en-US Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:48:52 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 195274816 'Kaleidoscopic and beguiling . . . A singular and thrilling debut that shows what happens when objective truth and meaning are drowned in the shifting river of history and politics' ANDREW McMILLAN

'Strange, intriguing, exhilarating' CAMILLA GRUDOVA

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know.

She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows - almost - about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a on training her body and dreaming only of escape.

Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all.

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is the story of a young woman coming of age in a town reckoning with its brutal past, for readers of Milkman and A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.]]> 286 Han Smith 1399814265 Sonja 0 to-read 4.07
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name: Sonja
average rating: 4.07
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]]> 4451 The Road Less Traveled, Further Along the Road Less Traveled, and The Road Less Traveled and Beyond �� Dr. M. Scott Peck brilliantly probes into the essence of human evil.

People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of those around them. He presents, from vivid incidents encountered in his psychiatric practice, examples of evil in everyday life.

This book is by turns disturbing, fascinating, and altogether impossible to put down as it offers a strikingly original approach to the age-old problem of human evil.]]> 272 M. Scott Peck 0684848597 Sonja 0 to-read 3.99 1983
author: M. Scott Peck
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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]]> 217432723 304 Zoë Schlanger 0063073862 Sonja 0 to-read 2.00 2024
author: Zoë Schlanger
name: Sonja
average rating: 2.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 221607866
In Nia Mahmud’s sophomore collection of poems, aches don’t disappear, they just change shape. From curt conversations to wordy prose poems, this chapbook explores what it’s like to look at a wound and not always know the cure.]]> Nia Mahmud 1962390721 Sonja 0 to-read 0.0
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average rating: 0.0
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]]> 88564033 122 Anne Serre 0811234517 Sonja 0 to-read 3.58
author: Anne Serre
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.58
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]]> 210826371 Recommended by Cosmopolitan, USA Today, Shondaland, & Book Riot




“It’s not often that fat women feel such thorough representation of themselves not only in poetry but in any media and not only in the beautiful moments but in the sorrowful ones, ranging throughout life. James does a brilliant job of portraying this and all her themes brilliantly; highly recommended.”��—Starred review by Library Journal




The raw poems inside Song of My Softening studies the ever-changing relationship with oneself, while also investigating the relationship that the world and nation has with Black queerness. Poems open wide the questioning of how we express both love and pain, and how we view our bodies in society, offering themselves wholly, with sharpness and compassion.]]> 140 Omotara James 1948579480 Sonja 5 5.00 2024
author: Omotara James
name: Sonja
average rating: 5.00
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rating: 5
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]]> 39802362
"Lesbians Are Everywhere" by Robin Gregory
"Who Would Have Thought It? Radical Feminism Now" by Sue Leigh
"Truth Telling" by Barbary Clarke
"Globetrotting as Radical Lesbian Separatist" by Claudia Huber
"A Radical Lesbian Mother Carves a Pathway to Equality for Children" by Viv Ray
"Underground" by Robyn Peck
"Being Together" by Chris Sitka
"The Women Around Me" by Jessica Megarry]]> 294 Long Breast Press 0980356849 Sonja 5
Three Years Human: poems and stories is Meg Irwin’s fabulous book of poems stories and photos published by Long Breast Press in Australia.
“The Feeling That Comes�� is one of my favorite poems but there are so many more.
These lines end the poem

that we have lost and will lose

all that we are

all that we love


even as everything is here


I am speechless after finishing this book and don’t want to let it go. So glad I have a copy I can treasure. I met Met on Lesbians WriteOn and enjoyed her readings whenever she read. Just LOVE]]> 4.00 2017
author: Long Breast Press
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
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I did not find the Long Breast Press book I was reading here on ŷ������ so I used this as a placeholder.

Three Years Human: poems and stories is Meg Irwin’s fabulous book of poems stories and photos published by Long Breast Press in Australia.
“The Feeling That Comes�� is one of my favorite poems but there are so many more.
These lines end the poem

that we have lost and will lose

all that we are

all that we love


even as everything is here


I am speechless after finishing this book and don’t want to let it go. So glad I have a copy I can treasure. I met Met on Lesbians WriteOn and enjoyed her readings whenever she read. Just LOVE
]]> 199469832
Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis , returns to graphic art with this collaboration of over 20 activists, artists, journalists, and academics working together to depict the historic uprising, in solidarity with the Iranian people and in defense of feminism.

On September 13th 2022, a young Iranian student, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by the religious police in Tehran. Her only crime was that she wasn’t properly wearing the headscarf required for women by the Islamic Republic. At the police station, she was beaten so badly she had to be taken to the hospital, where she fell into a deep coma. She died three days later.

A wave of protests soon spread through the whole country, and crowds adopted the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”—words that have been chanted around the world during solidarity rallies.

In order to tell the story of this major revolution happening in her homeland, Marjane Satrapi has gathered together an array of journalists, activists, academics, artists, and writers from around the world to create this powerful collection of full-color, graphic-novel-style essays and perspectives that bear



Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrates that this is not an unexpected movement, but a major uprising in a long history of women who have wanted to affirm their rights. It will continue.]]> 272 Marjane Satrapi 1644214059 Sonja 0 to-read 4.43 2023
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 57800570 A teen girl hiding the scars of a past relationship finds home and healing in the words of strong Black writers. A beautiful sophomore novel from a critically acclaimed author and poet that explores how words have the power to shape and uplife our world even in the midst of pain.

When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known.

Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can't shake the feeling everyone knows what happened--and how it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G's class. There, Angel's classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from novels like The Bluest Eye and Push speak to her and begin to heal the wounds of her past.

This stunning novel weaves together prose, poems, and vignettes to tell the story of Angel, a young woman whose past was shaped by domestic violence but whose love of language and music and the gift of community grant her the chance to find herself again.]]> 176 Mahogany L. Browne 0593176448 Sonja 0 to-read 3.93 2022
author: Mahogany L. Browne
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
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]]> 51931067 From Stonewall and Lambda Award-winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.

When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle....

But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve.]]> 368 Kacen Callender 0062820257 Sonja 0 to-read 4.21 2020
author: Kacen Callender
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> 56383551 324 Miki Kashtan 0990007367 Sonja 0 to-read 4.35
author: Miki Kashtan
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.35
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> 220687890 A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK �� The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.]]> 336 Tommy Orange 0593311442 Sonja 0 to-read 4.22 2024
author: Tommy Orange
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
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]]> 216775156 'One of the most compulsive voices I've read in years' Olivia Laing, Observer

'You can't help but think of her work falling in the tradition of Annie Ernaux, just edgier. Her prose is gorgeously spare and practical' Irish Independent

In the twin worlds of the French bourgeoisie and aristocracy, names are everything. By contrast, our narrator insists on shedding her surname, indelibly associated with France's political and colonial past. In Name, she explores how this name is bound to the complex grief she feels for her father's recent passing and her mother's overdose many years earlier, as well as the murky practices of a political dynasty - a family life built around substance abuse, buried trauma and elitist pride.

Written in sharp prose that has been lauded by Rachel Kushner, Maggie Nelson, Olivia Laing and others, Debré's third novel is a fresh feat of restrained yet explosive writing.]]> 144 Constance Debré 1800819889 Sonja 0 to-read 4.00 2022
author: Constance Debré
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> 219503411 So, You Think 83 is Too Late to Start Over? Think Again!Join Sandra Butler as she leaves her home and community of fifty years to move into a residential facility in an unfamiliar city. With meals, activities and proximity to her children, what could possibly go wrong? Well, as it turns out-just about everything.

Butler vividly portrays the intricate challenges of this late-life transition, capturing the struggle to adapt to an institutional setting with whatever cheer could be mustered. Each day was a new adventure, pretending all is well for her children, trying to make conversation through masks and faulty hearing aids, and the anticipation of a dinner that might, just might, be flavorful.

Butler's funny, honest account brings a welcome and necessary perspective to the inevitable moment when we end one chapter and begin whatever comes next.

Praise for Leaving Home at 83 "It's a 'zine! It's a movie! It's a sit-com! Actually, it's an intimate glimpse into Sandra Butler's personal journal as an 83-year-old queer Jewish feminist activist leaving her Bay Area home to live close to her daughters in the Red State of Arizona. The ensemble of characters at Desert Manor are hilarious, jaw-clenching, at times worthy of a Jack Russell Terrier head tilt. "Caught between not wanting to be a burden and wanting to be taken care of," Butler's writing is tender, funny and unequivocally relatable." —Karen Lee Erlichman, D.Min, LCSW is a psychotherapist, spiritual director, writer, and mentor

"Butler's irreverent account of pulling up roots and attempting to replant them in unfamiliar soil illuminates some of the inevitable truths of our old and getting older lives.

