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Recent acquisition for our personal library.

Souvenir gift from one of our adult daughters, who recently visited Athens and Istanbul with her boyfriend, for our teen daughter, who loves Greek mythology.

2 older, cognitively-impaired, women escape their minder's care & leave their sheltered housing to join the 2008 Athens protests. They get caught up in the riots and can't find their way home. The anarchist son of 1 of them gets imprisoned, the minder's son joins the neo-nazi Golden Dawn, the Egyptian cleaner & her son are attacked & chased from their home by racist thugs. Farce and tragedy. Thought-provoking.
#Greece

I am still working on the Booker longlist and was excited that this one was a shorter read. Little did I know it would take me the longest amount of time to read and honestly in the end the effort didn‘t seem worth it to me. It is not a bad book, it just didn‘t click with me.

Scavenger hunt: frightful

#HauntedShelf #RestlessSpirits

I just finished another exciting Mary Stewart novel! Even better: I was able to do the buy-book-read-book thing so quickly that the $0.99 sale is still in effect and I can urge y‘all to grab it if you‘re in the mood for a Cretan adventure with great tension. It‘s from 1962, so there‘re a couple dodgy bits, but nothing awful enough to destroy my enjoyment.

The author's writing in this book is exquisite, but I could've done without the last 5% of the book, sometimes a story does not need an epilogue.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It‘s 9 yrs since Teresa lost her mom, and now after having lost her dad, she returns to the Greek village. The thing is, we‘re told this on the blurb, but after having read the book the Greeks she meets doesn‘t know

When she returns she tries to reconnect with the people she met the last time, but as she finds out nothing stays the same and people change

I enjoyed meeting Niko, Xanthe and especially Petros

If now is everything, Pepper has chosen to use it for an afternoon snooze.

My 12th from the #Booker longlist is one to read slowly and carefully. Layered and indirect. Teresa returns to a coastal town in Greece to mourn and read Homer. And she instead spends a lot of time insinuating herself into the private lives of locals. The reader has to work out the actual story and what she‘s doing. Recommended, but know it‘s difficult.
#Booker2025

6-13 Sep 2025
#Bookerlonglist2025 9
Another book I enjoyed, but did not love, from the longlist.
On the death of her father, Teresa returns to the Greek seaside village she visited on the death of her mother nine years earlier to find some things change and some stay the same.
Perhaps it is just that I am more introverted than Teresa but I did find the depth of her discussions she had with the villagers somewhat unlikely. But some lovely writing

Scorpionfish, by Natalie Bakopoulos (2020)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A Greek-American woman returns to her family‘s Athens apartment, to find the city, country, and her friends changed.

Review: This is a quiet and subtle, yet profound reflection on big themes such as loss, identity, community, belonging, and place. While a small story of this one woman and her friends, the reverberations of global issues are loud. ⬇️