This past autumn, we kicked off our inaugural post of staff recommendations which included our favorite recent recommendations compiled from our personal reading lists as well as the group reads. We promised to post these recommendations on a bi-annual basis so here’s our list for spring 2020 of top reads from around the world.
Happy reading!
ABOUT BETH, THE CLUB CO-FOUNDER
She devours science fiction & fantasy interspersed with scuba diving books, historical fiction, food-based books, detective novels, travel books, literature, & poetry. Beth possesses a penchant for Arthurian legends & stays on top of trends by amusing herself with tech/business.
Poetry from Poland
“I was thrilled to discover this book. The poetry is so engaging written in plain language with such a fresh point of view. Her wittiness is also a delight. It’s no wonder she won the Nobel Prize. If you enjoy poetry, this collection is not to be missed. If poetry is not your usual genre, this could be a great book to try.” - Beth
“Both plain-spoken and luminous…Szymborska’s skepticism, her merry, mischievous irreverence and her thirst for the surprise of fresh perception make her the enemy of all tyrannical certainties. Hers is the best of the Western mind—free, restless, questioning.” - NY Times Book Review
”One of Europe’s greatest recent poets is also its wisest, wittiest, and most accessible. Nobel Prize–winner Wislawa Szymborska draws us in with her unexpected, unassuming humor. Her elegant, precise poems pose questions we never thought to ask. ‘If you want the world in a nutshell,’ a Polish critic remarks, ‘try Szymborska.’ But the world held in these lapidary poems is larger than the one we thought we knew.
Carefully edited by her longtime, award-winning translator, Clare Cavanagh, the poems in Map trace Szymborska’s work until her death. Of the approximately 250 poems included, nearly 40 are newly translated; 13 represent the entirety of the poet’s last collection never before published in English.”
“Nobel laureate Szymborska’s gorgeous posthumous collection interweaves insights into the suffering experienced during WWII and the Cold War brutalities of Stalin with catchy, realistic, colloquial musings. Her poems are revelatory yet rooted in the everyday. She writes about living with horrors, and about ordinary lives: people in love, at work, enjoying a meal. This is a brilliant and important collection.” - Booklist
"Szymborska has her impressive poetic repertoire on full display in this volume [which] reveals her development over seven decades, including a gradual departure from end rhyme and the sharpening of her wit. As multitudinous as Whitman, she conveyed deep feeling through vivid, surreal imagery and is able to revive clichéd language by reconnecting it in startling ways. Odes, critiques, and persona poems are just a few of the forms her writing took. Yet, despite their diversity, the constants of her poems were nuance and observational humor. Also apparent is Szymborska’s rare ability to present an epiphany in a single line.” - Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review
A folk tale steeped in magical realism from Barbados
“Honestly, our book club often chooses books which aren’t to my taste so I was pleasantly surprised when this suggestion of mine was chosen & then so happy to discover the book was so good. I usually don't like magical realism & folk tales because there's not enough magic for me. However, this book worked so well even without lots of magic. I loved the storyteller main character & the tie in of Senegal & Barbados together. The author also gets bonus points from me because she wrote this for NaNoWriMo (an event where participants write a novel in just 30 days)!” - Beth
“Utterly delightful! The impish love child of Amos Tutuola [famed for his African folk tales] & Gabriel García Márquez [known as one of the best writers of the 20th century].” - Nalo Hopkinson
“Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord's world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals, inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale [incorporating the Afro-Barbadian culture], will feel instantly familiar—but Paama's adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.
Paama's husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents' home in the village of Makendha, now he's disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones—powerful spirits called the djombi—who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.
Karen Lord's debut novel, which won the prestigious Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados, the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the Mythopoetic Award, is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit.”
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
Science Fiction from Germany
“I found this book compulsively readable. The science is also spot on & no wonder, since Brandon Q. Morris is the pseudonym of Matthias Matting, a German physicist & space specialist. I've been looking for a worthy successor to The Martian for a while and though this comes from a different author, it works. Though Mars Nation isn't written quite as well as The Martian (and that may be due to the translation), I loved it just the same. The story sucked me in especially when...well, you'll see for yourself.” -Beth
“NASA finally made it. The very first human has just set foot on the surface of our neighbor planet. This is the start of a long research expedition that sent four scientists into space.
But the four astronauts of the NASA crew are not the only ones with this destination. The privately financed ‘Mars for Everyone’ initiative (MfE) has also targeted the Red Planet. Twenty men and women have been selected to live there and establish the first extraterrestrial settlement.
Challenges arise even before they reach Mars orbit. The MfE spaceship Santa Maria is damaged along the way. Only the four NASA astronauts can intervene and try to save their lives. No one anticipates the impending catastrophe that threatens their very existence—not to speak of the daily hurdles that an extended stay on an alien planet sets before them. On Mars, a struggle begins for limited resources, human cooperation, and just plain survival.”
