{"id":4115,"date":"2017-06-16T23:33:03","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T23:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/?p=4115"},"modified":"2017-06-16T23:56:21","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T23:56:21","slug":"check-out-our-summer-reading-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/2017\/06\/16\/check-out-our-summer-reading-picks\/","title":{"rendered":"Check Out Our Summer Reading Picks!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SwingSwing Time<\/em> by Zadie Smith<\/strong><\/p>\n

An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of\u00a0White Teeth<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0On Beauty.\u00a0<\/i>Two brown girls dream of being dancers\u2014but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It\u2019s a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live. But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, the women dance just like Tracey\u2014the same twists, the same shakes\u2014and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time. Swing Time<\/em> is a New York Times<\/em> Best Seller and a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. -Penguin Random House. Recommended by Nancy Young. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yaccy8tn<\/a><\/p>\n

\"suitcasePanorama City<\/em> by Antoine Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Heir to\u00a0A Confederacy of Dunces\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Being There<\/em>,\u00a0Panorama City<\/em>\u00a0is a wildly entertaining and surreptitiously moving novel about a self-described \u201cslow absorber\u201d\u00a0named Oppen Porter,\u00a0who records\u00a0everything he thinks his\u00a0unborn son will find useful in becoming a man of the world.\u00a0Panorama City<\/em> is\u00a0the Winner of the 2017 San Fernando Valley Fiction Award. \u2013 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Recommended by Mark Stover. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yakjneav<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"picture<\/em><\/strong>Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth<\/em> of the FBI by David Grann<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.\u00a0In this last remnant of the Wild West\u2014where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the \u201cPhantom Terror,\u201d roamed\u2014many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization\u2019s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection.\u00a0 Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. In\u00a0Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>,\u00a0David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long.\u00a0Killers of the Flower Moon\u00a0<\/em>is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating. \u2013\u00a0Penguin Random House. Recommended by Lynn Lampert. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y75g9hoh<\/a><\/p>\n

Love Medicine<\/em> by Louise Erdrich<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\"a<\/p>\n

Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation,\u00a0Love Medicine<\/em>\u2014the first novel by bestselling, National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich\u2014is the epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life. Filled with humor, magic, injustice and betrayal, Erdrich blends family love and loyalty in a stunning work of dramatic fiction. \u2013 Harper Collins Publishers. Recommended by Laurie Borchard. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y8cgsvp7<\/a><\/p>\n

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector\u2019s Story<\/em> by Hyeonseo Lee<\/strong>\"a<\/p>\n

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world\u2019s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships \u2013 and the story of one woman\u2019s terrifying struggle to avoid capture and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realize that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told \u201cthe best on the planet?\u201d Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family. She could not return, since rumors of her escape were spreading, and she and her family could incur the punishments of the government authorities \u2013 involving imprisonment, torture, and possible public execution. Hyeonseo instead remained in China and rapidly learned Chinese in an effort to adapt and survive. Twelve years and two lifetimes later, she would return to the North Korean border in a daring mission to spirit her mother and brother to South Korea, on one of the most arduous, costly and dangerous journeys imaginable. This is the unique story not only of Hyeonseo\u2019s escape from the darkness into the light, but also of her coming of age, education and the resolve she found to rebuild her life \u2013 not once, but twice \u2013 first in China, then in South Korea. Strong, brave and eloquent, this memoir is a triumph of her remarkable spirit. \u2013 Harper Collins Publishers. Recommended by Marcia Henry. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y6vxzx44<\/a><\/p>\n

The Association of Small Bombs<\/em><\/strong> by Karan Mahajan<\/strong>\"The<\/p>\n

When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family\u2019s television set at a repair shop with their friend Mansoor Ahmed one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb\u2014one of the many \u201csmall\u201d bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world\u2014detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland. Karan Mahajan writes brilliantly about the effects of terrorism on victims and perpetrators, proving himself to be one of the most provocative and dynamic novelists of his generation. The Association of Small Bombs<\/em> is a National Book Award Finalist, one of the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0Book Review\u2019s Ten Best Books of the Year in addition to winning numerous other honors and awards. – Penguin Random House. Recommended by Nancy Young. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/ycwxo7pr<\/a><\/p>\n

\"peopleGuests of the Ayatollah<\/em> by Mark Bowden<\/strong><\/p>\n

On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans hostage and kept nearly all of them captive 444 days.\u00a0 The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America’s first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people, launched yellow-ribbon campaigns, made celebrities of the hostage’s families, and crippled the reelection campaign of President Jimmy Carter.\u00a0 Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, their radical, na\u00efve captors, the soldiers sent on the impossible mission to free them, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Taking listeners from the Oval Office to the hostages’ cells,\u00a0Guests of the Ayatollah<\/i>\u00a0is a remarkably detailed, brilliantly re-created, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world. – Simon & Schuster. Recommended by Coleen Martin. Location information: http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/yaysu37g<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swing Time by Zadie Smith An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of\u00a0White Teeth\u00a0and\u00a0On Beauty.\u00a0Two…<\/p>\n

Read moreCheck Out Our Summer Reading Picks!<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[206,207],"class_list":["post-4115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading-2","tag-summer-reading","tag-summer-reading-picks","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4115"}],"version-history":[{"count":97,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4221,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4115\/revisions\/4221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/cited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}