She invites the reader to accompany her as she enters her new life with the unforgettable characters of Desert Manor. What was lost and what is eventually found is at the heart of her remarkable story. Reading her words is like sitting in a café with a witty and wise friend and savoring the openhearted truth-telling that comes from years of intimacy." —Naomi Newman, actor, director, playwright, co-founder of A Traveling Jewish Theater

"Sandra Butler is an extraordinary storyteller. Accompanying her as she leaves home to live near her daughters, I was swept into the unexpected complexity of this late-life transition, one she navigates with humor and hard-won self-awareness." —Terry Greenblatt. women's peace and justice activist, Senior Advisor, Plowshares

"Sandra Butler addresses the unspoken realities of women's lives with curiosity, intelligence, and an insistence on honoring these still concealed truths. Now, she has written "Leaving Home at 83," chronicling a precipitous change in her life. With her keen intellect, honesty, and humor, she chronicles the losses, challenges, and freedoms of leaving home. Butler is a trustworthy guide, and I am grateful for her well-earned wisdom. —Jan Holmgren, president emerita, Mills College]]> 176 Sandra Butler 1955826668 Sonja 0 to-read 0.0
author: Sandra Butler
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]]> 58180146
Airports are distillations of the world. I like thinking of them that way. The hope of leaving and the desire to come home, existing side by side. Any voyage is possible. My mind flies off toward the blue province once again. I don’t know, anymore, why I always associate it with blue. It isn’t even my favorite color.

Traveling alone from Miami to Port-au-Prince, our narrator finds comfort at the airport. She feels free to ponder the silence that surrounds her homeland, her mother, her aunts, and her own inner thoughts. Between two places, she sees how living in poverty keeps women silent, forging their identities around practicality and resilience. From a distance, she is drawn inevitably homeward toward her family and the glittering blue Caribbean Sea.

Blue comes alive through vivid images crowding the page, just as memories do in real life, as if the author is trying to sort through them, to come to grips with her own emotional conflict. Balancing the pain and anger are spiritual bonds that connect the author to the women who have come before her, who have created her, and with Haiti itself, her motherland. No amount of glittering opportunity up north can prevent her from finding her way home.]]> 128 Emmelie Prophète 1542031311 Sonja 4 3.56 2007
author: Emmelie Prophète
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 219916558

Vulnerable, eloquent, compassionate, and enduring, Born Sacred is an in-time reflection honouring the shared histories of Indigenous Peoples of North America and of the people in Palestine. Sumac offers this collection as a small piece of life dedicated to Palestinians and resounds the collective call for solidarity in our shared liberation.]]> 160 Smokii Sumac 1773637258 Sonja 0 currently-reading 3.70
author: Smokii Sumac
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.70
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]]> 205543996 Ferocious and vulnerable poems about redefining acts of creation, destruction, deconstruction, and recreation, from a singular Indigiqueer point of view


a body more tolerable is a collection of powerful and haunting poems full of mythos, fairy tales, allusion, and magic. Divided into three parts, the book takes an intimate exploration of Indigenous grief, trans identity, and frustrated desires in ways that reject perception. Author jaye simpson conjures up dazzling multiverses throughout their mythic journey as they dance and run wild in their own manifestation of girlhood.


In these visceral poems, teeth gleam, graze skin, or sink into flesh, becoming bloodied and exposing the animalistic hunger that lies within. Pulsating with yearning and possibility, a body more tolerable is a book that resists typical notions of physicality and sex to dream of a world more divine.]]> 88 jaye simpson 155152967X Sonja 0 to-read 4.27 2025
author: jaye simpson
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
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]]> 150253 416 Sappho 1844080811 Sonja 5 4.44 -550
author: Sappho
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.44
book published: -550
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/03
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]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Sonja 0 to-read 3.69 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/01
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]]> 214151304 Emma Donoghue, the “soul-stirring�� (Oprah Daily) nationally bestselling author of Room, returns with a sweeping historical novel about an infamous 1895 disaster at the Paris Montparnasse train station.

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

From an author whose “writing is superb alchemy�� (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century.]]> 288 Emma Donoghue 1668082799 Sonja 0 to-read 3.36 2025
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 55098820 An intimate work of autobiographical fiction by one of ex-Yugoslavia's greatest writers about his family's experience as refugees from the Bosnian war--a timeless story of love, memory, and the resilience of the human spirit.

"Today, it seems, was the day I was meant to die." When a writer suffers a heart attack at the age of fifty, he must confront his mortality in a country that is not his native home. Confined to a hospital bed and overcome by a sense of powerlessness, he reflects on the fragility of life and finds extraordinary meaning in the quotidian. In this affecting autobiographical novel, Semezdin Mehmedinovic explores the love he and his family have for one another, strengthened by trauma; their harrowing experience of the Bosnian war, which led them to flee for the United States as refugees; eerie premonitions of Donald Trump's presidency; the life and work of a writer; and the nature of memory and grief.

Poetically explosive and pure to the core, My Heart serves as a kind of mirror, reflecting our human strengths and weaknesses along with the most important issues on our minds--love and death, the present and the past, sickness and health, leaving and staying.]]> 228 Semezdin Mehmedinović 1646220072 Sonja 0 to-read 4.06 2017
author: Semezdin Mehmedinović
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 211004813 The Accidentals is the brilliant new book from International Booker-shortlisted duo Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey.]]> 144 Guadalupe Nettel 1639734929 Sonja 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Guadalupe Nettel
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 58837536 A beloved and blistering cult classic and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction finally back in print, Nevada follows a disaffected trans woman as she embarks on a cross-country road trip.

Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City while trying to stay true to her punk values. She's in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. She takes random pills and drinks more than is good for her, but doesn't inject anything except, when she remembers, estrogen, because she's trans. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin, and then onto a cross-country trek in the car she steals from Steph. She ends up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realizes that she could become James's savior—or his downfall.

One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Imogen Binnie's Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalized life under capitalism. Guided by an instantly memorable, terminally self-aware protagonist—and back in print featuring a new afterword by the author��Nevada is the great American road novel flipped on its head for a new generation.]]> 290 Imogen Binnie 0374606617 Sonja 0 to-read 3.93 2013
author: Imogen Binnie
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 90311007 352 Chris Aslan 1785789864 Sonja 0 to-read 4.24
author: Chris Aslan
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.24
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Sonja 5 Look to nature to solve our problems. Abundance and reciprocity is alive and well. We just have to see it and participate. Our overall mindset must change if we are to survive. Scarcity is a capitalist ploy to keep the system of profits going.

“This transition from exploitation to reciprocity, from the individual good to the common good has been seen as a parallel to the transition that colonizing human societies must undergo…��

“The Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.��

There is much to relate to in this book. I highly recommend it.]]> 4.39 2024
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
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Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote another wonder-ful book. This one is short but its simplicity in tone and message is an example of what to strive for in life.
Look to nature to solve our problems. Abundance and reciprocity is alive and well. We just have to see it and participate. Our overall mindset must change if we are to survive. Scarcity is a capitalist ploy to keep the system of profits going.

“This transition from exploitation to reciprocity, from the individual good to the common good has been seen as a parallel to the transition that colonizing human societies must undergo…��

“The Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity rather than accumulation, where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.��

There is much to relate to in this book. I highly recommend it.
]]> 22374786 232 Miki Kashtan 0990007316 Sonja 0 to-read 4.69 2014
author: Miki Kashtan
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 56324067 335 Shahzoda Nazarova Samarqandi 9492675110 Sonja 4 Not much is known about Central Asia. Some say it is defined by the “stans�� for the most part but the geographical borders of these particular countries�� Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan—is bigger and its borders are not true. People of different ethnicities wander. Malika, the heroine of this novel, is Tajik but considers Bukhara Uzbekistan her home.
The novel is based in a region that has both a patriarchal and matriarchal history. The ancient history of this area is fascinating and the novel does recount some of that. Patriarchy is represented by the cruel domineering Emir and the matriarchy by Bibi, Malika’s grandmother, who speaks of natural healing and women’s strength. The culmination of the novel is the story of the Emir which is actually very disappointing.
The rambling story very much reflects the culture of Central Asia. The unexpected shifts, the lack of a real structure, the ending itself may irritate the European “Western�� reader, but isn’t access to unknown cultures worth the read?
I enjoyed Malika’s discussion of immigration and wanting to leave Bukhara for the quiet organized life of the Netherlands but also wanting to go back to her home. I loved the section where she described her grandmother Bibi and all the descriptions of Uzbek culture and history, including the Soviet influences.
Because of the similarities of the heroine’s story to that of the author who also left her Uzbek homeland for the Netherlands, I couldn’t help but think of them as one person. Shahzoda herself learned Uzbek, Persian, Russian and her native Tajik, then later English and Dutch. If you look at her website she has books in all these languages. She speaks of the domination of English�� we are indeed lucky to be able to read about these cultures. She had an editor for this book but wrote it in English. Her books have not been published in her native land.
I suggest reading the author’s note at the beginning of the preview. It gives an overview of the novel and the author. Like me, you may decide to take the adventure.]]> 3.67 2020
author: Shahzoda Nazarova Samarqandi
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves:
review:
Not wanting to give Back to Bukhara 3 stars, I still want to warn you that it is a book for those interested in Central Asia and in a woman who is fighting the specific demons of patriarchy in her country of origin.
Not much is known about Central Asia. Some say it is defined by the “stans�� for the most part but the geographical borders of these particular countries�� Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan—is bigger and its borders are not true. People of different ethnicities wander. Malika, the heroine of this novel, is Tajik but considers Bukhara Uzbekistan her home.
The novel is based in a region that has both a patriarchal and matriarchal history. The ancient history of this area is fascinating and the novel does recount some of that. Patriarchy is represented by the cruel domineering Emir and the matriarchy by Bibi, Malika’s grandmother, who speaks of natural healing and women’s strength. The culmination of the novel is the story of the Emir which is actually very disappointing.
The rambling story very much reflects the culture of Central Asia. The unexpected shifts, the lack of a real structure, the ending itself may irritate the European “Western�� reader, but isn’t access to unknown cultures worth the read?
I enjoyed Malika’s discussion of immigration and wanting to leave Bukhara for the quiet organized life of the Netherlands but also wanting to go back to her home. I loved the section where she described her grandmother Bibi and all the descriptions of Uzbek culture and history, including the Soviet influences.
Because of the similarities of the heroine’s story to that of the author who also left her Uzbek homeland for the Netherlands, I couldn’t help but think of them as one person. Shahzoda herself learned Uzbek, Persian, Russian and her native Tajik, then later English and Dutch. If you look at her website she has books in all these languages. She speaks of the domination of English�� we are indeed lucky to be able to read about these cultures. She had an editor for this book but wrote it in English. Her books have not been published in her native land.
I suggest reading the author’s note at the beginning of the preview. It gives an overview of the novel and the author. Like me, you may decide to take the adventure.
]]> 58587364
“A deeply generous and honest gift to the world.��
�� Elliot Page

