Books

Book 959: The Dove in the Belly – Jim Grimsley

Book cover of "The Dove in the Belly" with Amazon Affiliate linkWhen I finished re-reading Dream Boy back in May, I did a quick search to see what Jim Grimsley was up to these days and stumbled across this upcoming release. I reached out to the publisher for a copy and crossed my fingers it wasn’t going to be as traumatic or emotionally draining as the others I’ve read.*

The Dove in the Belly is the story of Ronny and Ben. It takes place on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in the 1970s and that’s the main reason I wanted to read this, Grimsley went to UNC and having it set on the UNC campus intrigued me as I also went to UNC and remember some of the history around the early LGBT organizations and experiences on campus.

Continue reading “Book 959: The Dove in the Belly – Jim Grimsley”

Books

Book 932: Young Jane Austen – Lisa Pliscou

Book cover of "Young Jane Austen" with Amazon Affiliate linkI picked this up back in 2016 and it’s languished on my TBR Austen/Brontë shelf ever since. It came up on my random book generator spreadsheet when I was packing books for our vacation back in February but it was the last one on the list and it kept getting delayed.

So FINALLY I made myself read wedge it in between ARCs this month and realized I should’ve read it weeks ago because it could easily be read in one sitting.

Continue reading “Book 932: Young Jane Austen – Lisa Pliscou”

Books

Book 929: Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li

Book cover of "Portrait of a Thief" with Amazon Affiliate linkI’m punching myself for not reading this book earlier AND for goofing off (aka knitting and Minecrafting) while reading it instead of blazing through it as it deserved. I’ve been sitting on this since November of LAST YEAR when someone in marketing at the publisher reached out with it.* I forced myself to wait until late March/early April to read it because I had a feeling I would really enjoy it and that barely covers my enthusiasm for it.

The premise was fascinating to me even if I was a bit wary of the Boston setting (I have bad experience with books being set where I live/have lived), but international art theft by college students, critiques on colonialism, BIPOC author, and characters, discussion of diaspora, ummm obviously I was going to say yes to it. I found out while reading the acknowledgments, that this has already been optioned by Netflix and I cannot tell you how much I’m ready for that!

Continue reading “Book 929: Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li”

Books

Book 911: The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

Book cover of "The Bluest Eye" with Amazon Affiliate linkToni Morrison is one of those authors who have always been on my list, mostly due to the controversy around their books (stupid book banners), but I’ve never gotten around to reading them. Both The Bluest Eye and Beloved were on my The Classics Club list I created back in 2012 and I picked up physical copies sometime after that.

When Morrison passed in 2019, I told myself I would read her works and it took me this long to get to them thanks to always being distracted and just not making an effort. Both are relatively short so ended up on my Rando Book Selector spreadsheet using randomly generated titles from roughly 60 books to slowly chip away at my TBR pile and The Bluest Eye came up as I was planning for a recent vacation and here we are.

Continue reading “Book 911: The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison”

Books

Book 909: The Professor – Charlotte Brontë

Book cover of "The Professor" with Amazon Affiliate linkI’m actually making an effort to clear my TBR shelves whether it’s my physical bookshelf or my Kindle, so there are going to be some random books showing up over the next few months.

This is the penultimate complete work of the Brontë sisters that remained on my TBR list. The final book remaining is Charlotte’s Shirley which I’ll probably cross off at some point this year too. I do have a book of poetry by Emily that I want to read too, but I have a hard time finding the motivation to read poetry in general.

Continue reading “Book 909: The Professor – Charlotte Brontë”