_brown girl dreaming_, Jacqueline Woodson
Nov. 21st, 2016 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutBook group pick this month for Mayberry, NH (<-- not its real name). I got this copy from my local library (technically, it's from the Minuteman library network and comes from Goodnow).
It's prose. It's a super fast read and it is amazing how it just sinks into one's brain and the details just _stick_. Incredible writing, deceptively simple, and it seems clear from interviews (and from the content of this book, as it is a memoir) that that is both what the author intends and what the author is really, really good at. If you're wondering whether you should try a book by this author, the answer is, yes! Yes you should.
I don't generally go out of my way before reading a book club selection to research a book or author, the way I often do before reading a book _I_ pick. So I was quite startled to find partway through the book that she had been raised a JW. When she talks about the pink songbook and quotes a line or 4 of lyric, she caused my past to come right back out of its box and now I have that goddamn song stuck in my head again. Not likely to happen to most readers!
I'm looking forward to this evening's discussion, and may update this post after.
It's prose. It's a super fast read and it is amazing how it just sinks into one's brain and the details just _stick_. Incredible writing, deceptively simple, and it seems clear from interviews (and from the content of this book, as it is a memoir) that that is both what the author intends and what the author is really, really good at. If you're wondering whether you should try a book by this author, the answer is, yes! Yes you should.
I don't generally go out of my way before reading a book club selection to research a book or author, the way I often do before reading a book _I_ pick. So I was quite startled to find partway through the book that she had been raised a JW. When she talks about the pink songbook and quotes a line or 4 of lyric, she caused my past to come right back out of its box and now I have that goddamn song stuck in my head again. Not likely to happen to most readers!
I'm looking forward to this evening's discussion, and may update this post after.