Posts Tagged ‘novels’
Book Review: The Expatriates
I enjoyed this novel following the lives of three expatriate women living in Hong Kong. The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee explores the lives of three women – all adrift in their own way – living in Hong Kong’s expat community. Mercy is a Korean-American Ivy League grad who has been drifting ever since graduating…
Read MoreBook review: Hidden
This is the third novel I’ve read – and enjoyed – by Canadian author, Catherine McKenzie. Hidden is the story of a love triangle that unravels slowly following the death of Jeff, beloved father of Seth and husband of Claire and possible lover of Tish, a colleague who works at the same corporation, in another…
Read MoreBook review: The Trophy Son
There was a lot of publicity around this novel by Douglas Brunt when it was released this summer, and I was curious to read it. In this novel, we follow the story of tennis prodigy Anton Stratis. Andre is pushed into professional tennis by his overbearing father, who tried and failed to create a tennis…
Read MoreAll roads lead to Rome – for literature!
If you find yourself in Rome in the next couple of weeks, you may want to take part in the Eternal City’s literature festival – the Festival delle letterature. This year is the Festival’s 16th edition, running from 20 June through 21 July. It’s an interesting mix of Italian and foreign authors, and most events…
Read MoreBook review: The Two-Family House
I devoured Lynda Cohen Loigman’s debut novel, The Two-Family House, this past weekend. I spent last Saturday on the beach reading about this complicated, large Brooklyn Jewish family in the 1950s. I loved getting into the minds of these well-drawn characters and watching how attitudes and thinking changed along with the changing times. The main…
Read MoreA slice of heaven: mountains and a book
Just thinking back to my last weekend. After many of months of kids’ exams, kids’ sports competitions and my own work keeping me away from my preferred weekend getaway in the Apennine mountains of central Italy, I finally (!!!) managed to escape the city. The weekend was short, but enjoyable. Here I am out-of-frame in…
Read MoreDoes an author owe something to her readers?
As a reader, there are many types of books I don’t like. If a book isn’t well written, it’s an easy write-off for me. If it’s not a genre I enjoy – most action/spy novels or science fiction fall under this category for me – I’m not expecting much either, even if they are well written.…
Read MoreBook review: Flawed
I picked up this novel, by Irish author Cecilia Ahern, by chance. I liked the premise, and I was struggling through a novel that infuriated me more than it interested me, so I decided to take a break from it with another, much different novel. It’s good I didn’t notice that the novel was the…
Read MoreBeach reading season 2017 officially begins (for me…)
It’s that wonderful ‘event’ that rolls around each year – the official start of beach reading season! For me, it often happens around the Easter holidays, when the weather in Rome starts turning almost summer-like. I often take my kids to one of our favorite beach spots near Rome – the wonderful town of Sperlonga.…
Read MoreDo you hate when a movie adaptation of a novel changes its setting?
How many times has this happened to you? You read a book, you enjoy it (or maybe you didn’t even enjoy it so much, but you’re still curious about how it could be adapted to the screen) and then you hear the film is coming out. Great, right? But instead of the x original location…
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