Svetlana's Reads and Views

    Title of the book: SPQR a history of ancient Rome Author: Mary Beard  Publisher: live right  Publishing Date: 2015 ISBN: 978-1-63149-222-8 Summary: In  SPQR , an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" ( Wall Street Journal ). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" ( Economist ) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" ( Christian Science Monitor ) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" ( Dallas Morning News ) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the...

   Title of the book: the rest is memory  Author: Lily tuck  Publisher: liveright  Publishing Date: 2024  ISBN: 978-1-324-09572-9 Summary: The heartbreaking story of a young Catholic girl transported to Auschwitz becomes a Rashomon-like rondo in the hands of one of our greatest novelists. First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy’s motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a village in southeastern Poland before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed by prisoner Wilhelm Brasse. Three months later she is dead. How did this—the fictionalized account of a real person who was Catholic—happen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa’s story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles, Jewish and Catholic, who perished...

    Title of the book: Heart-work; short stories Author: Roberta Silman  Publisher: Campden Hill Books Publishing Date: 2024 (short stores 1977-2024) ISBN: 979-8-9859260-2-6 Summary: IN THIS SECOND COMPELLING COLLECTION of stories Roberta Silman explores the intricacies of love, the infinite surprises that exist within families, and the yearning for guidance that can result in great leaps of the imagination on the part of her passionate and resilient characters. As she did in her first prize-winning collection, Blood Relations, Silman has created a group of unforgettable people who have something to tell us about how to negotiate the often dangerous shoals of daily life. Silman’s understanding of the bonds that create fierce loyalties, her ability to see into her characters’ minds in uncanny ways, and her grasp of the loneliness that is part of the human condition are revealed in these stories, which have appeared in The Atlantic, McCall’s, The Virginia Quarterly Review, ...

    Name of Book: Hot Stage Author: Anita Nair ISBN: 978-1-913394-96-7 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press  Part of a Series: Inspector Gowda series  Type of book: India, December of 2012, right politics, Bangalore, religion, drinking bars,  territory, juggling balls, mystery, death, illegal fights, undercover work  Year it was published: 2024 Summary: The third in the Inspector Gowda series, set in Bangalore, India. Borei Gowda is a splendidly grumpy, hard-drinking, deeply flawed policeman whose chaotic home life includes an absent wife, an estranged son and an enigmatic mistress. When elderly Professor Mudgood is found dead in his Bangalore house one winter morning, it is considered a natural death; after all, he was 82 years old, but Gowda isn’t so sure. All the evidence points to a political murder since the professor was a fervent critic of right-wing forces in India. But the more Gowda delves into the details, the more convinced he becomes that the professo...

    Name of Book: Chain of Custody Author: Anita Nair  ISBN: 978-1-908524-74-4 Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press  Part of a Series: Inspector Gowda series (prequel A CUT LIKE WOUND, sequel HOT STAGE)  Type of book: India, child trafficking, kidnapping, police officers, politics, mysteries, balancing act, 2011? Bangalore, lovers, daily life, heartbreak  Year it was published: 2016 Summary: Bangalore's Inspector Gowda is back in another nail-biting thriller. What does thirteen-year-old Nandita's disappearance have to do with the murder of a well-known lawyer in a gated community? Gowda is soon embroiled in the investigation of a child-trafficking racket. Negotiating insensitive laws, indifferent officials, and uncooperative witnesses, he is in a race against time to rescue Nandita from one of the most depraved criminal rings he has ever encountered. Anita Nair lives in Bangalore and is an internationally acclaimed author and playwright. Her novel Ladies Coupe is ...

    Name of Book: The Trials of Empire Author: Richard Swan ISBN: 978-0-316-36198-9 Publisher: Orbit Part of a Series: Empire of the Wolf Type of book: Fantasy, dark, grim, law, religion, wars, exploring the world, mystery, religion vs secular laws, magic  Year it was published: 2024 Summary: The third novel in an epic fantasy trilogy, which follows the tale of Sir Konrad Vonvalt, an Emperor’s Justice – a detective, judge and executioner all in one. THE TIME OF JUDGEMENT IS AT HAND The Empire of the Wolf is on its knees, but there's life in the great beast yet. To save it, Sir Konrad Vonvalt and Helena must look beyond its borders for allies - to the wolfmen of the southern plains, and the pagan clans in the north. But old grievances run deep, and both factions would benefit from the fall of Sova. Even these allies might not be enough. Their enemy, the zealot Bartholomew Claver, wields infernal powers bestowed on him by a mysterious demonic patron. If Vonvalt and Helena a...

  Title of the book: Miss Kim Knows and other stories  Author: Cho Nam Joo (trans Jamie Chung)  Publisher: Live right  Publishing Date: 2024 ISBN: 978-1-324-09531-6 Summary: From the international best-selling author of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, a collection exploring the intimacies of contemporary Korean womanhood. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman suffers domestic violence. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again. Written in Cho Nam-joo’s signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women, ranging from preteens to octogenarians, as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. In “Under the Plum Tree,” Mallyeo feels existential as she bears witness to her sister’s final days; in “Dear Hyunnam Oppa,” a college graduate musters the courage to leave her partner; and in “Grown-Up Girl,” a mother final...

