Todd Stewart's Picks for Kojo's Winter Reading List 2006

Fiction

Red WeatherRed Weather by Pauls Toutonghi
Who doesn't want to read about Latvians in Milwaukee? The father character makes the novel. A funny, bittersweet coming of age story.

 

Last Town on EarthThe Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen
A milltown in the Pacific Northwest attempts to avoid the Flu Pandemic of 1918. A soldier attempting to enter the town is shot and killed, and this action reverberates through the town.

 

Tropical Fish

Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana
Excellent collection of linked stories following a Ugandan girl’s coming of age.

 

Borkmann's Point

Borkmann’s Point by Hakan Nesser
For those who love the mysteries of Henning Mankell. Why are the Swedes so good at writing mysteries?

 

 

Chourmo

Chourmo by Jean-Claude Izzo
This is the second installment in Izzo’s dark, noirish Marseilles Trilogy (the first was Total Chaos). Raymond Chandler had L.A., Izzo had Marseilles. As much about the city as it is about solving the crime.

 

Nonfiction

Redemption

Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War by Nicholas Lemann
An excellent history of Reconstruction and its violent end in the election of 1875 in Mississippi.

 

Voices of Time

Voices of Time: A Life in Stories by Eduardo Galeano
A beautiful memoir by the Uruguyan writer, told in the short, poetic fragmentary style he perfected in his history of the Americas, The Memory of Fire trilogy.

 

Pickpocket's Tale

A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Explore the seamy side of  New York City in the 1800s through the biography of George Appo, pickpocket extraordinaire.

Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
Nothing too heavy here—just laugh-out-loud memories of growing up in 1950s Iowa, without slipping into saccharine nostalgia.

 

Art Book

Romare BeardenRomare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension by Sally & Richard
Bearden spent much of his later life on the island of St. Martin in the Caribbean. Beautiful reproductions of his watercolors and collages to warm you on a cold winter night.