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The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley

I listened to this one after I recommended a friend read Clare Pooley’s Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting and discovered this one was available through our library. It’s been a fine audiobook for me. An elderly eccentric artist in London named Julian writes about himself in a notebook and leaves it in a cafe, inviting others to write about themselves and to get to know their...

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

This is my fourth Graham Greene book; I am enthusiastic about two and not-so-much about two. This falls into the not-so-much category. It was written in 1955 and set at the end of the era of French colonial control of Vietnam as told by a cynical British reporter. Thomas Fowler has lived in Saigon for some years, happy to be away from his wife in Britain who refuses him a divorce. He lives with...

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

I became a fan of Jhumpa Lahiri in 2008 when I read Unaccustomed Earth and Interpreter of Maladies. Sometime later she learned Italian and has translated at least one book from Italian to English and writes in Italian which was the case for this book of short stories. I believe my reservations about Ties, the book she translated, were not the result of shortcomings of the translation. I always...

Favorite Books for 2023

This year I read 47 books; six were non-fiction and more than half (26) were audiobooks. Of the “print” books, most were on kindle, which is much easier for me to read than paper books. Three of these books had the pandemic as an important backdrop and each of them spoke of it in ways that I connected to. A good year of reading. Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman. I have listened to...

The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardem

Jane Gardem turns up on my radar now and again for her trilogy that begins with Old Filth. “Filth” is the acronym for Failed in London, Try Hong Kong and the trilogy is a much respected work with the ending of the British Empire as the backdrop. One day I will read it, but at the moment, I am not up for reading about colonial privilege. This coming-of-age novel is set in 1946 in...

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Once again James McBride has brought me a lot of joy and continued to win my admiration for his work. This one is set in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and begins in 1972 when a skeleton was discovered in a well. Before much investigation begins, Hurricane Agnes hits and the skeleton and any other evidence is washed to the sea. The author turns then to Chicken Hill in Pottstown in the 1920s and 1930s...

Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe

I have read almost all of Nina Stibbe’s books. This one is non-fiction, like her first, Love, Nina, about moving to London to be a nanny for the two sons of Mary-Kay Wilmers, founder and former editor of The London Review of Books, and Stephen Frears, filmmaker (My Beautiful Laundrette and Philomena). That book is a compilation of her letters to her sister Vic; this one is in the form of a...

Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser

Thanks to Dorothy for loaning me this 1997 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I was not conscious of either the book or author. We meet Martin as a young teenager working in his father’s cigar store in late 19th century New York. He is a bright fellow, focused on attracting customers, and begins by making a connection with a nearby hotel where at age 14 he begins work as a bellboy...

Fraud by Zadie Smith

I listened to Zadie Smith read her fictional work about squabbles and disagreements in the Nineteenth Century literary world among authors William Ainsworth, Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank, and William Makepeace Thackery. The work also turns to the true story of a man who claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a baronetcy. Sir Roger was lost at sea in 1854; his mother posted ads in...

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

It was Ron Charles’ review in The Washington Post that induced me to read this 645-page book, and it was the memory of his enthusiasm that kept me at it when I nearly gave it up after two grim sections, one featuring a teenage girl and the other her pre-teen brother. Then came a section describing a horror that was averted by the entrance of a woman speaking about black dogs barking outside...

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