Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Van Dyke seeks to explore racism as it exists in obvious, vocally expressed prejudice but also how it can be insidiously lurking below the surface of even some acts of seeming kindness. This writer excels at character study and exploration of human relationships, which definitely keeps you turning pages at an astounding rate.
The thing I wish I had known about this book before I read it? That the narrator is not supposed to be likeable. In fact, the narrator is supposed to evoke anger in the reader more so than any kind of pity.
There are many reasons you should read this book, the primary one being that this novel became one of the first to successfully and comprehensively discuss systemic racism and how it affects Black youth and the Black population in general.
Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone was not well-received when it was published and was compared unfavourably to Baldwin’s earlier work. Now there is a push to go back to it and appreciate it for the excellent book it is.
The original Aztec word relates to five ‘worthless’ days at the end of the yearly cycle. Children born during these days were thought not to amount to much and be doomed to poverty and ill luck; these children were referred to as ‘nenoquich’.
In essence, the book is about a man named Molteni who is a screenwriter to makes ends meet. Molteni believes that his wife Emilia has ceased to love him and nothing will convince him of the contrary.
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali focusses on a group of mostly foreign officials and journalists that are residing at a hotel in Kigali and gathering around the pool. They are aware that some kind of catastrophe is coming and lamenting the lack of care that the world has shown when it comes to Africa in general and Rwanda in specific — even though a lot of the conflicts in the country are due to colonialism and its aftermath.
A good non-fiction book is just as complicated to write as a fiction one and includes a mastery of many of the same elements. Writing style, writing technique, tone, and description have to be both well done and exist in an ideal balance. If so, then even a boring subject can be compelling. But, if not, even an enthralling subject can be completely dry and unreadable.
There’s something very comforting to me about children’s books that rhyme. I grew up with Dr Suess and Mother Goose and I was read to before bed every night. It was rhyming stories that rocked me to sleep and it was rhyme that I first learned to read before I was formally taught to.
I intentionally saved Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales for Christmas Day because it has become my favourite Christmas story over the years (or, at the very least, it sits in a firm tie with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).
