Where is your nonfiction section please.
What the title says! I've been trying to think of themes or ways to combine reviews because I have such a backlog and I finally just gave up. These have nothing in common except they're being released this week or next. Let's talk about them! Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, by Toni... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Lost Pianos of Siberia, by Sophy Roberts (Amazon) There is no dramatic curtain-raiser to the edge of Siberia, no meaningful brink to a specific place, just thick weather hanging over an abstract idea. It is a modern economic miracle, with natural oil and gas reserves driving powerful shifts in the geopolitics of... Continue Reading →
Book review: To the Lake, by Kapka Kassabova (Amazon) When I lay in bed, I could hear the splash of waves on the shore as if they were outside the door. I dreamt of the lake rising in the night and engulfing the town, like an old prophecy. Bulgarian-born, Scottish-based author Kapka Kassabova became an... Continue Reading →
I haven't been on the ball with checking upcoming new titles this year, for, well, lots of reasons. But I think there have also been many shifting publication dates, and it seems lots of releases have been pushed to next year. Nevertheless, there's still some exciting upcoming new nonfiction to look forward to in the... Continue Reading →
Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature, by Viv Groskop This, then, is a book about the intersection between Frenchness and happiness through reading, as that is a place I have always found great comfort. My hope is to demonstrate, through the French writers I first discovered in my teens and twenties, how... Continue Reading →
Walking: One Step at a Time, by Erling Kagge, translated from Norwegian by Becky L. Crook (Amazon/ Book Depository) I've been on short walks; I've been on long walks. I've walked from villages and to cities. I've walked through the day and through the night, from lovers and to friends. I have walked in deep forests and... Continue Reading →
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, by A. Kendra Greene (Amazon / Book Depository) I've felt bad lately for certain newly released books that are coming out when the timing is less than ideal, whether for topic or inability to promote. Happily The Museum of Whales You Will Never See is not one... Continue Reading →
I only finished two of these, but I'm going to tell you about all three anyway. First up is a new release that's a read-in-one-sitting deal, in case you want a quick but fairly intense and even gritty read: Phyllis Grant's Everything is Under Control. Grant was a dancer training at Julliard, living in New... Continue Reading →
What strange times we find ourselves in, huh? I hope everyone is healthy and safe wherever you are in the world, and please, for the love of everything, listen to the medical HBIC who's just trying to help us put this nightmare in the past. He knows that of which he speaks. Lists are popping... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway (Amazon / Book Depository) There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties,... Continue Reading →
One post of new nonfiction to look forward to is never enough, so here's a second roundup of some upcoming titles in 2020 that have caught my eye. This time I've got macabre science stories, tales of obsession, badass women of World War II, current social and political commentary, multiple trips to Paris and Siberia,... Continue Reading →
If new nonfiction this year was a little lackluster, I did feel more enthusiastic about the backlist titles I read throughout the year. It was one of these that was my absolute favorite and the best book I read this year: Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, by Kapka Kassabova - Kassabova returned... Continue Reading →
