My friend Molly mentioned listening to this book and was wowed by the beautiful language. I had recently told her about the book by Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors, that both reminded me of Somerset Maugham books and had him as a character. So I listened to it myself and once again fell in love with Somerset Maugham. The mother of the beautiful Kitty, the main character, has hopes that her...
Although I had reservations about the previous book I read by Banana Yoshimoto, I wanted to try this one, her most well-known and loved. The main character, Mikage, begins by telling us how much she loves kitchens of all types. She is happy when she is in one and in her grief at losing her grandmother, she can only sleep in the kitchen. Her grandmother, along with her grandfather, had raised her...
The Alice in question is Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who became known as a White House Princess and then a Washington Power Broker, as the subtitle has it. Her life began inauspiciously: her mother died within two days of her birth, leaving her father Teddy Roosevelt bereft, especially so, as his mother died that same day. She was born in 1880, had her debutant ball in the White House in 1902...
Jeanne Theoharis is a professor at Brooklyn College and has written eleven books on the topics of civil rights and Black Power movements. This one was written in 2013 and is the first definitive political biography of Rosa Parks. The audiobook I listened to was recorded in 2024 and has a substantial introduction, occasioned by newly available papers, photographs, and other materials of Rosa Parks...
I don’t remember where I saw a reference to this very new book; the only major newspaper review I have seen was done by The Guardian and only 29 people have written about it in Goodreads. I’m hoping it will receive the appreciation I believed it deserves. I was intrigued by the unique idea of 101 readers, many you’ve heard of, reading seven or eight minute descriptions of a wide...
This one will certainly be on my list of favorites for the year. The story is set in 1910 and 1921 in Malaysia and is told in the style of Somerset Maugham’s stories from that location, and is written by a person whose ethnic group was on the receiving end of the racism of the British. While the casual racism and homophobia of the characters are apparent, they become fully human. The story...
The Australian Kate Grenville is one of my favorite authors; I especially love her books The Lieutenant, The Idea of Perfection, and One Life: My Mother’s Story. This one is a fictionalized account of her grandmother, Dolly Maunder Russell. In 1881, the year Dolly was born, a new law required that children remain in school until they were 14 years old. That is how it came to be that her...
Sally is a young woman who returns to the small village in England where she grew up when she finds herself “on the rocks.” The book was published in 1915; the war had put an end to her adventures in Paris. It was in response to a letter from a troublemaker in Little Crampton suggesting she could marry Mr. Bingley, the stodgy bank manager, that she returns to the home of her guardian...
I read JacquiWine’s take on this 1988 book that was only recently translated from Japanese into English. She was drawn by the haunting and enigmatic story of a young woman’s barely remembered childhood. Yayoi was in an apparently happy family with loving parents and a slightly younger brother Tetsuo. One day out of the blue she has a vision of having had a sister and comes to realize...
It’s hard to imagine a better audiobook than this one; hearing a deeply personal memoir read by the author reflecting on his brother’s death and on being a guard for ten years in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as he healed was great. The author had been a staffer at The New Yorker at the time of his brother’s death in 2008. His job was to work with eminent writers as...