It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I finished two books this past week- Every Good Boy Does Fine, by Jeremy Denk, and The Silence of the White City, by Eva Garcia Sáenz. I'll have a review of White City in a few days. In the mean time I started two new books:

 

Batouala, by René Maran, won the Prix Goncourt in 1922, the first book by a Black author to win France's most prestigious literary prize. It was a big influence on the winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize, David Diop's amazing At Night All Blood is Black. I'm only through the introduction and preface but I have high hopes. It's short and I expect to finish quickly.

In the nonfiction realm, I started Stephen Puleo's Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. It's interesting! It caught my eye after reading Elizabeth McCracken's wonderful Bowlaway, in which the main protagonist dies in the flood. And I'm from Boston so of course I want to read about a weird thing that happened there. I'll admit the prose is a little on the dry side but the story is keeping me going.

In audioland I'm continuing to enjoy How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish, by Ilan Stavans. I have about 10 hours to go. Learning all kinds of interesting things.