Now that it’s July, I’m re-examining the goals I had in mind earlier this year, checking to see whether my plans have aligned with my reading choices so far. A few days ago, I wrote about one of my slow-reading projects this year, and in a few days
Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning (2016) is a doorstopper of a book that grew out of his desire to write an introductory chapter to a book about Black Studies programs in American (i.e. in the United States) universities and colleges. When his chapter was 90 pages long,
Growing up, reading was a solitary activity. Even when I was lucky enough to live near someone else who had a similar connection to books and stories, we never did that together: we played. We might swap books, under the best of circumstances, but we never had our own
On the longlist, I’d read just four of the books when the nominees were announced, two last year and two this year. For those who can forgive short stories for not being novels, Lisa Alward's Cocktail will satisfy on many levels. She’s got the sharp observations of writers like
Last year I read 11 of the longlisted titles for The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and with the recent announcement of the 2024 longlist I was prompted to reflect on 2023’s selections. Three of the short story collections I’ve already written about—Talia Laksmni Kolluri’s What We Fed to
