Beyond Beach Reads
If you are planning to do a bit of reading this summer and want to tackle some books that aren’t just ‘beach reads,’ I have a few to suggest……..
While I haven’t read this book yet, I plan to. Some have suggested that it is another glorious ode to trees, a novel that compares to Richard Power’s Overstory. The book has also been praised by others as a testiment to family and community. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it an “astonishingly polished and immensely affecting debut novel.” The reviewer goes on to say “It’s the Gundersons’ fierce love for each other and unwavering resilience despite multiple betayals and near unshakeable lossses that transform the book from a treatise on the dangers of an unfettered industrial complex and the impacts of climate change into a prescient and deeeply felt novel about good people (mostly) just doing their best to survive.”
Norma Rae, aka Crystal Lee Sutton, look out!! Maddie Sykes is stirring up trouble in the tobacco industry the same way you did in textiles. First time author Adele Myers sets her historical fiction novel in a make-believe North Carolina town where tobacco (and men) rule. Maddie Sykes comes to this town as a teenager who works in her aunt’s seamstress business. The longer she lives there, the more she seems to sense trouble–trouble with the women in the society circles, trouble with the women in the factories and trouble with the industry that has bought the place everything that makes it a charming little Southern town. Mabye Maddie is too smart for her own good. Who can she trust and what will she do? This book is a ‘page turner’, as they say!
Vivian Shaw, a book reviewer for the Washington Post, starts off by saying “The Cartographers is one of those brilliant books you have to read twice.” That sentence alone would cause me NOT to read the book. I don’t like to read a book twice! Other reader reviews reported that the book was confusing and the writing jumbled. So, until I read what my friend ‘beckyonbooks’ had to say, I wasn’t going to feature it on this blog. BUT, Becky really liked The Cartographers, and I totally trust her judgement. She says that anyone who has an interest in maps, mysteries and magic will enjoy it.
For more information on the author and the book, try: