The Overbooked Bibliophile

Rating: 4.5⭐ Set in Spring 2020 amid the COVID-19 lockdown,  Tom Lake  by  Ann Patchett  revolves around former actress Lara Kenison who lives and works with her husband Joe Nelson in their family cherry orchard in Michigan. The pandemic has brought her whole family together as they shelter in place and help in the day-to-day operations of the orchard, making up for the shortfall in seasonal staff. Emily, the oldest of her three daughters, all of whom are in their twenties, is the only one who plans to take up running the farm in the future. Lara’s youngest daughter, Nell, aspires to become an actress, and her middle daughter Maisie is studying to become a veterinarian. Her daughters press their mother for details of her short-lived romance with famous actor Peter Duke when she was in her twenties, while they were both part of the summer theater production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in Tom Lake, Michigan. Peter wasn’t a famous actor back then and though their roma...

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ When a major CME (coronal mass ejection) is projected to knock out all power grids and cause a worldwide blackout, people scramble to “prepare" for the worst. This is a world that has survived the COVID pandemic but when the solar storm hits and results in a black sky event that could last months, maybe even years until power can be restored, it calls for a different level of preparedness. 

My Rating: 4.5⭐ Simon and Isabel, “Sigh” and “Bell”, two “solitary misanthropes” move into a home at the base of a mountain in the Irish countryside with their dogs Voss and Pip. Having quit their respective jobs and given up their “autonomous lives” they live on their social welfare checks and dwindling savings - a conscious decision they have taken neither out of any compulsion nor out of any particularly overwhelming discontent with their “autonomous" existence. “A refuge, a cult, a church of two; this was their experiment.”

My Rating:  4.5⭐ “Once upon a time, I dreamed of being unbound. I wanted to be free but couldn’t manage it. My brother could. My mother could not. My father could. My grandmothers could not.” In 2013 forty-one-year-old Sara Tarek Al-Ameed, a professor of Philosophy at Kuwait University is accused of blasphemy and arrested. A female student had recorded one of her lectures on Nietzsche and reported her - a part of said lecture perceived as offensive and blasphemous. A recent amendment to existing law has branded blasphemy a capital crime that is punishable by execution.

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ Nine individuals receive a list of nine names printed on a sheet of paper in the mail. One of the names on the list is their own and the remaining eight are names of random strangers - the present owner of a family-owned inn, an FBI agent, the mistress of a rich man, a struggling actor, a suburban dad, an English professor, a retired businessman, an oncology nurse and a singer-songwriter- two of whom are female and the remaining seven male, each of whom reside in different locations across the country and have no apparent connection, either personally or professionally. Junk mail? Advertising gimmick? A harmless prank? Apparently not.

My Rating: 3.5⭐️ Short story collections are always a mixed bag. The themes in this collection vary between realistic, satirical, fantastical , futuristic and dystopian with touches of magical realism and revolve around themes of coming of age, loneliness, grief, mortality, relationships, regret and so much more.