Feb 25
I think I was the only person in the world to dislike Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. I read her debut when it first came out and I actively disliked it although I don’t remember exactly why I disliked it. Ever since then I’ve been meaning to give Smith another try. I picked up this book for our winter scavenger hunt since it fulfilled item #21: A book with no images on the cover. Here’s what I thought… Read more
Feb 24
Last week I reviewed the latest Indiespensables box from Powell’s Books that came with a copy of Mr. Splitfoot. This book has been on my radar for a while and I coincidentally had been approved for a galley of the book prior to receiving my book box. The novel is getting an incredible amount of buzz in the book world. Here’s my review.
Feb 23
The High Mountains of Portugal was released this month. It also happens to be one of the books on our march madness brackets. If you haven’t had a chance to vote in our march book madness survey, help us out and vote here. Here’s what I thought of the book. Read more
Feb 21
We are creating a list of books for our March Madness reading challenge. You can read more about that here.
Fellow bloggers and readers: Please help us out by rating our challenge books. The survey takes about 10 minutes and you’ll be entered to win a $15 Amazon gift card. Books on the list were nominated by our challenge participants. You can still sign up to participate in the challenge which will begin on the same day as the NCAA basketball tournament.
We would be forever grateful if you could complete the survey and share with other readers so we can generate a fair ranking of all our books. These books will then be put into our reading brackets and you can all join us in making predictions.
You can find the survey here: March Madness Book survey.
Feb 17
Last November I attended the Book Riot Live convention (read my review here) and while I was there I signed up for the book match by Brooklyn library librarians. I listed my favorite authors as David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Chimamanda Adichie, and Margaret Atwood. and I listed my favorite genres: literary fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and international literature. Finally I mentioned that I particularly like books that focus on cultures and traditions that are different from my own. One of books they recommended was Akata Witch
If a book ever cried out for an alcoholic beverage, it is this one. I wanted something tropical and refreshing so I selected Council Brewing Pineapple Tart Saison.
Saisons tend to be sour, low ABV (this one was only 4% making it wildly inappropriate for the book) are super carbonated, and often have some kind of a fruity component. In this case Pineapple. Supposedly this is killer on tap, but it wasn’t great in the bottle. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars. I got the sour, but didn’t get the pineapple at all. I’ve had other Council Saisons I’ve liked much better than this, but it really would be a good beer for sitting on the beach in Jamaica….
And if you were a character in A Brief History of Seven Killings, you’d likely lift the bottle to your lips and be killed in some horrific fashion. Bumbaclot!
I started reading this book right around the time the Man Booker Prize was announced and after 60 pages, I realized that the dialect was going to kill me, so I decided to do the audio. I spent a lot of time in Jamaica in the ’80’s and I felt I had enough of a handle on the Patois that the audio would be a breeze. It wasn’t.
From Finland we are heading to Africa. The Republic of Guinea is the next stop in our world tour or reading! Join us as we explore some of what Guinea has to offer in terms of literature and find out which book we selected. We hope you help us to add to the list of recommended reading for Guinea!
Feb 11
The Reader’s Room will be hosting our own version of a bookish March Madness, slated to begin with the start of the NCAA tournament (March 17th). Reading won’t start until March 17 and full instructions won’t be posted until March 1. However, this challenge requires us to do some preparation so it would be very helpful to us to get people signed up early. We hope you join us for this challenge!
Here’s an overview of what you will need to do in the next 10 days:
In the near future:
One grand prize winner will be selected to win awesome bookish prizes!
*NOTE: If you are a non-US reader and are unfamiliar with march madness tournaments, you can read more about what that is, here. It may sound complicated but it should be easy to figure out.
Feb 10
Yuki Chan in Brontë Country by Mick Jackson
Published in: January 2016
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: ★★★
Find it here: Yuki Chan in Brontë Country
This ARC was provided by Faber & Faber Ltd (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis from Goodreads: “They both stop and stare for a moment. Yuki feels she’s spent about half her adult life thinking about snow, but when it starts, even now, it always arresting, bewildering. Each snowflake skating along some invisible plane. Always circuitous, as if looking for the best place to land . . .”
Yukiko tragically lost her mother ten years ago. After visiting her sister in London, she goes on the run, and heads for Haworth, West Yorkshire, the last place her mother visited before her death. Against a cold, winter, Yorkshire landscape, Yuki has to tackle the mystery of her mother’s death, her burgeoning friendship with a local girl, the allure of the Brontës and her own sister’s wrath. Both a pilgrimage and an investigation into family secrets, Yuki’s journey is the one she always knew she’d have to make, and one of the most charming and haunting in recent fiction.
Book Worm’s Thoughts: Yuki is a young Japanese woman who has come to England to try and reconnect with her late mother by following in her footsteps. All Yuki has to guide her is a set of photographs showing various views in Haworth (Bronte country). Yuki believes her mother visited Haworth because of her enjoyment of the Bronte’s works, however when she meets people who remember her mother’s visit, it turns out her reason being in Haworth is very different and may even provide a clue to her tragic death.
As a character I liked Yuki, she is a young woman struggling to find her place and come to terms with the loss of her mother. You might expect this to make her serious and dull but Yuki is entertaining and funny. I really enjoyed her irreverent descriptions of the Bronte tour and the kind of people on the tour with her as well as her wry observations about the British tourist industry.
There is a serious side to Yuki and this is shown by her need to explore things scientifically. There is a detailed section on snow and the varieties of snow flakes and how they may be produced in controlled conditions. Despite her in-depth knowledge about Snow Yuki is still young at heart enough to appreciate the magic of falling snow (so am I) and this allowed me as a reader to connect with her.
The ending is ambiguous and usually I would hate that (I like things all tied up neatly preferably with a big red bow and a reassuring “The End”), however in this case the ambiguity didn’t bother me because it allowed Yuki and the reader to draw their own conclusions and to choose from two versions of events.
Favourite quotes;
This one refers to an English hotel with shared bathroom facilities “The woman smiles and Yuki smiles right back, nodding madly. Perfect! Now I can brush my teeth while sitting on the lavatory”
“Your mother and I could see who you were right from the very beginning. You were right there, the moment we set eyes on you.”
Who would like this book? If you are looking for a book that revolves round the Brontes, this is not it (in this instance the title is misleading). However, if you like a story that involves an unconventional heroine, discovering family secrets, forming new friendships, and coming to terms with the past, then I think you will enjoy this.
Want to try it for yourself? You can find a copy here: Yuki Chan in Brontë Country
We want to hear from you! Have you read this book? What did you think? Do you plan on reading it?
Feb 9
Jen and I have been making our way through our scavenger hunt challenge and we are working on a few new challenges for a little later in the year. You can read about our scavenger hunt challenge here. For those of you participating in the challenge, we’ve decided to move back the end of the challenge to March 31 to give you all a little extra time to read books. Some prizes will be handed out at that point but others will be handed out at the end of the year to someone who has completed all 31 items. We highly recommend that you try completing “hidden” prize items by the March 31st deadline since those will be awarded at that time. It’s not too difficult to figure out which items those might be if you read the clues.
And now on to my challenge progress… Read more
Nicole Del Sesto
