Category: family-life

  • This writing by Katie Engelhart of The New York Times won the 2024 Pulitzer prize in the ‘Feature Writing’ category. It talks about a topic I’m sure that hits way too close at home for many: dementia. Katie follow two sisters’ journey in Denison, Iowa as they fight for guardianship over their mother, Diane. Fearing…

    New York Times: The Mother Who Changed Cover

  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond is a 2017 Pulitzer winner in the General Non-Fiction category, covering the problem of home eviction and homelessness within Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although the author chooses to only cover eight or so people within this one city, his higher purpose is to generally highlight how…

    Evicted Book Cover

  • Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See is an historical fiction set in the late 15th century China during the Ming dynasty. Having shelved this novel for far too long, I am so glad I finally got the chance to read it. It is a beautifully written novel regarding Tan Yunxian, a woman born…

    Lady Tan's Circle of Women Book Cover

  • World Without End by Ken Follet is the second of five novels in his popular Kingsbridge series. We are once again transported back to Kingsbridge, but 200 years later. Pillars of the Earth was a joy to read, and its sequel here follows the exact same formula, so I’m not expecting different results. Sure enough,…

    World Without End Book Cover

  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo gives a horrifying look inside one of Mumbai India’s most poverty-stricken slums. Prepare yourselves for sadness, anger, grief, helplessness, and a bit of joy, but not in the way you’d expect. Published in 2014, the events that take place occurs between 2007 through 2011. In a time when…

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    Behind the Beautiful Forevers Book Cover

  • The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton is a novel set in the near future where hurricanes ravage the southern state of Florida to the point where it becomes near impossible to inhabit. It has been such a long while since I could remember reading a more grounded story about humans dealing with real natural disasters…

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    The Light Pirate Book Cover

  • Black Water Sister by Zen Cho is a contemporary urban fantasy novel set in Malaysia. With Jess being able to hear her dead grandmother voice in her head, her life has all of a sudden turned for the worst and that’s not to say that her life was perfect or even anywhere near that to…

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    Black Water Sister Book Cover

  • Breakdown by Katherine Amt Hanna is a story about what happens to some survivors after a major pandemic has taken the world by storm. Does this story takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting? Yes. Does it completely revolve around this fact? Absolutely not. I’ve had Breakdown on my to-read list a couple of months ago…

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    Breakdown Book Cover