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Category: Friday Cravings

Friday Cravings: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

[ 5 ] February 10, 2012
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It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Found: Entertainment Weekly Must List App for iPhone

Publisher’s Description

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.

Check out the official book website to learn more

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Friday Cravings: The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen

[ 8 ] February 3, 2012
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Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen

Found: Hudson Booksellers at Washington Dulles Airport

Publisher’s Description

More than two decades after moving to Saudi Arabia and marrying powerful Abdullah Baylani, American-born Rosalie learns that her husband has taken a second wife. That discovery plunges their family into chaos as Rosalie grapples with leaving Saudi Arabia, her life, and her family behind. Meanwhile, Abdullah and Rosalie’s consuming personal entanglements blind them to the crisis approaching their sixteen-year-old son, Faisal, whose deepening resentment toward their lifestyle has led to his involvement with a controversial sheikh. When Faisal makes a choice that could destroy everything his embattled family holds dear, all must confront difficult truths as they fight to preserve what remains of their world.

The Ruins of Us is a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.

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Friday Cravings: The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman

[ 4 ] January 27, 2012
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It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman

Found: Don’t even remember, but need to have it!

Publisher’s Description

Style is a luxury, and luxury is simply what makes you happy.

Over the years, founding editor in chief of domino magazine Deborah Needleman has seen all kinds of rooms, with all kinds of furnishings. Her conclusion: It’s not hard to create a relaxed, stylish, and comfortable home. Just a few well-considered items can completely change the feel of your space, and The Perfectly Imperfect Home reveals them all.

Ranging from classics such as “A Really Good Sofa” and “Pretty Table Settings” to unusual surprises like “A Bit of Quirk” and “Cozifications,” the essential elements of style are treated in witty and wonderfully useful little essays. You’ll learn what to look for, whether you are at a flea market or a fancy boutique—or just mining what you already own.

According to Deborah, the point of decorating is to create the background for the best life you can have, with all its joys and imperfections.

This book will show you how.

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Friday Cravings: Day After Night by Anita Diamant

[ 9 ] January 13, 2012
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Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

It’s time for Friday Cravings! Read more about the feature here.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

Pick of the Week – Day After Night by Anita Diamant

Found: Through the Amazon.com “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature.

Publisher’s Description

Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Hebrew Bible in The Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters—young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe—in this intensely dramatic novel.

Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for “illegal” immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp who survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to hope, the four of them find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country.

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Friday Cravings: Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors

[ 9 ] January 6, 2012
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When I first started this blog, I used to do a feature called Friday Cravings. I am a self-proclaimed book hoarder! Regardless of how many books I already have or how overflowing my bookshelves are, I am always on the look out for that next great read or that undiscovered gem of a book. That’s where Friday Cravings comes in: although I find new must-haves almost every day(!), I’ll limit sharing my picks to Friday and try (very hard) to pick just one book. I think this will also be a great way for us to discover some older and maybe overlooked books and not focus on just the shiny new releases.

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! Just leave a comment here. And if anyone has read the book below, please let me know what you thought.

 

Pick of the Week – Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine DeLors

Found: I am fortunate to live in a city that has one of the best library systems in the country: Cuyahoga County Public Library. Recently, on their Facebook page, they asked folks to list the last three books they read. In exchange, they’d give you suggestions for similar books you might also enjoy. Mistress of the Revolution was one of the books they suggested for me…and I’m in love! (Psst…it’s also bargain priced on Amazon)

Publisher’s Description

Set in opulent, decadent, turbulent revolutionary France, Mistress of the Revolution is the story of Gabrielle de Montserrat. An impoverished noblewoman blessed with fiery red hair and a mischievous demeanor, Gabrielle is only fifteen when she meets her true love, a commoner named Pierre-André Coffinhal. But her brother forbids their union, choosing for her instead an aging, wealthy baron.

Widowed and a mother while still a teen, Gabrielle arrives at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in time to be swept up in the emerging cataclysm. As a new order rises, Gabrielle finds her own lovely neck on the chopping block—and who should be selected to sit on the Revolutionary Tribunal but her first love, Pierre-André. . . .

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Friday Cravings – "Son Of Hamas" by Mosab Hassan Yousef

[ 1 ] February 26, 2010
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Here’s this week’s pick! 

Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! The books do not have to be new or upcoming releases. Leave a link to your own post in the comment area and link it back to Luxury Reading. If you don’t have a blog, just list the book and the author.

Description

Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status . . . and power. But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence, and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader.

In Son of Hamas, Mosab Yousef–now called “Joseph”–reveals new information about the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization and unveils the truth about his own role, his agonizing separation from family and homeland, the dangerous decision to make his newfound faith public, and his belief that the Christian mandate to “love your enemies” is the only way to peace in the Middle East.

No review copy was provided. The posted information is from the publisher’s description of the book.

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Friday Cravings – "Shadow Princess" by Indu Sundaresan

[ 1 ] February 19, 2010
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Here’s this week’s pick! 
Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! The books do not have to be new or upcoming releases. Leave a link to your own post in the comment area and link it back to Luxury Reading. If you don’t have a blog, just list the book and the author.

Publisher’s Description

The daughters of the emperor, Jahangir and Roshanara, conspire and scheme against one another in an attempt to gain power over their father’s harem. As royal princesses, they are confined in the imperial harem and not allowed to marry. However, this does not stop them from having illicit affairs or plotting who will be the next heir to the throne.


These royal sisters are in competition for everything: control over the harem, their father’s affection, and the future of their country. Unfortunately, only one of them can succeed. And despite their best efforts to affect the future, their schemes are eclipsed, both during their lives and in posterity, as they live in the shadow of the greatest monument in Indian history, the Taj Mahal.

With a flair and enthusiasm for history and culture, Sundaresan creates a story full of rich details that brings the reader deep into the world of the lives of Indian women and their struggles for power and the profound history of the Taj Mahal, one of the most celebrated works of architecture in the world.


No review copy was provided. The posted information is from the publisher’s description of the book.

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Friday Cravings

[ 1 ] January 29, 2010
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Here’s this week’s pick! I noticed this book on one of my favorite websites, Bas Bleu, and fell in love with the cover.
Have a book that you’re craving to add to your collection? I’d love to hear from you! The books do not have to be new or upcoming releases. Leave a link to your own post in the comment area and link it back to Luxury Reading. If you don’t have a blog, just list the book and the author.
Pick of the Week
Art historian Nicholas Ochterlonie is the very model of a modern English gentleman: He has a perfectly ordered life in which everything—or so he thinks—is exactly as it seems. But when his wife inexplicably demands a divorce, he finds himself diving into uncertainty. Soon he is risking his professional reputation, breaking the law, and embarking on a delirious affair with the mysterious Julian, a beautiful woman who is badly damaged by her past with a Russian gangster. 

Protecting Julian from the Mafya and challenging his colleagues’ pet convictions give Nicholas an intoxicating new sense of himself as a dashing hero, unafraid to grapple with difficult truths. But he soon finds events spiraling out of control. A gripping mystery by the award-winning author of Death in the Garden, The Art of Deception is a fascinating character study—with a stunning surprise in its tail.

No review copy was provided. The posted information is from the publisher’s description of the book.

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