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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Witch and famous” by Angela M. Sanders
Kate’s 2¢: “Witch and famous” by Angela M. Sanders
“Witch and famous” by Angela M. Sanders
While murder is no laughing matter, Sanders’s approach to solving the issue is novel and often funny. I enjoyed this book that was included on the NLS cartridge of 7 books, sent at random.
Rebecca Mitchell did a good job of reading this for us. Thank you.
From the Web:
About Angela M. Sanders
Angela grew up in rural Northern California building forts in the woods where she devoured Nancy Drew mysteries. She earned degrees in economics and public administration, and in graduate school studied six months in Paris, sparking a lifelong interest in French culture. After 11 years as a congressional investigator, Angela realized she was more fascinated by the stories at the edges of her investigations—the decrepit exercise equipment in the ladies room of a Czech oil company; the curious number of framed photographs of women on a nuclear weapons official’s desk; the stupendous speed by which a particular Agriculture undersecretary inhaled chili dogs—than by the policies she evaluated. She returned to the west coast to explore the world and her imagination through magazine stories and fiction.
Angela lives in Portland, Oregon.
Angela M. Sanders
I give the best part of my day—that calm few hours early in the morning when the birds are waking up and my subconscious is fresh from a night with the sandman—to writing fiction. Specifically, I write crime fiction geared to people who like down-to-earth glamour shaken with intelligence and wit.
My current series, the Witch Way librarian mysteries, also explores rural Oregon, but this time through the eyes of a transplanted East-Coaster who finds herself in the middle of nowhere, running a library in a multi-turreted house that would have made the Addams Family proud, in a town full of alarming eccentrics, and with the curious ability of being able to talk to books.
The Joanna Hayworth Vintage Clothing series takes place in my hometown of Portland and features a curmudgeonly aesthete who reluctantly solves murder cases while luxuriating in 1930s dressing gowns and icy martinis.
The Booster Club capers center around a retirement home for petty criminals who want to do good, but can’t resist using their, um, “talents” along the way.
The three Kite Shop mysteries, written as Clover Tate, take place in on Oregon’s gorgeous coast and star Emmy Adler, a young, struggling kite shop owner with hippie parents (quinoa and a Watergate reenactment club factor heavily) and a knack for stumbling over dead bodies.
Happy reading! Let’s stay in touch. You can reach me at angela@angelamsanders.com.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Witch and famous DB114583
Sanders, Angela M Reading time: 8 hours, 19 minutes.
Rebecca Mitchell
Mystery and Detective Stories
“For a tiny town, picturesque Wilfred, Oregon, has everything, including an impressive library housed in a Victorian mansion, a touch of magic in new librarian and fledgling witch, Josie Way, a visiting movie star-and a curious tendency toward murder . . . Josie and all of Wilfred are buzzing with excitement. A-list movie star Daphne Morris has chosen to interview Roz, assistant librarian and novelist, for her book club. But when the glamorous actress quickly charms both Roz’s long-time love and sheriff Sam, the object of Josie’s unrequited affection, Josie turns to the whispers from her beloved books for ideas on revising the plot. Yet soon there’s another twist . . . At a party to celebrate the interview, Daphne’s personal chef is found dead in a scene that all too closely echoes one in Roz’s novel. It’s clear to Josie that someone’s idea of a happy ending means framing her friend. She’ll have to read between the lines with the help of the library’s enchanted stacks, guidance from her magical grandmother’s letters, and her cat familiar, Rodney, to solve this murder before someone decides to stage a deadly sequel . . .” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Vanished: Stories” by Karin Lin-Greenberg
Kate’s 2¢: “Vanished: Stories” by Karin Lin-Greenberg
“Vanished: Stories” by Karin Lin-Greenberg
I enjoyed each of these short stories, especially the ones about teachers and students. It resonated with me by reminding me of some of the students I taught years ago.
Having a variety of readers brought uniqueness to each story and the readers did well.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karin Lin-Greenberg is an American fiction writer. Her story collection, Faulty Predictions (University of Georgia Press, 2014), won the 2013 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction[1] and the 2014 Foreword Review INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award (Gold Winner for Short Stories).[2] Her stories have appeared in The Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Epoch, Kenyon Review Online, New Ohio Review, The North American Review, and Redivider. She is currently an associate professor of English at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. She has previously taught at Missouri State University, The College of Wooster, and Appalachian State University. She earned an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, an MA in Literature and Writing from Temple University in 2003, and a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College.[3]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Vanished: stories DB110972
Lin-Greenberg, Karin. Reading time: 7 hours, 4 minutes.
Read by Xe Sands; Emily Lawrence; Erica Sullivan; Taylor Meskimen; Kyla Garcia; Erin Bennett; Stacey Glemboski; Hillary Huber; Jane Oppenheimer.
Short Stories
“Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Vanished tells the stories of women and girls in upstate New York who are often overlooked or unseen by the people around them. The characters range from an aging art professor whose students are uninterested in learning what she has to teach, to a young girl who becomes the victim of a cruel prank in a swimming pool, to a television producer who regrets allowing her coworkers into her mother’s bird-filled house to film a show about animal hoarding because it will reveal too much about her family and past. Humorous and empathetic, the collection exposes the adversity in each character’s life; each deals with something or someone who has vanished—a person close to her, a friendship, a relationship—as she seeks to make sense of the world around her in the wake of that loss.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
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Kate’s 2¢: “The Blaze” by Chad Dundas
saying…
Apparently, Matt’s Traumatic Brain Injury has less to do with his memory loss than the fright his Dad and his friend instilled in him when Matt witnessed a crime cover-up. Still, memory loss is no joke and individuals suffering with this should get professional help.
WebAbout me & my work. I’m the author of the acclaimed novels The Blaze and Champion of the World, co-producer of the award-winning history and true crime podcast Death in the West and co-host of The Co-Main Event MMA Podcast.
from NLS/BARD/LOC:
The blaze DB99574
Dundas, Chad. Reading time: 10 hours, 50 minutes.
Read by Chris Henry Coffey.
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
Having lost much of his memory from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq, Matthew Rose is called back to Montana after his father’s death. On his first night back, Matthew sees a house go up in flames, which sparks a memory of a different long-ago fire. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020.
Downloaded: January 8, 2024
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢:” An American tune: a novel” by Barbara Shoup
Kate’s 2¢:” An American tune: a novel” by Barbara Shoup
“An American tune: a novel” by Barbara Shoup
NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares her thoughts about what she reads. Imho…
I enjoyed this story and Charles Cooper did a good job of reading it.
Shoup showed us several results of young men who experienced the war in Vietnam: one who died, one who came back totally whacked on drugs, and one who receded into his own shell. My brother was in Nam and he never talks about it.
A few take-aways:
–An achingly poignant account of a family crushed under the weight of surpressed truths.
–Given the skills to succeed, nurtured with kindness and attention, that we begin to see how different our world could be.
–Only working from the indside could you make a difference.
–It was the time of life. Wasn’t remembering the people you loved when you were young, a natural a natural part of the process of looking back on your life; coming to terms with what it had turned out to be.
–…They were buried by life itself.
–Choices come to compose tune of our lives.
From the WEB:
Barbara Shoup is the author of seven novels and the co-author of two books about the creative process. Her young adult novels, Wish You Were Here and Stranded in Harmony were selected as American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults. Vermeer’s Daughter was a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young Adults. She is the recipient of numerous grants from the Indiana Arts Council, two creative renewal grants from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the 2006 PEN Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, and the 2012 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Regional Indiana Author Award. Currently, she is the executive director of the Writers’ Center of Indiana. Her most recent novel is An American Tune.
MWW social media intern Rachael Heffner interviewed Barb for this week’s E-pistle.
Rachael: Your intensive at MWW is called Writing YA: Think Like a Teenager. I know you don’t want to give too much away, but can you give one tip on how to “think like a teenager”?
Barbara: That teenage person is still there, inside every one of us. If you’re like me, you can’t help thinking like a teenager, at least some of the time. If you’ve forgotten how to think like a teenager, this workshop will take you right back to that time in your life and put you in touch with the emotional perspective you need to get a YA novel right.
Rachael: You write both YA and adult novels. What’s the biggest difference for you in terms of writing these types of books, or is there a difference?
Barbara: I don’t consciously choose to write one or the other. I write the novels that seem possible to write–some of them are made of ideas that reflect the complexity of adult life; others, the rawness and self-absorption of adolescence. They are equally interesting to me and equally challenging. In several cases, novels that started out as adult novels became YA novels in process when I realized that the strongest voices and most compelling stories were those of the younger characters.
Rachael: You are quite a busy woman. You are Executive Director at the Indiana Writers Center. You’ve just published a new novel called An American Tune. Most writers have to struggle to balance family, work, and writing. How do you do it?
Barbara: I’m extremely fortunate to love everything I do. Everything is of a piece to me and everything feeds my writing, one way or another. Still, it’s a constant struggle to keep everything in balance. Usually I write for a few hours early each morning. Sometimes I escape for a week or so to a quiet place and work nonstop, which is heaven. That said, there are plenty of times when I get overwhelmed and find my real life creeping into the time I need for fiction–which is not a good thing because when I don’t write, I’m just not okay. So I try to catch myself when I feel things getting out of whack. Years ago I read this in a women’s magazine–probably about dieting, but it seemed dead on in terms of everything: “Discipline is remembering what you want.” I want to be a writer, so I choose it whenever I can. Slowly, the pages pile up.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
An American tune: a novel DBC12181
Shoup, Barbara. Reading time: 14 hours, 7 minutes.
Read by Charles Cooper. A production of Indiana State Library, Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library.
Psychological Fiction
While reluctantly accompanying her husband and daughter to freshman orientation at Indiana University, Nora Quillen hears someone call her name, a name she has not heard in more than 25 years. Not even her husband knows that back in the ’60s she was Jane Barth, a student deeply involved in the antiwar movement. An American Tune moves back and forth in time, telling the story of Jane, a girl from a working-class family who fled town after she was complicit in a deadly bombing, and Nora, the woman she became, a wife and mother living a quiet life in northern Michigan. An achingly poignant account of a family crushed under the weight of suppressed truths, An American Tune illuminates the irrevocability of our choices and how those choices come to compose the tune of our lives.
Download An American tune: a novel
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “All The Western Stars” by Philip Lee Williams
Kate’s 2¢: “All The Western Stars” by Philip Lee Williams
“All The Western Stars” by Philip Lee Williams
saying…
Bob Askey is one of my favorite readers/narrators and he did his usual fabulous job of presenting this story.
You have to love these two old codgers, who aren’t ready to lie down and die in a nursing home. I’ve often thought that too many people are put ‘away’ in a nursing home too soon before their time.
I enjoyed the humor and the extravagant tales Jake and Luca make up as the need arises.
A few take-aways:
–A memorable story filled with universal fears and truths.
–Jake and Lucas are running from their pasts, from their mortality, from the fear of dying unfulfilled.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
( biography of a living person needs additional citations)
www.philipleewilliams.com[dead link]
Philip Lee Williams (born January 30, 1950) is an American novelist, poet, and essayist noted for his explorations of the natural world, intense human relationships, and aging. A native of Athens, Georgia, he grew up in the nearby town of Madison. He is the winner of many literary awards for his 21 published books, including the 2004 Michael Shaara Prize for his novel A Distant Flame (St. Martin’s), an examination of southerners who were against the Confederacy’s position in the American Civil War. He is also a winner of the Townsend Prize for Fiction for his novel The Heart of a Distant Forest and has been named Georgia Author of the Year four times. In 2007, he was recipient of a Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities. Williams’s The Divine Comics: A Vaudeville Show in Three Acts, a 1000-page re-imagining of Dante’s magnum opus, was published in the fall of 2011. His latest novels are Emerson’s Brother (2012) and Far Beyond the Gates (2020) from Mercer University Press[clarification needed]
Biography[edit]
Philip Lee Williams was born in 1950, one of three children of Ruth Sisk Williams (1924–2008) and Marshall Woodson Williams (1922– ). He, his parents, and his older brother John Mark Williams (b. 1948), moved to Madison, Georgia, in 1953, where Marshall Williams had accepted a job as a chemistry teacher at Morgan County High School. Williams also has a sister, Laura Jane Williams, born in 1959.
Williams began his creative work by composing music and writing poetry while still in his teens. He graduated from Morgan County High School in 1968 and from the University of Georgia in 1972 with a degree in journalism and minors in history and English. In 1972, he married Linda Rowley. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.
He finished more than half of his master’s degree in English at the University of Georgia before sustaining a serious back injury in 1974. After that, he spent 13 years as an award-winning journalist before becoming a science writer at his alma mater in 1985. As a journalist he worked for The Clayton Tribune (Clayton, Ga.), the Athens Daily News (Athens, Ga.), The Madisonian (Madison, Ga.), and The Athens Observer (Athens, Ga.)
Williams retired in 2010 from the University of Georgia, where he was a writer and taught creative writing.
In 2010, Williams was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, alongside Flannery O’Connor, Martin Luther King Jr., James Dickey, and fellow University of Georgia graduate Natasha Trethewey.[1] In addition, he is a recipient of the Georgia Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
All the western stars DB28203
Williams, Philip Lee. Reading time: 9 hours, 17 minutes.
Read by Bob Askey. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Psychological Fiction
A novel about two old men who escape from a small-town Georgia nursing home and head West to live out their cowboy fantasies. Jake Baker, a Mississippi-born former construction worker, and Lucas Kraft, an award-winning poet and novelist, find they have much in common: thirst, lechery, a hankering for risk, and a desire for freedom. Strong language and some descriptions of sex.
Download All the western stars
Kate’s 2¢: “Bleak Harbor” by Brian Gruley
“Bleak Harbor” by Brian Gruley
saying…
How many times have we condemned, looked down, or otherwise discounted someone who looked a bit different from us or acted strangely?
MacKenzie Beyer did a good job of reading this story. I enjoyed spending time on Bleak Harbor.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
www.bryangruley.com
Bryan Gruley (born November 9, 1957) is an American writer. He has shared a Pulitzer Prize for journalism[1] and been nominated for the “first novel” Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.[2]
Career[edit]
Gruley studied at the University of Notre Dame where he majored in American Studies and graduated in 1979.[3] Gruley is currently a reporter for Bloomberg News, writing long form features for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.[1][4] He worked more than 15 years for The Wall Street Journal[1] including seven years as Chicago bureau chief.[5][6]
With the Journal, he also helped cover breaking news including the September 11 World Trade Center attack, and shared in the staff’s Pulitzer Prize for that work, which cited “its comprehensive and insightful coverage, executed under the most difficult circumstances, of the terrorist attack on New York City, which recounted the day’s events and their implications for the future.”[1][7]
Gruley’s first novel, Starvation Lake: a mystery, was published in 2009 as a trade paperback original by the Touchstone Books imprint of Simon & Schuster. It is set in the fictional town of Starvation Lake, based on Bellaire, the seat of Antrim County, Michigan.[5] The real Starvation Lake is a lake in the next county, but the fictional town is on the lake, and the novel begins when the snowmobile of a long-missing youth hockey coach “washes up on the icy shores”.[5] Two sequels have followed in the so-called Starvation Lake series, The Hanging Tree (2010) and The Skeleton Box (2012). As of May 2013 Gruley is working on a new novel set in a different town with different characters.[citation needed]
Gruley played ice hockey as a boy and continues to play in his fifties, and to root for the Detroit Red Wings. He was schooled in Detroit, at Detroit Catholic Central, but the family vacationed up north and acquired a cottage in 1971 on Big Twin Lake near Bellaire, which the six siblings used until some time after their parents died. His first newspaper job was in the region as a 1978 summer intern at Antrim County News.[1][5]
Gruley and his wife Pam currently live on the North Side of Chicago.[5] They have three grown children.[1]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Bleak Harbor DB93541
Gruley, Bryan. Reading time: 11 hours, 29 minutes.
Read by MacKenzie Beyer.
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
Shortly before he turns sixteen, Danny Peters–who has autism–disappears from Bleak Harbor, the town his ancestors founded. Danny’s mother and stepfather–both alarmed that their own secret actions led to his abduction–scramble to obtain ransom funds. Strong language, some violence, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2018.
Downloaded: January 8, 2024
Download Bleak Harbor
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Seasons of purgatory” by Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr
Kate’s 2¢: “Seasons of purgatory” by Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr
“Seasons of purgatory” by Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr
Translated by Sara Khalili
This was a book chosen at random by NLS and sent to me on a cartridge that contained seven books.
