Picture Prompt Book Bingo

Back at the start of the year, Mayri at Bookforager set up a Book Bingo challenge complete with bingo card. I decided that I would give it a go.

Sugar and Slate

Read 15/03/2022-29/03/2022

Rating 4 stars

Sugar and Slate is a memoir about growing up mixed race in North Wales. Paula chose it as this year’s Dewithon book and I managed to find a library copy. It’s partly fictionalised and the author’s reminiscences about her own life are punctuated by poetry and dramatic scenes that tell the story of her parents and the broader stories of nationality, race and belonging. Divided into three sections, Africa, Guyana and Wales, the book examines how these places have impacted and influenced the author’s life, and how their presence as points in the slavery triangle explain how the author came to exist.

Such A Fun Age

Read 27/01/2022-29/01/2022

Rating 4 stars

I had Kiley Reid’s debut novel Such A Fun Age on my library wishlist but took it off again after I read some lukewarm reviews here in the blogosphere.

Then my employer decided to set up a reading scheme, that they’re calling The Big Read. It aims to encourage staff to think about different perspectives and think more critically about our work and our audiences. Our first book is Such A Fun Age, and we were each given a copy at the start of December. It seemed rude not to read it.

The story concerns Emira, a 25 year old black woman who is drifting a little in life, working as a transcriber and a babysitter, and Alix, one of Emira’s employers, a 33 year old mother of two. It explores the friendship groups of both women, shining a light on Black experience through Emira’s story as well as on the pressures on all women to be someone, to have purpose, to be fulfilled, all while looking good, through the stories and interactions of all the female characters. There’s also a story arc around the differing relationships between men and women, in particular men who want to appear as feminist and Black allies but whose actions are still underpinned by a certain level of chauvinism and white saviour behaviour.

It’s a book that got some hype. It was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. The cover is blazoned with praise, as is the front fly, and there are three pages of praise quotes. I’ve a friend who said that the hype is to be believed. I’ve a workmate who said that it’s good but a bit overegged. But what do I think?

The Shadow King

Read 18/04/2021-04/05/2021

Rating 4 stars

Hirut, a woman with a long scar “that puckers at the base of her neck and trails over her shoulder like a broken necklace”, waits in Addis Ababa station for a man she hasn’t seen in almost 40 years. They are connected by a secret, one from history, involving Mussolini and Emperor Haile Selassie.

Under Solomon Skies

Read 31/03/2021-03/04/2021

Rating 3 stars

Under Solomon Skies is Berni Sorga-Millwood’s first novel. It’s an environmental story that describes the devastating effects of global operations exploiting the Solomon Islands’ natural resources and the wider impact of climate change. Sorga-Millwood has drawn on her experience of living and working in the Solomon Islands as a teacher with VSO in writing the novel. Jacaranda published Under Solomon Skies last year as part of its Twenty in 2020 collaboration with Words of Colour Productions to publishing twenty Black British writers in one year.

The Girl with the Louding Voice

Read 09/10/2020-15/10/2020

Rating 5 stars

Abi Daré’s first novel is set in Nigeria and views that country’s patriarchal society through the eyes of a teenage girl who wants something better for herself. It’s a sassy, political, heartwarming story that gripped me with its heart stopping moments and its message of hope.

Random Thoughts on Lockdown 4

The world seems to be coming out of hibernation.

Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers

Read 07/06/2020-14/06/2020

Rating 4 stars

Book 2 in my 10 Books of Summer reading challenge.

Common People is a book I pledged for on Unbound in 2018. It grew from a radio documentary by Kit de Waal called “Where Are All the Working Class Writers?“, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2017.

As well as securing high profile, established authors like Malorie Blackman, Louise Doughty, Lisa McInerney and Anita Sethi, de Waal as editor commissioned a search through regional writer development agencies for new working class voices to be included in the anthology.

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

Read 03/06/2020-07/06/2020

Rating 5 stars

Book 1 in my 10 Books of Summer reading challenge.

I put The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House on my list of books for the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge because I’ve owned it since November 2018 and made a couple of attempts to read it, both times putting it down after a couple of pages because it felt too much. The current protests against the brutal treatment of black people by police and society in general made me get over myself.

This pocket sized volume of 50 pages packs a punch. It brings together five essays by Audre Lorde that are a call to dig deep, find our passion, harness our anger and make a permanent, radical change to the assumptions that underpin the world we live in. These essays highlight sexism, racism and homophobia and underline their intersectionality.

Girl, Woman, Other

Read 08/03/2020-13/03/2020

Rating 5 stars

What better reason to start reading a novel about what it means to be female in Britain today than it being International Women’s Day? I’ve wanted to read Bernardine Evaristo’s book since it won the Booker prize last year.