Drop the Ball, Go to the Ball, and Travel Back in Time: 3 New Books to Dive Into This Summer
by Jennifer Ridgway
There are so many great books coming out right now, it was difficult to decide which to highlight! These three books are very different yet all are wonderful reads. They include an epic story about resilience and a tragedy of history, a YA novel that taps into the musical and cultural sensation “Hamilton,” and a nonfiction pick that aims to help working women find more balance in life. We hope that one (or all three!) of these books catches your fancy to earn a coveted place on your shelf.
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The Shadow Land
Available from:I remember holing up with Elizabeth Kostova’s debut, The Historian, and devouring the book over a single weekend. Kostova’s follow-up, The Swan Thieves, was just as captivating. Her newest book, The Shadow Land, proves that the common threads in Kostova’s novels are beautiful writing, a weaving of the past with the present, and mystery that propels the plot forward.
Alexandra Boyd has just arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, when she finds herself on the steps of the wrong hotel. As she contemplates what to do, she helps an elderly woman into a car, holding onto her bags in the process. After the car drives away, she realizes that she has accidentally kept one of the lady’s bags, which contains an urn. The mystery of finding the woman (and her companions) sends Alexandra on a journey across Bulgaria and throughout history.
There are two intertwined mysteries in The Shadow Land. The first is the question of what happened to the woman and the two men traveling with her. This mystery helps unravel the second mystery: Who is the person in the urn, and what was their story? Alexandra’s accomplice is a cab driver, Bobby, who drives her around Bulgaria and helps her on her fact-finding mission. In the process, readers also learn the reason why Alexandra has chosen to go to Bulgaria and uncover details about her own sad past.
Kostova was inspired to write the novel after more than 20 visits to Bulgaria. Bulgaria is not a common setting for novels, and its history is not very well known by many readers, yet it is part of the larger history of World War II, Communism, and labor camps. The Shadow Land is a beautiful book with descriptions of both the beauty and horror of a lesser-known country and its past.
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Alex and Eliza: A Love Story
Available from:The musical “Hamilton” has become a cultural sensation, and the fever continues to grow as the musical hits the road. While the musical centers on the life of Alexander Hamilton, his wife Eliza Schuyler makes numerous appearances throughout and seems to have quite a story of her own. Not much is actually known about the courtship of Alexander and Eliza other than that it was speedy by today’s standards — they met and married within a year — and intense.
Bestselling YA author Melissa de la Cruz, known for her book Isle of the Lost and the Blue Bloods series, decided to write a fictionalized version of their romance after seeing the musical. De la Cruz opens the book in 1777 with an imagined meeting at a ball being thrown by the Schuyler family in Albany, New York. This first meeting between Alex and Eliza seems like love at first sight. However, they don’t see each other again until 1780, when Eliza goes to stay with her aunt Gertrude in Morristown, New Jersey, where Hamilton is stationed.
As there is not much known about their romance, de la Cruz has had to take quite a bit of creative license with their story and the result is a captivating YA romance peppered with bits of history. The relationship between Alexander and Eliza is thwarted along the way by familiar YA themes like misunderstanding, class differences, parents, and self-doubt. The book ends with their eventual marriage in December 1780.
Alex and Eliza is a quick, fun read. While it will find a natural audience with “Hamilton” fans, any reader of YA romance, musical fan or not, will enjoy it. It may even spur an interest in learning more about these two great figures in American history and the Revolutionary War.
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Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less
I don’t know any parent, whether they work full-time outside of the house or are a stay-at-home parent, who doesn’t struggle to get it all done — and nonfiction authors have noticed this, too. Readers learned how to Lean In from Sheryl Sandberg, and Ann-Marie Slaughter discussed how we can do more for working parents (and for work-life balance in general) as a society in her book Unfinished Business. Now, Tiffany Dufu has lent her voice to the conversation with Drop the Ball.
Dufu is the Chief Leadership Officer at Levo (a millennial professional network) and was named to Fast Company’s League of Extraordinary Women. A woman who has worked extremely hard and achieved no small amount of success, Dufu explores in her new part-memoir, part-prescriptive book how she managed to calm some of the chaos that came after having her children. She takes a personal look at how women can work to achieve success in their careers while raising children.
Dufu lays out a few different tactics for parents. For example, she and her husband use a spreadsheet to delineate and keep track of who is responsible for what — from going through the mail to finding a babysitter to being in charge of car maintenance. Another parenting tactic Dufu describes is to “recruit a village.” The people that make up your parenting village include family members, neighbors, babysitters, specialists (like mechanics, attorneys, and doctors), and unpaid working parents (a.k.a. stay-at-home parents). Dufu encourages readers to recognize how people in your life can help you in their own varying, and valuable, ways.
One of the biggest lessons in the book is learning to let go of the mental blocks of perfectionism. Dufu suggests that sometimes we have to just call something done without it being perfect, or allow our partner to take care of it, trusting in their way rather than insisting on our way. And, of course, we need to see our partners as capable parents. As a society, we oftentimes still treat fathers as useless when it comes to parenting. Ultimately, Dufu explains, fathers should be treated as — and expected to be — equal partners in parenting and in the household. It isn’t fair to them or to moms to think otherwise!
There are some limitations to Dufu’s book, including her assumption that her life and career goals are the same as all women’s. She speaks from the point of view of having a full-time and out-of-the-home career, one in which she is continually striving to reach the highest echelons of her industry. There are many women who don’t want to be in a C-level position, who freelance, who work part-time, or who are stay-at-home parents. Also, most of the concessions and changes she suggests are at home; she doesn’t discuss how to “drop the ball” at work. (I would recommend Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism for a starting point on this topic.)
Despite these criticisms, there is a lot of good information in Drop the Ball. Even as a stay-at-home parent who occasionally does freelance work, I was able to take away some ideas for myself to either mull over more or implement in my own life. While the entire book may not be applicable to you, it is worth the read for the moments of insight you will have.
What great book have you read recently? Tell us about it below!