Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory is a remarkable and taut exploration of prejudice, history, and of course, memory. The book’s narrator and namesake, Memory, is an albino woman on death row in a Zimbabwean prison who is encouraged by her new lawyer to write her story for an American journalist who may be able to help win her freedom. Memory writes of the stark everyday life in prison and of the circumstances that have brought her there. But to fully explain, she must begin […]
I don’t want to review this book
Pachinko, Min Jin Lee’s novel following multiple generations of a Korean family through most of the 20th Century, has received a lot of positive attention: finalist for the National Book Award, 10 best books of 2017 for the New York Times Book Review, Roxane Gay’s favorite book of the year (according to the Washington Post). And from what I’ve seen, the reviews here at CBR have been universally positive. So I’m at a bit of a loss, because I really didn’t enjoy it. At all. […]
Everybody makes one another’s terrible mistakes
I read this book too fast. I didn’t intend to. I picked it out as my travel book for a week of work and visiting friends in Boston, thinking I’d chip away a little each day. Then I read most of it on the flight out and finished it the next day because I just. couldn’t. help myself. In writing these reviews for #CBR10, I’m beginning to wonder if the amount of detail I retain is inversely proportional to the amount of time it takes […]
Don’t Expect Logical Actions from Racists
Thank you so much to caitycat! I doubt I would have stumbled across this novel without her review, and I thoroughly enjoyed it despite some minor complaints about potential red herrings or loose threads. The novel is set near Baltimore in 1880. The North never won the Civil War because of the zombie outbreak that followed the Battle of Gettysburg, leading to a quick reconciliation between the two sides to face the common threat to the survival of humanity. Slaves were declared free, but, for […]
We all have biases, or “Why grandma might suddenly sound like a racist”
Twelve years ago, my grandmother passed away at the age of 94. Born in 1912, she was the product of a different time, but other than maybe telling a slightly off-color joke or wondering out loud why there were so many more homosexuals around these days than when she was young, I don’t recall her being prejudiced against any particular group (except maybe Italians, but that’s a story for another day). Apparently in her final days in the nursing home, however, she started loudly proclaiming […]
Life Doesn’t Make Narrative Sense
I cannot review the Little House books without talking about this: these books are racist. I hope that teachers or parents who are introducing these books to children for the first time are having serious discussions with these kids about racism and colonialism, and how these attitudes influenced westward expansion. As I was rereading these books (which, by the way, I loved as a kid and reread many times), I couldn’t stop thinking about the word “pioneer,” which in this case is just a euphemism […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- …
- 25
- Next Page »