pickBeka reflects on the tumultuous past few months, beginning with her failure to pass the term, on her penchant for lying, the stories of “befo time” and political unrest, her great-gran‘s death and wake, a hurricane, and most troubling, the gulf widening between them as Troycie‘s inability to cope with ruinous events causes a breakdown. Beka‘s intelligence and contrariness see her (and the reader) through what could have been just a miserable tale.
#WeeklyReport
Starting the year off a little slowly, only reading these two books. And I haven't finished anything recently.
#NewYearNewBooks
#ShipsOrSailing A favorite foodie travel book where a woman & her husband sail around the Caribbean. ⛵️🌴🥭
He read me Arthur Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre to awaken my freedom, read me Baudelaire to contain my pain, read me Apollinaire to dilute my distress, read me Leconte de Lisle to rouse in me exaltations he called automatic, read me Saint-John Perse to take stock of the world in the rambling seaspray, he read Faulkner to show me the dark disorders in the head-depths of men...
CHRISTMAS DOWN HERE
The opportunity was during one December when City went up in flames. A disagreement between blackmen and france-whites following a tale of some illegally parked bike. Shots were fired. The white man's shot hit. Other Martinicans drinking by the kiosk nearly stoned the white shooter...
The women had to face the rest of life, including the duty of finding food for a swarm of lit- tle ones, and all without a garden. Each mama, you hear me, had to sow in herself a small plot of cunning, and look after the harvest, ill luck or no. Perched by the window, my Esternome would shout, turning to Idoménée, The hills have come down to City, the hills have come down on City, a bloody madness ...
panThis was a disappointment. A misogynistic philanderer is the only cop on Anegada and someone has been killed, kicking off an investigation in which he does just about everything wrong and the killer reveals themselves to him rather than him solving it. And the who doesn‘t make any sense. It did give me a good sense of place, at least.
#BritishVirginIslands #ReadingAmericas2023
pickThis author is very angry, and I felt chastised! First among various reasons for being a tourist! It should be required reading for anyone vacationing in the Caribbean, where the tourists have plenty and the locals do not. Take for instance, water. Tourists can swim in it, and then bathe in it, and drink as much as they like. But many islands have no water source so the locals have to conserve every last drop. From there, the author delves ⬇️
