The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading Naomi Novik's book of stories, Buried Deep; I'm listening to Colm Toibin's Long Island; and I'm listening to Louise Kennedy's poignant novel set during the Irish Troubles, Trespasses
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik is the author of fantasy novels featuring main protagonists I love: Uprooted and Spinning Silver as well as the Scholomance series, A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, and The Golden Enclaves.
Novik has also written a series of nine books about dragons, the Temeraire series. The dragons talk and are haughty and greedy and intensely loyal to their riders, Novik explores world politics and the intricacies of nations' relationships and airborne dragon battles within the books' alternate history, and the human protagonists are wonderfully faulted and fantastic.
Naomi Novik's Buried Deep is a collection of thirteen stories that span the worlds of her novels.
I received a prepublication copy of Buried Deep and Other Stories courtesy of NetGalley and Ballantine.
02 Long Island by Colm Toibin
It's 1976, and Irish Eilis Lacey lives in Long Island, married to Tony, an Italian American plumber who's one of four brothers. The enormous extended family lives in houses scattered all over the neighborhood, with cousins racing all over.
But one day a man visits Eilis, explains that his wife is carrying Tony's baby, and vows to drop the baby upon Eilis's doorstep when it is born.
I'm listening to Long Island as an audiobook courtesy of Libro.fm and Simon & Schuster Audio.
Colm Toibin is also the author of The Master, The Magician, and other novels.
03 Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Cushla is a young teacher (who fills in at the family pub) living through growing violence outside of Belfast. Along with her alcoholic mother and her impatient barkeep brother, she grieves the loss of her father and is astounded by the increasing conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
A pub visitor, married barrister Michael Agnew, intrigues Cushla with his intelligence and his attention. She finds that he's been defending IRA members, and the two begin an affair.
But when one of her students' fathers is beaten almost to death, everything turns on its head, and nothing will ever be the same.
I'm listening to Trespasses as an audiobook.
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