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.

Independent People by Halldór Laxness

Summary: Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur’s spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching. (Side note, this is the novel that the main character in Heart the Lover frequently referred to)

I’m thinking: Yes.

Aphasia by Mauro Javier Cárdenas 

Summary: Antonio wants to avoid thinking about his sister because she’s on the run after allegedly threatening to shoot her neighbors, and has been claiming that Antonio, the Pentagon, and their mother are all conspiring against her. Antonio is worried that what’s been happening to his sister might somehow infect his relatively contented, ordered American life, and destabilize the precarious arrangement with his ex-wife that’s allowed him to stay close to his daughters. So while skirting the subject of his sister’s state of mind, he’s completely destroying his own.

I’m thinking: Yes.

Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien

Summary: The story of Janie, who as a child experienced the terrible violence carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and then three decades later, has relocated to Montreal. There, old wounds are opened when her friend disappears. 

I’m thinking: Maybe.