Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Renee at It’s Book Talk. Throwback Thursday is an awesome opportunity to share old favorites as well as older books in our TBR. I love this idea as I only started blogging about a year and a half ago. Therefore, I have lots of old favorites to talk about. While I may not remember all of the details needed to write a complete review, I’m happy to share ...
recommended for book club
Review of We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
We Were the Lucky Ones is the fictionalized account of the true story of the Kurc family and their experiences during WWII beginning in their home town of Radom, Poland in 1939. The book spans eight years as we follow the Kurc family members to several countries and continents including Austria, Italy, Argentina, South America, and Siberia, Russia as the war continues and finally ends. As many ...
Review of “The Last Days of Night” by Graham Moore
I do not care so much for a great fortune as I do for getting ahead of the other fellows. - Thomas Edison Until I read this book, I had an impression of what it would have been like to see the night lit for the first time. It was terribly romantic. It was surreal, ethereal, and peaceful. (Sort of like this book's beautiful cover.) There were scientists and engineers of all sorts slapping each ...
Review of Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison For a Murder He Didn’t Commit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved. - Benjamin Franklin, letter to Benjamin Vaughn dated March 14, 1785 On the evening of October 30, 1975, Martha Moxley, a beautiful fifteen-year-old girl residing in the prestigious Belle Haven enclave of the very affluent town of Greenwich ...
Review of The Girls by Emma Cline
The Girls , Emma Cline's highly-anticipated debut novel, is the story of 14 year old Evie, growing up in 1960's California, and how she becomes entangled with a violent cult. Evie is now an adult who has, for the most part, moved on with her life. The story toggles back and forth between the two timelines in a well-paced and seamless manner. The parallels with the Manson killings of that time ...
May Book Club “Madamoiselle Chanel” and Circo
A couple of weeks ago, (I am waaay behind on posting), the NYC Ladies Fine Dining and Fiction Book Club got together at Circo to discuss Mademoiselle Chanel, which was selected for the group by one of our regular members. It was a book I'd been excited about reading for a long time so I was quite happy with the choice. I really enjoyed the book and it's quite evident that the author did an ...
Review of “Britt-Marie Was Here” by Fredrik Backman
Britt-Marie was an intensely unlikable woman in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. Perhaps that's because she was so unhappy herself. I'm so glad I was able to get to know her better in Britt-Marie Was Here. It should be mentioned that, although I highly recommend reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and you will be even more impressed by Britt-Marie in ...
Review of “The A to Z of You and Me” by James Hannah
This book filled me with a sense of bittersweet melancholy from start to finish. Ivo is a young man with diabetes who didn't take very good care of himself and, as a result, his kidneys have failed and he's in a hospice with (mostly) elderly people who are (mostly) dying of cancer. Throughout the book we learn the details of how he lost Mia, the love of his life. The story of Mia and Ivo, which ...
Review of “Before the Fall” by Noah Hawley
Though I probably shouldn't have started reading Before the Fall during a super-turbulent flight, I will say that it's certainly a page-turner. We know how the story ends (begins). The plane crashes. Nine people are dead. There are two survivors; Scott Burroughs, an artist who was offered a free ride to the city from a woman he's met on the Vineyard, and her four year old son. Beyond that, we are ...
Review of “Glory Over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House” by Kathleen Grissom
"I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven." -Harriet Tubman I absolutely loved The Kitchen House and was thrilled when I heard Kathleen Grissom was writing a sequel. Though Glory Over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House is a ...
