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 ...