A Word About Awards

THE SPANISH LOVE DECEPTION by Elena Armas   Award: Goodreads Winner 2021   Date Read: July 31, 2024   Seeing as I’ve been into the romance genre a lot lately, this one was the perfect balance between smut and sweet. Aaron is pure heart and already knows what he wants: Lina. And Lina only knows what she doesn’t want: Aaron and to open herself up to ridicule again.   When a family wedding in Spain threatens to expose Lina’s lies of having a boyfriend, Aaron eagerly jumps at the chance, convincing her he’s her only choice. And you almost wonder why he’s so eager to take on such a tedious task. But subtle hints here and there show he has feelings for Lina.   Of course, during the magic of their Spain adventure, Lina and Aaron are able to overcome their differences and discover they have amazing chemistry, heat and feelings for each other. The only thing standing in their way is Lina’s fear of being ridiculed for sleeping with the boss, which Aaron is poised to become.   I can definitely se

BIRDY by William Wharton   Award: National Book Winner 1980   Nomination: Pulitzer Finalist 1980   Date Read: July 27, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Some books—some of the best—defy description. But we'll try. On one level, this is a novel about a boy named Birdy, who with his friend Al Ambrogio grows up in a Philadelphia suburb before World War II, and is fascinated by pigeons. High school deflects Al's attention toward girls, but Birdy moves from pigeons to canaries, eventually raising an entire aviary. Level number two: Birdy's fascination with canaries—their habits, songs, and, above all, their flight—completely captures his imagination: "I know I want to fly at least as much as any canary. I don't have to fly anything as well as a canary; gliding down from high places with arm control might be enough." Level number three: this is a book about a boy who becomes a bird in every way but physically. To fly like, act like, be like a bird becomes less and less

THE CHANGELING by Victor LaValle   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2019, LA Times Finalist 2017, PEN/Jean Stein Finalist 2018   Date Read: July 21, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “A  tragedy thrusts a mourning father into peculiar, otherworldly corners of New York City. When Apollo and Emma have their baby, Brian, it feels like both reward and challenge for the new dad. Apollo, the son of a single mother, had been scraping by as a bookseller who hunts estate and garage sales for rare first editions, so even the unusual circumstance of Brian's birth (in a stalled subway train) seems like a blessing, as does the way Apollo stumbles across a first edition of  To Kill a Mockingbird  (inscribed by Harper Lee to Truman Capote, no less) shortly after. But after some young-parent squabbles and inexplicable images on their smartphones foreshadow trouble, the story turns nightmarish: Apollo finds himself tied up and beaten by Emma, then forced to listen to the sounds of Brian’s murder. LaValle has

AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN by Rabih Alameddine   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2016, National Book Finalist 2014, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2014, PEN/Open Book Finalist 2015   Date Read: July 9, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “A  72-year-old Beiruti woman considers her life through literature in an intimate, melancholy and superb tour de force. Alameddine has a predilection for highly literary conceits in his novels:  I, the Divine  (2001) is constructed out of the discarded first chapters of its heroine’s memoir, while his 2008 breakthrough,  The Hakawati , nests stories within stories lush with Arab lore. This book has a similarly artificial-seeming setup: Aaliya is an aging woman who for decades has begun the year translating one of her favorite books into Arabic. (Her tastes run toward the intellectual titans of 20th-century international literature, including W.G. Sebald, Roberto Bolano, Joseph Roth, Vladimir Nabokov and Fernando Pessoa.) Though, until its climax, there’s little

THE HIDING PLACE by Trezza Azzopardi   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2000, Dublin Longlist 2002, James Tait Black Finalist 2000, Women’s Prize Longlist 2001   Date Read: July 4, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Azzopardi brings the immigrant and poverty-stricken underbelly of Cardiff, Wales, during the 1960s to disturbing life as a young child bears witness to the gradual disintegration of her troubled family. Dolores “Dol” Gauci is one of six daughters of Frankie Gauci, a Maltese immigrant, and his Welsh wife Mary. A charming but unlucky gambler, Frankie loses his money, his home, and his share in the Moonlight Café the night Dolores is born. Months later the infant Dol loses most of her left hand in a house fire while her mother is attempting to seduce the rent collector out of his money. For what he sees as the good of the family, Frankie barters away one of Dol’s older sisters, who may or may not be Frankie’s daughter. Out of misguided protectiveness, he gives another in marriage to an