can create such a visually…
Niall Williams Fiction 2019/ 380 pages Sometimes a simple, dated story can be completely delightful! This is the story of Faha, Ireland, a small rural town, in which the winter rains finally stop after months of grey, dampness and wet. The first telephone arrives and then, god forbid, “the electricity” arrives. The town is divided…