I‘m in a test of wills with this book. Just renewed it for a week because I‘m determined to finish it, but I‘m 70% there and EXHAUSTED. Sorry—unpopular opinion, I know. 😢#TOB2025

Tonight I went to a wonderful “Reading Dinner” where we sit around and read (I brought James) for awhile and then have dinner. Such a please to discuss #TOB2025 books with smart people.

The guests were silenced by a painful mixture of Schoenberg and Russian folk song, derived from musically obtuse Styrian peasants, who had absorbed their atonality along with their mother's milk. The sound hurt; but it could not be ignored. Too much of it, Phryne was convinced, would curdle custard. (69)

It is a good book--and with some of the detritus cleared and perhaps a bit more interest in the trajectory of narrative, it could have been great. Certainly it was enough that I'll be curious to read what comes next from Cunningham, and I hope there is a “next“! #TOB2025

I am glad I read it, and there were definitely parts of the book I thought were glorious in prose and imagination. But at the end I felt I had finished putting together a piece of furniture, and found myself looking at several screws and bolt or two that were “left over.“ #TOB2025

Al-Essa's “looking glass“ is perhaps more than it seems, and we are easily manipulated into caring for characters even though they bear titles, like stock figures, rather than names. The “Everyman“ approach keeps a strange distance, until we come to understand the power of our own imaginations with an ending that has been described as a “narrative rupture“ or a “twist worthy of Kafka.“ #TOB2025

Senna does excellent work layering the texture with tension. First and foremost, there is Jane's own mixed-race identity and how it does/doesn't interact with both her personal and professional life. The book is more a tragicomedy than anything else, and the humor is sardonic. #TournamentofBooks2025 #TOB2025

No book or project could ever be comprehensive when it comes to exploring and capturing the history and legacy that began in 1619, when enslaved Africans set foot on the shores of North America, a year prior to the arrival of the Mayflower. However, as a reclamation of American History, this book is a chronicle, a celebration of poetry, art, and writing, and a call for understanding and moving forward.