Krik? Krak? by Edwidge Danticat: This is an beautiful and devastating short story collection weaving Haitian folk tale and myth with the immigrant experience and personal tragedy. Danticat's writing is exquisite; I sank into the book from the very first work. Most short story collections are hit and miss--there are usually duds in every grouping, but I didn't find that in here. All of the stories are linked subtly and build on the emotions of the previous one. I can't recommend this highly enough.
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness: Witches. Vampires. Ancient texts--it hits all of the right buttons for me. This is what Twilight wanted to be, and what Anne Rice novels are--a believable world inhabited by supernatural creatures who struggle just as much as we do with what it means to be "human". It has just the right balance of folklore, history, and action, and it has a realistic romance. This is the first in a trilogy, and I will definitely be picking up the other two.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodsen: Part YA, part poetry, part memoir, and completely breathtaking, Woodsen tells the story of growing up African-American in the South during the Civil Rights Movement in a beautifully lyrical prose poem. She tells of bouncing between South Carolina and New York City, trying to balance both the northern and southern ways of life, her mother's activism, and her grandmother's religious expectations. This should be part of every school curriculum.
And the award for the strangest book I read this month goes to Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan, and it's exactly what its title suggests--a book about rats. I won't say this is a favorite, but it certainly will stick with me. In case you're worried, I didn't go searching this one out; it was on the shelf in my new classroom, and to be honest, it sounded...well, unique. What I really appreciated about this book was how Sullivan played with Walden, emulating the style and technique that Thoreau used in his work. I now know more about these little creatures than I ever thought (did you know they can chew through CONCRETE?!?).
All in all, it was another good reading month. If you want to see everything I read, click here.
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