Last Half of August 2014 Reads

During the second half of August, I finished the book of Korean stories mentioned in my previous post. A varied and interesting collection. Glad I own it and can go back to it. My other reading during these two weeks stayed pretty much in North America, unusual for me to not be more geographically diverse, but that's the way it goes sometime. Of the two Canadian ones; one is partly set in France and the other is partly set in England. And one of the US ones is partly set in Europe and Israel. I also posted a brief review of Drifting (see previous August post) on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

The first part of the list is pretty much in the order of how much I liked the books (best liked to least liked). The second part is online stuff that I liked.

Dissonance; Lenard-Cook, Lisa
 Free finished copy from the publisher as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.  Sometimes a book just hits the spot for the reader. This is a story of suppressed memory, self discovery, forgiveness, and redemption. A piano teacher in New Mexico inherits the musical scores and diaries of a Holocaust survivor an begins a search to find out why these things were left to her.  Loved it. This was not the one I hoped to win in the LT July batch, but I think I liked it better than I would have liked the ones I didn't win. I got lucky with this. 

The Three; Lotz, Sarah
  Library book. This hops all over the globe. US, Japan, South Africa, & England. An excellent first novel.
 
Road Ends; Lawson, Mary
 Library book. Set in a small northern Ontario town and in London. All about family and independence.

We Were Liars; Lockhart, E.
 Library book.  Every year they came to the idyllic island (near Martha's Vineyard) but during the fifteenth summer everything went wrong. First love, family quarrels, secrets, and unbearable memories.

The Cartographer of No Man's Land; Duffy, P.S.
  Library book. Back and forth narrative between France and Nova Scotia during First World War.

The Fever; Abbott, Megan
  Won in Twitter giveaway (Cary Barbor @Bksandauthors).  High school girls with mysterious illness. Inspired by same news story as  Conversion by Katherine Howe (which I read in May). Both books are good and take slightly different angles. Abbott has a bit of a mystery (other than the illness) involved; Howe makes many references to the Salem witch trials.

The Girls From the Five Great Valleys; Savage, Elizabeth
 Free finished copy from the publisher as part of the Goodreads First Read program. Reprint of a 1977 coming of age (five girls) novel. Set in Montana. Brief review on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Some online Goodies
 Old Italian Gardens; Lee, Vernon.
 A1912 essay reprinted in Berfrois an online literary magazine. (also at:  Lee, Vernon. “Old Italian gardens.” . Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 15 Nov 2006. 27 Aug 2014.)  I would love to hear this read aloud by a really good reader.This makes a nice companion piece to another online resource I read in August:
Gardens of the Roman World; Bowe, Patrick
 A beautiful book offered free online by the Getty Virtual Library.

Infanticide; Yamamoto Yuzo; Translation and introduction by Zeljko Cipris. In The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 34, No. 3, August 25, 2014
  Online. Full text of a one act play about poverty in Japan. Originally published (as Eijigoroshi) in 1920. Illustrated with historical photographs. There is also a good background essay.