Good evening and greetings from rainy, fogged-up Baltimore. February is a short month, but hopefully everyone is squeezing as much reading as possible into their leap month this year. I haven’t written for a while, after spending most of January reading a book that really doesn’t fit with what I usually write about, but was …
I’ve finished my first book of 2020! And…I don’t quite know what I think of it. Not a very exciting start to the year, huh? The book in question is Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest. I had read Lessing’s Golden Notebook some years back, which is considered her magnum opus. And, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t …
A whole new year of book reading! What shall I do with it? When I thought about what my book resolutions would be for 2020, I thought I should first be honest about how well I did with my resolutions for 2019. Last year I said I would resolve to 1) finally read some Ellen …
I had known, or at any rate was capable of knowing, that Toni Morrison was our greatest living writer prior to reading Paradise. But certainly I am not capable of denying it now. As I had mentioned before in my prior post, I had been dragging my feet about finishing the remaining Morrison books I …
I’ve been sitting around for days pondering what to say about Zora Neale Hurston’s debut, Jonah’s Gourd Vine. What to say about the beginning of a dazzling literary journey? What to say about this spectacular, clever, frustrating, hysterical, singular writer at the start of her career? I knew that Jonah’s Gourd Vine was partly autobiographical, …
Today is a special day on the calendar for women’s literature: it is both Toni’s Morrison’s and Audre Lorde’s birthday. This year, Ms. Morrison is celebrating her 88th. If Ms. Lorde were still with us, she would be turning 85. Both 20th century icons; while my women’s library focuses more on fiction and novels (Toni …
First of all, I hope wherever you are on this planet, you’re enjoying weather better than the revolting mix of sleet, freezing rain, and ice that the greater Baltimore region has been “enjoying” this week. Snow I’ll welcome, but nobody likes ice and freezing rain. The only good thing about such weather is that it …
Oh, Sybylla Melvyn! I adore you. You name is added my list of favorite literary young heroines, below Anne Shirley, Josephine March, and Elizabeth Bennett. My Brilliant Career, published in 1901 and written by Miles Franklin when she was, unbelievably, a teenager, is a perceptive coming-of-age tale partially set on Sybylla’s father’s austere dairy farm …
I know, I know. January is almost over and I’m just getting around to posting about my New Year’s book resolutions! I guess I’ve already blown it if I say that my first one is not to procrastinate about blogging, huh? KIDDING. Anyway, without further nonsense, here they are: To Finally Read Ellen Glasgow, Edna …
A few weeks ago, a Chicago poet and activist that I very much admire, Eve Ewing, tweeted out a picture of a typed letter from Gwendolyn Brooks with the caption “Your faves are problematic.” Immediately my heart sank. What had beloved writer Gwendolyn Brooks done? Did she espouse some awful belief that we didn’t know …
