Having read histories of Namibia and the DRC, I got nervous that I was being a size queen about this Africa reading project, and I decided that to avoid incurring such a criticism, I would next learn about a very tiny country. So I selected Lesotho, an eensy wee little country surrounded on all sides by South Africa, and I read Elizabeth Eldredge’s 2007 book Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960. I have anticipated your next question: Why is that country inside of another country? The answer (not contained in my book, which only deals with Lesotho history…
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When I read non-speculative fiction, I like for there to be a Premise; for the book to be what they call high-concept. Like a girl was raised side by side with an ape, and here is what her life is like as an adult. Or a man’s personality completely changes following a traumatic brain injury. Or a British soldier assumes a secret identity to find his friend’s murderers. For me to pick up a book with a premise as quiet as Byrd‘s–a woman in her early thirties falls pregnant and gives the baby up for adoption–someone usually has to have…
11 CommentsHere is the premise of In Great Waters. It’s a hell of a premise so be prepared. In an alternate version of our world, mermaids and humans live side by side, connected by alliances like regular nations and by the existence of hybrids (bastards) who are half-mermaid and half-human. Such creatures have bifurcated tails and human reproductive organs; they can walk on land and hold their breath for as long as fifteen minutes. They are also, by tradition, the rulers of Europe. In the sixteenth (I think) century, a hybrid child called Henry, cast up on land by his mother,…
19 CommentsOMG y’all. THIS BOOK. READ IT NOW. It’s taken me a little while to spit this review out, because I feel like this is or will be one of those books that gets a lot of hype. I don’t want my review to become one of an avalanche of reviews that raves about a book, and then you are like, “Hey the people really love this book, Imma read it too,” and then you read it with your expectations sky high and when it doesn’t turn out to be the second coming of The Color Purple you’re like, “Why is…
27 CommentsThe Twisted Thread is a book I’d never heard of by an author I’d never heard of, but it was marked as a book about boarding school in the library catalogue so I was all over that. It’s boarding school + MURDER + pregnancy scandal, with a side order of class tension, and you guys, I like all those things. Hence it was an excellent book for several days on the subway, though it never reached the point where it was so absorbing I couldn’t put it down and had to read it while brushing my teeth and cooking and…
26 CommentsHave y’all ever seen Wonderfalls? If you haven’t, you really should. It’s basically Dead Like Me with a better premise, a better ensemble cast (absolutely no disrespect meant to Mandy Patinkin, whom I adore — it’s the dynamics between the characters that are better, really), and a stronger sense of what kind of a show it is. Where Dead Like Me gets a bit too grim, and Pushing Daisies can be a little too sweet, Wonderfalls finds the perfect balance. Naturally it’s the one of the three that ran for the shortest time. Anyway, there is this scene in Wonderfalls…
54 CommentsI read this book mostly in bed over several nights, while the weather outside was obligingly turning into fall. Although there are things about the cold weather that are miserable (mainly miserable for my hands and feet, which get very poor circulation as my blood is too busy keeping the rest of me warm like a furnace), they are all outweighed by the snuggly loveliness of cuddling down into your bed when it’s cold outside. (It’s not cold outside yet, by the way – just coolish and lovely – but I am anticipating the necessity of getting out my cache…
14 CommentsI love a memoir, y’all, and you know what I love more than a memoir? A graphic novel memoir. Delicious. My library has a new section on their ever-growing graphic novels shelf, which is Biography. When I went in yesterday (collecting films for my poor sick little sister and lots of excellent books for me), I took three of the five books from the new wee little section. Including Fun Home – which I remember the library not having last time I checked, and I was well cross about it. Fun Home is Alison Bechdel‘s memoir about her father, a…
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