Thursday, July 28, 2016

Sweetland by Michael Crummey

The epic tale of an endangered Newfoundland community and the struggles of one man determined to resist its extinction.

The scarcely populated town of Sweetland rests on the shore of a remote Canadian island. Its slow decline finally reaches a head when the mainland government offers each islander a generous resettlement package—the sole stipulation being that everyone must leave. Fierce and enigmatic Moses Sweetland, whose ancestors founded the village, is the only one to refuse. As he watches his neighbors abandon the island, he recalls the town's rugged history and its eccentric cast of characters. Evoking The Shipping News, Michael Crummey—one of Canada's finest novelists—conjures up the mythical, sublime world of Sweetland's past amid a storm battered landscape haunted by local lore. As in his critically acclaimed novel Galore, Crummey masterfully weaves together past and present, creating in Sweetland a spectacular portrait of one man's battle to survive as his environment vanishes around him.

322 pages (Jan 2014)

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Lit Guide from LitLovers.
 
 
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 
 

Michael Crummey Brown Bag at the Canadian Literature Centre:


Title Read-alikes: Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga; Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout; Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper; Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen; Crow Lake by Mary Lawson; The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman; Juliet in August by Dianne Warren; The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni; And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman; Night of the Animals by Bill Broun; Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique; All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toes; and Road Ends by Mary Larson.
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Saturday, July 23, 2016

The Last Days of Café Leila by Donia Bijan

“A glorious treat awaits you at the literary table of Donia Bijan.” —Adriana Trigiani

Set against the backdrop of Iran’s rich, turbulent history, this exquisite debut novel is a powerful story of food, family, and a bittersweet homecoming. When we first meet Noor, she is living in San Francisco, missing her beloved father, Zod, in Iran. Now, dragging her stubborn teenage daughter, Lily, with her, she returns to Tehran and to Café Leila, the restaurant her family has been running for three generations. Iran may have changed, but Café Leila, still run by Zod, has stayed blessedly the same—it is a refuge of laughter and solace for its makeshift family of staff and regulars.

As Noor revisits her Persian childhood, she must rethink who she is—a mother, a daughter, a woman estranged from her marriage and from her life in California. And together, she and Lily get swept up in the beauty and brutality of Tehran.

Bijan’s vivid, layered story, at once tender and elegant, funny and sad, weaves together the complexities of history, domesticity, and loyalty and, best of all, transports readers to another culture, another time, and another emotional landscape.

292 pages (April 2017)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 
 
 
Donia Bijan discusses The Last Days of Cafe Leila at Live! from the Library (Walnut Creek Library Foundation):


This title is available for download as an eBook and as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri; America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo; Please Look After Mom by Kyong-sook Shin; A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum; Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Pachinko by Min Jin Lee; A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza; The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama; Salt Houses by Hala Alyan; Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik; and What We Were Promised by Lucy Tan.
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Monday, July 18, 2016

A House in the Sky: a memoir by Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett

The dramatic and redemptive memoir of a woman whose curiosity led her to the world’s most beautiful and remote places, its most imperiled and perilous countries, and then into fifteen months of harrowing captivity—an exquisitely written story of courage, resilience, and grace.

As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself in its exotic locales. At the age of nineteen, working as a cocktail waitress in Calgary, Alberta, she began saving her tips so she could travel the globe. Aspiring to understand the world and live a significant life, she backpacked through Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, and India, and emboldened by each adventure, went on to Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan. In war-ridden Afghanistan and Iraq she carved out a fledgling career as a television reporter. And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road.

Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives “wife lessons” from one of her captors, and risks a daring escape. Moved between a series of abandoned houses in the desert, she survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark, being tortured.

Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is the searingly intimate story of an intrepid young woman and her search for compassion in the face of unimaginable adversity.

373 pages (September 2013)
 
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Lit Guide from LitLovers.  
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
 
 
 

Book Trailer (Jessie Kain):
 

Amanda Lindhout interview (Citytv):

Title Read-alikes: In the Presence of My Enemies by Gracia Burnham; A Rope and a Prayer by David Rohde; Hostage by Paul Chandler; The Shattered Lens by Jonathan Alpeyrie; The ISIS Hostage by Puk Damsgard; Beneath the Tamarind Tree by Isha Sesay; Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden; The Girl Who Escaped ISIS by Farida Khalaf; The Translator by Daroud Hari; Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink; Under an Afghan Sky by Melissa Funk; The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi; From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle; One Day Closer by Lorinda Stewart; and The Price of Life by Nigel Brennan.
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