Huntington Public Library Adult Reading Challenge

  This is a story of an Irish family in Ireland making plans for the younger daughter to make a life in the States. With the help of her older sister and a priest, the plans are set for her to ship off to Brooklyn. Once in Brooklyn, she soon meets the young man with whom she falls in love. We see and learn the differences being raised in families of different nationalities.

  Secrets and lies ...I just didn’t care about anyone of the characters …it’s very popular ...didn’t work for me.

  The main characters in this book, Abbas and Maryam, husband and wife, and their two children, Hannah and Jamal, were depicted with such detail and clarity that they were as real to me as friends I had known for years. The story line and location were completely foreign, but because of the amazing writing I felt like I was there. Just a wonderful book by an extremely talented writer.

 I liked this more than I thought I would as it is written in the third person. The main character drove me crazy a little bit as she is so undecisive. Quick beach read and hard to put down.

 Ivy and Jane are two white women from different sides of the tracks: Ivy- a poor, pregnant 15-year-old, and Jane: a 22-year-old, newly married social worker assigned to Ivy's family. When Jane discovers the North Carolina Welfare Department is sterilizing impoverished black or white medically or mentally defective people, she risks everything to fight the system.

 Hannah, a 45 year-old woman, has quit her boring job to care for her mother who has dementia. when Hannah finds her mother's blood type while sifting through her mother's papers, she becomes aware that it is impossible for them to be related. Her search for her real mother leads her to uncover a sad and sordid past. A late coming-of-age story.

 This novella explores the impact of a beautiful young girl's murder on her family and friends. Although the lack of closure is frustrating, the prose is gentle and compelling.

  The second of this trilogy picks up where Plain Song left off. Touching portrait of the people of Holt, Colorado, with a focus on two aging rancher brothers.

  The beginning of this book was a struggle because I prefer a different style than modernist writing. It feels like it tries too hard. Yet, it was a new and novel expression, so I can respect that. One of my favorite poems is the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a modernist masterpiece. Go figure! I suspect that Dos Passos leaned too hard into the style because even though he's considered one of the greats along with Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, I can hardly find anyone that's read him. The book is about New York City and its inhabitants from the turn of the 19th Century to the late 1910s or early 1920s. It's a huge place that New York, and Dos Passos decides to insert every resident as a character. It gets a little hard to follow, but the characters are interesting if you stick with it enough. The situations they encounter start to get going by the second third of the book. Ultimately, New York City grinds along regardless of the lives that live in it, and ...

  A beautiful contemporary Scottish novel that evokes a strong sense of nature and seasons. It’s a touching story, written in gorgeous prose.

  Charming but dark novella about a schoolteacher and her protégés, young impressionable girls at a private school in  Edinburgh.

Brooke Nolan is a battered child who makes an anonymous phone call about the escalating brutality in her home. When Social Services jeopardize her safety, condemning her to keep her father's secret, it's a glass of spilled milk at the dinner table that forces her to speak about the cruelty she's been hiding. In her pursuit of safety and justice, Brooke battles a broken court system that pushes to keep her father in the home.