Who doesn't just love buying books? Based on the fact that my first and last book haul was in April while the year is getting close to an end, you might think that I don't indulge in this extravagantly awesome, bookish activity. Well, this is not the case at all as I have been buying books but not posting about them. This post will set the record straight as it's a huge book haul of everything you've missed. Let me just note that the summaries given are taken from the books' blurbs. Are you ready?
Romance đ
1. Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan (2020)
On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can't stand him. She can't stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have a view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can't stand that he knows more about Casa Malaparte than she does, and she really can't stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa.
The daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where is weekending with her new fiancÊ, Lucie finds herself drawn to him again. Soon, Lucie is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancÊ and ultimately herself, as she tries to deny George entry into her world —and her heart.
2. The Serious Game by Hjalmar Soderberg (1912)
Arvid, an educated and ambitious young man, meets Lydia, the daughter of a landscape painter; it is summer, they are young, and they fall in love. Lydia, however, has other suitors, and Arvid is frightened of being tied up to her, afraid of his emotions. Instead, they part and both conduct marriages of convenience. Years later, trapped inside loveless marriages, the two struggle to rekindle the passion and promise of their early relationship, but with bitter and tragic results.
3. The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (2010)
Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life —an emptiness once filled by love.
So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is shocked out of herself. Turning her back on her family she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.
It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored.
4. Before the Rains by Dinah Jefferies (2017)
The book takes place in India in 1930. Since her husband's death, 28-year-old Eliza has devoted all her time and energy to her career as a photojournalist. The biggest opportunity comes when the British government sends her to an Indian princely state to photograph the royal family.
But when Eliza arrives at the palace, she meets Jay, the Prince's handsome, brooding brother. While Eliza awakens Jay to the poverty of his people, he awakens her to the injustices of British rule. Soon Jay and Eliza find they have more in common than they think. But their families —and society— otherwise. Eventually they will have to make a choice between doing what's expected, or following their hearts.
Political Fiction đĨ
5. Human Acts by Han Kang (2014)
Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalized country searches for a voice.
6. Twenty Years and A Day [Original Title: Veinte Anos Y Un Dia] by Jorge Semprun (2003)
The loss of the youngest member of the Avendanos has been a serious blow for the family. They even go so far as to recreate the tragic events that occurred on the day of his death every year. On the twentieth death anniversary, they decide that this is going to be the last time that they go on with this ritual. Among them, however, there are people who want to investigate and analyse the past of the family. Hidden secrets and relationships will come to light, completing the puzzle of the death of the young man and creating a grim image of the cruel reality of the period after the Spanish Civil War.
Nonfiction ✍
7. Mindhunter by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker (1995)
John Douglas has looked evil in the eye and made a vocation of understanding it.
In Mindhunter, the FBI special agent who was the inspiration for Jack Crawford's character in The Silence of the Lambs (and who lent the film's makers his expertise) explains how he invented and established the practice of criminal profiling.
He also discusses individual case histories including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and the Atlanta child murders.
With the fierce page-turning power of a bestselling novel, yet terrifyingly true, Mindhunter is a true crime classic.
8. What If ... by Randall Munroe (2014)
What if one man decided to answer all the unanswerable questions, using science: What would happen if absolutely everyone jumped at the same time? How long could a nuclear submarine last in space? What are the odds of meeting my soulmate? What if my DNA vanished? How could we build a Lego bridge between London and New York? Welcome to the mind-blowing world of what if?
9. Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (2017)
What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.
While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
Family-themed Books đĒ
10. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1959)
Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family —acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long-suffering mother and Roger the dog— take off for the island of Corfu.
But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna; among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies.
Recounted with immense humour and charm, My Family and Other Animals is a wonderful account of a rare, magical childhood.
11. The Burning Secret [Swedish Title: Brennendes Geheimnis] by Stefan Zweig (1900)
Edgar and his mother go on holidays in the Austrian Alps. A young baron becomes friends with Edgar. The man's mission, however, is not so innocent as all he wants is to sleep with the mother. Edgar understands that his mother and the baron are hiding a secret that all adults share. And he is determined to find out the truth that they all hide from children.
12. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (2017)
For as long as they can remember, siblings Isma, Aneeka and Parvaiz have had nothing but each other. But darker, stronger forces will divide Parvaiz from his sisters and drive him to the other side of the world, as he sets out to fulfil the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.
13. The Sunshine Sisters by Jane Green (2017)
It was never easy being one of Ronni Sunshine's daughters. Publicly, she is the glamorous, successful, dramatic Hollywood actress. Privately, she is self-absorbed, angry, and a disinterested, narcissistic mother. Now in her seventies, Ronni has had strange symptoms for a while, but has refused to believe her diagnosis: she has ALS. There is no cure.
