Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht

Why I have it: Spotted Lizzy’s review.

Summary: Realising he and she are the very worst kind of people, a middle-aged man embarks on a dubious road trip through Switzerland with his eighty-year-old mother, attempting to give away the wealth she has amassed from investing in the arms industry, but a fortune of such immensity is surprisingly hard to squander.

I’m thinking: Yes (an epigraph by Jorge Luis Borges made me laugh – ‘If you love Germany, you shouldn’t visit it.‘)

You Must Remember This by Sean Wilson

Why I have it: Because of Lisa’s beautiful review.

Summary: A family story, as experienced by Grace, an elderly woman with dementia trying to get her moorings in a worsening storm.

I’m thinking: Yes.

The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

Why I have it: Mentioned in the introduction of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity.

Summary: Most people think of New Jersey as the suburban-industrial corridor between New York and Philadelphia. Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks, known as the Pine Barrens, with many sections uninhabited. The few people who dwell in the region, the ‘Pineys’, are little known and often misunderstood. McPhee explores.

I’m thinking: Yes.