The Reading Room

This much country

“One day all of this pain will transform from a stumbling block into the foundation for a new life. This winter will make way for a sunny day in May during which the spring cleaning of my soul and mind will take place. Then those new dustless shelves will be so welcoming to the bigger and better love coming to occupy my heart.”

Who knew I could love a book about dog sledding so much. Well it isn’t all about dog sledding but it is what makes the second half so intense.

This Could Be Us

“Ill never take solace in a fake fine again.”

This Could Be Us is book 2 in the amazing Skyland series by Kenne Ryan.

Summary - From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise. But then an unlikely man enters the picturethe forbidden one, the one Soledad shouldn’t want but can’t seem to resist. She’s lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes.

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

“What does a word mean? And a life? In the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so, too, can a person, a life. Language is the mirror, the principal metaphor. Because ultimately the meaning of a word, like that of a person, is boundless, ineffable.”

This quote isn’t from Roman Stories but just something that Jhumpa Lahiri has said and to me, this is the reason that her voice resonates so well with me.

Family family

“The one thing she knows for sure is what makes a family isn’t blood. And it isn’t love. No matter how they’re formed, the truth about family is this: it’s complicated.”

If I liked the beginning and I loved the ending but thought the middle rambled and needed focus where does that leave this review? Three stars?

I appreciated the discussions around family and adoption, basically the entire ending but how the story got there was almost a DNF for me. And ultimately, the main character felt very inauthentic which is interesting because I think her “uniqueness” was an attempt to make her seem authentic

Blood brothers

A story of people, not politics…

Summary - Blood Brothers illustrates Elias Chacour’s own incredible life in Palestine as a refugee. The book describes the hardships Elias and his family had to go through. The story opens in the 1940s in the village of Biram, where Chacour spent his early childhood.

I had attempted to read The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine last month but its level of nonfiction was just too dense for me to absorb anything. Blood Brothers read like a memoir but with history mixed in, which allowed me to absorb the history in a much more accessible way. Chacour looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a Christian lens and his journey was one that taught me a lot.

Kala

“It takes strength to be open to life, to the possibility things will change for the better.”

Summary - Katherine ‘Kala’ Lanann was 15 years years old when she disappeared in November 2003, leaving her friends Joe, Aoife, Helen, Mush, and Aiden and the whole town of Kinlough in shock. The once tight-knit group of friends eventually go their own ways, their friendship fractured in the aftermath of Kala’s disappearance.

Begin Again

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Baldwin was a man beyond his time.

Summary - Begin Again (2020) looks back at the incomparable work of the writer James Baldwin, who spent decades dissecting America’s fundamental racism problem. His ideas may provide insights for us today, so Begin Again seeks to answer the question: What advice would Baldwin have on issues like Trumpism or Black Lives Matter?

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

“The sea was the first home I knew. Out here I spent my early childhood in a wild state of happiness, stretched out under the almond trees fed by brine, relishing every fish eye like precious can my toes dipped in the sea’s milky lapping.”

I absolutely loved this book. Safiya Sinclair is a poet and that is completely evident from the beautiful prose that lyrically tells her story. She evoked so much emotion in me – I laughed, I learned, and I cried. Memoirs can be so magical and this one was no exception – I felt completely mesmerized by Sinclair’s storytelling.

Son of Hamas

“For the first time, I began to question the things I had always believed in.”

Summary - Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status . . . and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence, and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader. In Son of Hamas, Mosab reveals new information about the worlds most dangerous terrorist organization and unveils the truth about his own role, his agonizing separation from family and homeland, the dangerous decision to make his newfound faith public, and his belief that the Christian mandate to love your enemies is the only way to peace in the Middle East.

December Choices

December Choices

A History of a Burning Ozas narrative traverses almost a century of time, four generations of family, five continents and multiple languages, with the story moving between the perspectives of 10 characters (largely told in the third-person voice with a few detours into the first person during the last quarter of the novel). The result is a haunting, symphonic tale that speaks to the nuanced complexities of class and trauma for this particular family.