Books

Book 911: The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison

Toni 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 phyical 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 480: Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood

I picked up my copy of Cat’s Eye back in December of 2011 and I’ve waited WAY too long to read it. I’ve been looking at my bookshelves thinking I needed to read more of those books and so I went back to my list and looked at the oldest on there and this was one of them.

I’m glad I read this because every time I read a another Margaret Atwood novel I ask myself why in the hell I waited so long between novels. I’m doubly glad I read this as it’s kept my belief that the short and long list booker prizes are more approachable than the winners. I haven’t read the 1989 winner yet, it’s Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, and it could break that streak with how much of an impact Never Let Me Go left on me.

I think what has always drawn me to Atwood are her strong female characters, her awesome speculative fiction, and what seems like her fascination with age and aging. I thought it was weird at first, but then I realized that some of these novels I’m reading from the late 80s were when Atwood was already in her late-40s/early-50s. So it made a lot more sense when I realized that. Continue reading “Book 480: Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood”