The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North

I sense The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is going to be one of those books that we will be seeing a lot of on all the Summer Reads lists. But as we have all learned, just because a book makes the must-read lists, doesn’t mean you should read it. And here I am to help you decide if you should, in fact, read The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. 

O, Africa by Andrew Lewis Conn

Yet again, I should have read the blurb more carefully when I picked this book. True, O, Africa by Andrew Lewis Conn is partially set in Africa in the 1920’s, but it was still not what I’d envisioned (ie/ Out of Africa). I should have read the comparisons to Chabon’s Cavalier and Clay and Doctorow’s Ragtime to know that this was not the book for me.