Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah was one of my favorite reads last year, and her Purple Hibiscus will be right up there on this year’s list, too. I don’t know how it took so long for me to find her books (correction: yes, I do), but she has quickly become one of my favorite writers. Purple Hibiscus tells the story of the Achike family through the eyes of Kambili, a young girl. Papa rules the family with an iron grip, infantilizing and militarizing and terrorizing his […]
My apology to women authors (with an assist from Amy Poehler)
I have to start this review with a confessional sidenote. As I went to choose my next read after Nick Harkaway’s Tigerman, I ended up with a pool of five potential books, eventually settling on the second in the series of memoirs by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. I’d read the first last year and wanted to get to this next one before I let too much time pass. But as I started to read, something was nagging at me, so I went down my list of […]
Dewey #813.08 Short Story Collections
Writing short stories takes a special kind of author, one who cam compress language to its densest form, one who can masterfully piece together a believable story arc in just a few pages – They need to be precise in their delivery and they need to capture the attention of their reader quickly. Single serving fiction, a short story, is the perfect for for our digital age. I first discovered my passion for short stories at University – In my first year I had a […]
More things should be full of win
I was expecting something more in the fantasy realm from Tigerman, given Nick Harkaway’s first two novels, and although there is the titular superhero, this book stays much more grounded, more of an existential thriller with military and cloak-and-dagger elements, and for that, it’s a lot of thought-provoking fun. The story takes place on a mythical island in the Arabian Sea, an island previously controlled by the British and French, among others, but which has become an environmental disaster due to chemical companies pumping toxic […]
To love, honor and obey. . .
Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage is at its heart an exploration of loyalty, of marriage and of love. Jones writes in such a sublime way it is hard not to get utterly lost in her world, to let her characters dictate when you eat, sleep and breathe. An American Marriage is the story of Celestial and Roy; the embodiment of an upwardly mobile couple, as the cover tells us, the American dream. The opening chapters of Jones’ narrative lay out the state of our protagonists […]
I confess I’m addicted to stationery. . .
I’ll start this post with a confession, I am guilty. 100% guilty. Guilty of being an absolute stationery addict – I geek out over a new color highlighter, a unused pristine notebook, when I discovered washi tape I thought my life was complete. . . but just don’t get me started on fountain pens, because I’ll never stop. I’m not sure where my fascination with stationery started, school lists perhaps? But now I guess I’m one of those who like to think that a new […]