Svetlana's Reads and Views

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...

 Hello Readers! I hope you have been enjoying my weekly updates, but I guess right now I will be taking a break from them and will start them back up at another date. Right now a lot of book reviews are waiting for me. My apologies. 

Name of Book: Blood of the Chosen Author: Django Wexler ISBN: 978-0-316-51962-5 Publisher: Orbit  Part of a Series: Burningblade and Silvereye  Type of book: Mix of fantasy and science fiction, politics, Order, magic, disease, the Chosen, sapphic relationships, narratives, hidden secrets, end of the world scenario (dystopia)  Year it was published: 2021  Summary: "Fantasy at its finest."--Nicholas Eames, on Ashes of the Sun  In the second book of Django Wexler's epic fantasy trilogy about two siblings divided by magic and revolution, Gyre must travel across the Splinter Kingdoms to rally the rebels to his side, while his sister Maya uncovers the secrets of a powerful artifact that could change everything.   Gyre finally sees a way to overthrow the all-powerful Twilight Order. But he'll have to gain the alliance of both the ghouls and the human rebels to the south in order to even stand have a chance. And uniting them won't be so simple. His ...

Name of Book: The Waters Author: Bonnie Jo Campbell ISBN: 978-0-393-24843-2 Publisher: W.W. Norton Type of book: 2010s century, modern times, Michigan, rural noir, nature, snakes, secrets, donkeys, survival, mathematics, traditions vs new path, island, healing, idols, stereotypes,  Year it was published: 2024  Summary: A master of rural noir returns with a fierce, mesmerizing novel about exceptional women and the soul of a small town. On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three daughters. The youngest, beautiful and inscrutable Rose Thorn, has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild. Donkey spends her days searching for truths i...