The author of I’m Afraid of Men lets readers in on the secrets to a life of reinvention.

Vivek Shraya knows this to be people change. We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions.

In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who’s made a career of embracing many artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change , she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna. What emerges is a meditation on change why we fear it, why we’re drawn to it, what motivates us to change, and what traps us in place.

At a time when we’re especially contemplating who we want to be, this slim and stylish handbook is an essential companion—a guide to celebrating our many selves and the inspiration to discover who we’ll become next.]]> 112 Vivek Shraya 0735238650 Sonja 4 3.94 2022
author: Vivek Shraya
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
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review:

]]> 35601662 0 Fran Day 0980356806 Sonja 0 custom 5.00
author: Fran Day
name: Sonja
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: custom
review:

]]> 189123 Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.]]> 321 Eileen Chang 1590171780 Sonja 0 to-read 3.91 1943
author: Eileen Chang
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221191755 From the rubble of war-torn France rises the story of Désirée, a young orphan trapped in the clutches of Nazi occupation. But beneath her perfect Aryan facade lies a fierce determination to reclaim her true French identity.

A Child of War is a gripping tale of courage and survival, one girl’s fight to reclaim her past and secure her future in a world of turmoil and danger. “I was born in France in 1932. On my eighth birthday, the Nazis came and killed my family, then left me for dead.��
Desi–May 1997

Soon after the Nazis occupied France in 1940, Oberstleutnant Anton Steigler (the Kommandant) discovers young Désirée in an orphanage, classifying her as the ‘Perfect Aryan child��. He takes control of Désirée and then presents her as a gift to his wife.

Désirée spends the war years living a life of privilege among the elite Nazi High Command in France, always pretending to be the perfect child the Kommandant believes she is, while constantly hiding her French identity under the looming threat of disposal.

Ultimately, she must choose the path to her future. Will she remain ‘Steigler’s Girl�� forever or reclaim her French identity?

To escape, Désirée must be brave, strong, and clever, but her survival will come at a cost.]]> 417 D. Riesau-Moreno Sonja 0 to-read 4.67
author: D. Riesau-Moreno
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17465608 88 Jennifer Michael Hecht 1556594496 Sonja 5 I enjoyed so many of her poems in this 2013 collection. “Lady Look-Alike Lazarized�� is a favorite. She even has cryptograms at the end of the book—for us to solve�� about the references in the poems.
Shall I quote some of her rhythmic lines?

“I measure every grief I meet
With penetrative arts
I wonder if it acts like me
Or hives in buzzing parts
And hides its ugly parts

O poetry, I want to trust
And thus presume
I want to hope
In a hat
To fly in
On her broom.

It’s hard not to feel like a failure
When you’re lonely among seven billion.
Starts to look like the problem is you,

In the Great Depression
Everyone lost everything and everyone
Blamed himself. You can see it in the
Photographs that won’t look back.��

This is just a quote of course. I apologize for taking it out of its context. You’d have to read the whole poem “Smells Like Every Grief I Meet,�� but you can get an idea of her poetry.

This is from her long ending poem�� “The Thesis Is That There Was a Beginning��

Yet we rarely change our minds.
We get our actual hearts replaced
More often than we change our minds
And our metaphorical hearts also change
Faster than we change our minds.

Makes you wonder!]]> 3.83 2013
author: Jennifer Michael Hecht
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:
I fell for Jennifer Michael Hecht when I read The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives. Her wisdom and humor is also evident in her poetry. After finishing Who Said, I wanted to read more of her poetry. I appreciate her tone of not taking ourselves so seriously. Humans really have gone overboard in our self importance.
I enjoyed so many of her poems in this 2013 collection. “Lady Look-Alike Lazarized�� is a favorite. She even has cryptograms at the end of the book—for us to solve�� about the references in the poems.
Shall I quote some of her rhythmic lines?

“I measure every grief I meet
With penetrative arts
I wonder if it acts like me
Or hives in buzzing parts
And hides its ugly parts

O poetry, I want to trust
And thus presume
I want to hope
In a hat
To fly in
On her broom.

It’s hard not to feel like a failure
When you’re lonely among seven billion.
Starts to look like the problem is you,

In the Great Depression
Everyone lost everything and everyone
Blamed himself. You can see it in the
Photographs that won’t look back.��

This is just a quote of course. I apologize for taking it out of its context. You’d have to read the whole poem “Smells Like Every Grief I Meet,�� but you can get an idea of her poetry.

This is from her long ending poem�� “The Thesis Is That There Was a Beginning��

Yet we rarely change our minds.
We get our actual hearts replaced
More often than we change our minds
And our metaphorical hearts also change
Faster than we change our minds.

Makes you wonder!
]]> 124961437 A fearless, powerfully written on-the-ground account of a nation careening into violent autocracy—told through harrowing stories of the Philippines�� state-sanctioned killings of its citizens—from a journalist of international renown

“My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.��

Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte.

Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines�� drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others.

The book takes its title from a vigilante whose words seemed to reflect the psychological accommodation that most of the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,�� he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.��

A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is also a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an important investigation of the human impulses to dominate and resist.]]> 428 Patricia Evangelista 0593133137 Sonja 0 to-read 4.19 2023
author: Patricia Evangelista
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 174712161 From award-winning author Myriam J.A. Chancy, comes an extraordinary and enduring story of two families—forever joined by blood, by country, and by long held secrets—and two girls with a bond that refuses to be broken.  In 1940s�� Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi become fast childhood friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. As young girls, they build their unlikely friendship—until a deathbed revelation ripples through their families and tears them apart. After François Duvalier's rule turns deadly in the 1950s, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie marries into a wealthy Haitian family. Across decades and continents, through personal success and failures, they are parted and reunited, slowly learning the strange truth of their singular relationship. Finally, six decades later, with both women in the United States, a sudden phone call brings them back together once more to reckon with and—perhaps—forgive the past.
Told with power and frankness, Village Weavers confronts the silences around class, race, and sexuality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls—connected their entire lives—who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s heart.]]> 352 Myriam J. A. Chancy Sonja 0 currently-reading 4.00
author: Myriam J. A. Chancy
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 214519374
"Desecrated Poppies," written during the eclipse in April 2024 and in anticipation of the November 2024 elections, delves into the intersections of anti-trans and anti-Palestine politics, illustrating how they intertwine with fascism. Through essays and poetry, Yaffa navigates their experiences of these seemingly conflicting identities, both of which are weaponized to advance fascism. "Desecrated Poppies" also explores antidotes to fascism, with a particular focus on cultural work and the imperative to prioritize the most marginalized among us. A world beyond fascism exists, and we hold the pathway forward.]]> 166 Yaffa As Sonja 0 to-read 4.54
author: Yaffa As
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59949727 A powerful, heartrending, and insightful novel of a trio of women in Cameroon who dare to rebel against oppressive, long-held cultural traditions—including polygamy and domestic abuse—that define and limit their lives.

Three women, three stories, three linked destinies . . .

In North Cameroon, well-to-do young Ramla is torn from her true love and wed to a manipulative older man. Safira, her co-wife, juggles envy and empathy for this new bride with disappointment in the husband she desperately loves. Like her older sister, Ramla, Hindou is married off to a man she does not know or want, a distant cousin whose instability and violence terrifies her.

From an early age, these women were raised to submit to men, or risk shame and repudiation of themselves and their families. They are advised to have munyal—patience. They are told that their fates are the will of the All-Powerful, and that it is unthinkable—or rather, impossible—to defy tradition. They are reminded of the Fulani proverb which holds, “At the end of patience, there is the sky.��

Yet Ramla, Safira, and Hindou are tired of waiting for a happiness that may never come. Their lives are driven by impatience and clouded by the suffering rooted in forced marriage and physical abuse, but it is this oppressive culture that binds them together. In a society that demands female obedience, how will these three impatient women free themselves

Djaïli Amadou Amal makes her literary debut in English with this remarkable novel that breaks taboos as it denounces the cultural mores of Africa's Sahel region. Inspired by the author’s own experiences and written with grace, strength, and veracity, The Impatient is a moving testimony to a shared pain and a call for change—an unflinching depiction of the psychic damage traditions can have on the women who must abide by them and a denunciation of violence against all women and the normalization of domestic abuse—not only in Cameroon but around the globe.

