Friday Finds- The Ban Has Been Lifted

So my book-buying ban is officially lifted- my birthday is tomorrow. And... well, it was time to lift it.

I picked up Dirty Snow, a crime novel by Georges Simenon set just after World War 2 in France. I have never read him and I think this book will be fun. From the NYRB website:

Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother’s whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty thief, and, as Dirty Snow opens, he has just killed his first man. Through the unrelenting darkness and cold of an endless winter, Frank will pursue abjection until at last there is nowhere to go.

The Art of Healing Heartbeats, by Jan-Philipp Sendker, has been described as good trashy fun from the great publisher Other Press. From their site:

A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present.  When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains.

My Twitter pal author Steve Himmer recommended Alexis M. Smith's novel Glaciers, fresh from the wonderful Tin House Books. From the Tin House site:

Isabel is a single, twentysomething thrift-store shopper and collector of remnants, things cast off or left behind by others. Glaciers follows Isabel through a day in her life in which work with damaged books in the basement of a library, unrequited love for the former soldier who fixes her computer, and dreams of the perfect vintage dress move over a backdrop of deteriorating urban architecture and the imminent loss of the glaciers she knew as a young girl in Alaska.

And if you don't follow Steve on Twitter, you really need to. He's a really nice guy and his book The Bee-Loud Glade is pretty neat, too. Look for him @SteveHimmer and tell him I say hi.

What did you add to your pile this week? See more Friday Finds at ShouldbeReading.wordpress.com.