Al-Andalus is the forgotten heritage of the Muslim presence on the Iberian Peninsula. A thriving educational center where the Muslims, Jews and Christians were able to coexist in relative peace for almost 800 years. It is a period of European history that is rarely mentioned and if it is then only briefly. Yet it left …
What happens when the perfect world of a planned community clashes with the messiness of the reals world? Can we really shield ourselves from chaos with a set of rules for living? Can racism be denied out of a community? Little Fires Everywhere asks those fundamental questions in a serious but often also lightly satirical …
My only explanation why I read this classic of sci-fi only now is that I rarely dabbed in the sci-fi space. Recently this has started slowly changing and when someone recommends a book to me I tend to try it and usually with a good outcome. It was the same with this one. A book …
This is such a weird year! I’m so out of kilter with where we are in terms of time that I completely missed the beginning of the 20 Books of Summer! That’s a first. So here I am jumping on the bandwagon mid-course. Cathy at 746Books is our wonderful host and she is doing an …
Dive right into the heart of Cuba with this collection of seven short stories.
Short and sweet like a short story, here are a few quotes from Jigs&Reels by Joanne Harris A change of costume here, of location there: stories do not die, but are simply reincarnated every generation or so into a different time and idiom - from Fule’s Gold I cried at the unfairness of it all: …
A collection of quirky short stories, showing how this jewel-like form helps to unleash imagination. You’ll meet nursing home escapees, writers meeting their characters in real life, statisticians winning the lottery, middle-aged witches, and a bit extreme role-play games aficionados. And many many others. I had this book on my shelves for so long I …
What do you do when your taxidermist father shoots himself in the head and your bereaved mother starts making pornographic art using the animals he stuffed? Also, the woman you loved was your brother’s wife and she abandoned both of you. Those are the things Jessa-Lynn Morton is trying to figure out, among few other …
It's been six months... I can't even...so I won't As with everyone ups, and downs, pandemic, vaccines, lockdowns and in all this trying to stay somewhat sane. Reading was a huge help this time, I read more and used it more as an escape. It helped me relax and cut out the stress when it …
Imagine if you could read all the unsent letters, all those that got lost or that were never meant to be sent. This book gives you a good sense of what would happen. A sense of what’s lost when we don’t communicate our thoughts, but also what may happen if we do. A book on …
