The Price of the Ticket
Don’t let the size of The Price of the Ticket discourage you. It was a collected volume that was worth the time and the effort and did not break my normally quick reading flow.
Diversity
Most old books are written by rich, straight, white men. These books were written by people who were not. Authors from a visible minority and women writing outside of ‘acceptably feminine’ topics can be found here.
Blues for Mister Charlie
‘Blues for Mister Charlie’ is a drama in three acts that is loosely based on the Emmet Till case — a notorious lynching that happened in Mississippi in the lead up to the Civil Rights Movement.
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time is the James Baldwin book to read if you decided that you will only read one of his works and no others — though I sincerely hope that no one does this.
Blue
Partly prose and partly poetry, in Blue Jarman explores what it means to be in a body that is failing with mind that is still full of life and wonder.
2024’s Favourites
A New Tradition Maybe? This year the holiday season proved strangely elusive, and then, when it finally felt like it arrived, it was fraught with problems. Wesker had a bad weigh in. First, my lovely spouse was sick, then I fell ill and am still not well two weeks later. There were so many blizzards. […]
Pitch Dark
Time moves in circles in Pitch Dark, just like Ennis is moving in circles in her own mind. And there are no clear conclusions and no ending. This book is a journey.
Hope Against Hope
It is essentially Nadezhda’s account of her own suffering and her country’s under the murderous, oppressive force of a dictator’s relentless purges of all opposition. Of art and culture. Of intellectuals and anyone who got in his way or was inconvenient.
The Cipher
The Cipher is an interesting story that uses extreme violence to help the narrative. It doesn’t become the narrative.
Siblings
Elisabeth is supposedly fully invested in the GDR and stubbornly sees it as the way to some kind of utopian realization of equality for all. However, her doubts have started to creep in.
Murder in the Age of Enlightenment
Though the subjects are varied, what remains is Akutagawa’s beautiful starkness and his precise use of prose. There is the feeling that cutting one word would be impossible, but adding one would be a shame.