Category Archives: Adult Books

November 3, 2014 · 11:02 am

Some Reading Recommendations from Other People

NaNoBlogwhatever 3 of 30:

@Nalo_Hopkinson recommended Under the Mango Tree: Tales from Kamakwie, a collection of folk tales from Sierra Leone; proceeds from the book support the children who wrote it.

I forget the source, but I think it was a teacher friend, who recommended Sweetest Kulu, a picture book by Inuit singer Celina Kalluk. Alas, it seems to be out of print already.

Beyond Magenta, about transgender teens, from everywhere.

The Bishop’s Wife by Mette Ivie Harrison, which I originally heard about via Soho Press, but it’s been getting accolades left and right. Out in December, I think.

 

And found in the folder of links: a note that I put in my calendar last March to order two lunches, so I could save one for a day when no lunches would be delivered. There are a lot of oddball things accidentally filed in strange places in my email!

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Filed under Adult Books, Picture Books, Reading, YA

April 17, 2014 · 4:18 pm

Solitude

So, Gabriel García Márquez has passed on

I’d been thinking a lot about him lately; there was a Jeopardy question about his work not long ago, leading to a question about whether or not he was still living. I’ve also noticed a tendency for people to invoke “magical realism” as a term for “fantasy but I don’t want to be disrespected” lately as well (and I mean no disbelief that people are writing magical realism–just that things have been weird).

Another reason I’ve been thinking about GGM is because I’ve been thinking back to college, and a time when I felt alienated by literature. I’ve been thinking about signals that books/stories are for you or not, which deserves at least a post not written on a phone while I wait for traffic to clear so I can drive home on the fuel I have, or better yet, a roundup of thoughtful links. At any rate, when I was taking a world literature class–which I transferred into at the last minute, running from a very dry class on politics that I had misjudged in the course catalog–I read GGM for the first time, as well as some other interesting, perspective-shifting work. I was still at sea, and in many ways I still am, but I think I that class helped point me in the right direction again.

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Filed under Adult Books, Reading