Just a few pages into Jessica J. Lee’s Dispersals, I was wholly hooked (the mention of “belonging” in the subtitle got me part way there). One of those reading experiences where you feel as though you are connecting not-so-much with a book but with a way of seeing, a
Nancy Johnson’s The Kindest Lie (2021) reminds me of Terry McMillan for its focus on Black working women’s lives and Brit Bennett’s The Mothers for its slant towards mothering. The novel looks back, specifically to the election of Barack Obama in 2008: “Their feet felt light and their chests,
Non-Fiction November is hosted this year by Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Julie (JulzReads), Sarah (Sarah’s Book Shelves), Katie (Doing Dewey) and Rennie (What’s Nonfiction). It's a month-long celebration of everything nonfiction with a different prompt and a different host each week. Week four's theme is Reads Like Fiction and it's hosted by
"Everything about the restaurant business is made harder by being in it as a woman. And speaking out about that only makes it worse." And, yet, she is doing just that. Speaking out and putting herself out there, in I Hear She's a Real Bitch. Readers meet Jen Agg
In which there is talk of novels which were read too quickly to allow for extensive note-taking and snapshots: good reading. Yewande Omotoso's The Woman Next Door (2017) Longlisted for the Women's Fiction Prize this year, this story about two women in their eighties, neighbours in South Africa, is quietly
