Published by Doubleday on 13 Aug 2013
Goodreads

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu’ivu in search of a rumoured lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub “The Dreamers,” who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States. He scientifically proves his thesis, earning worldwide fame and the Nobel Prize, but he soon discovers that its miraculous property comes at a terrible price. As things quickly spiral out of his control, his own demons take hold, with devastating personal consequences.

Alternately titled: Simply my favourite bookstores in Philly. Nothing beats the excitement of going on a treasure hunt through towering stacks or a good deal. I’ve gotten used to buying books for less than $5, and I get nervous when books start costing double digits.

Now that stores are starting to open up with limited hours, I thought it’d be the perfect time to show some appreciation to my favourite bookstores that happen to all be secondhand. And if it wasn’t the perfect time, I would have found some other excuse.

That said, we are still in the middle of a p*ndemic, so I wouldn’t recommend making a habit of visiting, but if you need an outing once every two or three weeks for your mental health, here are some local businesses you could support. (I keep a running list of books I want to find secondhand, alphabetised by author surname, to make my browsing process more streamlined so I don’t have to linger at the shop for too long.) Or, more likely, if you’re in need of some armchair travelling, here are some destinations for you.

– I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. –

Published by St. Martin’s Press on 04 Aug 2020
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | BAM | Apple | Kobo | Google

Living through WWII working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim, she is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life?

Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, Paris Never Leaves You is an extraordinary story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.

This year has seen many changes to my reading habits. They continue to change so I haven’t been able to pin them all down, but one of the changes has been that I’ve been giving into mood reading. Mood reading isn’t conducive to keeping up with book clubs, so it’s quite lucky that my reads happened to coincide with that of my friends’, making for three buddy reads of the seven books I read this month.

July’s reading highlight has been discovering an all-time favourite—Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi—making for a humble total of three this year so far. Another highlight has been “rereading” The Hunger Games on audio. I’m still deciding whether to add them to my annual count of books read, but I’m leaning towards not, because I’m much more of a visual learner and engage with audio so differently. But I just wanted to throw in this update and say that: 1) the series holds up and 2) it hits different in 2020.

Published by Doubleday on 10 Mar 2015
Goodreads

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.