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan]]> 176 Djaïli Amadou Amal 0063141620 Sonja 4 The first woman doesn’t want to marry and wants to pursue her education and a career but her family. She’d like to marry a man she knows but she is married off to a rich man who already has a wife. The second woman is her sister who is brutalized by her husband and ends up terribly sick.
The third is the co-wife of the first woman. She has been married to the rich man for twenty years. She only wants to get rid of the new young co-wife or drive her away.
These very sad stories show the situation of women focused on marriage because of tradition but it turns out to be a kind of slavery not only in relation to their husbands but also to their families and traditions.
Published in 2020, it is a courageous exposure of the some of the worst fates of women in these situations. Unfortunately the sanctioning of women’s oppression is still going on in many countries. But, while it is not the same, other women are being oppressed, even in the “land of the free.�� We’ve just gotten used to it as the women of Cameroon have and rarely speak up.]]> 3.96 2017
author: Djaïli Amadou Amal
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:
The Impatient by Djaili Amadou Amal is a novel about the fate of women in Cameroon and in many places throughout the world. A woman is meant to marry and that’s it, even better if it is to a rich man. Being a co-wife can also be part of a woman’s fate. Three different fates are the subject of this novel, beautifully written and translated by Emma Ramadan.
The first woman doesn’t want to marry and wants to pursue her education and a career but her family. She’d like to marry a man she knows but she is married off to a rich man who already has a wife. The second woman is her sister who is brutalized by her husband and ends up terribly sick.
The third is the co-wife of the first woman. She has been married to the rich man for twenty years. She only wants to get rid of the new young co-wife or drive her away.
These very sad stories show the situation of women focused on marriage because of tradition but it turns out to be a kind of slavery not only in relation to their husbands but also to their families and traditions.
Published in 2020, it is a courageous exposure of the some of the worst fates of women in these situations. Unfortunately the sanctioning of women’s oppression is still going on in many countries. But, while it is not the same, other women are being oppressed, even in the “land of the free.�� We’ve just gotten used to it as the women of Cameroon have and rarely speak up.
]]> 211004927 What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan, bestselling author of She’s Not There and co-author of Mad Honey with Jodi Picoult, examines the divisions—as well as the common ground—between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American.

Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There was the first bestselling work written by a transgender American. Since its publication twenty years ago, she has become the go-to person for insight into the impact of gender on our lives, from the food we eat to the dreams we dream, both for ourselves and for our children. But Cleavage is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it’s also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000—when many people reacted to Boylan’s transition with love—and the present era of blowback and fear.

How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose—and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent, and spouse. With heart-wrenching honesty, she illustrates the feeling of liminality that followed her to adulthood, but demonstrates the redemptive power of love through it all.

With Boylan’s trademark humor and poignancy, Cleavage is a sharp, witty, and captivating look at the triumphs and losses of a life lived in two genders. Cleavage provides hope for a future in which we all have the freedom to live joyfully as men, as women, and in the space between us.]]> 256 Jennifer Finney Boylan 1250261880 Sonja 0 to-read 3.82 2025
author: Jennifer Finney Boylan
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207003534 A bold, witty, magical new voice in fiction, Justin Haynes weaves a cross-generational Caribbean story of migration, superstition, and a search for family in the novel Ibis. There is bad luck in New Felicity. The people of the small coastal village have taken in Milagros, an 11-year-old Venezuelan refugee, just as Trinidad’s government has begun cracking down on undocumented migrants—and now an American journalist has come to town asking questions. New Felicity’s superstitious fishermen fear the worst, certain they’ve brought bad luck on the village by killing a local witch who had herself murdered two villagers the year before. The town has been plagued since her death by alarming visits from her supernatural mother, as well as by a mysterious profusion of scarlet ibis birds. Now, skittish that the reporter’s story will bring down the wrath of the ministry of national security, the fishermen take things into their own hands. From there, we go backward and forward in time—from the town’s early days, when it was the site of a sugar plantation, to Milagros’s adulthood as she searches for her mother across the Americas. In between, through the voices of a chorus of narrators, we glimpse moments from various villagers�� lives, each one setting into motion events that will reverberate outwards across the novel and shape Milagros’s fate. With kinetic, absorbing language and a powerful sense of voice, Ibis meditates on the bond between mothers and daughters, both highlighting the migrant crisis that troubles the contemporary world and offering a moving exploration of how to square where we come from with who we become.]]> 352 Justin Haynes 1419772775 Sonja 0 to-read 4.10
author: Justin Haynes
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 101994 88 Agha Shahid Ali 0393326128 Sonja 5
The Poetry Foundation has an excellent essay online by Stephanie (Steph) Burt on Ali and the ghazal called Agha Shahid Ali: “Tonight�� (written in 2010) if you want to check it out.


I loved reading this book it was recommended by Laura.
Now I recommend reading the whole book to get the full flavor of his artistry. it is really worth reading.
His Ghazals, playful and intricate, show what an accomplished poet he was. Characterized by couplets in regular rhythm, they end with a refrain which is the title of the poem. The line breaks make my heart skip a beat.

His humor: “SHAHID DEVASTATES FLORIDA is your dream headline, no hurricane will ever be named after you.�� After You is the title of the Ghazal.

Agha Shahid Ali was Kashmiri, born in New Delhi India. He fervently supported the Kashmir Muslim cause. He died in 2001 but considered himself an American poet.

I liked his allusions/ dedications to other poets but they were mostly male (disappointing) with the exception of the great Emily Dickinson.

Here are some lines I liked

When Lorca died, they left
the balcony open and saw:
his qasidas braided, on the
horizon, into knots of Arabic.]]> 4.25 2003
author: Agha Shahid Ali
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
Here is a great book of ghazals by Agha Shahid Ali who made the ghazal popular in English the U.S. by the turn of the century and died shortly thereafter.

The Poetry Foundation has an excellent essay online by Stephanie (Steph) Burt on Ali and the ghazal called Agha Shahid Ali: “Tonight�� (written in 2010) if you want to check it out.


I loved reading this book it was recommended by Laura.
Now I recommend reading the whole book to get the full flavor of his artistry. it is really worth reading.
His Ghazals, playful and intricate, show what an accomplished poet he was. Characterized by couplets in regular rhythm, they end with a refrain which is the title of the poem. The line breaks make my heart skip a beat.

His humor: “SHAHID DEVASTATES FLORIDA is your dream headline, no hurricane will ever be named after you.�� After You is the title of the Ghazal.

Agha Shahid Ali was Kashmiri, born in New Delhi India. He fervently supported the Kashmir Muslim cause. He died in 2001 but considered himself an American poet.

I liked his allusions/ dedications to other poets but they were mostly male (disappointing) with the exception of the great Emily Dickinson.

Here are some lines I liked

When Lorca died, they left
the balcony open and saw:
his qasidas braided, on the
horizon, into knots of Arabic.
]]> 13117630 309 Donna F. Mekis 0932319122 Sonja 0 to-read 4.50 2009
author: Donna F. Mekis
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217453566 Award-winning novelist Mary Morris weaves together an unsolved family mystery, a poignant coming-of-age story, and a little-known corner of World War II history in this lyrical novel of family, loss and, ultimately, love.

Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found, and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.�� The family never understood what Viola meant. 

Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage and her life, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II.  Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage. 

In Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother’s lost years. She is certain that the paintings of the red house hold the answer to her mother’s past and her search takes her from her hometown of Brindisi, deep into Puglia where she encounters a man who knew her mother and who illuminates little-known secrets of Italy’s Second World War.  

Blending elements of true crime with settings that evoke Elena Ferrante, Laura follows her mother’s trajectory as she ventures north to Naples, Turin and finally home. Along the way, she confronts the dark truth of her mother's story and at last makes sense of her own.]]> 304 Mary Morris 0385544987 Sonja 0 to-read 3.96
author: Mary Morris
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 612644 This wit that has taken her far, especially after the acclaim that The Next Ancient World received upon its publishing Now, twenty years later, Hecht’s lines are clear indicators of the long career that awaited her, demonstrating an unmatched understanding and mastery of both language and verse.]]> 78 Jennifer Michael Hecht 0971031002 Sonja 0 to-read 4.27 2001
author: Jennifer Michael Hecht
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59912428 A soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind.

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can she trust him completely . . .

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.]]> 464 Jodi Picoult 1984818384 Sonja 5 4.05 2022
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
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review:

]]> 58015891 New Poetries VIII anthology.]]> 128 Jason Allen-Paisant 1800171137 Sonja 0 to-read 4.05 2021
author: Jason Allen-Paisant
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4406
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.]]> 601 John Steinbeck 0142000655 Sonja 0 4.41 1952
author: John Steinbeck
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> 228024522 29 Абрам Терц Sonja 0 to-read 4.67 1957
author: Абрам Терц
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.67
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219510412
With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and break-ups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness (or simply the need to know the name of a gay bar on a night out), this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.

Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself in the 21st century, and where it might lead us in the future.]]> 256 Elizabeth Lovatt 0349704619 Sonja 0 currently-reading 4.11 2025
author: Elizabeth Lovatt
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 123856312
In 1980, Y-Dang Troeung and her family were among the last of the 60,000 refugees from Cambodia that then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pledged to relocate to Canada. As the final arrivals, their landing was widely documented in newspapers, with photographs of the PM shaking Y-Dang's father's hand, reaching out to pat baby Y-Dang's head. Forty years later, in her brilliant, astonishing book, Y-Dang returns to this moment, and to many others before and after, to explore the tension between that public narrative of happy “arrival,�� and the multiple, often hidden truths of what happened to the people in her family.
    In precise, beautiful prose accompanied by moving black-and-white visuals, Y-Dang weaves back and forth in time to tell stories about her parents and two brothers who lived through the Cambodian genocide, about the lives of her grandparents and extended family, about her own childhood in the refugee camps and in rural Ontario, and eventually about her young son’s illness and her own diagnosis with a terminal disease. Through it all, Y-Dang looks with bracing clarity at refugee existence, refusal of gratitude, becoming a scholar, and love.]]> 312 Y-Dang Troeung 1039008763 Sonja 0 to-read 4.53
author: Y-Dang Troeung
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.��]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Sonja 0 to-read 4.39 2024
author: Elif Shafak
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 198713552 ***e-book***
This is one of the wisest books I've read in years... ��New York Times Book Review

No writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the act—the fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefle’s work is never once stuffy or she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play that’s vital and welcome, that doesn’t make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange, life-enlargening fun. -The Kenyon Review

Profound, unpredictable, charming, and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled, as well as amused... ��Publishers Weekly

This is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart, the inner-life, the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. ��Matthew Dickman

The accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry, aesthetics and literature... ��San Francisco Examiner

Over the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.



Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.


]]> 329 Mary Ruefle Sonja 5
“The poem as a made thing, the poem as imaginative vision, as a moment of searching—��

A moment of searching�� There’s a certain humility here.

In an early lecture: “But the rose is not beauty. What beauty is is your ability to apprehend it.��

A title I love is: SOMEONE READING A BOOK IS A SIGN OF ORDER IN THE WORLD.]]> 4.29 2012
author: Mary Ruefle
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:
So much wisdom in this book by poet Mary Ruefle! About writing, about life. I’ve highlighted some passages. Here are a few favorite quotes

“The poem as a made thing, the poem as imaginative vision, as a moment of searching—��

A moment of searching�� There’s a certain humility here.

In an early lecture: “But the rose is not beauty. What beauty is is your ability to apprehend it.��

A title I love is: SOMEONE READING A BOOK IS A SIGN OF ORDER IN THE WORLD.
]]> 3181564
She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.]]> 180 Yōko Ogawa 0312427808 Sonja 0 to-read 4.04 2003
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211953312 Award-winning historian, professor, and journalist Tao Leigh Goffe launches an investigation of the Caribbean as the seat of corrupt Western wealth and environmental exploitation.

When Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean island of Guanahaní, it was remade, at least in mythology, as Eden. Since then, the Caribbean and its peoples have paid the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuses, falling prey to the planting of sugarcane and other cash crops. In Dark Laboratory, Goffe embarks on a historical journey into the influences that have made these islands—from Jamaica and Aruba to Cuba and Martinique—a target of Western capitalism and the foundation of the global economy as we know it today.

Through the lens of personal and family memoir, as well as cultural and social history, Goffe seeks to radically transform how we conceive of Blackness, natural history, colonialism, and the climate crisis. Her writing considers the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude as Chinese laborers worked alongside enslaved Black people to excavate products like sugarcane and guano—in its day more valuable than gold—from these island nations.

How can we combat contemporary racism and environmental degradation using the Caribbean and its dark history as guide? In autobiographical writing that shines light on both environmental upheaval and racial subjugation, Goffe offers solutions based on island ecologies, locating the origins of racism and the climate catastrophe in the colonization of the Caribbean. Her combination of personal narrative and research provides a record of the violence that has shaped these nations and a testament to our capacity for renewal.

In stunning, lyrical prose, Goffe dismantles our longest-held notions about island utopias and proposes new modes of thinking about the ruin and restoration of the environment.]]> 384 Tao Leigh Goffe 0385549911 Sonja 0 to-read 3.88 2025
author: Tao Leigh Goffe
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4665985 Spanish 67 Angelamaría Dávila 0940238500 Sonja 0 to-read 4.77 1977
author: Angelamaría Dávila
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.77
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 21500754 198 Angelamaría Dávila 0865816298 Sonja 0 to-read 4.50 2006
author: Angelamaría Dávila
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210339277 To secure her financial future, Zaheen needs to open an ancient, plastic-age door. She thinks it’s a simple enough task. But is she underestimating the resilience of the security in-charge and her rather reticent wife?

Zaheen, a university dropout, wishes to finally become financially secure by joining her homeland’s nearly monopolistic The Knowledge Corporation. Unfortunately, the corporation does not usually hire dropouts. Zaheen’s desperation makes her a potent tool in the hands of manipulators looking to achieve their own ends. In her quest to achieve financial security, Zaheen meets a mentor who sets her up on a mission to find skeletons in the government’s closet. The task seems simple Zaheen only needs to get past a non-smart door from ancient times. But the security in-charge and her wife are more intelligent and resilient than she expects. Someone has tried to open the door before and met an unfortunate and untimely end. Is Zaheen on course for a similar, burning destiny?]]> 374 Shumaila Badar 173833631X Sonja 0 to-read 2.50
author: Shumaila Badar
name: Sonja
average rating: 2.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Sonja 3 3.54 2024
author: Miranda July
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:
I didn’t like this book. I can always tell I’m bored when I start skimming. I was drawn to a book about a bisexual mother of a kid who is being raised non-binary. However, I got no insight into the child, a flat character. I also did not get much backstory for our “heroine.�� And I wondered what all the gratuitous sex was all about. In the end, while the theme and plot about a fake road trip to New York from California may have been intriguing, nothing really made sense. I felt it was a bunch of acting out. The humor may have been a redeeming quality but that’s about it. On The NY Times Best Seller list? Who says?
]]> 176443755
“A triumph of historical fiction�� ( The Washington Post ), an instant New York Times bestseller, and a Reese’s Book Club pick, set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.]]> 384 Sadeqa Johnson 1982197374 Sonja 0 to-read 4.24 2023
author: Sadeqa Johnson
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220160476 Spanning across twenty years and one life-altering summer in Croatia, Slanting Towards the Sea is at once an unforgettable love story and a powerful exploration of what it means to come of age in a country younger than oneself.

Ivona divorced the love of her life, Vlaho, a decade ago. They met as students at the turn of the new millennium, when democratic Croatia was alive with hope and promise. But the challenges of living in a burgeoning country extinguished Ivona’s dreams one after another—and a devastating secret forced her to set him free.

Now Vlaho is remarried and a proud father of two, while Ivona’s life has taken a downward turn. In her thirties, she has returned to her childhood home to care for her ailing father. Bewildered by life’s disappointments, she finds solace in reconnecting with Vlaho and is welcomed into his family by his spirited new wife, Marina. But when a new man enters Ivona’s life, the carefully cultivated dynamic between the three is disrupted, forcing a reckoning for all involved.

Set against the mesmerizing Croatian coastline, Slanting Towards the Sea is a cinematic, emotionally searing debut about the fragile nature of potential and the transcendence of love.]]> 336 Lidija Hilje 1668078678 Sonja 0 to-read 4.80
author: Lidija Hilje
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217005288
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters�� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano 0593243757 Sonja 0 to-read 4.13 2023
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1321824 89 Sharon Bridgforth 0965665968 Sonja 0 to-read 4.06 2004
author: Sharon Bridgforth
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58152039 224 Zee Edgell 1398340472 Sonja 0 to-read 3.56 1982
author: Zee Edgell
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1757904 64 Danielle Legros Georges 1880684799 Sonja 5 4.27 2001
author: Danielle Legros Georges
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 216389275 128 Antigone Kefala Sonja 0 to-read 3.57
author: Antigone Kefala
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 154479743
An epic novel set in mid-nineteenth-century America about the spiritual costs of a freedom that demands fierce protection

In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours.

It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root. But although Saint does her best to protect the inhabitants of Ours, over time, her conjuring and memories begin to betray her, leaving the town vulnerable to intrusions by newcomers with powers of their own. As the cracks in Saint’s creation are exposed, some begin to wonder whether the community’s safety might be yet another form of bondage.

Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.]]> 592 Phillip B. Williams 0593654838 Sonja 0 3.87 2024
author: Phillip B. Williams
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
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]]> 86320 Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2003

Black Garden is the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, got sucked into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, bringing to an end the Soviet Union, and plaguing a region of great strategic importance. It cuts between a careful reconstruction of the history of Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting on its convoluted aftermath.

Part contemporary history, part travel book, part political analysis, the book is based on six months traveling through the south Caucasus, more than 120 original interviews in the region, Moscow, and Washington, and unique primary sources, such as Politburo archives.

The historical chapters trace how the conflict lay unresolved in the Soviet era; how Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders exacerbated it; how the Politiburo failed to cope with the crisis; how the war began and ended; how the international community failed to sort out the conflict.

What emerges is a complex and subtle portrait of a beautiful and fascinating region, blighted by historical prejudice and conflict.]]> 400 Thomas de Waal 0814719457 Sonja 0 4.21 2003
author: Thomas de Waal
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
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]]> 228300568 plans to get twisted up in another romantic mess. Except she never counted on
meeting the jaw-dropping Scarlet Hunt.

Yoga instructor Scarlet has been focused on raising her daughter since her ex-
wife ditched them both to pursue her Hollywood dreams. The last thing she
expects is to stumble into Eve’s adoring gaze. The teacher at her daughter’s
school is too young, too cute, and far too interested, so it’d be wildly
inappropriate to ask Eve to tutor her daughter. Right?

As the risk of catching feelings hangs over them, a certain sexy Hollywood ex
swaggers back into Scarlet’s life, needing one hell of a favor�� How much more
complicated can life get?]]> 226 Fiona Zedde 3963249935 Sonja 5
Fiona’s erotic writing is just the best. There is such a nice variety in the novel, from the “human circus�� scene to the intimacy of��
“Joy, relief, tenderness.
Their lips slotted together, then clung as sweet emotion shivered through Eve’s body and Scarlett’s arms wrapped around her.��

I enjoyed the structure of the novel with the alternation of the two voices driving the plot, never awkward or repetitive—very smooth. And Fiona’s details are always so entertaining�� after Eve and her friend Trish just had something to eat, Trish’s dog “barked and jumped up to lick Eve’s face, his doggy breath smelling suspiciously like pizza.��

Born in Jamaica but has made both the U.S. and Spain home, Fiona Zedde is her pen name. She has written more than thirty queer books—erotica, fantasy, vampire, romance.

Once I heard Fiona Zedde express the idea of wanting to explore and reveal the many varieties of lesbian and queer relationships in her writing. What an admirable ambition! In Eve Falls First she tackles the theme of lesbian motherhood and generational differences and it was a great read. Thank you for your work, Fiona Zedde.]]> 4.56
author: Fiona Zedde
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:
Another awesome erotic romance by Fiona Zedde. This time a single lesbian mother, Scarlett, falls for Eve who is 20 years younger and becomes her daughter’s tutor. The bold proximity but respectful boundaries of the child to the flirtations and sexuality of the mother and her tutor were very well done. Eve Falls First was a light and fun read and very welcome in these times.

Fiona’s erotic writing is just the best. There is such a nice variety in the novel, from the “human circus�� scene to the intimacy of��
“Joy, relief, tenderness.
Their lips slotted together, then clung as sweet emotion shivered through Eve’s body and Scarlett’s arms wrapped around her.��

I enjoyed the structure of the novel with the alternation of the two voices driving the plot, never awkward or repetitive—very smooth. And Fiona’s details are always so entertaining�� after Eve and her friend Trish just had something to eat, Trish’s dog “barked and jumped up to lick Eve’s face, his doggy breath smelling suspiciously like pizza.��

Born in Jamaica but has made both the U.S. and Spain home, Fiona Zedde is her pen name. She has written more than thirty queer books—erotica, fantasy, vampire, romance.

Once I heard Fiona Zedde express the idea of wanting to explore and reveal the many varieties of lesbian and queer relationships in her writing. What an admirable ambition! In Eve Falls First she tackles the theme of lesbian motherhood and generational differences and it was a great read. Thank you for your work, Fiona Zedde.
]]> 1063144 79 Jewelle Gómez 156341063X Sonja 0 to-read 3.89 1995
author: Jewelle Gómez
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203871232
How did Mijo become the man we encounter in these pages? By facing poverty? Enduring heartbreak? Nurturing ignorance? Damir Karakaš, a war reporter who witnessed the horrors of the breakup of Yugoslavia firsthand, examines the recent history of an unsettled region in evocative prose, contrasting the beauty of nature against the failings of people. Celebration, translated by the incomparable Ellen Elias-Bursać, traces a dark path—from hapless individual to world-changing catastrophe—in search of a way to break the cycle of political violence.]]> 120 Damir Karakaš 194964166X Sonja 0 to-read 3.55 2019
author: Damir Karakaš
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1296486 79 Lucille Clifton 039446155X Sonja 5
The experience of reading it truly feels epic. Many times the lineage of the family from the Dahomey people is repeated like a refrain. Lucille was named “for Dahomey women.�� Her great grandmother Lucy who killed a white man, Harvey Nichols, the father of her child, was part of this lineage.

The stories are not told linearly. They are told the way they were heard by Lucille. It is a short book and poetic, with old photos and quotes from Walt Whitman. The last one is:
“Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.�� (Walt Whitman)
Highly recommend
]]> 4.35 1976
author: Lucille Clifton
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:
Lucille Clifton’s Generations is described by Tracy Smith in the introduction as “her poetically terse and emotionally epic prose memoir first published in 1976.�� And she writes this: “here in America, and perhaps everywhere, no matter who we have been made to believe that we are, we are—all of us—the children of slaves.�� Ponder this.

The experience of reading it truly feels epic. Many times the lineage of the family from the Dahomey people is repeated like a refrain. Lucille was named “for Dahomey women.�� Her great grandmother Lucy who killed a white man, Harvey Nichols, the father of her child, was part of this lineage.

The stories are not told linearly. They are told the way they were heard by Lucille. It is a short book and poetic, with old photos and quotes from Walt Whitman. The last one is:
“Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.�� (Walt Whitman)
Highly recommend

]]> 62984812 An invaluable companion for writers at every stage of their journey to make the writing life a more complex and cooperative venture


In this intimate and eloquent meditation, the award-winning poet Carl Phillips shares lessons he has learned about what he calls an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered,�� through forty years of teaching and mentoring emerging writers. He weaves together his experiences as a poet and prose writer with discussions of underexplored elements of the writing life, including ambition, stamina, silence, politics, practice, audience, and community.


In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, this is an invaluable companion for writers at every stage of their journey. Phillips’s book serves as a partner in speculation and an invitation to embrace mystery.]]> 85 Carl Phillips 0300268955 Sonja 5 “As long as I am living in language, as I like to put it, I count it as writing. This is why reading, for example, is so important—is maybe the most important part of writing.��
“To write is to resist invisibility. By having spoken, I’ve resisted silence before again returning to it.��
“what love looked like to me at forty is nothing like how it looks at sixty.��
Tell me about it!
And the concept of writing building one on the other. The idea of writing as transformation not simply exposition. It’s all very inspiring.
Finally—“To write poems felt like finding the native language of my interior self, and discovering that I’d always known this language—I had only to speak it: so this is my name; and this here, who I am.”]]> 4.42
author: Carl Phillips
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:
A great and helpful book for writers and readers alike. Meditations indeed.
“As long as I am living in language, as I like to put it, I count it as writing. This is why reading, for example, is so important—is maybe the most important part of writing.��
“To write is to resist invisibility. By having spoken, I’ve resisted silence before again returning to it.��
“what love looked like to me at forty is nothing like how it looks at sixty.��
Tell me about it!
And the concept of writing building one on the other. The idea of writing as transformation not simply exposition. It’s all very inspiring.
Finally—“To write poems felt like finding the native language of my interior self, and discovering that I’d always known this language—I had only to speak it: so this is my name; and this here, who I am.��
]]> 131870356 200 Balsam Karam 1558611932 Sonja 0 to-read 3.79
author: Balsam Karam
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.79
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35277865
Moving back in time towards the moment of Thomas Newman’s death, the story is related by Reve �� an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and a man with secrets of his own to keep. Through his eyes, and his indelible voice, Harvey creates a medieval world entirely tangible in its immediacy.]]> 294 Samantha Harvey 1787330591 Sonja 4 3.43 2018
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Sonja 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Daniel Mason
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 88298649 Has this 40-year-old virgin finally found someone who makes her want to risk it all?

In this slow burn, friends to lovers romance, Delphine’s life is made up of secrets. About her passions, her sexual identity, and even her past.

She coasts along on a tide of half-truths until a familiar “straight�� woman splashes deeper into her world, threatening her tenuous peace of mind.

This woman wants to be everything Delphine has never had before �� a confidant, a seductress, a trusted lover. But, by giving in to this siren, is Delphine setting herself up for heartbreak?]]> 307 Fiona Zedde Sonja 0 to-read 4.27 2024
author: Fiona Zedde
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 57151981
In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. When she befriends an orphan boy named JungHo, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets of Seoul, they form a deep friendship. As they come of age, JungHo is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence, and Jade becomes a sought-after performer with a new romantic prospect of noble birth. Soon Jade must decide whether she will risk everything for the one who would do the same for her.

From the perfumed chambers of a courtesan school in Pyongyang to the glamorous cafes of a modernizing Seoul and the boreal forests of Manchuria, where battles rage, Juhea Kim’s unforgettable characters forge their own destinies as they wager their nation’s. Immersive and elegant, Beasts of a Little Land unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shapes.]]> 416 Juhea Kim 006309357X Sonja 0 to-read 4.00 2021
author: Juhea Kim
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 150250 Glass, Irony and God. This collection includes: "The Glass Essay," a powerful poem about the end of a love affair, told in the context of Carson's reading of the Brontë sisters; "Book of Isaiah," a poem evoking the deeply primitive feel of ancient Judaism; and "The Fall of Rome," about her trip to "find" Rome and her struggle to overcome feelings of a terrible alienation there.]]> 142 Anne Carson 0811213021 Sonja 0 to-read 4.33 1995
author: Anne Carson
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right��? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Sonja 0 to-read 4.06 2022
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 228105884
Amid the weight of unsettling archival documents, the voices of the displaced, and a sweltering New York summer, the unnamed narrator discovers the mysterious story of a woman who disappeared from her settlement without a trace. As he pieces together her strange fate, he confronts his own temporary status in a foreign land and wonders what it means to call a place home.

Intimate and dreamlike, What Remains is a meditation on the ruins of memory and an urgent exploration of identity, colonialism, and resistance. Inventively blending memoir, fiction, anthropology, and travel writing, the novel investigates, with surprising intuition, the traces left in the places we inhabit.]]> 112 Brais Lamela Sonja 0 to-read 5.00 2022
author: Brais Lamela
name: Sonja
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5045758 294 Andrée Blouin 0030627591 Sonja 0 to-read 4.32 2025
author: Andrée Blouin
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 35917072 Tomi Adeyemi conjures a stunning world of dark magic and danger in her West African-inspired fantasy debut, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir.

They killed my mother.
They took our magic.
They tried to bury us.

Now we rise.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers—and her growing feelings for an enemy.]]> 525 Tomi Adeyemi 1250170982 Sonja 0 to-read 4.27 2018
author: Tomi Adeyemi
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199534697 A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry

Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?�� In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey—an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.

Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as “Blue Black.�� The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.

Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.]]> 256 Imani Perry 0062977393 Sonja 5 I loved it. I listened to Imani Perry read it and it was a great experience.]]> 4.35 2025
author: Imani Perry
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:
A beautiful creative storytelling of Black history and culture through the color blue.
I loved it. I listened to Imani Perry read it and it was a great experience.
]]> 50682
"Grief, terror, courage, the passion for survival and for more than survival, are here in the searchings of a great poet." —Adrienne Rich

"This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me." —Alice Walker

"The forthrightness and ferocity with which Audre Lorde greeted every social injustice is in full force in this courageous exploration." —Amazon.com]]> 104 Audre Lorde 1879960737 Sonja 5 4.42 1980
author: Audre Lorde
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
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review:

]]> 126603589 384 Olga Tokarczuk Sonja 4 From its beginning, the novel treats the theme of abuse of women and misogyny. Except for Mieczys and Thilo, all of the male characters have only negative things to say about women and they spend a lot of time putting down women. After Mieczys arrives at the sanatorium he encounters the mysterious dead body of Opitz’s wife who had brought him breakfast that morning. It jogs the memory of his beloved nanny. The body and then’s mysogyny courses through the novel. Descriptions of nature are also significant and really gorgeous.
It is a novel of ideas too. The men talk about politics, religion, and the mysterious deaths in the institution. Mieczys is nervous and fearful, is strangely shy about his body, has memories of his childhood with his father and uncle, and questions the other men’s attitudes. At the end of the novel we get a sudden unraveling and set of revelations, including about some local monsters that resemble Nazis.
Although I loved both Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead and
The Books of Jacob and I see glimmers of both in The Empusium, I don’t feel that it came up to their level and I didn’t enjoy the latter half as much. I still recommend it though. It gives the backstory of narrow- minded, sexist and racist thinking that is the foundation of fascism.]]> 3.93 2022
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves:
review:
The Empusium is the story of Mieczyś a young man from Lviv who goes to a German sanatorium for treatment. The story derives from The Magic Mountain which Olga Tokarczuk greatly admires and has read a number times by her own admission. The word Empusium comes from the name of shapeshifting female demon, Empusa, who was thought, in Greek mythology, to prey upon men.
From its beginning, the novel treats the theme of abuse of women and misogyny. Except for Mieczys and Thilo, all of the male characters have only negative things to say about women and they spend a lot of time putting down women. After Mieczys arrives at the sanatorium he encounters the mysterious dead body of Opitz’s wife who had brought him breakfast that morning. It jogs the memory of his beloved nanny. The body and then’s mysogyny courses through the novel. Descriptions of nature are also significant and really gorgeous.
It is a novel of ideas too. The men talk about politics, religion, and the mysterious deaths in the institution. Mieczys is nervous and fearful, is strangely shy about his body, has memories of his childhood with his father and uncle, and questions the other men’s attitudes. At the end of the novel we get a sudden unraveling and set of revelations, including about some local monsters that resemble Nazis.
Although I loved both Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead and
The Books of Jacob and I see glimmers of both in The Empusium, I don’t feel that it came up to their level and I didn’t enjoy the latter half as much. I still recommend it though. It gives the backstory of narrow- minded, sexist and racist thinking that is the foundation of fascism.
]]> 57701646 62 Eileen Cleary 1949279332 Sonja 5 4.71
author: Eileen Cleary
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.71
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> 42505379
Ella is nearing thirty, and not yet living the life she imagined. Her artistic ambitions as a student in Minnesota have given way to an unintended career in caregiving. One spring, Bryn--a retired carpenter--hires her to help him care for Jill, his wife of many years. A car accident caused a brain injury that has left Jill verbally diminished; she moves about the house like a ghost of her former self, often able to utter, like an incantation, only the words that comprise this novel's title.

As Ella is drawn ever deeper into the couple's household, her presence unwanted but wholly necessary, she is profoundly moved by the tenderness Bryn shows toward the wife he still fiercely loves. Ella is startled by the yearning this awakens in her, one that complicates her feelings for her girlfriend, Alix, and causes her to look at relationships of all kinds--between partners, between employer and employee, and above all between men and women--in new ways.

Tightly woven, humane and insightful, tracing unflinchingly the most intimate reaches of a young woman's heart and mind, Say Say Say is a riveting story about what it means to love, in a world where time is always running out.]]> 176 Lila Savage 0525655921 Sonja 0 to-read 3.04 2019
author: Lila Savage
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61953668 An extraordinary chronicle of war and an occult story of love between a father and his son from one of Iraq’s most celebrated contemporary writers

“Whenever he told lies, the birds would fly away. It had been that way since he was a child. Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen.��

So begins Bachtyar Ali’s The Last Pomegranate, a phantasmagoric warren of fact, fabrication, and mystical allegory, set in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s rule and Iraq’s Kurdish conflict.

Muzafar-i Subhdam, a peshmerga fighter, has spent the last twenty-one years imprisoned in a desert yearning for his son, Saryas, who was only a few days old when Muzafar was captured. Upon his release, Muzafar begins a frantic search, only to learn that Saryas was one of three identical boys who became enmeshed in each other’s lives as war mutilated the region.

An inlet to the recesses of a terrifying historical moment, and a philosophical journey of formidable depths, The Last Pomegranate interrogates the origins and reverberations of atrocity. It also probes, with a graceful intelligence, unforgettable acts of mercy.]]> 322 Bachtyar Ali 1953861407 Sonja 0 to-read 4.21 2002
author: Bachtyar Ali
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211401593 A Haitian-born, Boston-based poet explores the personal and political stories of the Haitians who were part of Congo’s 1960s decolonization movementBetween 1960 and 1975, thousands of Haitian professionals emigrated to Congo, a fellow Black francophone nation that emerged under the revolutionary new leadership of Patrice Lumumba. As Danielle Legros Georges writes in the introduction to this collection, these émigrés sought to “escape repression in Haiti, start new lives in Africa, and participate in a decolonizing Congo.�� Among them were her parents.Grounded in these personal and social histories, Three Leaves, Three Roots is a collection of Legros Georges’s creative reconstructions of the Haiti-Congo experience. She interweaves her verses with excerpts from primary sources such as the interviews she conducted with the Congo émigrés and letters written by people both famous and obscure, including Lumumba, Fidel Castro, and members of Legros Georges’s family.The result is a richly layered portrayal of an era of decolonization and rebuilding, a time that sparked with both promise and vulnerability for the Pan-Africanist and Black Power movements. This collection is an important work of Haitian American poetry and of Black it reminds us, artfully, that movements of solidarity among people of color have always existed and always will exist.]]> 144 Danielle Legros Georges 0807020486 Sonja 0 to-read 3.83
author: Danielle Legros Georges
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3397333 Margaret Randall Sonja 0 3.00 1982
author: Margaret Randall
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 205436018 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang 0593595459 Sonja 0 to-read 3.88 2021
author: Han Kang
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> 30091914 A riveting, poetic, and fearless portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice by the acclaimed author of The Vegetarian.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend, who meets his own fateful end, to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, both suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 218 Han Kang 1101906723 Sonja 4 Han Kang was born in Guangju and was determined from a young age to make this story known to the world. The Nobel Prize this year made this possible. She writes:

“‘Gwangju�� had become another name for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair.��

There are Human Acts like this all over the world. And we must never forget.

