A nice mix this month. Yesterday I hurt my hand carrying an especially heavy bag (of books, of course, what else is there?). So I couldn't do anything but read, hence I read One Day in one day.
Fiction:
The Women’s Courtyard by Khadija Mastoor; translated from the Urdu by Rockwell, Daisy (5 stars) The Shadow King by Mengiste, Maaza (5 stars)
Frontier by Xue, Can; translated from the Chinese by Gernant and Chen Zeping (5 stars)
Girl, Woman, Other by Evaristo, Bernardine (5 stars)
We, the Survivors by Aw, Tash (4+ stars)
The Memory Police by Ogawa, Yōko; translated from the Japanese by Snyder, Stephen (4+ stars) Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels by Libling, Michael (3+ stars)
Grand Union: Stories by Smith, Zadie (2 stars--so disappointing because I liked Swing Time so much)
Women Within by Parrish, Anne Leigh (2- stars--the rather abrupt ending really bothered me)
Nonfiction:
Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box by Albright, Madeleine K. (4+ stars)
Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay by Zickefoose, Julie (4 stars)
One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America by Weingarten, Gene 4 stars)
Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith (4 stars)
Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright by Hendrickson, Paul (3+ stars)
Scholars of Mayhem: My Father's Secret War in Nazi-Occupied France by Guiet, Daniel C. and Smith, Timothy K (3+ stars)
To Feel the Music: A Songwriter's Mission to Save High-Quality Audio by Young, Neil (3 stars)
Reading notes:
I love it when stuff like this happens.
While I was reading The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste, a novel set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia:
Abiy Ahmed Ali, the current prime minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.
and A new Ethiopian restaurant opened in my town
Then, while I was reading the Frank Lloyd Wright bio, I serendipitously stumbled on this cool map from Home Advisor: A map of Frank Lloyd Wright homes in (nearly) every state.
