I admit it: the first feeling that I had when I saw Laila Lalami's novel was relief, relief that it was obviously shorter than so many of the novels I wanted to read so quickly as part of the Orange Prize longlist reading I wanted to do. Not very propitious,
Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog Translated from the French by Alison Anderson (2006) Europa Editions, 2008 So I borrowed this as an uncatalogued paperback from the library. Sometime last autumn. ::deliberate vagueness:: I felt lucky because, as it was uncatalogued, it wasn't being tracked the same way as
Paule Marshall's Brown Girl Brownstones VMC No. 87 (1959) Without knowing anything of it, I chose Paule Marshall's novel Brown Girl, Brownstones to read with Black History Month in mind (along with Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative and Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine). It was kind of a random
Making Conversation is, for me, one of those Persephones, like Miss Pettigrew and Miss Buncle, that are readily recommendable: it’s the sort of book that will appeal to a wide variety of readers and has little to discourage. And, just as these books do have more serious ideas beneath their
Even though I actually finished reading this memoir last week, it seems fitting to launch February's blog, on the first day of Black History Month, with bookchat about this memoir, penned by the woman who was the first black woman to teach history at Yale University, as an assistant professor
