1. Everything I Don't Remember, Jonas Hassen Khemiri
A young man named Samuel dies in a horrible car crash. Was it an
accident or was it suicide? To answer that question, an unnamed writer
with an agenda of his own sets out to map Samuel s last day alive.
Through conversations with friends, relatives, and neighbors, a portrait
of Samuel emerges: the loving grandchild, the reluctant bureaucrat, the
loyal friend, the contrived poseur. The young man who did everything
for his girlfriend Laide and shared everything with his best friend
Vandad. Until he lost touch with them both. By piecing together an exhilarating narrative puzzle, we follow Samuel from the first day he encounters the towering Vandad to when they become roommates. We meet Panther, Samuel s self-involved childhood friend whose move to Berlin indirectly cues the beginning of Samuel s search for the meaning of love which in turn leads Samuel to Laide. Soon, Samuel s relationship with Laide leads to a chasm in his friendship with Vandad, and it isn t long before the lines between loyalty and betrayal, protection and peril get blurred irrevocably.
2. Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love
within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and
struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. From her outpost in an
isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist,
watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region.
She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private
spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life.On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.
Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the countryside, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place.
3. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Living with a foster family in Germany during World War II, a young girl, Liesel, struggles to survive her day-to-day trials through stealing anything she can get her hands on, but when she discovers the beauty of literature, she realizes that she has been blessed with a gift that must be shared with others, including the Jewish man hiding in the basement.
By her brother's graveside, Liesel Meminger's life is changed when she picks up a single object. It is "The Gravedigger's Handbook", left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words. This book presents a story about the power of words and the ability of books to feed the soul.
4. The Chaos of Stars, Kiersten White
All good stories have a few false starts...Myth: The children of immortal gods are immortal, too. Reality: Isadora isn't going to be around forever - and her parents barely seem to notice she's alive right now.
Myth: Once a god, always a god - that kind of power never fades away. Reality: These days, Isadora's relatives are clinging to the little bit of power they have left. And some of them would do anything to take it all.
Myth: Every teenage girl dreams of falling in love. Reality: From what Isadora's seen, love is a painful mess. All she dreams of is a normal life away from her crazy family-minus any romantic drama.
Myth: If you go far enough, you can leave the past behind. Reality: Isadora moves halfway around the world to San Diego for a fresh start, but quickly finds that there's no such thing as a clean break from family - and that leaving her old life may mean sacrificing more than she ever guessed
5. Charmides and Other Poems, Oscar Wilde
(There is no description for this book but it's basically an collection of selected poems of Oscar Wilde.)
6. Utan personlight ansvar, Lena Andersson(I couldn't find this book translated to English, but it's the second book after Wilful Disregard - A Novel About Love that I reviewed here, I did translate the description of this book though.)
Ester Nilsson's back. And she has not learned anything.
Five years after Hugo Rask Ester meets actor Olof Sten. Already at the first meeting she recognizes her body's reaction: she is becoming helplessly in love. Olof makes no secret that he is married to Ebba Silfversköld, but he also starts meeting Esther. They start a relationship, which isn't a relationship according to Olof. Because he is married, and says that they have no plans to leave Ebba. But what does he do with Esther?
7. Delhis vackraste händer, Mikael Bergstrand
(This is another book that only find in Swedish but I also translated this description into English.)
When Göran Borg not browse a blog for football nerds he thinks of his ex-wife Mia. His career has stalled, hairline climbs purposefully up and the waistband is getting tighter around the stomach. He only meet his and Mias adult children occasionally, and now they're going on holiday to Thailand with her mother and her new, wealthy man. When a cheerless winter rain is pouring down over Malmö and Göran Borg is on the way to the monotonous job he wonders if life can become so much sadder. It can.
He can, for example, get fired, lured away on a charter trip to India, suffer from traveler's diarrhea, and get left alone to die in a shabby hotel in Jaipur.
But there is a knock on the door and in comes Yogendra Singh Thakur, called Yogi. An Indian textile exporter in its very best and most wonderful years, if you ask him. Yogi takes Göran on an outer and inner journey to India's teeming capital New Delhi.
8. Missing Person, Patrick Modiano
Private investigator Guy Roland is plagued with amnesia after a mysterious accident fifteen years ago. When his boss is retiring Roland decides to find his true identity. The trail leads him to the Second World War and to a man, perhaps he himself, who worked in the Dominican Legation in Paris under the assumed name of Pedro McEvoy. This man had a large circle of friends: mannequin Denise Coudreuse, the English jockey Dédé Wildmer, the Russian ballet dancer Gay Orloff and others who together fled Paris in 1940 in connection with the German invasion of the city.
Guy Roland's research takes him, among other things, to Bora Bora, where one of the former friends had settled, but in vain. The friend Freddie have been killed a few days earlier in a shipwreck. Now remains a last opportunity for Guy Roland, an address in the Jewish ghetto in Rome, where he must have lived in the 30's: The obscure stores street 2, via delle Botteghe Oscure.
