Tag: recent history

Review: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I’m so glad that Moreno-Garcia’s publisher is going back and reissuing her earliest books, because both this and Certain Dark Things were fantastic. I wasn’t sure I’d like this one – the backdrop of 80’s music didn’t appeal to me much. I wasn’t expecting this book to bring me right back to what it felt like…

Review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver rarely disappoints, but I was nervous about reading this adaptation of David Copperfield, a favorite classic.  Copperfield is considered to be most autobiographical of Dickens’ works, which explains why it feels much more “real” to me. I don’t always love adaptations, because they often hew so closely to names and details that the…

Review: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

I picked up this book on the recommendation of Modern Mrs. Darcy, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a moving story of a young black nurse in the 1970s, about a real-life class action suit to address the coerced or forced sterilizations of young women of color in hospitals and institutions across the United States. Civil…

Review: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

You’ll have heard of this book because of the awards it won in 2020, including the Booker Prize.  This story of a young boy growing up with an alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow is worth the read.  It’s dark, but once I finished it, I missed the characters.  By the time you finish it, Shuggie…

Review: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

The Great Believers was heartbreaking, but so good and very worth reading.  I realize that reading a book about the AIDS crisis in the 80s isn’t a light read, but I feel like it’s really important to understand.  It’s also a book for anyone who likes a long, layered, multi-generational story. Makkai tells this story…

Review of Miss Ex-Yugoslavia by Sofija Stefanovic

This book wasn’t what I expected but I appreciated Stefanovic’s unique perspective.  I especially liked that this book gave me a much better understanding of what happened in Serbia in the 1990’s, with a focus more on the politics of Slobodan Milosevic’s reign.  I’ve read other books, like Girl At War and The Unquiet Dead,…

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Sympathizer is a first novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for literature.  It’s a fascinating look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath from the perspective of the Vietnamese.  Right away it makes you realize how much Americans only see the Vietnam War from our own perspective, not those…

The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

I read this book for the Read Around the World challenge, where a specific country is selected for each month.  May’s selection was Colombia.  Vasquez is a noted author in Colombia, having won numerous awards, primarily for this novel and for The Informants.  He studied law in Bogotá, Colombia and studied literature in Paris at…