Hitting a reading block for Read-A-Thon? Read-A-Thon media partner, Isaac (@i_reads)’s, got you with some book recs!
Around The World (With a Historical Lean)
1. Oxford, England – The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams is set around the early 1900s, centered around the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, with many secondary and background characters true to history or at least based on specific real people, and covering both World War I and women’s suffrage in the UK.
2. Stockholm, Sweden – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is the start of a series that was made into movies both in Sweden and in the US, following a journalist and the technologically-gifted title character as they dig into financial and family intrigue.
3. Near Munich, Germany – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is set during World War II and the Holocaust, narrated by Death and following a young girl and her foster family as they hide a Jewish person from the Nazis.
4. Paris, France – Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly is set in Paris, with the present day intersecting with the French Revolution through a diary and the catacombs.
5. Cairo, Egypt (among other places) – Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell is the book that Vincent Vega (John Travolta) was reading in the diner bathroom in Pulp Fiction.
6. Vientiane, Laos – The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill takes place in Laos not long after the communist revolution and centers on a retirement-age coroner solving a murder against the backdrop of Southeast Asia in the late 1970s.
7. Sydney, Australia – Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarity follows the interactions of multiple families around a school and a death.
1. How to Kill A Rock Star by Tiffanie DeBartolo – I love her writing in general, but this story in particular just pulled me in and still makes me feel good thinking about it.
2. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein – out of order and narration of uncertain reliability always intrigues me.
3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – magical reality that directly addresses the magic, within a beautifully built-world.
4. Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran – Claire DeWitt is simultaneously the kind of hard-boiled detective in so many books and a more seriously-written Dirk Gently.
5. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl – maybe listening to the audiobook mostly at night driving across the country added to the strangeness, but this was so wonderfully strange and intriguing.
Brb, adding these to our TBR list. Thanks, Isaac!
Log your completed books by May 31. If you still haven’t signed up for Read-A-Thon, sign up here!
