Category: Online Reading Challenge

Online Reading Challenge – November Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in Africa that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

“We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

I read our main title: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. This is a multigenerational saga that spans countries and centuries. Two half-sisters are born in eighteenth-century Ghana in different villages. The kicker: they don’t know the other exists. One sister, Effia, marries an English slave trader, moves into Cape Coast Castle, and lives a life of comfort and somewhat peace. She raises half-caste children with her white husband. The other sister, Esi, is captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle, sold into slavery, and shipped off on a boat. She ends up in America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery.

This book follows Effia and Esi’s descendants through eight generations. It discusses slavery in the past all the way through to racism in the present. One thread loops through Ghana with Effia’s family. Another thread travels America with Esi’s family. Readers switch back and forth between each woman’s descendants to learn how past actions influence their futures.

Gyasi’s debut novel was absolutely breathtaking. I listened to the audiobook and wished that I would have had access to the family tree that was in the front of the print book. If you decide to give this book a listen, Knopf Double Day has a copy of the family tree online that you can use. As I was reading, I was amazed that this was the author’s debut novel! Homegoing was beautifully written and tore at my heart as it introduced characters with heartbreaking stories of loss, danger, and love. Gyasi does a wonderful job of telling the accounts of a family and how their bodies are affected by events/people/places out of their control, while also being sensitive to their souls.

In December, we’re headed to Cuba!

Online Reading Challenge – November

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to Africa. Our Main title for November is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher.

Ghana, eighteenth century: two half sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery.

One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.

This title is also available in large print, CD audiobook, and as a Libby eBook.

Looking for some other materials set in Africa? Try any of the following. As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Fiction Picks

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Online Reading Challenge – October Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in Iceland that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. Initially I was wary of this book. I thought it was going to be hard for me to get through given the ‘Note on Icelandic Names and Pronunciation’ at the beginning and the map that confused me even more. (Now I realize those two items highlighted how well-researched this book is.) The more I read though, the more I found myself wanting to ignore my responsibilities and only read this book. I can’t pinpoint when it hooked me, but once it did, I was enthralled. Bonus: this book was based on a true story – the story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland. For more information about the true story, the author discusses it at the end of the book.

“To know what a person has done, and to know who a person is, are very different things.”
― Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

The above quote is the epitome of Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. In 1829 Iceland, Agnes and two others were convicted of a brutal double murder on a remote homestead. The judicial system, as it was at the time, ordered Agnes to be housed with a family on their small family farm. She is to stay there until her execution, receiving spiritual guidance from an assistant minister assigned to help in her final days.

Her hosts are naturally horrified when they learn that they are to house a murderer. Being forced to share a small space with her and to sleep and eat next to her is disastrous. The monetary compensation they are given isn’t even worth it in their eyes, but they are not given a choice as to whether or not they will house Agnes. They avoid Agnes at first, but when the assistant minister, Toti, shows up, they are forced to confront their feelings. Toti is the only one who tries to understand her, even though she is reticent to discuss religion with him. As Agnes’ execution date looms closer, the family learn more about Agnes and the truth of what happened the night two people were murdered.

This book is set against Iceland’s stark landscape. The language is beautifully written, showcasing to reader the hardships that farmers were facing at that time. The author also discusses what it’s like to face a death sentence. Agnes starts this story stoic, determined to face her death with dignity, but the closer her death becomes, the more her resolve cracks. She begins to open up, giving readers, and the people around her, a rare glimpse at her truth.

I hope you enjoyed traveling to Iceland with me this month! In November, we’re headed to Africa.

Online Reading Challenge – October

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to Iceland. Our Main title for October is Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher.

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tv=ti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

Looking for some other books set in Iceland? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Online Reading Challenge – September Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in New York City that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis. This is a dual timeline book, but both timelines take place in the same physical place, the New York Public Library. I was excited when I realized this was the main book for this month! I read this book for the first time when it was initally published in August 2020, but reread it to refresh myself for this challenge. This is one of my favorite books set in New York City, as well as one of my favorites set in a library. The dual mysteries, plus all the bucking against tradition, hooked me. Let’s get into it!