Fantasy from Germany
“Upon seeing the cover & reading the description, I swore I’d already read the book. I hadn’t, but I thought I had because the idea behind it is similar to other books about dwarves. That’s not a bad thing though as it’s easy to get swept up into the fantasy of it because it just works so well. Such a fun adventure!” - Beth
The bestselling series from Europe
“For countless millennia, the dwarves of the Fifthling Kingdom have defended the stone gateway into Girdlegard. Many and varied foes have hurled themselves against the portal and died attempting to breach it. No man or beast has ever succeeded. Until now. . .
Abandoned as a child, Tungdil the blacksmith labors contentedly in the land of Ionandar, the only dwarf in a kingdom of men. Although he does not want for friends, Tungdil is very much aware that he is alone—indeed, he has not so much as set eyes on another dwarf. But all that is about to change.
Sent out into the world to deliver a message and reacquaint himself with his people, the young foundling finds himself thrust into a battle for which he has not been trained. Not only his own safety, but the life of every man, woman and child in Girdlegard depends upon his ability to embrace his heritage. Although he has many unanswered questions, Tungdil is certain of one thing—no matter where he was raised, he is a true dwarf.
And no one has ever questioned the courage of the dwarves.”
Science Fiction from Cuba
“This book was included in the Cuban vote. It didn’t win, but it looked so good I had to read it & I’m so glad I did. The book is a unique one, & gloriously suspenseful & psychological. While the book isn’t perfect, the issues are all fairly minor balancing out a real treat of a book with a superb ending. Side note: This is one of those books which doesn’t start out well & you need to read a few chapters to become invested.” - Beth
“This mesmerizing novel, reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, is a science-fiction survival story that captures the intense pressures—economic, ideological, and psychological—inside Communist Cuba.
A Legend of the Future takes place inside a spaceship on a groundbreaking mission to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons; back home, a final conflict between warring superpowers threatens the fate of the Earth. When disaster strikes the ship, the crewmembers are forced into a grand experiment in psychological and emotional conditioning, in which they face not just their innermost fears, but the ultimate sacrifice—their very humanity.”
“Finally, we have the chance to read a landmark work from one of Cuba’s greatest science fiction writers…. Steady build-up of suspense, believable depiction of characters under intense stress, unique take on human space exploration…. If you like intensely psychological sci-fi that deftly piles on the suspense, this novel’s for you. It will blow your mind in a good way. The boundaries between dream and reality, and then between human and machine, almost melt away as the story progresses. And it is de Rojas’s skillful manipulation of those boundaries that makes A Legend of the Future so addictive.” - SF Signal, 4.5-star review
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
Note: The publisher made the poor decision to include thoughts in quotes in the novel so you can't easily differentiate between thoughts & conversation. There are also a few other small issues, however, the story is good enough to overcome these minor faults. Get through the 1st few chapters & you’ll see why this novel is a staff recommendation.
About Ivor Watkins, Moderator
Ivor likes to read crime & contemporary fiction along side science fiction and non fiction. He reads with vigor dark and depressing topics alongside the lighter drama and mysteries - very little is not considered in his travels around physical and online stores and libraries. Also included are short stories, poems and essays.
Reading is balanced between his other pursuits of being a slave to his cats, providing tech support to his Other Half and being baffled by his day job.
Critique of inequality and sexism from South Korea
“Having recently seen the film sensation Parasite, a local book group was reading this book as part of its inaugural foreign literature in translation meeting and it tied in nicely with my curiosity about the themes of inequality, class and discrimination in South Korean society.” - Ivor
“In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoung’s entire life is recounted to the psychiatrist―a narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around her―from the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the women’s restroom and post their photos online. In her father’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s fault that men harass her late at night; in her husband’s eyes, it is Jiyoung’s duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their child―to put them first.”
“Cho’s clinical prose is bolstered with figures and footnotes to illustrate how ordinary Jiyoung’s experience is—When Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, was published in Korea in 2016, it was received as a cultural call to arms —Like Bong Joon Ho’s Academy Award-winning film Parasite, which unleashed a debate about class disparities in South Korea, Cho’s novel was treated as a social treatise as much as a work of art.” - The New York Times
Crime Fiction from Italy
“An enjoyable police procedural following a murder investigation in the snowy Italian mountains. This first outing of coarse, dark humoured and intolerant Commissario Rocco Schiavone as he yearns for being back in warm Rome while his feet get colder by the minute traipsing in the freezing snow on the trail of a local killer.” - Ivor
“When a mangled body has been discovered on a ski run above Champoluc, Rocco immediately faces his first challenge—identifying the victim, a complex procedure complicated by his ignorance of the customs, dialect, and history of his new home. Proud and undaunted, Rocco makes his way among the ski runs, mountain huts, and aerial tramways, meeting ski instructors, Alpine guides, the hardworking, enigmatic folk of Aosta, and a few beautiful locals eager to give him a warm welcome.
It won't be easy, this mountain life, especially with a corpse or two in the mix. But then there's nothing that makes Rocco feel more at home than an investigation.
