A Jungle of Tales

  This book follows Rue, the ‘conjure woman’ of an isolated black community somewhere in the South. Like her mother, Miss May Belle, she is a skilled midwife and healer who is also believed to be able to make curses and converse with spirits. As such, the respect her neighbors have for her is tinged with fear. Her position in their Reconstruction-era village is threatened by the arrival of a charismatic preacher named Bruh Abel, the birth of an uncanny child, a spreading sickness, and the lies Rue has told to try and keep safe both her people and an individual who is important to her. In telling Rue’s story, Atakora jumps back and forth between “Freedom time”, “Slavery time”, and “War time”. This makes it feel like a mystery in many ways, with the reasons for certain decisions or character interactions coming as twists partway through or at the end. That and the cliffhangers at the end of most sections keep pulling the reader forward, and the solutions do not disap

My mom gave me this book last Christmas, the same year I gave her a book set during the 1918 flu/WWI - because what better time than a pandemic to read about other times people thought the world was ending? This is a short book that aims to give a snapshot of life in Europe and neighboring areas on the edge of the first millennium AD, framed around the life of an unusual pope, the scholarly Gerbert de Aurillac, AKA Sylvester II. The book begins with a crowd gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica on the last night of 999 AD waiting for “the Day of Wrath” – the second coming, the Apocalypse, the end of the world in some form. The author notes that many educated people inside and outside the church didn’t believe the millennium had much significance “but the common people, the lower nobles, village priests, and peasants, took it as an absolute truth that the ‘nightfall of the universe was at hand’”. People saw signs of this impending end in any ominous event, and mas

  I feel a bit late to the party in talking about this book after seeing several years-worth of reviews raving about it. To tell the truth, though, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up based on the blurb on the back :“Reclusive Hollywood icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life” . Those glowing reviews spilled the beans on Evelyn’s secrets enough to intrigue me, though. After all, I don’t think I’ve ever met another Cuban-American bisexual woman in real life, let alone as the main character of a hugely popular novel. And she gets to be messy and real, and not a perfect heroine? OK, sign me up! The book was just as much a page-turner as promised - though I feel it delivers better on one of those secrets than the other. The story starts with Monique Grant, a low-level magazine writer, being unexpectedly invited to interview the famous but mysterious actress. Her editor assumes it has something to do with an upcoming

‘Seraph of the End’ left me thirsty for more vampire stories. Alas, I haven’t been able to track down an English translation of ‘Seraph of the End: The story of vampire Mikaela’, which supposedly not only covers Mika’s missing years as a newborn vampire but delves deeper into the history of the vampire lore and history of that universe. But a search on Goodreads turned up – among some other intriguing suggestions - this manga. I found a translation here .   It is a very different story from ‘Seraph’, but really good in its own way, both horrifying and strangely sweet. While biking at night, a first-year high school student named Makoto Okazaki is bitten by a vampire girl who seemingly drops out of the sky. She asks him (note: read right to left): He wakes in the hospital with a terrible thirst and an aversion to bright lights. Things seem almost normal for a while, except that he finds himself punching Yuki, the taller classmate who’s been pu

              After ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles’ , I needed a palate cleanser, and remembered that I had recently bought this book 1 . This set of interconnected short stories, based on traditional Japanese folklore and ghost stories but emphasizing the feminine perspective, was perfect! It reminds me a little of Neil Gaiman’s short story ‘Snow, glass, apples’, in which he uses key features of ‘Snow White’ to tell a story about a vampire. It would still be enjoyable if you’d never heard the original fairy-tale, but much cooler if you have…which is why I was happy this book included a synopsis of the tales inspiring it at the back, for those of us who didn’t grow up with them.   1. This is also exactly how I ended up discovering ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ :   “Let’s try this ‘JoJos Bizarre Adventure’ thing everyone is raving about. [Half a season later]. I…don’t think I’m the target audience for this. These unsettlingly muscular guys yelling and punching are givin

            Have you ever experienced a painting or piece of music and thought: “I can see the virtuosity that went into creating this, so I kind of get why other people like this. But for me, looking at/listening to this once is more than enough”? That is my feeling about this book – which is really disappointing because based on the description on the back I thought it would be right in my wheelhouse. I was expecting something like a Japanese version of ‘Neverwhere’ or ‘The Master and Margarita’ : a magical realism adventure with imagery and characters that are really outside our normal experience. That is not what this book is. I’m still wrapping my head around what it is and how I feel about it. But here goes…             The story is told from the perspective of Toru Okada, a young man who recently quit his job as a legal assistant and is acting as homemaker until he figures out what he actually wants to do with his life. His wife Kumiko was initially supportive of this decisi