Gena's Reads

The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World’s Favorite Insect by Wendy Williams is a fascinating new book about our obsession with butterflies. Although filled with scientific information, this book is for the lay person simply interested in learning more about these fascinating creatures and why and how they’ve captured our imagination for centuries. Williams takes the reader along on her own personal journey of discovery over the past few years…

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A Burning is the incredible debut novel by Megha Majumdar, set in modern day India. The novel follows the lives of Jivan, a Muslim girl from the slums who aspires to rise to the middle class, PT Sir, a gym teacher hoping to rise to political power, and Lovely, an uneducated outcast with dreams of becoming an actress. As the story unfolds and builds to its climactic ending, their lives weave together and apart again, while Majumdar demands the reader…

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Afterlife is the new novel by Julia Alvarez, her first adult novel in many years, if you haven’t read In the Time of the Butterflies, you should! Here she writes about Antonia, a just retired English professor in a small Vermont town (Alvarez taught at Middlebury) who is grieving the sudden loss of her husband, the town’s beloved doctor. While her Dominican sisters are staging an intervention for one sister they believe has lost her mind, Antonia finds herself drawn…

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Good Talk: A Memior in Conversations by Mira Jacob is a graphic novel based on her life. If you haven’t read any graphic novels, start with this one, then read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. If you’re not a fan after that, then graphic novels just aren’t for you. Jacob is full Indian, not half, born to immigrant parents and raised in New Mexico. Her husband is Jewish and they live in New…

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How to Do Nothing by Jenny O’Dell is really not about doing nothing, but rather shifting where our attention goes. This is one of Obama’s top ten book picks of 2019, and I wholeheartedly agree; in today’s world, this book is nothing less than revolutionary. Many self help books claim we need to spend less time on social media and more time in nature, but this book offers so much more than that. Extensively researched, thoughtful and observant, this book…

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Normal People by Sally Rooney is a love story set in Ireland. Two young people meet in high school, Marianne, a wealthy somewhat outcast girl and Connell, the son of their maid, who is poor but good looking and popular. They form an unlikely bond, yet Connell is too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. Later in college, the tables are turned, when Marianne is popular and surrounded by friends and Connell is shy and feels out of place, yet…

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The Confession, by Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist, tells the story of Rose Simmons, searching for a mother she has never known. Her search takes her to the house of a reclusive novelist, the last woman to see her mother before she disappeared. She changes her name, and gets a job as the novelist’s assistant, hoping to uncover long buried secrets. I was drawn to this novel first for its beautiful cover, then because I loved the Miniaturist, but…

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The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven, is loosely based on the 2008 Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernie Madoff. Partially set in Canada at a remote five star hotel in the wilderness, this novel couldn’t be more different from Station Eleven, much to my disappointment. Jonathan Alkaita’s (the Madoff character) actions effect many characters throughout the book, and Mandel follows their different story lines. The setting becomes a powerful character as well, whether it is…

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Little Gods by Meng Jin is a novel set at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when Su Lan, a brilliant scientist gives birth to a daughter and becomes an ambivalent mother. This is an immigrant story, a story of identity, of trying to escape your past, but never really succeeding. Although beautifully written, from several different perspectives, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. I never really cared about any of the characters, they…

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Improvement by Joan Silber tells the story of Reyna, a single Mom whose boyfriend just got out of jail and tries to get her into a smuggling job with him and his friends. When she backs out at the last moment, the consequence of that action echos around the globe to many people in many places whose lives are loosely linked by one tragic accident. In this sparse and beautifully written novel, Silber weaves a wonderful tail rich in details…

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