This was one of the best novels I’ve read in a very long time. I thought it would be about women struggling with infertility (provenance of mistaken belief: a half-listened…
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Camino Island
February 17, 2018Camino Island, by John Grisham, definitely felt like a guilty pleasure. I listened to it, for the neighborhood book club, while driving around town for a few weeks. It’s the…
Au Bonheur des Dames
January 11, 2018While I enjoyed this novel, in part for its detailed descriptions (Zola’s realism is exquisite), it also felt like it took me forever to read it. For a while I…
In Times of Siege
December 15, 2017Githa Hariharan’s 2003 novel offers a glimpse of what it’s like to teach at the university level without the guarantee of academic freedom. The protagonist is a History professor whose…
Ghachar Ghochar
November 6, 2017According to Suketu Mehta’s blurb on the front of the novel, “Vivek Shanbhag is an Indian Chekhov.” This is pretty accurate. Ghachar Ghochar is short, subtle, and totally compelling. The ending…
All the Missing Girls
October 27, 2017Another pick from the neighborhood book club. Like Gone Girl but with the innovation of narrating the story backwards. So you get the protagonist, an unsympathetically drawn woman from a small…
The Yacoubian Building
October 9, 2017I’m mentoring a senior capstone project on this novel, so I figured I’d better read it. For me, it started too slowly. Plot did not “thicken” until around page 80,…
The Giver
September 21, 2017Rather depressing story about what we might give up if we wanted a perfect world of “Sameness”: colors, music, real feelings, holidays, family bonds. Don’t get attached to the kid…
Emma
August 31, 20172017 is the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. I’m not sure why that is something to celebrate, but whatever. Austen fans are a peculiar breed. I am not one,…
The Whole Town’s Talking
August 23, 2017This has to be the whitest book I’ve ever read. Flagg’s newest (?) novel chronicles the evolution of Elmwood Springs, MO, from it’s origins as a Swedish immigrant farming settlement…