Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: Sensing Light Author: Mark A Jacobson ISBN: 978-1-61243-570-1 Publisher: Ulysses Press Type of book: AIDS/HIV, discovery, 1979-1991, death, family, friendship, doctor, medical life, San Francisco, homosexuality, life, quality time, surviving, patients, quality of life Year it was published: 2016 Summary: “A POWERFUL WORK OF FICTION THAT AUTHENTICALLY EVOKES THE BAD AND THE GOOD.”—Eric Goosby, MD, US Global AIDS Coordinator, 2009–13 “A MOVING STORY OF DOCTORS NAVIGATING THE INTERSECTIONS OF SUFFERING, AMBITION AND DISCOVERY.”—Krista Bremer, My Accidental Jihad This breakout book by Mark A. Jacobson, a leading Bay Area HIV/AIDS physician, follows three people from vastly different backgrounds, who are thrown together by a shared urgency to find out what is killing so many men in the prime of their lives. Kevin, a gay medical resident from working class Boston, has moved to San Francisco in search of acceptance of his sexual identity. Herb, a middle-...

Name of Book: Come Next Spring Author: Alana White ISBN: 978-1-504034234 Publisher:  Open Road Distribution Type of book: Tennessee Smoky Mountains, 1949-1950, community, friendship, classicism, literature, Gone with the Wind, families, horses, strangers, welcoming, outsiders, insiders, city, country Year it was published: 1990 Summary: It’s 1949 in Tennessee Smoky Mountain country, and everything in pre-teen Salina’s life seems suddenly different. Her sister is engaged, her brother is absorbed in caring for his sickly foal, and salina feels she has nothing in common anymore with her best friend. This novel for young people captures the insular spirit of the mountain people, the breathtaking country itself, and a girl’s struggle to accept the inevitability of change. Characters: Main characters include Salina, a twelve year old red-headed precocious reader who believes in a happily ever after for Scarlett and Rhett. She has an older sister, Mary, an older bro...

Title of the book: Mamaleh knows best what Jewish mothers do to raise successful, creative empathetic independent children Author: Marjorie Ingall Publisher: Harmony Books Publishing Date: 2016 ISBN: 978-0-8041-4141-3 Summary: We all know the stereotype of the Jewish mother: Hectoring, guilt-inducing, clingy as a limpet. In Mamaleh Knows Best, Tablet Magazine columnist Marjorie Ingall smashes this tired trope with a hammer. Blending personal anecdotes, humor, historical texts, and scientific research, Ingall shares Jewish secrets for raising self-sufficient, ethical, and accomplished children. She offers abundant examples showing how Jewish mothers have nurtured their children’s independence, fostered discipline, urged a healthy distrust of authority, consciously cultivated geekiness and kindness, stressed education, and maintained a sense of humor. These time-tested strategies are the reason Jews have triumphed in a wide variety of settings and fields over the vas...

Title of the book: When Johnny doesn't come marching home; a compelling human interest story about a 20 year old boy's search for adventure in World War I Author:  Marian Small Publisher: Friesen Press Publishing Date: 2016 ISBN: 9781460286760 Summary: In 2017, the United States of America will be celebrating the Centennial of World War I. 1st Sergeant JOHN RUSSELL SMALL was a Veteran of that War. This is a true account of his experiences before, during and after the War, as written by his daughter, MARIAN SMALL, who set out at the age of 89 years to tell the story of a 20 year old boy whose love of adventure took him in 1916 to the Texas/Mexican border to join Brigadier-General John J. Pershing in the pursuit of Pancho Villa, the Mexican bandit, and then in 1918 to the trenches in France and No Man’s Land. At her Dad’s death in 1978, Marian inherited his collection of memorabilia which dates back 100 years to the time of his enlistment in the Ohio National Gua...

Name of Book: The Kept Woman Author: Karin Slaughter ISBN: 978-0-06-243021-2 Publisher: William Morrow Type of book: Mystery, thriller, drugs, foster houses, secret child, secrets, relationships, mother/daughter, mentors, Georgia, Atlanta, glamour, high life Year it was published: 2016 Summary: Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future. Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them. The author of the acclaimed standalone Pretty Girls returns with this long-awaited new novel in her bestselling Will Trent series—an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges the Georgia detective into the darkest depths of a case that just might destroy him. With the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation are brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop. Studying the body, Sara Linton—the GBI’s newest medical examine...

Name of Book: Wild Girls Author: Erica Abeel ISBN: 978-1-68003-103-4 Publisher: Texas Review Press Type of book: 1950s-1990s, marriage, Allen Ginsburg, friendship, unconventional choices, Paris France, university, noveau-rich, old money, homosexuality, hidden secrets, artists, secret crushes, settling for second best, blossoming, stages, cheating Year it was published: 2016 Summary: Three college friends from the 50s blaze their own path in love and work, braving the stifling conventions of the age, and anticipating the social thaw that would arrive ten years later. These “wild girls” pay heavy penalties for living against the grain, but, over the years, rebound and re-set their course, drawing strength from their friendship. The novel follows them from an elite northeastern college, to Paris with Allen Ginsberg, to New York’s avant-garde scene in the early sixties, to a mansion in Newport, to the slopes of Zermatt, to Long Island’s Gold Coast, as it celebrates the n...

Name of Book: The Tea Planter's Wife Author: Dinah Jeffries ISBN: 978-0-451-49597-6 Publisher: Crown Type of book: Ceylon, England, America, tea plantation, 1913, 1925-1934, secrets, Sinhalese, Tamil, workers, wills, first marriages, Great Depression, childhood, manipulation, blackmail Year it was published: 2015 Summary: In this lush, sexy, atmospheric page-turner, a young Englishwoman, 19-year-old Gwendolyn, marries a rich and seductively mysterious widower, Laurence Hooper, after a whirlwind romance in London. When she joins him at his Ceylon tea plantation, she's certain she'll be the perfect wife and, someday, mother. But life in Ceylon is not what Gwen expected. The plantation workers are resentful, the neighbors, and her new sister-in-law, treacherous. Gwen finds herself drawn to a Singhalese man of questionable intentions and worries about the propriety of her husband's connection to an American widow. But most troubling are the terrible secre...

Wild girls- Erica Abeel SR: September 21st 2016 FR: October 5th 2016 A House Divided-Pearl S Buck SR: March 11th, 2016 FR: N/A Roma Amor- Sherry Christie SR: October 1st 2016 FR: The autobiography of Henry VIII- Margaret George SR: September 21st 2016 FR: The tea planter's wife- Dinah Jeffries SR: September 21st 2016 FR: October 1st, 2016 Save the last dance- Eric Joseph, Eva Ungar Grudin SR: October 26th 2016 FR: Revenants- Scott Kauffman SR: August 8th 2016 FR: October 20th 2016 The boy who wanted wings- James Conroyd Martin SR: October 5th 2016 FR: The claws of the cat - Susan Spann SR: September 4th 2016 FR: Come Next Spring- Alana White SR: October 15th 2016 FR: October 21st 2016 Rina- Kang young-sook SR: October 24th 2016 FR: Nonfiction: Tree of Souls-Howard Schwartz SR: February 10th, 2014 FR: N/A The can't-idates; running for president when nobody knows your name- Craig Tomashoff SR: September 22nd 2016 FR: October 28th 2016 Whe...