Helen Keller’s memoir is unforgettable for many reasons, but is surprising for her admission of having retold a fable (Birdie and His Friends by Margaret T. Canby) as en eleven-year-old when submitting a short story (The Frost King) for her school magazine. Though, more surprising than this acceptance was Mark Twain’s letter to Keller, where…
Read MoreThis debut novel in English by the Spanish poet feels like a collection of short stories that weave back and forth through time. Attempting to bypass and often unknowingly giving in to intergenerational trauma, two working-class women try creating lives of their own for freedom from patriarchal constrictions, financial hardships, and everlasting grief, while these…
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There’s something to be said about readers often and rightly complaining about the lack of stories featuring Black characters that don’t revolve around racism, but not supporting tales that actually centre Black love and their families, heritage, and inner conflicts. Can’t Resist Her quickly unravels a second-chance romance with excellent steamy scenes, great potential for…
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Some books really force you to decide what you like more: a fast-paced plot or a slowly-evolving character arc. A River Enchanted gives you enough reasons to go with the latter. Fantasy books, especially when not in the the young adult demographic, are often expected to let a complex plot, an extensively built world, and…
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It’s often interesting to see what motivated an author to craft a particular story. Especially when the push to create something powerful comes from empathy for the powerless. Like Sabaa Tahir who says her own experience of growing up as a kid who didn’t fit in and then reading about various stories of some absolutely…
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In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman – all with her young child in tow. Years on, she is an old woman with a fading memory, mixing up her maid’s…
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Yasmin Ghorami in twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe. As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings,…
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An exquisite collection from a breathtakingly new voice–centered on a constellation of Korean American families, these stories announce the debut of a master of short fiction. A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend’s painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town . . . A woman in an arranged marriage…
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January always brings a new wave of enthusiasm for a reader—you have a chance to leave behind last year’s goals, the disappointing reads, and the sadness of not getting a chance to pick up your most anticipated books the entire year. And while I did read quite a few books in this first month of…
Read MoreFebruary is here! I had some big reading goals set up for January but sadly, the pandemic reached my house and I had to keep everything on the backburner to focus on my health. Now I’m definitely more enthusiastic for this month, having come back from a long break, ready to tackle my TBR. If…
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