Angelou continues to astound in The Heart of a Woman, the fourth volume in her series of six autobiographies. Skipping forward eagerly in time, Heart is set over the course of roughly five years and picks up a few years after its predecessor Singin' and Swingin' and Getting' Merry Like Christmas.

As with the other books in the series there is only ( Read more... )

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas is a compulsively good read. Like Angelou's previous two biographies it's not very long, but the enthusiasm with which Angelou relates her experiences makes it seem even shorter. While her other biographies deal with childhood and her early steps towards independence, Angelou emerges here as a ( Read more... )

The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday (Illustrated by Al Momaday)

( The Way to Rainy Mountain )

I swore I wouldn't get behind this year, and look at this. I'm already lagging. I suck at New Years resolutions.

#2: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (translated by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander)

( The Devotion of Suspect X )

13. Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far EastI love travel books, and this is a fantastic one. Iyer visits several Asian countries (including India, China, Tibet, Burma, the Philippines, Bali, Thailand, Hong Kong, and probably a few more I'm forgetting) with the goal of seeing how they've been affected by ( Read more... )

9. Gita Mehta, Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India

Snakes and Ladders is a book of short essays (very short; I'd guess the average was three pages) on the modern history of India, written to celebrate the country's fifty anniversary in 1997. If you don't know anything about modern India, I think this would be a great place to start. If ( Read more... )

( The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami )

4. Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read ThemElif Batuman, a Turkish-American woman who wants to grow up to become a writer, instead somehow finds herself getting a PhD in Russian literature. This collection of essays is about her graduate school experience (including endless questions on why she studies ( Read more... )

So, I'm wildly behind on my 50books_poc reviews. Because I'm full of suck. But I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork, so that seems the perfect time to do a few reviews.

( The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan )

( Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi )