Saturday, August 11, 2018

Book Haul: Recommendations (Part 4)





Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews. I get to show off all the books I’ve gotten recently. Way back at the beginning of the year, I asked for book recommendations. Here are some of the books that you recommended I read. Sorry, I didn’t write down who recommended which book because I’m a lazy, terrible person, but thank you for the recommendations!




Your Recommendations






Italian Shoes (Fredrik Welin #1) by Henning Mankell



Living on a tiny island entirely surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room.

When an unexpected visitor alters his life completely, thus begins an eccentric, elegiac journey—one that shows Mankell at the very height of his powers as a novelist.
















Copenhagen by Michael Frayn


In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends and close colleagues, and they had revolutionized atomic physics in the 1920s with their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. But now the world had changed, and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. The meeting was fraught with danger and embarrassment, and ended in disaster.

Why the German physicist Heisenberg went to Copenhagen in 1942 and what he wanted to say to the Danish physicist Bohr are questions which have exercised historians of nuclear physics ever since. In Michael Frayn's new play Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife Margrethe once again to look for the answers, and to work out, just as they had once worked out the internal functioning of the atom, how we can ever know why we do what we do.












Truevine: Two Brothers, A Kidnapping, And A Mother’s Quest: A True Story Of The Jim Crow South by Beth Macy


The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back.

The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever.

Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars."

Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home?











Negotiating With The Dead: A Writer On Writing by Margaret Atwood


What is the role of the Writer? Prophet? High Priest of Art? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain—or excuse—their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play.




















Death With Interruptions by José Saramago


What happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death? On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, of course, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration. Flags are hung out on balconies; people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently dying; life-insurance policies become meaningless; and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots. 

Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small "d," became human and were to fall in love?








Have you read any of these? What did you think?












25 comments:

  1. Truevine sounds really interesting, and Death with Interruptions has a cool premise! Enjoy your books!

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    1. I want to read Truevine ASAP. I was so excited when I finally found a cheap copy.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  2. I've read the first two.

    I gave Italian Shoes 4 stars, but my "review" is just quoting snippets that I liked.

    I gave Copenhagen 4 stars but I didn't review it.

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    1. It’s possible that you recommended them to me. I don’t remember because I just wrote down what sounded interesting and not who recommended it.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  3. Death With Interruptions sounds interesting

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  4. I haven't read any of these. Hope you enjoy them, though!

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  5. Death With Interuptions sounds really cool!!

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  6. How did I not know about Negotiating With the Dead? Margaret Atwood is in my top three favorite authors. Have you read it yet??
    Happy reading!
    Natflix&Books

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    1. Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors, too. Cheap copies of that book were hard for me to find. Atwood is usually so popular that I don’t have problems finding her books. I just got it, so I haven't read it yet. Hopefully I'll read it sometime this year.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  7. Death With Interruptions sounds really different and maybe fun and thought provoking?

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  8. I sense a Death title theme ��

    Have a wonderful week reading!

    Angelica @ Paperback Princess

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    1. That would make sense. Death is one of my favorite things to read about. :)

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  9. I've just had to add Truevine to my Amazon wishlist because that sounds amazing.

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  10. Looks like an interesting bunch! I keep meaning to read more of Saramago's work. Enjoy!

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    1. I seem to be collecting his work and not reading it. I have to fix that.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  11. Some really interesting books you added this week. I think you'll have some good reading ahead of you!

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  12. Oh that's awesome that you took suggestions! I love the idea, one way to find interesting reads for sure!

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  13. Death With Interruptions by José Saramago is one of my favorite book I was looking for a long time. I love to read the story of the novel. The book always attracts me. I will definitely get eBooks Download online and read the story.

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  14. I haven’t read any, but Truevine sounds sad but good. And the Atwood book is also interesting as I often read writers writing about the art

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    1. I’m looking forward to both of those books. I’ll try to read them before the end of the year.

      Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  15. I haven't read any of these or heard of most of them! Only Margaret Atwood's looks familiar to me. I am getting more into literature and adult fiction though, so I am going to keep an eye out for your reviews on these, AJ!

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