Wednesday, the 30th of November 2022, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about…
Book Revew: The Trauma of Caste by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
My thanks to North Atlantic Books and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. In The Trauma of Caste, Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan considers caste discrimination, one of the oldest systems of discrimination in the world, and its horrific and scarring impacts on millions, not only in South Asia with which the system…
Bengali Children’s Literature: Some Volumes to Explore-I
Home to numerous languages, written and spoken (122 among these being 'major' languages), India has rich literary traditions--classical and contemporary--in many of these. With translations into English as well as Indian languages, many of these are now (or are becoming) accessible to a wider readership. A couple of years ago, I'd done a set of…
Book Review: Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik and translated by Martin Aitken #NovNov
My thanks to Archipelago/Steerforth Press for a review copy of this book via Edelweiss. Ti Amo (2022) is a raw, honest, beautiful, heart-breaking, autobiographical account of a woman whose husband is suffering terminal cancer. Written originally in Norwegian by author Hanne Ørstavik, the version I read is translated brilliantly by Martin Aitken. In Ti Amo,…
Shelf Control #206: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wednesday, the 23rd of November, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it--what…
Book Review: Dead in the Water by Mark Ellis
My thanks to the author Mark Ellis for a review copy of the book via Booktasters. Dead in the Water is the fifth in the Frank Merlin series of police procedurals/mysteries set in World-War-II London. I have previously read and reviewed the first in this series but haven’t yet had chance to catch up with…
Book Review: How We Disappear: novella and stories by Tara Lynn Masih
My thanks to Press 53 for a review copy of this book via NetGalley. Having read and loved Tara Lynn Masih’s novel My Real Name is Hanna (a piece of historical fiction that I highly recommend), when I saw this collection of short stories on NetGalley, I of course had to read it. How We…
Shelf Control #205: Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
Wednesday, the 16th of November, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it--what…
Book Review: Montaigne by Stefan Zweig and translated by Will Stone #NovNov #NonfictionNovember #GermanLitMonth
In such epochs where the highest values of life—our peace, our independence, our basic rights, all that makes our existence more pure, more beautiful, all that justifies it—are sacrificed to the demon inhabiting a dozen fanatics and ideologues, all the problems of the man who fears for his humanity come down to the same question:…
Book Review: Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen #NovNov
Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, written and set during the Harlem renaissance, is a complex novel, which as its name suggests, navigates themes of race and identity which form a central thread in the book but also much more, for themes of marriage and relationships are also key, besides others like motherhood, class and society.…
Literary Potpourri 