As you would expect, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is wonderful when she talks about feminism. And why not? She’s wonderful when she talks about everything else. In this essay, an adaptation of the TED talk sampled by Beyonce in “Flawless,” she argues that the necessity for feminism is in everything we do, in the air we breathe. To be a feminist doesn’t mean to hate men, or society — it means to hope for better from men and from women and from society, and to act in ways that promote that ideal of being better. Many of the anecdotes Adichie tells…
25 CommentsCategory: 4 Stars
The universe is more diverse! If you aren’t already participating in Aarti’s wonderful September event A More Diverse Universe, you definitely should. Check out her amazing recommendations here and here and here, visit her blog to check out what other people are reading, and follow the hashtag #Diversiverse on Twitter. My first read for this event is Dayo Olopade’s The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa, a book I’ve long had my eye on because of its brilliantly colored, eye-catching jacket design. It’s also a terrific book, an antidote to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called “the…
22 CommentsHave y’all ever thought about that before? I had not! But I was reading the 2013 Best American Science and Nature Writing, edited this year by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and an essay by Michelle Nijhuis from Scientific American blew my mind out of the back of my skull. Someone has to decide which animals go extinct! Even if that is not the exact decision that gets made, it’s effectively still true: When resources are finite (and they always are), choosing to save one species means you have chosen not to save another one. If you aren’t in denial about this truth,…
14 CommentsI confess to being seduced into reading On Sal Mal Lane (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) by its cover. I am helpless in the face of vibrant blue with bronze highlights. And with the stylized children on the bottom. I couldn’t resist. Look at this here: The Herath family moves into Sal Mal Lane before civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka. Their beauty and kindness to one and all bewilders and attracts the families in the lane: Old Mr. Niles, confined to his bed and dreadfully bored before Nihil Herath begins coming to talk to him; slow, careful Raju, who is devoted to…
4 CommentsNothing I want to say about Gone Girl can be said without spoilers, so on the off chance that anybody reading this post has been slower than me to read Gone Girl, and cares about spoilers, begone with you! (Instead of reading this post, you should go read Ana’s post about books where The Twist dominates conversations about the book. Not apropos of anything! Not being pointed! Just an interesting read!) Okay! If you didn’t want to be spoiled, I hope you have stopped reading! I am going to say spoilers now! Now I’m going to say them. Right now.…
25 Comments“Mines are hidden in cake tins and biscuit tins.” He showed us. The tins were bright and promising, with pictures of roses painted on their sides, or small children with rosy cheeks in old-fashioned winter clothes running behind snow-covered trees, or butter-soft shortbread with cherry-heart centers. “Would any of you open this tin?” A few of us raised our hands eagerly. “Children like you open the tins and get blown to pieces.” We greedy, stupid few quickly sat on our hands again. Damn this book is good. Alexandra Fuller writes about growing up as the daughter of…
21 CommentsWell, this is the best. Photographer Dinah Fried has excerpted descriptions of meals from a wonderful range of literature — everything from Bread and Jam for Frances to A Confederacy of Dunces — and recreated those meals in gorgeous, lush photographs. I recently acquired a work iPad and discovered that one of the best uses of an iPad is to look at beautiful things. I borrowed Fictitious Dishes as an ebook from my library and tediously spent several days forcing everyone near me to look at all the pretty pictures. And now it is your turn. Here’s the one from The…
29 CommentsThe final installment of a series is a trap. The writer is pursuing a set of goals which, though they are not fundamentally incompatible with each other, would probably not receive much encouragement from the OK Cupid algorithm to send each other a flirty message. The stakes have to be high but can’t be stakes the characters have already faced and overcome in previous books; the resolution has to be victory but can’t be too deus ex machina; and the characters have to end on a note that acknowledges everything they have been through but also feels conclusive and not…
23 CommentsOh wonderful Attica Locke! If only I had read The Cutting Season after Difficult Men rather than before! Attica Locke would have been a wonderful antidote to the maddening failure of representation. The protagonist of The Cutting Season (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), Caren Gray, has come back to work and live at the Louisiana plantation where her mother was a cook and her multi-great grandparents were slaves. She manages all of the plantation operations, from tours (complete with a rose-colored play about antebellum life at Belle Vie) to events — Belle Vie is a popular location for weddings…
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