An insightful observer of human nature, Antonio Manzini writes with sly humour and a dash of irony, and introduces an irresistible hero—a fascinating blend of swagger, machismo, and vulnerability—in a colourful and atmospheric crime mystery series that is European crime fiction at its best.”
“Forget Montalbano, Commisario Rocco Schivone is grievous, coarse, violent … Wonderful, heartbreaking. “ - L'Uomo Vogue
“Surly, moody, individualistic, unconventional, corrupt, abusive, with a dark past, Rocco Schiavone seems to come from the dark metropolis of a novel by James Ellroy.” L'Indice
Horror and coming of age thriller from sweden
“Powerful, chilling and cynical novel but also delicate and beautiful in equal measure as the lives and the relationship of two trapped and tormented souls become entwined together and face the horrors of hateful society head on. A great read” - Ivor
The international bestselling book which was named Best Novel in Translation
“It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day. But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind.
A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night.
Sweeping top honors at film festivals all over the globe, the film version of Let the Right One In has received the same kind of spectacular raves that have been lavished on the book.”
“Absolutely chilling. This page-turner grabs you from the onset and just won't let go.” - L. A. Banks.
“A brilliant take on the vampire myth, and a roaring good story.” - Kelley Armstrong
ABOUT Mia, THE CLUB CO-FOUNDER
Mia devotes herself to others as a Registered Nurse living in Charleston, South Carolina. She's also a firm believer in self improvement & has returned to school while working full-time.
Married to the love of her life (Jose), her family became complete with the arrival of her daughter, Autumn. Her life is full with yoga, salsa dancing, books, movies & music. Mia is also passionate about cooking/eating vegetarian food. She wishes she could travel more, but adores reading the world as a substitute.
Mia enthusiastically acts as the online book club's co-admin.
A THrilling mystery from Denmark
“This book gripped me, saddened me, humbled me and educated me. I loved the main character Smilla, her tough as nails attitude and intelligence (streetsmart, intellectual capacity and empathy for the underdog), alongside the fight for justice was a perfect mix for my tastes in stories.” - Mia
Named Best Book of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly & People magazines
“She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories—a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...
It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own.
Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation, and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice.”
Note: Depending upon your country, this book may be titled Smilla’s Sense of Snow or Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.
A Surreal work of satire from SwedeN
“I loved The Room and although the main character was unlikable, the story was authentic in describing the place the mind goes to when faced with uncreative, mundane, unfulfilling work. In this sense, The Room uplifted me to see the way a mind can fracture and distort reality, yet protect itself in a bizarre assembly of events, space and time.” - Mia
“Hilarious and chilling.” -Times of London
“Daily grind got you down? Escape into this Swedish dark comedy.” -O, the Oprah Magazine, Ten Titles to Pick Up Now
”Bjorn is a compulsive, meticulous bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works—a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Bjorn is in his room, what his co-workers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Bjorn's bizarre behavior eventually leads his co-workers to try and have him fired, but Bjorn will turn the tables on them with help from his secret room.
Debut author Jonas Karlsson doesn't leave a word out of place in this brilliant, bizarre, delightful take on how far we will go—in a world ruled by conformity—to live an individual and examined life.”
Historical Literary fiction and Magical realism from Spain
“One of the most special aspects of this book was the main character’s father had a very special book store, which was the genesis of this story. The characters were endearing and lovable, and the story touched my heart as most doomed, twisted love stories tend to do.” - Mia
“The Shadow of the Wind is a stunning literary thriller in which the discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or may not still be alive...
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'Cemetery of Lost Books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax— as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from the book, a character who turns out to be the devil. “
"Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show." —The New York Times Book Review
Science Fiction Homage and Satire from Cuba
“Within Yoss’s style of writing, a story of his country is thinly veiled in the genre of science fiction and helped me to understand the surreptitious struggle of words and actions everyday Cubans employ to escape reality. The stories were entertaining, yet it is easy enough to read between the lines and see the real issues at hand, and I appreciated the writers artistry in this skill.” - Mia.
“The most successful and controversial Cuban Science Fiction writer of all time, Yoss (aka José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) is known for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism. In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss pays homage to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and 334 by Thomas M. Disch. A critique of Cuba in the nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, A Planet for Rent marks the debut in English of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice.”
“One of the most prestigious science fiction authors of the island.”—On Cuba Magazine
"A gifted and daring writer."—David Iaconangelo
Imaginative SCIENCE FICTION FROM China
“This book blew the dust off my brain with the powerful themes of physics, revolution, and history, while renewing my openness to the science fiction genre in a way that no other book has. The realistic elements kept me grounded, while the abstract theories of physics sent me spinning through the dimensions.” - Mia
“1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.
Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns. This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.”
“Cixin's trilogy is SF in the grand style, a galaxy-spanning, ideas-rich narrative of invasion and war.” - Guardian.
“Wildly imaginative, really interesting ...The scope of it was immense” - Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States.