Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a short and beautiful book. I finished it in a couple of sittings and wanted to start all over again.

Why the title? I think the Washington Post reviewer got it right!

Woodson reminds us that this was, indeed, another Brooklyn, far from the tony borough of multi-million-dollar brownstones and speciality grocery stores. Heroin addicts wobble along these streets. A prostitute who lives beneath August’s family loses her children to Social Services. “White people we didn’t know filled the trucks with their belongings,” August remembers, “and in the evenings, we watched them take long looks at the buildings they were leaving, then climb into station wagons and drive away.”

Every Kind of Wanting by Gina Frangello

I heard about this book on one of my podcasts and thought it sounded really interesting....and it was, but I really didn't like any of the characters very much, so I had a hard time engaging with the story.
Having just gone through the experience of having a surrogate carry my son and daughter-in-law's first child, I was attracted to the story, but this story is SO DIFFERENT from that in my family. Thank God!
Here is what the Westchester Library says about the book:

Every Kind of Wanting explores the complex intersection of three unique families and their bustling efforts to have a "Community Baby." Miguel could not be more different from his partner Chad, a happy-go-lucky real estate mogul from Chicago's wealthy North Shore. When Chad's sister, Gretchen offers the couple an egg, their search for a surrogate leads them to Miguel's old friend Emily, happily married to an eccentric Irish playwright, Nick, with whom she is raising two boys. Into this web falls Miguel's sister Lina, a former addict and stripper, who begins a passionate affair with Nick while deciphering the mysteries of her past. But every action these couples make has unforeseen consequences. As Lina faces her long-hidden demons, and the fragile friendships between Miguel and Chad and Nick and Emily begin to fray as the baby's birth draws near, a shocking turn of events-and the secret Lina's been hiding-threaten to break them apart forever. By turns funny, dark and sexy, Every Kind of Wanting strips bare the layers of the American family today. Tackling issues such as assimilation, the legacy of secrets, the morality of desire, and ultimately who "owns" love, the characters-across all ethnicities, nationalities, and sexualities - are blisteringly alive"--

But, here is my favorite quote in the book:
"Our children are never ours. We belong to them, but they belong to themselves.  They belong to people not yet born."

Mischling by Affinity Konar

I wanted to love this book, after hearing it reviewed on All the Books Podcast, but I can't say that I did. The poetic nature of the writing distanced me from the characters and seemed to "pretty" in light of the subject matter. The book deals with two twin girls' experiences at Auschwitz under Mengele's "care." His interest in twins is notorious and this book took the reader right into his "Zoo" (laboratory)
The ending also seemed a little too "pat" for me.
I guess the book didn't stand much of a chance, either, for me, because I had just finished A Gentleman in Moscow, which is certainly my favorite bookfor the last year or so.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

I just finished the Neapolitan Novels and loved them, but I must say......A Gentleman in Moscow is the BEST book I have read in a really long time.  Now, it doesn't hurt that it's about Russia and that Russia plays a HUGE part in the story - at least for me, but beyond that the story, the writing, the ambiance, the wit, the suspense...it's got it all. I couldn't stop reading and I didn't' want it to end.

The story starts with Count Rostov's trial, where he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol Hotel (where he happens to reside anyway!), but his quarters are now much more sparse and hidden up in the belfry. That doesn't stop this man from assimilating to the new life and making the most of it.  

His friendships with various hotel staff and his relationship with Nina, a young girl he meets at the beginning, are told with wit and intelligence.  He maintains a friendship with a writer he met in his university days, who has since become a dissident writer.  Count Rostov dines each evening with good wine and excellent food, despite the shortages and lace of good ingredients.  The novel presents such a great image of what life was like in the early days of the Soviet rule and how over time there is an easing of the ways of Marxism and Socialism.  

On the New York Times Book Podcast I heard this referred to as a Russian spy novel. That could not be further from the truth in my eyes.  Yes, at the end there is some intrigue and covert goings-on, but they have little to do with politics and more to do with the Count getting his way!

READ THIS BOOK!

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrente

Wow, I finished the four books. AMAZING. I do really want to go back and read the first one again.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

This is the third novel in the Neopolitan Diaries and I loved it....for the most part. There were sections that were a bit slow for me, but overall, you get a great sense of how Lina and Lenu evolve over time and become themselves.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

I have Ferrante Fever!  Just finished Book #2 and now MUST read Book #3. I think I liked the second book more than the first, but it also made me want to go back and re-read My Brilliant Friend. I had no idea on how dependent the books are on each other. Usually in a series, the author doesn't require the reader to know much about the prior books and will fill in the details of the story. Not true here!
In the first book I got so many of the characters, other than Lila and Lenu mixed up. That continued for a point in in this book, but it started becoming more and more clear who the "important" characters are and how they are all interconnected and interrelated.

This paragraph from the New York Times defines the special realationship of these two characters very well:

The novel begins with Elena throwing Lila’s notebooks into the Arno after Lila has entrusted her lifetime of writing to her best friend. About to publish a novel and graduate from Pisa’s prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore, 22-year-old Elena can’t bear to read of Lila’s love affair with Nino Sarratore, the young man she believes Lila stole from her. But the act of sabotage has deeper, darker roots. Elena has always feared that Lila, although poorly educated and stuck in Naples, is more brilliant than she, that Lila is the real writer. These two love each other ferociously, but each burns with a desire to outdo the other, sometimes killing what is best in her soul mate.