Books

Book 790: The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

OMG ya’ll, clearly, I should be judging the next Booker Prize. First Wolf Hall and now this, I get why they choose these beautiful books as winners. I’m only partially serious. I still think so many of the books are boring old stuffy books that are specifically chosen because of the inability of large swaths of the population to comprehend or appreciate them. So, boo on that.

All kidding aside, this was an incredibly beautifully written DEBUT novel. I was floored when I found that out. The way she wrote and the way time flowed eerily (and seamlessly) backward and forward in this novel it truly felt like a master class in novels. No wonder she won the prize—I’m definitely going to have to read her only other fictional work, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, at some point because everything else she’s written is nonfiction (what?!).

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Books

Book 397: The Beans of Egypt, Maine – Carolyn Chute

My friend Carlie (Hi Carlie!), recommended this book way back when I started this blog not long after she recommended The Hunger Games and I picked up a copy back in December 2012. I don’t know why it took so long for me to get around to it, but it did. I should’ve known better based on how much I enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, another of her discoveries.

This book really should be mentioned in the same breath of books like The Color Purple and Bastard Out of Carolina. Maybe it is and I’m not aware of it, but if it isn’t I’m not sure why. It was published in 1985 right in between the Color and Carolina and it’s just as harrowing, real and disturbing as either of those. (It’s also compared to Faulkner, but I can’t speak to that as I’ve never read him.)

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