Books I RED

 Once upon a time, a young woman named Lada chose to read The Handmaidstale. She bought the book from the Bookdepositry, it was a Penguin VINTAGE paperback. As she read she made miniscule notes and underlined parts of M. Atwood's well known story. I bought the book at an online antiquarian shop just for the marginalia, because of course I already have a hardback copy, also a vintage edition with read gilded edges.  Red, the color of sisterhood. Red, because we all bleed. Red because life and birth. Red, the color of love. In Margaret Atwood's dystopia the very segregated society of Gilead is, a sort of hyper republican, militant version of a fundamentalist Abrahamitic dictatorship. I believe the novels popularity has persisted since the 1980's when it first came out. The Vintage edition that I held in my hand was printed in 2010. The series by HBO came out in 2017. I first watched the series back in 2018 or 2019, I'm not sure precisely but I didn't come to know the ...

I ordered the Legami Book Lovers calendar 2024 in the beginning of the year. I hadn't read any of the monthly books but I kept my eye on Agatha Christies A Caribbean Mystery at my local library. I didn't think of reserving it as it was always just there, waiting to be read. August came around and Miss Marple was on the list, ACarribean Mystery was on the list. When I went to borrow the book it was borrowed so I made a reservation. Yesterday i finished the book. It was an easy yet complex read, it was my first Agatha Christie.  I'm going to share some quotes from it and discuss it now: "The place looked like an earthly paradise. With its sunshine, its sea, its coral reef, its music, its dancing, it seemed a Garden of Eden. But even in the Garden of Eden, there had been a shadow of the Serpent- Bad things - how hateful to hear those words." (p.76) That's essentially the thrill of the Caribbeans I think, the lure of the exotic palm trees and tropical heat. A plac...

My obsession with the Caribbeans continues. I've been both in a reading and writing slump, confessing to you, hidden and unknown reader, how in my stressed and melancholy state I result to the buying of more books and frequenting the public library instead of resting in the abundance of my own.  There in the city library, by the statue of a young maiden, I found both Jean Rhys biography and that of Safiya Sinclair, how strange! This white creole woman and and a young black one, with clearly white ancestors (a great grandmother i suppose) and I a lazy reader hanging like a broken jungle bridge between them.  After Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy I was yearning to know more about the women from the Caribbeans hence it felt like destiny when Safiya's biography gravitated into my hand as if of some magical force. As you might remember from my last post I had some ideas about white western women and black Caribbean women being different because of privileges. Since my last update I'v...