Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle Non-fiction suggested by Shirley From Amazon: Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity—and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground. We live in a technological universe in which we […]
Red Famine
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum Non-fiction suggested by Shirley Amazon: In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization—in effect a second Russian revolution—which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million […]
Room
Room by Emma Donoghue Fiction suggested by Terry From Amazon: “To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It’s where he was born, it’s where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when […]
The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir by Ariel Levy from Amazon – about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention. When thirty-eight-year-old New Yorker writer Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of […]
Rules of Civility
Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles Fiction suggested by Shirley From Amazon — on the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey […]
Sandcastle Girls
Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian Fiction suggested by Terry Historical Fiction, based on author’s grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ history in Turkey, Armenia and the US. This is a more pleasant and straight-forward as well as entertaining look at the WWI Turk-Armenian genocide than the Orhan’s Inheritance which we read. I gave it a 4/5 on my […]
Sarah’s Key
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay Fiction from Annie France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode. (Heavy)
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe Non-Fiction suggested by Maren The IRA abduction and murder of a suspected informer, a widowed mother of ten, begins this modern history of The Troubles, three decades of increasing violence in Northern Ireland. The story of a society wracked […]
Season of the Witch
Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love by David Talbot Non-fiction suggested by Toni Cultural history of San Francisco 1967 – 1982, a labor-of-love illumination of a city’s soul, the clash of outsiders from hippies to activists, against the authorities representing the old, mainly Catholic, establishment. The uniqueness of […]
Social Animal
Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks Non-fiction from Verna How attitudes are formed. The story of how success happens, told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica