Africa
Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap
Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot. (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.) So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]
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William Kamkwamba, Bryan Mealer: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Blurb: When William Kamkwamba was just 14 years old, his family told him that he must leave school and come home to work on the farm – they could no longer afford his fees. This is his story of how he found a way to make a difference, how he brought light to his family […]
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Martha Gellhorn: Travels with Myself and Another
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks Door 10 – Peace, Book: Read a book in which the ending of a conflict is a major theme. Gellhorn is a sharp observer and she has a way with words — I’d just wish she’d liked people and, for that matter, the places she […]
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June 2021 and Mid-Year Reading Recap
Sigh. Well, I think posting a monthly (and even half-year) reading recap a full three weeks into the next month has to be some sort of record, even for me, but here we are. And I admit that at this point I’d even been contemplating holding off another week so as to combine this with […]
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Dear Ijeawele: A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun completely bowled me over when I read it a few years ago. Purple Hibiscus, too, took me in, though never as absolutely, when I read it the following year; for a first novel, it’s very impressive indeed. I seem to be doing somewhat less well with Adichie’s […]
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Agatha Christie: The Secret of Chimneys
Oh, I would love to love this book so much more than I ultimately do. There Christie goes and takes me on a merry romp in the spirit of The Secret Adversary (whose plot, let’s face it, is every bit as implausible as that of The Secret of Chimneys), complete with adventurers, mysterious manuscripts and […]
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Agatha Christie: The Man in the Brown Suit
This was the monthly “main” read in the Appointment with Agatha / Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration group read (my blog master post can be found HERE; the Goodreads group is HERE): Like almost all of Christie’s spy / political conspiracy novels, this won’t ever be one of my all-time favorite books by her — parts […]
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January 2021 Reading Wrap-Up
I only finished eleven books in January, which isn’t a lot by my standards as of the last couple of years, even taking into account that two of the books were decidedly on the long side (all the more as I balanced out the two long books by two extremely short ones). But I decided […]
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An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “J”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
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2020 in Facts and Figures
I already posted my main 2020 in Review and Looking Ahead to 2021 posts a while ago — only on my new blog (separate post to come) –, but I held back on my 2020 reading statistics until the year was well and truly over. And for all my good intentions when posting my mid-year […]
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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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Book Characters Turning Over a New Leaf
24 Festive Tasks: Door 4 – Japanese Culture Day, Task 2: Japanese Culture Day was first held in 1948, to commemorate the announcement of the country’s post-war constitution on November 3, 1946, which was to make a new start for Japan. Which book did you read this year where someone was searching for or starting […]
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Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile (Kenneth Branagh audio)
24 Festive Tasks: Door 22 – Kwanzaa, Book: Read a book written by an author of African, African American or Caribbean descent or a book set in Africa or the Caribbean, or whose cover is primarily red, green or black, or with crops of the earth or a native African animal on the cover (lion, […]
Read MoreThe Halloween Creatures Book Tag
Rules: Answer all prompts. Answer honestly. Tag 1-13 people. Link back to this post. ( For me it was SnoopyDoo!) Remember to credit the creator. (Anthony @ Keep Reading Forward)< Have fun! Witch A Magical Character or Book Terry Pratchett’s witches, particularly Granny Weatherwax. And DEATH (preferably in his Hogfather incarnation). No contest. […]
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BL-opoly, Pandemic Edition – Rolls #15 & #16
Catching up on BL-opoly while BookLikes happens to be up and running — not many more rolls to go, I think; even if the site doesn’t crash again. Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/2835888/bl-opoly-pandemic-edition-rolls-15-16
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Bernardine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other
Not a proper review, just a short note to say … Heaven knows the Booker jury doesn’t always get it right IMHO, but wow, this time for once they absolutely did — in fact, I hope and expect that looking back, it will come to be regarded as one of the most influential books of […]
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BL-opoly, Pandemic Edition – Roll #11
I rolled again yesterday after having finished my books from roll #10, but it was too late and would have taken too long to add the new books I’m planning to read, so I deferred posting until today. So here’s where the dice are taking me in this round: (I was going to leave the […]
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Gaël Faye: Petit pays (Small Country)
A short but impactful novel (barely longer than a novella), tracing the coming-of-age of the son of a French father and a Burundian Tutsi mother, which coming-of-age is rudely interrupted when the genocide in neighboring Rwanda spills over into Burundi. Along the way, the novel examines how our cultural identity is first drummed into us, […]
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Agatha Christie / Mathew Prichard (ed.): The Grand Tour
Letters and Photographs from the British Empire Expedition 1922 Agatha Christie’s letters, photos and postcards from the expedition to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Canada in which her first husband, Archibald, and she were invited to participate out of the blue shortly after the birth of their daughter Rosamund. Lovingly edited by her […]
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Books Read for School
24 Festive Tasks: Door 9 – World Philosophy Day, Task 4: Did you love or hate the books you had to read for school? Looking back, which ones (good or bad) stand out to you the most? By and large, I think it’s fairest to say “I didn’t mind” the books we read in […]
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