Keep Reading November 2017

Keep Reading November 2017

One of the things I am forever thankful for is the endless amount of great authors who have contributed to the world wide collection of books that are available to me.  As you have probably figured out; I love to read and to talk about what I have read.  November was another month full of great reading and here are a few titles I would like to pass on.

My very favorite November book is a recent book by Celeste Ng.  Little Fires Everywhere takes place in Shaker Heights Ohio.  This is a planned community where everything and everyone acts as expected.  The book opens with a house fire that destroys the home of a family who is not quite perfect.  As you get to know the characters you are lead to believe that the mystery of the fire will be solved.  It turns out that is not the mystery that finds a conclusion.

After reading this book I searched for an earlier book by this author and found Everything I Never Told You.  Although not quite as gripping as Little Fires Everywhere, it is really worth reading.

My nonfiction choice is Evicted, Poverty and Profit in an American City by Matthew Desmond.

The author picks a hand full of real people who live in or on the very edge of poverty.  He tells their stories along with the landlords who control or manipulate their tenants lives.  You will be shocked to discover the games landlords play to make money off of people struggling to survive.

Behold the Dreamers is a novel that reads like a true story.  The author, Imbolo Mbue tells the story of a Cameroonian family living in Harlem.  They are on their way to achieving the American dream when the market crashes.  The husband has been working as the driver for a banking executive while his wife is working for the banker’s wife.  They both lose their jobs and give up their struggle to stay in America convincing themselves they really want to go home.

I can’t close the month without talking about a book from the past.  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellesen is well worth reading or rereading.  I will copy the description from NLS on this one.

Classic novel of man’s search for identity. Follows a young black man from his youth in a Southern town through the depression years in Harlem, where he examines and rejects the values thrust on him by both whites and blacks.