I enjoyed reading about the myths and beliefs of these people. a
Fajer Al-Kaisi did a good job of reading this translation.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shiraz, Iran, is an Iranian writer, journalist and literary theorist.[3]
Mandanipour was born and raised in Shiraz, Iran. In 1975 he moved to Tehran and studied Political Sciences at the University of Tehran, graduating in 1980. In 1981, he enlisted in the army for his military service. To experience war and to write about it, he volunteered to join the front during the Iran-Iraq war and served there as an officer for eighteen months.
Following his military service, Mandanipour returned to Shiraz, where he worked as director of the Hafiz Research Center and National Library of Fars. In 1998, he became chief editor of Asr-e Panjshanbeh (Thursday Evening), a monthly literary journal.
In 2006, Mandanipour traveled to the United States as an International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University. In 2007 and 2008, he was a writer in residence at Harvard University and in 2009 at Boston College. In September 2011, Mandanipour returned to Brown University as a visiting literary arts professor, teaching contemporary Persian literature and modern Iranian cinema. He is now a Professor of Practice at Tufts University.
Works[edit]
Mandanipour started writing at fourteen and published his first short story, Shadows of the Cave, in 1985 in the literary journal Mofid Magazine. In 1989, his first collection of short stories was published under the same title.
Regarded as one of the most accomplished and promising writers of contemporary Iranian literature, Mandanipour’s creative approach to the use of symbols and metaphors, his inventive experimentation with language, time, and space, as well as his unique awareness of sequence and identity have made his work fascinating to critics and readers alike.[citation needed] In his stories, Mandanipour creates his unique surreal world in which illusion seems as natural as terrifying reality. The nightmares and realism of his stories are rooted in the historical horrors and sufferings of the people of Iran.
At the outset, Mandanipour’s stories are enigmatic. Yet, they jolt awake the reader’s imagination and provoke him or her to peel away the intricately woven and fused layers in which past, present, tradition, and modernity collide. His characters do not conform to conventional molds. Traditional identities are blurred as the lines between right and wrong, friend and foe, and sanity and insanity become fluid. Often driven by the most basic human instincts of fear, survival, and loneliness, Mandanipour’s characters struggle in a world of contradictions and ambiguities and grapple with self-identity, social dilemmas, and everyday life.
In a collection of essays on creative writing, The Book of Shahrzad’s Ghosts (Ketab-e Arvāh-e Shahrzād), Mandanipour discusses the elements of the story and the novel, as well as his theories on the nature of literature and the secrets of fiction. He writes, “Literature is the alchemy of transforming reality into words and creating a new phenomenon called fictional reality.”
His novel The Courage of Love (Del-e Del Dadegi), published in 1998, is structured around a love quadrangle with the four main characters representing earth, fire, water, and wind. The novel’s events occur during two different periods of war and earthquakes. Mandanipour compares the devastation, savagery, futility, and dark consequences of war and earthquakes by placing the two timeframes laterally, like mirrors facing each other. In the novel, Mandanipour employs a stream of consciousness. Numerous critics, including Houshang Golshiri, have regarded the 900-page work of fiction as a masterpiece of contemporary Iranian literature. In 2008, he cooperated in writing the screenplay of a documentary named Chahar Marge Yek Nevisandeh (Four Deaths of a Writer). It is about the life of a writer showing how he dies four times in his works, and the screenplay was directed by Ali Zare Ghanat Nowi.[4]
In 2009, Mandanipour published Censoring an Iranian Love Story, his first novel to be translated into English. Ostensibly a tale of romance, the book delves deeply into themes of censorship as the author struggles, in the text, with writing a love story that he’ll be able to get past Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s Office of Censorship to publish an account of life in post-Islamic Revolution Iran.
In the novel, two narratives are intertwined. In one, we read of the difficulties, fears, and trepidations that surround the meeting of a young couple in modern-day Iran at a time when gender separation is forcefully imposed on society. Scene by scene, we become more familiar with their struggles to preserve their love and their creative schemes to lessen the risk of discovery and arrest. In a parallel storyline, Mandanipour enters as his alter ego and takes us along as he composes each sentence and scene, revealing his frustrations and his methods of battling against censorship. The penalties that the writer self-censors appear as strikethroughs in the text. The writer’s comical efforts at surmounting censorship and advancing his story resemble the struggles of the young lovers to preserve their love.
