Svetlana's Reads and Views

  Name of Book: The Cut Line ( original Lõikejoon)  Author: Carolina Pihelgas (trans Darcy Hurford)  ISBN: 9781642861624 Publisher: World Editions  Type of book: Estonia, summer, escape, 2020s, abusive relationships, toxicity, family, nature, threat, imminent war with Russia  Year it was published: 2026 (original 2024) Summary: In the dog days of an Estonian summer, Liine flees to the countryside to put a conclusive end to her toxic 14-year relationship. She undergoes every stage of separation in a lone farmstead amid forests. Physical labor and gardening help her withstand her ex-partner’s threats, the incredulity of friends and family, and her own anguish. Dread is pervasive in this novel. Set in the near future, it is filled with vivid depictions of the threat of climate change. All around Liine, nature is facing acute drought and heat. No less menacing is the presence of an expanding NATO base close to the cottage at the Russian border. The world’s largest m...

  Name of Book: Caledonian Road  Author: Andrew O'Hagan  ISBN: 9781324074878 Publisher: W.W. Norton Type of book: Classicism, 2021-2022, performative allyship, gender, parent/child relationships, friends, illegal immigration, LGBtQ+ relationships, art, marijuana, dark web, Eastern European, gang, Robin Hood, technology, elite, downtrodden, death  Year it was published: 2024 Summary: From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace. May 2021. London. Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes. The second? Milo Manghasa, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which exc...

  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: Bear Witness; The Pursuit of Justice In A Violent Land  Author: Ross Halperin  Publisher: Liveright Publishing Date: 2025 ISBN: 9781324090786 Summary: “The reporting is really remarkable—it’s detailed, it’s in depth, it’s cinematic....This book is a triumph. You should all get it.” ―David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager Amazon Editors' Pick: A Best History Book of May A high-octane true-crime story, Bear Witness follows two Christians who refuse to let fear or conventional wisdom stand in the way of their altruistic mission. The vast majority of Hondurans would have never dared to set foot in Nueva Suyapa, a mountainside barrio that was under the thumb of a gang whose bravado and cruelty were the stuff of legend. But that is precisely where Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, chose to raise their families. Kurt and Carlos were best friends ...

  Name of Book: Solimeos Author: Rhoda Lerman ISBN:9781637587638 Publisher: Wicked Son 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: 2023 Summary: Fleeing post-World War II Germany, an aristocratic young man and his Nazi officer father are spirited away to the Brazilian jungle to help create a new, occult-obsessed, German Reich…but love, ambition, and vengeance interfere. In the waning days of World War II, fourteen-year-old Axel, his family, and their servants are cold and hungry in Pappendorf Castle. Baron Dietrich von Pappendorf, Axel’s father, is away, having spent much of the war traveling the world in search of an ancient, pre-Babel language that his occult-obsessed, Nazi masters believed would solidify Aryans as the master race. But when the baron returns to the family castle, it’s not in triu...