Pachinko
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee has been on my reading list and sitting on my bookself, looking lovely and forlorn, for some time. With the wildfires, lightning storms and heat wave in Northern California, I decided to head to the coast for a spell and found some time to read it while chilling out in …
The Devil in the White City
When I first moved to Chicago for grad school, we were assigned The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson as recommended summer reading. It was an apt choice — our building is located along the Midway Plaisance which served as the entertainment area for the 1893 World’s Fair featured in the book. According …
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
– It really is you…Yury finally managed to exclaim. But…You speak Russian? – Yes, I went on a five-year course in your country’s language shortly after we last met, said Allan. The school was called Gulag. What about that vodka? The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonassen is kind …
A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini tells the story of two Afghan women whose lives are molded and refracted in the tumult of events in recent Afghan history — the Soviet invasion beginning in 1979, the Civil War, the reign of the Taliban, and the beginnings of the Karzai administration. It’s a powerful, moving, …
Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as Stage is a short and well-researched biography on the famous Bard, with some background on Elizabethan England thrown in for good measure. I’ve been meaning to read something of Bryson’s for a long time and thought this might make a good introduction, especially since I did a lengthy project …