Translated into English by Sara Khalili, Censoring an Iranian Love Story was well received by critics worldwide. The New Yorker named it one of the Reviewers’ favorites from 2009, and National Public Radio listed it as one of The Best Debut Fictions of 2009.
In his review for The New Yorker, James Wood wrote, “Mandanipour’s writing is exuberant, bonhomous, clever, profuse with puns and literary-political references.”[2] For The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote, “Some of Mr. Mandanipour’s efforts to inject his story with surreal, postmodern elements feel distinctly strained (the intermittent appearances of a hunchbacked midget, in particular, are annoyingly gratuitous and contrived), but he’s managed, by the end of the book, to build a clever Rubik’s Cube of a story, while at the same time giving readers a haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran: arduous, demoralizing and constricted even before the brutalities of the current crackdown.” And writing in the Los Angeles Times, Susan Salter Reynolds commented, “Censorship, seen as its art form, is just another way of messing with reality. It’s hard enough to generate ideas without someone else’s superimposed over them. Still, the fictional Mandanipour tries … He writes a love story that is convincingly, achingly impossible in a place where men and women cannot even look at each other in public. The effect (as every good Victorian understood) is deliriously sensual prose.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Seasons of purgatory DB109146
Mandanīʹpūr, Shahriyār; Khalili, Sara Reading time: 5 hours, 44 minutes.
Fajer Al-Kaisi
Short Stories
“The first English-language story collection from “one of Iran’s most important living fiction writers” (Guardian). In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2022.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “After the Fire” by Henning Mankell
Kate’s 2¢: “After the Fire” by Henning Mankell
“After the Fire” by Henning Mankell
saying…
Sean Barrett did a great job of reading Marlene Dellagi’s translation of this story from Swedish. I never could have gotten all the Swedish words pronounced correctly.
The Narrative arc was well done, blending in the retired doctor’s memories with the current events on the small island he inherited from his grandparents The descriptions of how life surrounded by the Baltic was vivid and compelling.
A few take-aways:
–My medical collegues and I would the werst fate would be to be dementia, evene more so that physical pain.
–The stones used to build the foundations, were on their way backto the places from which they’d come.
–Anger rarely helps to solve the problem. –People are never completely what we believe they are.
–Even thought I am a doctore, death is just a mercilessly unwanted; just as difficult to prepare for.
–The truth is always provisionaly, while lies are often solid.
–Death must be freedom from fear, the ultimate freedom.
—
–Death is a natural part of our lives.
–Xenifobia is based on nothing more than myth, heresay and what the friend of a friend allegedly experienced.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henning Georg Mankell (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈhɛ̂nːɪŋ ˈmǎŋːkɛl]; 3 February 1948 – 5 October 2015) was a Swedish crime writer, children’s author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.
He was a left-wing social critic and activist. In his books and plays he constantly highlighted social inequality issues and injustices in Sweden and abroad. In 2010, Mankell was on board one of the ships in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was boarded by Israeli commandos. He was below deck on the MV Mavi Marmara when nine civilians were killed in international waters.
Mankell shared his time between Sweden and countries in Africa, mostly Mozambique where he started a theatre. He made considerable donations to charity organizations, mostly connected to Africa.
Life and career[edit]
Mankell’s grandfather, also named Henning Mankell, lived from 1868 to 1930 and was a composer.[1] Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1948. His father Ivar was a lawyer who divorced his mother when Mankell was one year old. He and an older sister lived with his father for most of their childhood. The family first lived in Sveg, Härjedalen in northern Sweden, where Mankell’s father was a district judge. In the biography on Mankell’s website, he describes this time when they lived in a flat above the court as one of the happiest in his life.[2] In Sveg, a museum was built in his honour during his lifetime.[3]
Later, when Mankell was thirteen, the family moved to Borås, Västergötland on the Swedish west coast near Gothenburg.[2] After three years he dropped out of school and went to Paris when he was 16. Shortly afterwards he joined the merchant marine, working on a cargo ship and he “loved the ship’s decent hard-working community”.[2] In 1966, he returned to Paris to become a writer. He took part in the student uprising of 1968. He later returned to work as a stagehand in Stockholm.[3] At the age of 20, he had already started as author at the National Swedish Touring Theatre in Stockholm.[4] In the following years he collaborated with several theatres in Sweden. His first play, The Amusement Park dealt with Swedish colonialism in South America.[2] In 1973, he published The Stone Blaster, a novel about the Swedish labour movement. He used the proceeds from the novel to travel to Guinea-Bissau. Africa would later become a second home to him, and he spent a big part of his life there. When his success as a writer made it possible, he founded and ran a theatre in Mozambique.[2]
From 1991 to 2013, Mankell wrote the books which made him famous worldwide, the Kurt Wallander mystery novels. Wallander was a fictional detective living in Ystad in southern Sweden, who supervised a squad of detectives in solving murders, some of which were bizarre. As they worked to catch a killer who had to be stopped before he could kill again, the team often worked late into the nights in a heightened atmosphere of tension and crisis. Wallander’s thoughts and worries about his daughter, his health, his lack of friends and a social life, his worries about Swedish society, shared his mental life with his many concerns and worries about the case he was working. There were ten books in the series. They were translated into many languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. The series gave Mankell the freedom and wherewithal to pursue other projects which interested him.
