Book Haul

New month, new books.

March is here to stay, even though it feels as if February just arrived. In regards to having enough time to read and have ample time to try and put a dent into my Goodreads Reading Challenge, February isn’t one of my favorite months. March will be the month of playing catch up and hopefully getting ahead with my reading. Along with knocking out a good amount of reading this month, I’d like to continue to add new reads to my TBR (To Be Read) shelves at home. My first book buys of the month consist of three books that have been patiently sitting on my TBR list.




Title: The Lost World
Author: Michael Crichton
Series: Jurassic Park #2
Genre: Fiction; Science Fiction; Thriller; Adventure
Goodreads Rating: 3.71/ 5 stars
Pages: 416 ( Paperback )
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: October 30th, 2012 (Original publication: September 17, 1995)

Summary: It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end—the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public.

There are rumors that something has survived. . . .

The Jurassic Park franchise is plastered just about everywhere, nowadays, but it's still just as authentic and engrossing as it was before its fame. Crichton is the author for you if you're looking for a series of books that will challenge your reasoning skills and keep you on your toes both mentally and in anticipation. The first book, Jurassic Park, was incredibly well done and it's also necessary to read the first installment in this series in order to understand and be familiar with some of the concepts and recurring characters. I highly recommend checking out this series and the movies.



Title: White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith
Genre: Fiction; Contemporary; European Literature; British Literature
Goodreads Rating: 3.74/ 5 stars
Pages: 448 ( Paperback)
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: June 12, 2001 (Original publication: May 19, 1999)

Summary: On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie—working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt—is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel.

Epic and intimate, hilarious and poignant, White Teeth is the story of two North London families—one headed by Archie, the other by Archie's best friend, a Muslim Bengali named Samad Iqbal. Pals since they served together in World War II, Archie and Samad are a decidedly unlikely pair. Plodding Archie is typical in every way until he marries Clara, a beautiful, toothless Jamaican woman half his age, and the couple have a daughter named Irie (the Jamaican word for "no problem"). Samad —devoutly Muslim, hopelessly "foreign"— weds the feisty and always suspicious Alsana in a prearranged union. They have twin sons named Millat and Magid, one a pot-smoking punk-cum-militant Muslim and the other an insufferable science nerd. The riotous and tortured histories of the Joneses and the Iqbals are fundamentally intertwined, capturing an empire's worth of cultural identity, history, and hope.

Zadie Smith's dazzling first novel plays out its bounding, vibrant course in a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute. A winning debut in every respect, White Teeth marks the arrival of a wondrously talented writer who takes on the big themes —faith, race, gender, history, and culture— and triumphs. 

Zadie Smith hadn't been on my radar until about late 2016, when her latest novel, Swing Time, was published. The more that I learned about her, the more eager I was to add her work to my TBR list.



Title: The Sympathizer
Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
Genre: Fiction; Historical Fiction; War; Asian Literature
Goodreads Rating: 4.01/ 5 stars
Pages: 384 ( Paperback )
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: April 12, 2016 (Originally published: April 2015)

Summary: Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Sympathizer is a Vietnam War novel unlike any other. The narrator, one of the most arresting of recent fiction, is a man of two minds and divided loyalties, a half-French half-Vietnamese communist sleeper agent living in America after the end of the war.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. But, unbeknownst to the general, this captain is an undercover operative for the communists, who instruct him to add his own name to the list and accompany the general to America. As the general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, the captain continues to observe the group, sending coded letters to an old friend who is now a higher-up within the communist administration. Under suspicion, the captain is forced to contemplate terrible acts in order to remain undetected. And when he falls in love, he finds that his lofty ideals clash violently with his loyalties to the people close to him, a contradiction that may prove unresolvable.

A gripping spy novel, a moving story of love and friendship, and a layered portrayal of a young man drawn into extreme politics, The Sympathizer examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

Well written, historically based novels have zero trouble finding a home on my shelves. I have high hopes for Nguyen's acclaimed novel.

Let me know if you spotted any favorites or any books that you've been looking forward to reading.

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- Anisa