I admit Han Kang’s novel was difficult to read because of the violence and killing and suffering of mothers and others. So much pain and brutality is unthinkable yet it goes on all around us. I felt I was reading a documentary about the Guangju Uprising. But I admire Han Kang for what she chooses to write about and I will read more of her work. The translation is by Deborah Smith. ]]> 4.26 2014
author: Han Kang
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
Human Acts by Han Kang is a most significant novel. It tells the story of the Guangju Uprising in South Korea in 1980. Students led demonstrations against the dictatorship and were brutally beaten, killed, tortured. They were accused of communism so if course the U.S. supported this violent suppression. 2,000 of these precious young people were most likely killed but many more were left with lifetime disabilities, their families and friends suffering too.
Han Kang was born in Guangju and was determined from a young age to make this story known to the world. The Nobel Prize this year made this possible. She writes:

“‘Gwangju�� had become another name for whatever is forcibly isolated, beaten down, and brutalized, for all that has been mutilated beyond repair.��

There are Human Acts like this all over the world. And we must never forget.

I admit Han Kang’s novel was difficult to read because of the violence and killing and suffering of mothers and others. So much pain and brutality is unthinkable yet it goes on all around us. I felt I was reading a documentary about the Guangju Uprising. But I admire Han Kang for what she chooses to write about and I will read more of her work. The translation is by Deborah Smith.
]]> 214152146
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 224 Carys Davies 1668030675 Sonja 0 to-read 4.03
author: Carys Davies
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40738442 - Jen Jewel Brown, Editor

I am one of many Australians who never met Lisa Bellear, yet was shocked by her unexpected and tragic passing. These poems are her gift! In this collection the poems resonate her warrior spirit, and the spirit of Aboriginal Country, as was her wish.
- Ali Cobby Eckermann, Nunga poet and writer

Lisa Bellear became a close friend when I studied and taught at Melbourne University from the mid-1990s. During that time she became renowned not only as a poet but also as a community photographer recording numerous events and people in the local Aboriginal community. Her sudden departure was a great shock to all who knew her, but she lives on in our memories because her poems and photographs are the powerful legacy she left us.
- Dr Gary Foley, Associate Professor in History, Moondani Balluk, Victoria University]]> 100 Lisa Bellear 1742589758 Sonja 0 to-read 4.50 2018
author: Lisa Bellear
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/12
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]]> 596736 And she examines her personal history, further exploring her themes as she journeys home to Trinidad, tells of being turned down for a job, describes becoming a leftist, reviews her influences as a poet, and considers the process of filmmaking as a metaphor for the way each of us makes decisions about what we will - and will not - see.]]> 183 Dionne Brand 0889104921 Sonja 5 Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics, first published in 1994, is a great book. I couldn’t put it down.
Some of the topics she covers are racism, women’s rights, cooptación, Cuba, sexuality, poetry, Canadian whiteness, and Caribbean history.
Dionne Brand is always strong and clear, poetic and honest. When she writes in the essay “Dualities�� about her struggles over whether to finish her PhD, she says she couldn’t quite “buy into the program.�� But it made me sad when she admitted: “but if we really think about it, we’re broken.�� We get a sense of what it all cost her from the previous essays but it’s hard to imagine the extent and depth of the brokenness. I am so glad we have her poetry and other books. Most of all that we have the gift of her wisdom.]]> 4.40 1995
author: Dionne Brand
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
I always learn so much from Dionne Brand and I love her writing. Primarily a poet, she was born in Trinidad and then emigrated to Toronto in 1970. She was in Grenada supporting the Revolution when the U.S. invaded in 1983 to thwart it.
Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics, first published in 1994, is a great book. I couldn’t put it down.
Some of the topics she covers are racism, women’s rights, cooptación, Cuba, sexuality, poetry, Canadian whiteness, and Caribbean history.
Dionne Brand is always strong and clear, poetic and honest. When she writes in the essay “Dualities�� about her struggles over whether to finish her PhD, she says she couldn’t quite “buy into the program.�� But it made me sad when she admitted: “but if we really think about it, we’re broken.�� We get a sense of what it all cost her from the previous essays but it’s hard to imagine the extent and depth of the brokenness. I am so glad we have her poetry and other books. Most of all that we have the gift of her wisdom.
]]> 19010021 National Book Award Finalist Stay, Illusion, the much-anticipated volume of poems by Lucie Brock-Broido, illuminates the broken but beautiful world she inhabits. Her poems are lit with magic and stark with whether they speak from the imagined dwelling of her “Abandonarium,�� or from habitats where animals are farmed and harmed “humanely,�� or even from the surreal confines of death row, they find a voice like no other—dazzling, intimate, startling, heartbreaking. Eddying between the theater of the lavish and the enigmatic, between the gaudy and the unadorned, Brock-Broido’s verse scours America for material to render unflinchingly the here and now. Grandeur devolves into a comic “We have come to terms with our Self / Like a marmoset getting out of her Great Ape suit.�� She dares the “The wings were left ajar / At the altar where I’ve knelt all night, trembling, leaning, rough / As sugar raw, and sweet.�� Each poem is a rebellious chain of “Be good, they said, and so too I was / Good until I was not.�� Strange narratives, interior and exterior, make a world that is foreign and yet our own; like Dickinson, Brock-Broido constructs a spider-sibling, commanding the “silk spool of the recluse as she confects her eventual mythomania.�� And why create the web? “If it is written down, you can’t rescind it.”]]> 113 Lucie Brock-Broido 0307962040 Sonja 5 From the poem entitled “FOR A SNOW LEOPARD IN OCTOBER��

“Would they take

You now from me, like Leonardo’s sleeve disappearing in
The air. And when I woke I could not wake

You, little sphinx, I could not keep you here with me.
Anywhere, I could not bear to let you go.Stay here

In our clouded bed of wind and timothy with me.

Lie here with me in snow.”]]> 3.90 2013
author: Lucie Brock-Broido
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:
Superb poetry. Hesitating to quote out of the context of poetry but wanting to give you a taste��
From the poem entitled “FOR A SNOW LEOPARD IN OCTOBER��

“Would they take

You now from me, like Leonardo’s sleeve disappearing in
The air. And when I woke I could not wake

You, little sphinx, I could not keep you here with me.
Anywhere, I could not bear to let you go.Stay here

In our clouded bed of wind and timothy with me.

Lie here with me in snow.��
]]> 195716400 The collected life-work of an interdisciplinary writer, performer, and central figure in the Black Gay cultural arts and AIDS movements.

In this timely collection of poetry, plays, fiction, and performance texts, Assotto Saint draws upon music and incantation, his Haitian heritage and a politics of liberation, to weave together a tapestry of literature that celebrates life in the face of death. Influential to contemporary writers such as Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, and Melvin Dixon, Sacred Spells is Saint's crucial legacy–five hundred incandescent pages of painful, lyric writing that exemplifies the visceral, spiritual dimensions of an artistic practice that’s integral to Black and trans activist movements in the United States, both historic and present.]]> 363 Assotto Saint 1643622196 Sonja 0 to-read 5.00 1996
author: Assotto Saint
name: Sonja
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59658380 BloodFresh is a celebration of identity. Ebony Stewart reclaims her own narrative to speak against the racism and colorism she’s experienced, while criticizing society’s treatment of women as sexual objects. This collection reaffirms the reader through storytelling as an open letter to retell, acknowledge, overcome, and learn new ways to use poetry as a coping technique. As BloodFresh reflects the importance of owning your own space, Stewart carves out a home for herself, her poems, and all of the readers who take refuge in her words.]]> 112 Ebony Stewart 1638340080 Sonja 0 to-read 4.30 2022
author: Ebony Stewart
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58984757
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors--some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction--Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.]]> 80 Rio Cortez 0143137131 Sonja 0 to-read 4.01 2022
author: Rio Cortez
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28664905
It is 1903. A lame and frail Malangana �� ‘Little Suns�� �� searches for his beloved Mthwakazi after many lonely years spent in Lesotho. Mthwakazi was the young woman he had fallen in love with twenty years earlier, before the assassination of Hamilton Hope ripped the two of them apart.
Intertwined with Malangana’s story, is the account of Hope �� a colonial magistrate who, in the late nineteenth century, was undermining the local kingdoms of the eastern Cape in order to bring them under the control of the British. It was he who wanted to coerce Malangana’s king and his people, the amaMpondomise, into joining his battle �� a scheme Malangana’s conscience could not allow.
Zakes Mda’s fine new novel Little Suns weaves the true events surrounding the death of Magistrate Hope into a touching story of love and perseverance that can transcend exile and strife.]]> 272 Zakes Mda 1415209057 Sonja 0 to-read 4.00 2015
author: Zakes Mda
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
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date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> 212806569 A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of��Horse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz �� just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy �� collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.]]> 224 Geraldine Brooks 059365398X Sonja 0 to-read 4.36 2025
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Sonja
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> 36436062 "The morning became a long, drawn-out afternoon that became depthless night dawning innocently through the house."

Tales of desire and madness from this giant of Brazilian literature.]]> 64 Clarice Lispector 0241337607 Sonja 0 to-read 3.54 2018
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Sonja
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2018
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date added: 2025/02/08
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