After living in Zambia and other African countries, Mankell was invited from 1986 onward to become the artistic director of Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique. He subsequently spent extended periods in Maputo working with the theatre and as a writer. He built his own publishing house, Leopard Förlag, in order to support young talented writers from Africa and Sweden.[5] His novel Chronicler of the Winds, published in Sweden as Comédie infantil in 1995, reflects African problems and is based on African storytelling.[6] On 12 June 2008, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of St Andrews in Scotland “in recognition of his major contribution to literature and to the practical exercise of conscience”.[7]
Around 2008, Mankell developed two original stories for the German police series Tatort. Actor Axel Milberg, who portrays Inspector Klaus Borowski, had asked Mankell to contribute to the show when they were promoting The Man from Beijing audiobook, a project that Milberg had worked on. The episodes were scheduled to broadcast in Germany in 2010.[8][9] In 2010, Mankell was set to work on a screenplay for Sveriges Television about his father-in-law, movie and theatre director Ingmar Bergman, on a series produced in four one-hour episodes. Mankell pitched the project to Sveriges Television and production was planned for 2011.[10] At the time of his death, Mankell had written over 40 novels that had sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.[11]
Personal life[edit]
Mankell was married four times and had four sons, Thomas, Marius, Morten and Jon, by different relationships. In 1998 he married Eva Bergman, daughter of film director Ingmar Bergman. They remained married until his death in 2015.[3]
Death[edit]
In January 2014, Mankell announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and throat cancer.[12] In May 2014, he reported that treatments had worked well and he was getting better.[13][14]
He wrote a series of articles inspired by his wife Eva, describing his situation, how it felt to be diagnosed,[15] how it felt to be supported,[16] how it felt to wait,[17] and after his first chemotherapy at Sahlgrenska University Hospital about the importance of cancer research.[18] Three weeks before his death he wrote about what happens to people’s identity when they are stricken by a serious illness.[19] His last post was published posthumously 6 October.[20]
On 5 October 2015, Mankell died at the age of 67, almost two years after having been diagnosed.[21]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
After the fire DB89647
Mankell, Henning. Reading time: 11 hours, 58 minutes.
Read by Sean Barrett. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Psychological Fiction
Surgeon Fredrik Welin retired in disgrace to a tiny island as its only resident. He rarely sees his daughter, and his mailman is the closest thing he has to a friend, and to an adversary. He is perfectly content. And then a fire changes everything. Translated from the 2015 Swedish original. Some strong language. Commercial audiobook. 2017.
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by kate
Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “The White Lady” by Jacqueline Winspear
Kate’s 2¢: “The White Lady” by Jacqueline Winspear
“The White Lady” by Jacqueline Winspear
saying…
This story was on the NLS cartridge with seven books they thought I’d enjoy.
Orlagh Cassidy did a great job of reading “The White Lady”. I enjoyed this story and learned a lot about behind the scenes of WWI and WWII.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jacqueline Winspear (born 30 April 1955) is a mystery writer, author of the Maisie Dobbs series of books exploring the aftermath of World War I. She has won several mystery writing awards for books in this popular series.
