Avondale College

117,165 pages read and 3,395 team points

Team members

autesamoa

2,336 pts

(1,797 pages read)

Running in the Family

By Michael Ondaaje

5 stars
Something Special

By Iris Murdoch

5 stars
The Temporary Gentleman

By Sebastian Barry

4 stars
Speaking My Language

By Mike McRoberts

5 stars
The Last Living Cannibal

By Ariana Ngarewa

5 stars
Bookstore Girls

By Kei Aono. Translated by Haydn Trowell

3 stars

Enemies to Friends but not a cosy read. Riko and Aki work in a Japanese Corporate publishing industry. It's dog eat dog with lots of high drama. The two women clash in a workplace permeated with inept men and some nasty corporate sexism. They also just don't like each other. Can they put aside their dislike to save the future of a bookstore they actually love? I am a Librarian so I will read any book with 'bookshop', (or coffee shop), in the title! But this one was slow to start. A dozen Japanese names in the first chapter set against the most volatile wedding I have ever read (bar poor Jane Eyre's), was a struggle. But insightful and beautiful ideas about the love of books and how they were purchased, shelved, moved, or displayed, by these two women to connect to actual readers in their shops, was inspiring.
The Widows of Malabar Hill

By Sujata Massey

4 stars

Fantastic mystery thriller set against Bombay in 1920. The heroin, Perveen Mistry the daughter of a well respected Parsee family has just returned from Oxford and has joined her father's law firm . She is now in charge of executing the will of the wealthy Omir Farid a Muslim mill owner, who has left three widows and several children. The women are in full purdah never leaving their compound or speaking to men. Perveen arrives in this story traumatised by her own tragic and violent recent experience of an arranged marriage - one that she herself arranged. This, with her feisty courage and intelligence,makes her a compassionate and understanding ally for these women living through purdah. A big history lesson that did not feel like a history lesson! Loved it.

43 - 0 - 1

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Avondale College

117,165 pages read and 3,395 team points

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