Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Help Wanted Author: Adelle Waldman ISBN: 978-1-324-02044-8 Publisher: W.W Norton  Type of book: New York, lowest rung, dying town, 2010s, relationships, microcosm, world of its own, competition, breaking out things, tact, politics  Year it was published: 2024  Summary: In Help Wanted, Adelle Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and knack for social observation to the world of work. At a big-box store in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every morning at 3:55. Under the eye of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before customers arrive. When a golden opportunity for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement―among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging to her “cool kid” status from high school, a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together and set a just...

Name of Book: The Ivory Tomb Author: Melissa Caruso ISBN: 978-0-316-45439-1 Publisher: Orbit Part of a Series: Rooks and Ruin (THE OBSIDIAN TOWER and THE QUICKSILVER COURT are prequels; SWORDS AND FIRE trilogy are prequel trilogy)  Type of book: Friendship, ties, relationships, immortality, safeguards, heart guard, magic, demons, lore, secrets, diplomacy, determination, saving the world  Year it was published: 2022  Summary: The Ivory Tomb concludes the wildly original epic fantasy series bursting with intrigue and ambition, questioned loyalties, and broken magic that began with The Obsidian Tower. The Dark Days have returned. The Demon of Carnage mercilessly cuts through villagers and armies. The Demon of Corruption poisons/rots the land. The Serene Empire and the Witch Lords race towards war. And in the middle of it all stands Rxyander, the Warden of Gloamingard. Burdened by conflicting loyalties and guilt, Ryx searches desperately for a way to defeat th...

Name of Book: Cursebreakers Author: Madeleine Nakamura  ISBN: 9781939096128 Publisher: Canis Major Books Type of book: Fantasy, mental health, magic, secrets, hidden means, crushes, relationships,  Year it was published: 2023  Summary: Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic, must survive his own failing mental health and a tenuous partnership with a dangerous ally in order to save the city of Astrum from a spreading curse. Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic and disgraced ex-physician, has discovered a conspiracy. Someone is inflicting magical comas on the inhabitants of the massive city of Astrum, and no one knows how or why. Caught between a faction of scheming magical academics and an explosive schism in the ranks of Astrum’s power-hungry military, Adrien is swallowed by the growing chaos. Alongside Gennady, an unruly, damaged young soldier, and Malise, a brilliant healer and Adrien’s best friend, Adrien searches for a way to stop the spreading curse...

Title of the book: The Britannias; An Archipelagos Tale  Author: Alice Albinia  Publisher: W.W. Norton Publishing Date: 2024  ISBN: 978-0-393-60855-7 Summary: A revelatory portrait of Britain through its islands, The Britannias weaves history, myth, and travelogue to rewrite the story of this “island nation.” From Neolithic Orkney, Viking Shetland, and Druidical Anglesey to the joys and strangeness of modern Thanet, The Britannias explores the farthest reaches of Britain’s island topography, once known by the collective term “Britanniae” (the Britains). This expansive journey demonstrates how the smaller islands have wielded disproportionate influence on the mainland, becoming the fertile ground of political, cultural, and technological innovations that shaped history throughout the archipelago. In an act of feminist inquiry, personal adventure, and literary quest, Alice Albinia takes us over borders and through disparate island cultures, past and present. She uncovers th...

Name of Book: Pedro and Marques Take Stock (Supridores)  Author: Jose Falero (Trans Julia Sanches)  ISBN: 978-1-6626-0123-1 Publisher: Astra House  Type of book: Brazil, selling weed, 2009-2011, intelligence, poverty, supermarket work, morality, grayness, casual drug use, guns, allies  Year it was published: 2023 (Original 2020)  Summary: City of God meets Kevin Smith’s Clerks, Os Supridores is a debut novel set in the favelas of Brazil about two supermarket stock clerks whose lives are upturned when their small-time marijuana business takes off. A modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Pedro and Marques stumble through their days in their rough and rundown favela unloading trucks, restocking shelves, and dreaming of a better life; of breaking the cycle of poverty that has afflicted their families and their community. Well-acquainted with the drug dealers in their neighborhood, and seeing an opportunity to earn a little extra cash, they decide to join the drug...

Name of Book: Second Best  Author: David Foenkinos (tanslated by Megan Jones)  ISBN: 978-1-913547-59-2 Publisher: Gallic  Type of book: France, England, 1999-2019, Harry Potter, J.K Rowling, movies, decisions, comedy/tragedy, surviving, trauma, travel, acting, beyond control  Year it was published: 2023 (2022 in France)  Summary: A magical imagining of the fate of a fictional boy whose life is shaped forever when he loses out on the role of Harry Potter. It's 1999. Martin Hill is ten years old, crazy about Arsenal and has a minor crush on a girl named Betty. Then he makes it to the final two in the casting for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone .  In the end, the other boy is picked for the role of a lifetime. A devastated Martin tries to move on with his life. But how can he escape his failure, especially when it's the most famous film series in the world?  Foenkinos’s smash-hit Second Best is a playful, poignant story about fate, ...

Title of the book: Skinfolk; A Memoir  Author: Matthew Pratt Guterl  Publisher: Liveright  Publishing Date: 2023  ISBN: 978-1-324-09171-4 Summary: Could a picturesque white house with a picket fence save the world? What if it was filled with children drawn together from around the globe? And what if, within the yard, the lines of kin and skin, of family and race, were deliberately knotted and twisted? In 1970, a wild-eyed dreamer, Bob Guterl, believed it could. Bob was determined to solve, in one stroke, the problems of overpopulation and racism. The charming, larger-than-life lawyer and his brilliant wife, Sheryl, a former homecoming queen, launched a radical experiment to raise their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx—the so-called war zones of the American century. They moved to rural New Jersey with dreams of creating what Bob described as a new Noah’s ark, filled with “two of every race.” Whil...