Our envy of others devours us most of all. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn At one point in Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel The Bluest Eye, a character reflects on jealousy and envy. As a child, she was familiar with jealousy — that feeling that someone else has gotten something that rightfully belongs to you. Envy, when it comes, is a new and unsettling feeling, a perception that somehow, one is lacking something. In The Bluest Eye, that something is beauty, beauty as defined by others, beauty […]
The more things change …
Maya Angelou’s first autobiographical installment, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is widely considered to be the best of her series of autobiographies. Nominated for a National Book Award in 1970, this work has been a staple of high school reading lists, and banned book lists, for several decades. It is a beautifully written recollection of Angelou’s childhood, from the time she and her older brother were sent alone by train to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother (Angelou was 5) until Angelou, […]
“You think I’m psycho don’t you, mama”
Fifteen year old John Wayne Cleaver might be a sociopath. He finds it almost impossible to empathize with other people. He has a fascination with murder; specifically serial killers. He has one friend whom he can barely stand but keeps around because he wants to keep up the appearance of not being a loner. His one pleasure in life is working in the embalming room of his family’s mortuary. But despite all this, John Wayne Cleaver is not a serial killer. In fact, he has […]
This book ends on a cliffhanger! Know that before you start it.
Annabelle “Annie” Coffey is writing her final thesis and with only a few weeks left of term, she propositions her adviser, the postdoctoral fellow at her lab, Dr. Charles Douglas, because she believes they have “A Thing”. In a truly embarrassing and painfully awkward scene, handsome British guy Charles gently turns her down, because he is her boss and it would be massively inappropriate for him to sleep with her. Annie is convinced she’s not wrong about the chemistry between them, and that she’s not […]
This is what it means to be a woman in the world. Every step is a bargain with pain.
From the blurb: From New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente comes a brilliant reinvention of one of the best known fairy tales of all time. In the novella Six-Gun Snow White, Valente transports the title’s heroine to a masterfully evoked Old West where Coyote is just as likely to be found as the seven dwarves. A plain-spoken, appealing narrator relates the story of her parents – a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful […]
The gentleman in black turned down the corridor, and Charlotte Highwood followed
Miss Charlotte Highwood, youngest sister of Minerva and Diana, is not really interested in marriage. She just wants to tour Europe with her best friend Delia Parkhurst, but after earning the moniker “The Desperate Debutante” after her mother literally flung her into the path of an eligible young nobleman (causing him to fall off his horse and three carriages to collide), convincing the ton that she’s not a scheming fortune huntress is going to be more difficult. She knows full well that her extremely marriage-minded […]
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