Svetlana's Reads and Views

  Title of the book: The Oak and the Larch; A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires  Author: Sophie Pinkham  Publisher: W.W. Norton Publishing Date: 2026 ISBN: 978-1-324-03668-5 Summary: A majestic cultural and environmental history that reveals how forests have made—and resisted—Russia’s many empires. From the Baltic to the Pacific, from the Arctic to the steppes of Central Asia, Russia’s forests account for nearly one-fifth of the world’s wooded lands. The Oak and the Larch is the first-ever English-language exploration of this vast expanse—a dazzling environmental history of Russia that offers an urgent new understanding of the nature of Russian power, and of Russia’s ideas of itself. Inspired by the majestic oak, which towers over the country’s western heartland, and the hardy Siberian larch, an emblem of survival in the east, award-winning scholar Sophie Pinkham’s magisterial account spans centuries, revealing how forests have nourished ancient Siberian indig...

  Title of the book: Over-thinking about you; Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD and/or Depression  Author: Allison Raskin  Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Publishing Date: 2022 ISBN: 9781523513222 Summary: Dating is hard. But pursuing love and relationships when you live with mental illness can be even more overwhelming. Allison Raskin knows this challenge firsthand and shares her journey with perfect candor. She’s learned from her experiences, and we get to learn from her, discovering new ways to form healthy dating and relationship habits. How do you talk to a partner about your mental health? What is the potential impact of SSRIs on your body? What is the difference between having valid concerns and catastrophizing? It’s all here, from meeting online to how to handle a breakup, from recognizing and avoiding unhealthy relationships to the big one—sex. Woven in throughout are interviews with clinical psychologists, a psychiatris...

  Name of Book: Florenzer Author: Phil Melanson ISBN: 9781324095033 Publisher: Liveright  Type of book: Italy, Renaissance, 1464, 1471-1483, coming of age, LGBtQ character, church, banking, money, legacy, charge, scheming  Year it was published: 2025 Summary: Set in Renaissance-era Florence, this ravishing debut reimagines the intersecting lives of three ambitious young men—a banker, a priest, and a gay painter named Leonardo. Leonardo da Vinci, twelve years old and a bastard, leaves the Tuscan countryside to join his father in Florence with dreams of becoming a painter. Francesco Salviati, also a bastard and scorned for his too-dark skin, dedicates himself to the Catholic Church with grand hopes of salvation. Towering above them both is Lorenzo de’ Medici, barely a man, yet soon to be the patriarch of the world’s wealthiest and most influential bank. Each is, in his own way, a son of Florence. Each will, when their paths cross, shed blood on Florence’s streets. Bras...

  Title of the book: Author: Publisher: Publishing Date: ISBN: Summary: Author Info: Personal Opinion: Normally when reading a nonfiction book the author often does a preface or introduction in describing on why they chose to write this book. This one doesn't have neither and I had to look in the first chapter to find as to why the book is written: "Among the infinitude of lessons that have been drawn from this tale is a warning that justice can be miscarried and that childish simplifications like 'good and evil' and 'hero and villain' do not always neatly correspond to the punisher and the punished" (11) Simply put the story is divided into three parts; introduction to the most dangerous barrio in Honduras and to our would be heroes and how they conceived of trying to help people who lived there. The second part is dealing with legal aspects as the charity grew bigger and the third part is taking on the biggest fish in Honduras as well as trying to influe...

 Name of Book: Author: ISBN: Publisher: Type of book: WWII, Germany, Brazil, 1941 or 1942 to 1961, father/son relationship, loyalty, Jewish woman/German male relationships, blood, language, race, family, yearning, forbidden love, taboo, loss  Year it was published: Summary: Characters: Main characters are Axel, Lyuba/Raven and Dietrich. At the start, Axel is an eleven year old who hasn't matured sexually yet and is quite often an innocent when it comes to life. He is best described as sheltered yet is also an untrained prodigy when it comes to languages. His strengths would be innocence and loyalty which he displays a lot throughout the book. Lyuba is of Jewish origin and a bit older than Axel and is antithesis to Axel's innocence. She is extremely prickly and tends to push people away from her and is also extremely jaded by life. There is also Axel's father, Dietrich von Pappendorf who is an aristocrat, proper and often refuses to see others as human beings. His relationsh...

 Name of Book: Author: ISBN: Publisher: Type of book: Grief, sibling bond, parentify, Mexico, Spain, migration for work, demeaning jobs, grandparents, suicide, dating, performative liberalism, lethargy  Year it was published: Summary: Characters: Main characters are the Woman and Diego. (Woman is never named in the book.) Woman is a parentified girl who was forced to care for her younger brother when their mother moved to Spain to work, with little help from grandparents. Woman had to deal with feelings of being unwanted, not knowing about her father and of being seen in terms of Diego's caretaker instead of someone as human. From Woman's memories, Diego is a true teenager who also has to struggle with a lot of trauma, namely immigrating to a country that looks down on him, and leaving comfort and grandparents behind as well as being othered and not being understood by neither mom nor Woman. There are secondary characters such as Woman's Scottish boyfriend or a lot of ...