Personal life and career[edit]
Winspear was born on 30 April 1955, and raised in Cranbrook, in Kent.[1] She was educated at the University of London’s Institute of Education and then worked in academic publishing, higher education and in marketing communications. She emigrated to the United States in 1990. Winspear stated that her childhood awareness of her grandfather’s suffering in World War I led to an interest in that period.[2]
Maisie Dobbs series[edit]
Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator who untangles painful and shameful secrets stemming from war experiences. A gifted working class girl in class-conscious England, she receives an unusual education thanks to the patronage of her employer, who had taken her on as a housemaid.
She interrupts her education to work as a nurse in the Great War, falls in love and suffers her own losses. After the war, she finishes her university education, then works under the tutelage of her mentor. When he retires. she sets up as an investigator in her own office.
Dobbs places emphasis on achieving healing for her clients and insists they comply with her ethical approach.
She grows older throughout the series of novels, and her cases reflect the times, from the Great War to the Second World War.
Books[edit]
Maisie Dobbs series[edit]
1. Maisie Dobbs (2003) ISBN 9781569473306, OCLC 519884816
2. Birds of a Feather (2004)
3. Pardonable Lies (2005)
4. Messenger of Truth (2006)
5. An Incomplete Revenge (2008)
6. Among the Mad (2009)
7. The Mapping of Love and Death (2010)
8. A Lesson in Secrets (2011)
9. Elegy for Eddie (2012)
10. Leaving Everything Most Loved (2013)
11. A Dangerous Place (2015)
12. Journey to Munich (2016)
13. In This Grave Hour (2017)
14. To Die but Once (2018)[3]
15. The American Agent Harper Collins, 2019. ISBN 9780062436665, OCLC 1041763123[4][5][6][7]
16. The Consequences of Fear (2021) ISBN 978-0062868022
17. A Sunlit Weapon (2022)
Standalone[edit]
• The Care and Management of Lies New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2014. ISBN 9780062336132, OCLC 894542985 (Ms. Winspear also narrates the Audible audio version of her childhood memoir)
• The White Lady New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2023. ISBN 978006286798-8
Memoir[edit]
• This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing (2020) ISBN 978-1641292696
from NLS/BARD/LOC:
The white lady: a novel DB114582
Winspear, Jacqueline Reading time: 10 hours, 9 minutes.
Orlagh Cassidy
Historical Fiction
Spy Stories
Mystery and Detective Stories
“A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. The private, quiet “Miss White” as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. Well she might, as Elinor occupies a “grace and favor” property, a rare privilege offered to faithful servants of the Crown for services to the nation. But the residents of Shacklehurst have no way of knowing how dangerous Elinor’s war work had been, or that their mysterious neighbor is haunted by her past. It will take Susie, the child of a young farmworker, Jim Mackie and his wife, Rose, to break through Miss White’s icy demeanor—but Jim has something in common with Elinor. He, too, is desperate to escape his past. When the powerful Mackie crime family demands a return of their prodigal son for an important job, Elinor assumes the task of protecting her neighbors, especially the bright-eyed Susie. Yet in her quest to uncover the truth behind the family’s pursuit of Jim, Elinor unwittingly sets out on a treacherous path—yet it is one that leads to her freedom.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
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by kate
Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Kate’s 2¢: “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
“Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
saying…
I’m very glad Damian Lynch was reading this story. There were an awful lot of foreign words that I’d never have been able to read correctly.
I like to read stories that feature foreign lands and cultures. I’m not sure what the point of this story was, other than to give the reader a dose of African history.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.[1] His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.[1][2][3] He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.[4]
Early life and education[edit]
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948[5] in the Sultanate of Zanzibar.[6] He left the island, which later became part of Tanzania, at the age of 18 following the overthrow of the ruling Arab elite in the Zanzibar Revolution,[3][1] arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee. He is of Arab heritage,[7] and his father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated from Yemen.[8] Gurnah has been quoted saying, “I came to England when these words, such as asylum-seeker, were not quite the same – more people are struggling and running from terror states.”[1][9]
He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London.[10] He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of West African Fiction,[11]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Afterlives DB109882
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Reading time: 10 hours, 16 minutes.
Read by Damian Lynch.
Family
Romance
War Stories
Friendship Fiction
Historical Fiction
Historical Romance Fiction
Political Fiction
Psychological Fiction
“When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature.
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