What does it mean to be a woman? In the memorable novel Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami explores the question by looking at two key periods in the life of Tokyo writer Natsuko Natsume.
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From Concentric to Maculate: Marco D’Eramo’s Geographies of Ignorance
As we all know, travel has become a lot easier in recent decades—at least for those of us born into relative privilege and possessing passports that allow us to travel widely. But the flip side of that is that often we don’t know the places closer to home. As Marco D’Eramo points out in his New Left Review essay Geographies… Read More
Best Books I Read in 2020
There’s a quote by Alice Walker that I love: “When I was a child, I read books for entertainment and information; I now think of books as lifeboats.” 2020 was a year when I reached for the lifeboats more often than usual, and they didn’t fail me. Sometimes I went searching for context on pressing issues like pandemics, racial oppression… Read More
The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav
In her preface to The Seat of the Soul, Oprah Winfrey writes: “The Seat of the Soul changed the way I see myself. It changed the way I view the world. It caused a profound shift in the way I conduct all my relationships, business and personal” Then there’s another preface by Maya Angelou, with more high praise for the… Read More
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse: German Literature Month 2020
November has been a busy month for me, but I am determined to slip in a quick review for German Literature Month, hosted once again by book bloggers Caroline and Lizzy. I read Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, an intriguing 1927 novel about a man, Harry Haller, who feels so much like an outsider that he identifies himself as a “wolf… Read More
The History of Serbia by Cedomir Antic: Review
This is a useful overview of the history of Serbia, starting in neolithic times and going right through to the present (it was published in 2018). The book starts by describing the early inhabitants of the territory now known as Serbia, including the surprising fact that it produced 15 Roman emperors, more than the city of Rome itself. Then we… Read More
Spell the Month in Books
Why trawl the web for updates on just how little has changed in the US election process or how many more people have caught COVID-19, when you could spell the month in books? This idea has apparently been bouncing around the world of books recently—I got it from Lisa at ANZ LitLovers. You just spell out the name of the… Read More
October 2020 Reading Roundup
Here’s a quick roundup of some good books I read this month, featuring Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Tyler and more.
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The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain
The Heart of the Race is a classic of Black British women’s history. First published in 1985, the book filled in large gaps in British history, which had traditionally neglected the Black experience altogether before belatedly including the perspective of Black men while still largely excluding women. This was the first book to lay out a comprehensive history of Black… Read More