Ronni's three adult daughters —Nell, Meredith, and Lizzy— are largely estranged, both from her and from each other. All are going through crises of their own. But Ronni is adamant that they must come home, and help her take her own life. As their mother's illness draws them together to confront old jealousies and secret fears, they discover that blood might be thicker than water after all...
Thriller Books đŖ
14. The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock (2011)
We follow a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s . There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.
15. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin (2018)
It's 1969, and holed up in a grimy tenement building in New York's Lower East Side is a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four Gold children, too young for what they're about to hear, sneak out to learn their fortunes.
Over the years that follow, the siblings must choose how to live with the prophecies the fortune-teller gave them that day. Will they accept, ignore, cheat or defy them?
16. Can You Hear Me? by Elena Varvello (2016)
1978. Ponte, a small community in Northern Italy. An unbearably hot summer like many others.
Elia Furenti is sixteen, living an unremarkable life of moderate unhappiness, until the day the beautiful, damaged Anna returns to Ponte and firmly propels Elia to the edge of adulthood.
But then everything starts to unravel. Elia's father, Ettore, is let go from his job and loses himself in the darkest corners of his mind.
A young boy is murdered. And a girl climbs into a van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods...
Historical Fiction đš
17. The Engagements by J. Courtney Sullivan (2013)
1947: Mary Frances Gerety, a young copywriter in an eminent advertising agency, has to convince the world of two things —that marriage means a diamond ring on every woman's finger, and that she is as good at her job as any man. And then, in one moment of inspiration, Mary Frances writes down four words which will achieve both her aims...
18. The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst (2017)
In 1940, David Sparsholt goes up to Oxford University. Charismatic and good-looking, he seems to have little awareness of the effect he has on others, not least on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax. As the Blitz rages fifty miles away in London, the university exists in a strange limbo, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Aware that they will soon be called up, the two men forge an unlikely friendship that will colour their lives for decades to come...
19. 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster (2017)
On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous but entirely different paths. Family fortunes diverge. Loves, friendships and passions contrast. As each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain of mid-twentieth-century America, a boy grows up —again and again and again.
20. New Lives [German Title: Neue Leben] by Ingo Schulze (2005)
East Germany, January 1990. Enrico Turmer -man of the theatre, aspiring novelist- has turned his back on the art world and joined a startup newspaper. Under the guidance of Mephisto, the ever-present Clemens von Barrista, the former aesthete suddenly develops worldly ambitions even he didn't know he had.
This upheaval in our hero's life, mirrored in the vaster upheaval gripping Germany itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the birth pangs of a reunified nation, is captured in the letters of Enrico writes to the three people he loves most: his sister, Vera; his childhood friend Johann; and Nicoletta, the unattainable woman of his dreams. As he discovers capitalism and reports on his adventures as a businessman, he peels away the layers of his previous existence, in the process creating the thing he has dreamed of for so long —the novel of his life, in whose facets contemporary history is captured.
Contemporary Literature đ
21. Even If Only One Dog Is Left [French Title: S'il ne restait qu'un chien] by Joseph Andras (2017)
The port at Havre speaks up and poetically summarises five centuries of departures, journeys, deaths, exploitation, trade, work, races, goodbyes and hope.
22. Less by Andrew Sean Greer (2017)
Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the post: it is from an ex-boyfriend of nine years who is engaged to someone else. Arthur can't say yes -it would be too awkward; he can't say no —it would look like defeat. So he begins to accept the invitations on his desk to half-baked literary events around the world.
From France to India, Germany to Japan, Arthur almost falls in love, almost falls to his death and put miles between him and the plight he refuses to face. Less is a novel about mishaps, misunderstandings and the depths of the human heart.
23. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal (2017)
Not-so-dutiful daughter Nikki is pulled back into the Punjabi community she's been trying to leave behind when she takes on a teaching job at her local temple —a class that rapidly gets out of hand as the elderly women find their voices.
Freed from the expectations of others, the widows begin to open up about womanhood, sexuality, and the dark untold stories within the community. But the temple is policed by the self-appointed Brothers and as Nikki uncovers the truth about the suspicious death of a young woman, the illicit nature of the class places them all in danger.
Greek Books đ
24. Sasmos [Greek Title: ÎŖÎąĪÎŧĪĪ] by Spyros Petroulakis (2019)
The murder of a husband and a wife revive a vendetta in Crete. Will the people left behind manage to stop the vicious cycle of fear, violence and killing and find the strength to forgive, to reconcile; will sasmos ever come?
25. Wild Bees: The first flight [ÎÎŗĪΚÎĩĪ ÎÎÎģΚĪĪÎĩĪ: ΤÎŋ ĪĪĪĪÎŋ ĪÎĪÎąÎŗÎŧÎą] by Melina Tsampani (2021)
The hate and the vendetta that spark between the humble Stamiri family and the rich Sevasti family will cause havoc on the quiet Diafani village.
And you have finally reached the end of this truly huge book haul. Congrats!
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