Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
I read both Tropical Fish by Doreen Baingana and The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa more than a month ago, and they were both excellent. They deserve a little bit of book blog attention. Have you read them? What do you think of them? Tropical Fish by Doreen Baingana (2006) is a collection
It’s my pleasure to welcome Anthony Trollope to my site as a part of the Anthony Trollope Classics Circuit. Today Mr. Trollope is also visiting It’s All About Books with The Way We Live Now and nomadreader with thoughts on The Warden. See the schedule to see where else he’s visited this week, and if
I loved George Eliot’s Middlemarch (published 1874; thoughts), despite its 800 pages. I can’t say the same about Eliot’s Silas Marner (published 1861), despite its comparative brevity. Now, if you have been reading my blog in the past, you will know that I tend to read classics and I normally love them, especially Victorian novels.
Yesterday you were divorced. Today I am a widow. (page 1) So begins So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba (first published 1980, translated from the French by Modupé Bodé-Thomas), the personal (fictional) diary of the Senegalese woman Ramatoulaye, written as an extended letter to her best friend Aissatou, who has long lived in the
I have so struggled to put Maru by Bessie Head (published 1971) into context that I even reread the short novel (130 pages) before I attempted to write my thoughts. My second read solidified my perception that Maru is a type of warped fairy tale, one especially with no happily ever after. Although the prince-like
Part ghost story and part mystery, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (published 2006) captures the power of stories and books in a lonely life. Amateur biographer Margret Lea is invited to write the story of Vita Winter, aging popular writer with more than fifty published works to her name. Although the two women are
This month’s Classics Circuit features Meiji-era Japanese literature! I chose to read some short stories by Higuchi Ichiyō , the most well-known woman writer in Meiji Japan. In the Shade of Spring Leaves by Robert Lyons Danly is part biography of Ms. Ichiyō and part a collection of nine of her short stories. I decided
Part of my problem with Jane Austen’s Emma (first published in 1815) lay in the main character. Jane Austen once famously said, “I’m going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” Unfortunately, such was the case for me. I disliked Emma Woodhouse’s immature manipulation of others around her, and found
When I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (published 1967) half a decade ago, I didn’t understand it, but I loved every bit of it. As I struggled for months through the saga (part of which I read in the original Spanish, part in translation by Gregory Rabassa), I found myself
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published 2006) tells the story of the Nigerian Civil War, when the minority, repressed Igbos in Southeastern Nigeria established the independent republic of Biafra. My understanding of the war comes from my reading of the novel, but I did also reference Wikipedia. (Adichie mentions in an
According to my Harmon and Holman A Handbook to Literature, “romance” has had a special meaning in terms of literature since the beginning of the novel. As opposed to a “novel,” a term which suggested realistic manners and society, a “romance” was more unlikely to happen in reality. In common usage, [romance] refers to works
According to the tradition of the Dinka, the people who live in southern Sudan, after God created the world and the first man (a Dinka), he gave the first man a choice. “You can have either these cattle, as my gift to you, or you can have the What,” he said. The Dinka chose the
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