Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
Hargrave reads voraciously and diversely — mostly antiquarian and classic books in translation. These are her book reviews.
While she reads more books than she could possibly write about, she does consistently post weekly reviews. New reviews are posted on Mondays.
Looking for one of the books that have been reviewed? Want to find some vintage treasures of your own? Second-hand and used books are unique and eco-friendly, and can be found at your local independent bookseller. If you’re looking for an American bookseller, you can check here. UK booksellers can be found here.
If you’d prefer to buy books online, many vintage and rare editions can be found at ThriftBooks.
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A Week Fills Up Fast For the last couple of years, I’ve been keeping a bullet journal just to help us plan out our schedule, make sure we don’t take on too many clients at once, and keep track of various appointments. It’s helped a lot. I no longer feel like the days fly by […]
Garner is one of those writers that I wish more people had read. I love her writing style, and her clever economy of words that provides the reader enough room to think carefully about every sentence and every turn of phrase.
Johnson does not pull any punches as he examines the lives of societies various down-and-outs.
There is nearly literally something for everyone, but at the same time the narrative doesn’t feel busy or chaotic. Instead, Kennedy encapsulates the complexity of mid-century modern life from a vast number of perspectives.
I’ve decided to review two of Didion’s works (partially because they have been waiting in my to-review stacks for a while, and partially because this is post #222).
Memoirs are tricky sometimes. I only read them when I either am interested in the time period or they focus on something that I read in a literary context.
Unlike most short story collections, In Transit is a work that I would recommend considering as a whole. Though the stories were published separately and years apart, they share a very similar theme. All of them are about being lost in time, lost in space, and lost somewhere far from home.
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.
