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…
Lisa Jewell Fiction 2023/ 370 pages None of This is True opens on June 8, 2019, at a nice restaurant near London. It is Alix’s 45th birthday, and she is celebrating with a crowd of her friends … noisy and boisterous, with a lot of booze flowing. Josie is also celebrating her 45th birthday at…
Emily Habeck Fiction 2023 | 419 pages In 21 years of reading The Deschutes Public Library community read, this is the first book I didn’t care for. I may not have finished it, if it weren’t for its central place among those who read in Bend. A first novel by Ms. Habeck, but one that…
Lynda Rutledge Historical Fiction 2021 | 355 pages The story is narrated by Woodrow Wilson Nickel, a fictional character. When the story opens, he is 105, and being the age he is, he wishes to write of the experience of a lifetime, one he had when he was only seventeen. Inspired by true events, the tale…
Michael Finkel Nonfiction 2023/ 225 pages Stéphane Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend Anne-Catherine, is believed to be the most prolific art thief of all time, conducting 239 heists, typically in broad daylight, from 172 museums, and amassing $2 billion in art works. Different from most (all?) other art thieves, during his heyday, he never sold…
Abraham Verghese Fiction 2023 | 725 pages I picked it up at the library, and then took it back unread. Then I did it again. And then a third time. I was intimidated by the length (900 pages large print; 725 regular print). But this last time, I committed and read it through. What a…