Beasts of No Nation is a rather deceptive book in that it's very slim and compact (a mere 142 pages in the edition I read) and yet the depth of the material makes it a difficult read. The plot follows a young child soldier in an unnamed African country who not only has unspeakable things happen to him but does the unspeakable to others. It reminded ( Read more... )

What we have today is a selection of not very good reviews. Why? Because I'm moving into an apartment that's half the size of my current place. That means that some stuff has got to go. So I'd thought I'd do these reviews before I got rid of the books.

( Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe )

I've totally lost track of where I was with this for 2010, so I'm starting over.

1. Secret Son by Laila Lalami ( Read more... )

I initially wasn't going to count uni reading for this, but since I haven't had time to read fiction for what feels like months, I'm giving that up :). Also, I thought these articles might be of interest to a few here.

21. Retrieving Women's History: Changing Perceptions of the Role of Women in Politics and Society, ed. S. Jay Kleinberg.There are ( Read more... )

( Monster by Walter Dean Myers )

I just finished reading Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and felt compelled to post about it to this community and extol its virtues to anyone who would listen ( Read more... )

The tradition-minded people of the Ooni Kingdom have only distant legends of what it means to be born dada, as Zahrah was. Although her family love her, they don't really understand what it's like for the young girl to grow up with living vines twining in her hair, and some of her classmates are cruel. Only her best friend, Dari, appreciates her ( Read more... )

1/50: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow SunFrom Publishers' Weekly: "When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist ( Read more... )

(In addition to the regular 50 books challenge, I'm going to do 50 short-works, too. Not because I'm an overachiever -- which would be a fair charge -- but because I SUCK at finishing anthologies, yet I still want to point in awe at some of the amazing pieces in said anthologies-I-never-finish-reading. Also, sometimes I run across amazing stuff in ( Read more... )

I'm going to quote from the back cover because I'm not good at summaries: A provocative portrayal of modern life in Ghana. A dead baby and bloodstained clothes are discovered near a small village. Everyone is ready to comment on the likely story behind the abandoned infant. The man have one opinion, the women another. As the story rapidly unfolds ( Read more... )