Nemo Johnston is an intelligent black man with a strong instinct for survival. He is also a slave in antebellum South Carolina, and is purchased by Dr. Frederick Johnston and his colleagues of the South Carolina Medical College in 1857 to serve as a janitor, a butler and, most importantly, as a body-snatcher (or “resurrectionist”) for the school’s desperate anatomy department. Nemo undertakes the job with the understanding that it is primarily black bodies he will be unearthing for the dissections, but any sense of […]
It’s a YA book based on a principle of game theory. But with kissing!
For YA, The Winner’s Curse is very good. And if that just isn’t a ringing endorsement! I’m to the point now where I only read YA books if they come heavily recommended (or if they’ve been lauded as so terrible that I just have to read in order to satisfy my insatiable curiosity). And The Winner’s Curse came pretty heavily recommended. I follow a disturbing amount of YA book bloggers, and they all LOVED this thing. (Of course, they also all seem to be convinced […]
Cruel Humanitarians
In Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism, Margaret Abruzzo examines the contested origins of the idea of humanitarianism by investigating the proslavery and antislavery debates over the meaning of pain. This is an excellent book for understanding not only the intellectual development of the pro and antislavery positions, but also for breaking apart the concept of humanitarianism, to understand it as a contested and not static term. Read more at my blog…
A good read, but a laborious one
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
My long dormant local book club is back in swing and this was our first read of the new year, and my submission. I happened upon this book at a used book sale and after seeing that it had won the Pulitzer and cost $1.50, adding it to my “to read” pile was sort of a no brainer. My book club has some tough cookies so I was a little anxious since it was basically a blind suggestion from me, but it turned out to […]
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