This book was published in London and is not available in the US at this point (it is available at Alderman Library). I read about it in the blog Reading Matters, which had an enthusiastic endorsement of it. The narrator, a successful Irish playwright who lives in London, casually and companionably recounts to us her life and the lives of her friends over the course of a single day. ...
Audiobook. These short stories were written over the years by Alice Munro but held out from her other compilations because they were based on material she found about one side of her family named Laidlaw. They came to America from an obscure part of Scotland called the Ettrick valley, described in a 1779 description of Scotland as having "no advantages." The stories...
Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani — highly recommended by Corinne.
The sequel to Chocolat, this book is set in Montmartre in Paris. The Butte, as it is referred to, is painted as a village from another era. Each short chapter tells the story from the point of view of each of the major characters: Zozie, the wicked witch; Vianne, the wizard of chocolate that we know from Chocolat; and her daughter Anouk. The various characters from...
Reliving the excitement of the nearly two years of the campaign was a real pleasure. The public moments described here are all very familiar. Hearing what the campaigners were thinking as they planned and reacted to events was interesting, though much of that was familiar as well. It is a measure of my insatiable appetite that I wished for coverage of more events, the Democratic convention...
Audiobook. This is the story of Eilis (pronounced Eilish) from the village of Enniscorthy in Ireland in the 1950s. Her father has died, her brothers must leave home to make a living, her sister Rose works to support herself and her mother, and Eilis is sent off to Brooklyn in the hopes she will make her way there. The story of her crossing the Atlantic, settling into a...
This is the second Aimée Leduc book for me; Aimée is the half French, half American private investigator who lives in Paris and foils evildoers at the highest levels. The author is very specific about location and has a map in the front of the book so you can see where everything occurs. The Marais is the old Jewish quarter of Paris; the murder victim is an old Jewish woman who is marked...
The main character is Renée, a concierge in an apartment building for the very rich in Paris. She hides her erudition from the philistines who live in the building, and reads philosophy, watches wonderful films, and listens to great music in secret to preserve her comfortable life. She is described by a 10 year old tenant (who also finds everyone else unworthy) as having "the...
Several books look very interesting, based on the blog Reading Matters.
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, Molly Fox's Birthday by Dierdre Madden (not for purchase here yet, but Alderman has it), The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey, By the Lake by John MaGehern (and others by him; John Self also is enthusiastic about him).
Audiobook. Olive is a crusty New Englander who seems to find it necessary to say to her husband, "For Gawd's sake, Henry," on a regular basis. Perhaps crusty is putting it too gently. She is a real grump who prides herself on not being weak, but who shows up in most of these short stories with a kind, if gruff, word for people, sometimes just in the nick of time...