    Name of Book: QUINCAS Borbas  Author: Machado De Assis (trans Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Peterson)   ISBN: 978-1-324-09068-7 Publisher: Live right  Type of book: Brazil, satire, wealth, social class, 1860s-1870s, finances, mental health, Rio De Janeiro, dog, philosophy, parable  Year it was published: 1891 (2024)  Summary: A vibrant new translation of Machado de Assis’s classic novel about a young man flush with newfound wealth, who promptly gets swindled. Hailed in his lifetime as Brazil’s greatest writer, Machado de Assis (1839–1908) has found a new generation of readers through a series of critically acclaimed translations by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. Now, the duo returns to breathe new life into the irreverent, ambitious, and darkly funny Quincas Borba . Originally published in 1891, the novel begins with the death of its titular character, a mad philosopher infamous for spouting pessimistic theories of Humanitism. Borba ...

    Name of Book: Kim Jiyoung, born 1982 Author: Cho Nam-Joo (trans Jamie Chang) ISBN: 978-1-63149-867-1 Publisher: Live right  Type of book: South Korea 1982-2016, girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, working life, marriage, societal expectations and failures, economy, finances, demands, survival  Year it was published: 2016 (2021)  Summary: A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea’s new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny. Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person. In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old “millennial everywoman,” she has recently left her white-collar desk job—in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time—as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung imper...

  Name of Book: the WREN, the WREN  Author: Anne Enright  ISBN: 978-1-324-07603-2  Publisher: W.W. Norton  Type of book: mother/daughter relationships, time, abandonment, poetry, travel, curiosity, practicality, birds, nature, modern times, Ireland, lovers  Year it was published: 2023  Summary: Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by TIME , The Millions , and Literary Hub An incandescent novel from one of our greatest living novelists ( The Times ) about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women. Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at twenty-two Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s orderly home to find her own voice as a writer (mostly online, ghost-blogging for an influencer) and to live a poetical life. As she chases obsessive love, damage, and transcendence, in Dublin and beyond, her g...

Name of Book: How to become the dark Lord and die trying  Author: Django Wexler  ISBN: 9780316392204 Publisher: Orbit Part of a Series: Dark Lord Davi  Type of book: comedy, satire, fantasy, adventure, flipping the fantasy tropes, power of evil vs good, quest, humans vs other humanoids, mastermind  Year it was published: 2024  Summary: Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself. Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time. This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord al...

Name of Book: The Tower of fools Author: Andrzej Sapkowski  ISBN: 9780316423694 Publisher: Orbit  Part of a Series: the hussite trilogy   Type of book: Poland, 1420s, fantasy, foiled love, family, reputation, religion, Latin tongue, church, anachronistic women, wealth, middle class  Year it was published: 2020 ( original 2002)  Summary: Reinmar of Bielawa, sometimes known as Reynevan, is a doctor, a magician and, according to some, a charlatan. And when a thoughtless indiscretion finds him caught in the crosshairs of powerful noble family, he is forced to flee his home. But once he passes beyond the city borders, he finds that there are dangers ahead as well as behind. Strange mystical forces are gathering in the shadows. And pursued not only by the affronted Stercza brothers, bent on vengeance, but also by the Holy Inquisition, Reynevan finds himself in the Narrenturm, the Tower of Fools. The Tower is an asylum for the mad, or for those who...

Name of Book: these deathless shores  Author: p.h. low  ISBN: 9780316569200 Publisher: orbit Type of book: dark, Asian Peter Pan retelling, expectations, captain hook side, island, anorexia, romance, drug use and dependency, murders, real world vs Neverland, fantasy   Year it was published: 2024  Summary: Jordan has gotten good at pretending. On an Island where boys fly and fight pirates, but girls can only be mothers, Jordan's shaved head and false swagger are the only things keeping her adopted crew of Lost Boys from forcing her into a role she has never wanted. When she gets her first period, she's exposed and thrown back Outside—into a world where grown-ups die slowly in offices, flight is a fantasy, and withdrawal from the Island’s magical Dust slowly strips its afflicted of their dignity. To Jordan, it’s a fate worse than death. Nine years later, when the drug she has been using to medicate her withdrawal begins to show its fatal final symptom...

Title of the book: The Burning Earth; A history  Author: Sunil Amrith  Publisher: W.W. Norton  Publishing Date: 2024  ISBN: 978-1-324-00718-0 Summary: A brilliant, paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, over the last 500 years. Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of food, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have allowed billions of humans to exist and thrive. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered us to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality. In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, genocide and eco-cide, human freedom and planetary costs. His environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding war as massive reshaping of the earth through global mobilizations of natural resources, including humans; and explains patterns of migration as a...