What's New on the Shelf?

Being in a bit of a reading slump hasn't stopped me from accumulating more books. No matter how slow my actual output my curiosity never rests.

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. I think I read this in college but I'm not sure. Anyway I want to read it now because soon I'll be going on my fifth trip to San Francisco and I love reading about the city I love to visit.

The Brothers, by Masha Gessen. This is about the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013. I have
my own experience of the bombing and I'm not sure what this book is going to tell me that I don't already know, but I respect Gessen's coverage of the Russian world and I'm interested to see what insights she can bring.

Anna, by Niccolo Ammaniti. I am not a big fan of post-apocalyptic dystopias but I can't resist Niccolo Ammaniti, so I had no choice but to pick up his latest to be translated into English.

The Break, by Katherena Vermette, is a melodrama set among a diverse community in Canada. It got my attention because I haven't seen many novels about indigenous Canadian people.

All of these are books I hope to get to sooner rather than later, but who knows, right? The only one I picked up intentionally was The Joy Luck Club; the rest were serendipitous finds on my many forays into the bookstores of NYC and northern New Jersey.