Hello,
This week, we check in on our Book Club discussion of The Ways We Hide by Kristina McMorris. This historical novel by the author of Sold on a Monday is inspired by true events and focuses on an illusionist who is recruited by the British intelligence agency MI9 to design objects used to help captured soldiers escape from the Germans.
Our Editor's Choice review covers Sidik Fofana's Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, a funny and perceptive collection of linked short stories about the tenants of a Harlem apartment building struggling to make ends meet.
We also have a new blog post, Book Club Food Ideas for Hearty Discussions; a new Wordplay; and for members, a link to the just-published issue of The BookBrowse Review.
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With best wishes,
Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher
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The Ways We Hide
by Kristina McMorris
From the Jacket:
From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold On A Monday―over a million copies sold!―comes a sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path.
From the Discussion:
"The title is what drew me to the book. Although it was about WWII, it was also about how as humans (especially women) we resort to so many ways to either deny or hide our feelings, our wants, our desires and our mistakes. Do we fear the discovery of talents or the criticism of self?" - lilc
"I didn’t know how creative MI9 was in hiding contraband in everyday items. No wonder James Bond movies have so many unexpected gadgets. I also hadn’t heard of the Italian Hall or Bethel Green Station tragedies. I felt the author did an excellent job of tying a variety of historical events together to produce a wonderful story!" - cindyb
"I was not aware of the fire or the special weapons creations. I was a bit surprised that an American was involved in that way in a European war. It was a very clever immersion of fact with fiction and served the purpose of plot enhancement. Sometimes books read like an author spewing facts that actually serve no purpose in the plot of the book. This was very integral to the novel. Nicely done." - janett
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For Members: The BookBrowse Review |
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This issue features 16 reviews and Beyond the Book articles. The books we cover include Jerome Charyn's Big Red, Yiyun Li's The Book of Goose and Jonathan Escoffery's I Will Survive You, which made the National Book Award longlist.
This twice-monthly e-magazine is just one benefit of being a BookBrowse member. Sign up for an individual membership today or ask your library if they subscribe (or check for yourself).
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Stories from the Tenants Downstairs
by Sidik Fofana
Review and article by Rebecca Foster
"Everybody got a story, everybody got a tale / Question is: Is it despair or prevail?" These last lines of a short introduction in verse set up Sidik Fofana's aim: to depict the shifting fortunes of the residents of Banneker Terrace in Harlem. The building has new owners who plan to renovate and raise the rates. For many of the tenants, it's already a struggle to make rent each month, even if they hold down two or more jobs. So, while gentrification might be considered a positive thing in a neighborhood for some, it's bad news for the protagonists of these linked short stories.
Illegal hustling starts to look like a tempting option — if not a necessity. In "The Rent Manual" (which has second-person narration, in contrast to the first-person perspective of the other seven stories), Mimi is a waitress at a soul food restaurant and runs an informal home hairdressing business, but also gets drawn into a friend's scheme to resell cheap diapers. She's five months behind on her rent and knows eviction proceedings will start soon if she doesn't do something drastic.
Though the lives of these tenants are filled with difficulties — unemployment, dead or absent parents, three people living in a one-bedroom apartment, no tangible prospects for the future — they are not miserable. Their optimism and sheer joy shine through in their picaresque antics. Fofana even references the lyrics of the Journey song "Don't Stop Believin'" twice, as if to sum up his characters' irrepressible spirits. ... continued
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Beyond the Book:
Rent Control in New York City
In Sidik Fofana's Stories from the Tenants Downstairs, gentrification and rent rises pose a threat to the struggling characters living in an apartment building in Harlem. New York City and some neighboring suburban counties operate rent control and/or rent stabilization policies.
Rent control is rare, only applying to about 16,000 residential properties that were constructed before 1947 and have been occupied since 1971. These are remnants of a mid-20th-century drive to ensure affordable housing for the working class in American cities, spearheaded by NYC after the end of relevant federal regulations. The maximum base rent is adjusted every two years to take operating costs into account but cannot be raised beyond that amount. Tenants can protest a proposed rent rise if the landlord has not provided needed services or addressed building violations. ... continued
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Is your book club in need of some fresh food ideas? In a recent survey, we asked subscribers what snacks or meals their book groups prefer for their meetings.
We'll share with you some of the most popular responses, along with suggestions and resources that you can use for cooking up fun, food-filled sessions with your club in the future.
So here are some ideas for easy food inspiration. Bon appetit! ...continued
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Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win the book of your choice or a 6-month membership to BookBrowse!
"Y Can't G H A"
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The answer to the last Wordplay: F W O A Nail T K W L
"For want of a nail the kingdom was lost"
Meaning: No detail is too small to ignore to achieve a successful outcome
This essence of this proverb dates back to at least the late 14th century in English and to the early 13th century in German.
The earliest extant reference is in the work of Freidank, an early 13th century didactic poet (i.e writer of poems intended to teach) who is thought to have lived somewhere around Swabia, which was part of the German kingdom of the time. His version translates something like:
The wise tell us that a nail keeps a shoe, a shoe keeps a horse, a horse keeps a knight, a knight, who can fight, keeps a castle.
The earliest surviving reference in English is by John Gower in the late 14th century in his expansive poem Confessio Amantis ("The Lover's Confession"). ... continued
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With so many new books published every month, it's difficult to find the standouts, the ones which are really worth your time. This is why hundreds of thousands of readers rely on BookBrowse to do the hard work of sifting though the multitude of titles to find the most promising new books, with a focus on books that entertain, engage and enlighten. |
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BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.
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