pick#CoverStories Day 29: #Music that transcends borders is what Yo Yo Ma, United Nations Messenger of Peace, creates - and this is a fantastic picturebook biography that shows exactly that. My full review including a video of Yo Yo Ma‘s historic musical performance that took place at the Rio Grande also known as the US-Mexico Border: https://wp.me/pDlzr-quq - A very timely book.
pickNila,the daughter of doctor refugees from Afghanistan,grows up in poverty in Berlin because both parents cannot work in their profession.she hides her identity,saying she‘s Greek or Israeli&instead of studying for college,goes to raves&techno clubs.One night she meets Marlowe&is mesmerised by the older man whose debut novel made him an Indy celebrity.lots of drugs,sex,art,books,self hate,hate for Germany&its racism,Islamophobia,oppression of women
so-soI usually enjoy books about wandering Berlin, but this one not so much.
A bildungsroman featuring a lot of drugs, bad sex and bad choices, I winced for the protagonist as she made one awful decision after another. Lots of interesting individual elements, but I never felt I really understood where the author was going (and in placed desperately just hoped it would all just Stop!)
#WomensPrizeLL25
I was home neither in Rosenwald nor in Gropiusstadt. And like so many children before me, I became my own exile.
At school, the girls wore padded down jackets and boots I had seen only in equestrian ads. They knew how to ride horses and drank expensive water and used Dr. Hauschka products, which felt so expensive back then, I believed only millionaires could afford them. Longingly, I used a pump of their creams, inhaling that herbal scent.
pickBook 9 #WP25
This is a low pick for me. The last 100 pages were a bit of a struggle, I didn't want to pick it up and read more about her self destruction, but I was still interested in her life as an Afghani-German and what it was like as a German immigrant with so much hate that we don't talk about.
The writing throughout is solid, and the perspective is one I don't see a lot of in English Lit so it makes sense why this was chosen for the WP
She turned on the radio in the mornings, dancing when rock songs filled the kitchen with bygone delight. Recited poetry in an old, formal Persian-lines that I didn't understand but whose cadences imprinted themselves onto my brain-and took me to local libraries, where I was allowed to read as much as I wanted, the weight of the laminated library card like a luxurious treasure in my hand, my own name written in blue ink underneath: Nilab Haddadi.
...as if to signal to us idiots that reality still existed...
(How do you let someone know the party's over?)
pick#CoverStories Day 18: Central to this tale is the plight of a father and his young son (who was sent a new pair of #shoes by his mother who is working in the United States) as they travel from their home in El Salvador to Guatemala to the US-Mexican border, ostensibly to be reunited with the mother. My review of this timely tale: https://wp.me/pDlzr-gum
#WeeklyForecast
#WP25 I have 100 pages left of the tagged then I can start A Little Trickerie which I am super excited for
🎧This week's listen will be Ancillary Justice my January #DoubleSpin
Then hoping to sneak in The Coin which needs to go back to the library.