1913, New York: Laura Lyons and her family live in an apartment within the New York Public Library. Cool, right?! Laura’s husband is the superintendent for the library, which allows her family to live in this stately building. Laura should be happy with her lot in life, but she wants more. Laura applies to Columbia Journalism School, showcasing her headstrong and passionate personality by persuing stories all over the city. On one of her adventures in Greenwich Village, she discovers the Heterodoxy Club. This radical group is an all-female safe space where women can freely discuss their opinions on any subject without fear of judgment or retribution. These meetings change Laura’s opinions on a lot of things, one being the traditional role she plays in her family. A crisis back home sends Laura reeling. Valuable books have been reported stolen at the library, her husband’s credibility is in ruins, and her family is starting to fall apart. She has to decide where her loyalities lie before it’s too late.

Flash forward 80 years to 1993, New York: Sadie Donovan is at a loss. Her grandmother is the famous essayist Laura Lyons, something Sadie is both proud of, but also something she struggles with every day. After Sadie gets her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library, her joy is quickly squashed. Rare books, manuscripts, and notes are disappearing from the Berg Collection, framing Sadie as the library’s main suspect. Determined to save both her career and reputation, Sadie finds a private security expert who agrees to help her find the real culprit. Sadie expects to find the thief and her missing items, but is surprised when secrets from her own family’s past pop up demanding attention.

While I enjoyed this book, I admit that at points the two characters in two different timelines confused me. I would have loved separate books – one from Laura’s point of view and one from Sadie’s point of view. The themes of female empowerment, fighting against the oppression of women’s rights, and free-thinking women in the early 20th century pulled me in and kept me wanting to read more though. The Lions of Fifth Avenue was intriguing with its tales of sacrifice and secrets over generations. A solid four-star read for me!

In October, we’re headed to Iceland!

Online Reading Challenge – September

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to New York City. Our Main title for September is The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis. (This book takes place partly in the New York Public Library!) Here’s a quick summary from the publisher.

In New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis’s latest historical novel, a series of book thefts roils the iconic New York Public Library, leaving two generations of strong-willed women to pick up the pieces.

It’s 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn’t ask for more out of life—her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she is drawn to Greenwich Village’s new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club—a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women’s rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. And when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she’s forced to confront her shifting priorities head on . . . and may just lose everything in the process.

Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she’s wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit Sadie’s running begin disappearing from the library’s famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-averse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage—truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library’s history.

This title is also available in large print and as a Libby eBook.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Online Reading Challenge – August Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in Japan that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

“After all the years I’ve spent with him not seeing me, I don’t see him anymore either. We exist like two blind fish, sliding past each other cordially in our parallel universes.”
― Emily Itami, Fault Lines

I read our main title: Fault Lines by Emily Itami. This was a very quick read and honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of it as I was reading. At the end, I found myself wanting to know more about the lives of the characters and their own justifications for their actions.

Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has everything she could ever want: a hardworking husband, a beautiful apartment in Tokyo, and two adorable children. She should be happy, right? Wrong. Sometimes Mizuki finds herself standing on her high-rise balcony wanting to throw herself off and end it all. Her husband spends what little time he has with them glued to his phone, plus he is constantly being pulled away to work. All she does is clean up after her kids and hang up endless laundry.

One night while out with friends, Mizuki meets Kiyoshi and her whole life changes. Kiyoshi is a successful restaurateur. As the two get to know each other, Mizuki’s world starts to expand. She feels alive again and starts to rediscover all of the things that she has lost through the years. He is a breath of freedom, bringing her a new friendship she greatly needed. The two dive into exploring Tokyo, becoming closer. Their relationship changes overtime, illuminating for Mizuki that she is actually living two lives. In the end, Mizuki has to choose one: her family or Kiyoshi.

All in all, this debut novel was relatable and discussed choices, adulthood, and the dichotomy between freedom and tradition in ways that actually made sense. A mother’s desire cannot be ignored. Watching Mizuki battle with herself while she tried to figure out what she wanted was riveting. Her discussion of the morals and mores of Japan and how they butt up against those of people from outside Japan was enlightening. The warring cultural expectations complicated Mizuki’s life as she tried to find a balance between her past and present, her life as a sexual being and her life as a dutiful mother. This was a refreshing read and I have high hopes for the author’s next book!

In September, we’re headed to New York City!

Online Reading Challenge – August

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to Japan. Our main title for August is Fault Lines by Emily Itami. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher.

Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children, and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry.

Then, one rainy night, she meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. In him, she rediscovers freedom, friendship, and the neon, electric pulse of the city she has always loved. But the further she falls into their relationship, the clearer it becomes that she is living two lives—and in the end, we can choose only one.

Funny, provocative, and startlingly honest, Fault Lines is for anyone who has ever looked in the mirror and asked, who am I and how did I get here? A bittersweet love story and a piercing portrait of female identity, it introduces Emily Itami as a debut novelist with astounding resonance and wit.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Online Reading Challenge – July Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in suburbia that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

As I was making the displays full of suburbia books for each Davenport library, I realized that a lot of what I read is set in this location without me even realizing it – those cozy mysteries, generational fiction, thrillers, etc that keep me company day after day. For July, I read our main title: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Well technically, I had already read this title for a previous virtual book club that happened during COVID. (Side question: do any of you re-read books? I generally only do if it’s an absolute favorite comfort read since there are so many other books out there & not enough time! Let me know in the comments.) Anyway, instead of re-reading the book, I spent time going over my review and learning more about Ann Patchett. My favorite fact about Ann is that she opened Parnassus Books, a bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2011. Visiting there is on my bucket list. Let’s get into the book!

” ‘Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?’ … ‘But we overlay the present onto the past,’ … ‘We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.’ ” – Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

Danny and Maeve Conroy’s mother left their house and never returned when the siblings were very young. Their father is not warm or caring, instead he’s taciturn and withdrawn. Luckily for Danny, his older sister Maeve steps in and becomes his champion and ally. Their bond grows as the two age, providing them with love that they didn’t receive from their father. Their bond gets even stronger when their father marries out of the blue.

Their new stepmother Andrea moves into the house with her two little girls. It quickly becomes apparent that Andrea has absolutely no interest in Danny or Maeve, despite the four children getting along. In fact, Andrea works to exclude the older two from the family, giving one of her girls Maeve’s bedroom and forcing the housekeepers, who raised Maeve and Danny, out of the way. Their father is noticably more distant, making excuses to be away more frequently.

What drew Andrea to the family is the beautiful Victorian house that Danny and Maeve’s father bought for their mother. It’s located in an upscale Philadelphia neighborhood. He purchased the house with the former owners’ family portraits and furniture still in it. He saw this house as a symbol of his own success, while their mother saw it instead as excessive and overwhelming opulence with way too many expensive furnishings. Ultimately the house is what drove her away – somewhere to donate her time to helping other people. Andrea, however, saw the house, wanting it and the status that it would give her. She married their father for the house, which eventually led to Danny and Maeve being forced to leave and being haunted by that action for years.

The Dutch House is told first person through Danny’s point-of-view with some input thrown in by Maeve. This is rare for Ann Patchett, but added a layer of mystery to the story as Danny is written as a somewhat clueless character. Readers only see what Danny wants them to see with Maeve providing more details about their upbringing.

This book is about obsessive nostalgia and real estate lust, which I found to be somewhat contradictory, but that nevertheless worked together. It’s incredibly sentimental, heart-warming, and full of themes of forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, redemption, and letting go of the past. This is a story of unconventional families, making due with what you have, and what happens when children are left to their own devices. It gave me strong fairy tale vibes with the theme of motherless children (ie. ‘Cinderella’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘The Little Princess’). All in all, this book was hard for me to stop reading and left me thinking about the story long after I finished. I hoped you like this pick!

In August we’re headed to Japan!

Online Reading Challenge – July

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to suburbia. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, suburbia is ‘the outer parts of a town, where there are houses, but no large stores, places of work, or places of entertainment’. Miriam-Webster defines suburbs as ‘a smaller community adjacent to or within commuting distance of a city OR the residential area on the outskirts of a city or large town’. There are so many suburbia options for you to read, watch, or listen to! I can’t wait!

Our Main title for July is The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher.

Ann Patchett, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth, delivers her most powerful novel to date: a richly moving story that explores the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go. The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are.

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

This title is also available as large print, CD audiobook, Playaway audiobook, Libby eBook, and Libby eAudiobook.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!