Status Updates From Brown Girl in the Ring

*looks at number of books on currently reading list*
Yes, I have a problem... this is why library bans are awesome and exist.

:<

Enjoying this one so far! :D

This whole ghost-thing is very intriguing.

Sorry for leaving this book untouched for so long. Turns out I'm not as good at reading two books as I'd hoped. Amyway. This book reads like a breeze, which is delightful.

Since Tigana is quite a thick book to carry with me on the subway/the train, I need another book to read when I'm heading somewhere, which is often. So I've started to read this book, since I'm going to meet the author in September.

And so far... wow, a really intruiging opening.

I am loving this. The dialogue is magical.

Rain pelted down like boulders. The lightning cracked fissures into the tower's structure, and water began to leak in, buckets of it. The water traced forms along the wall, and two majestic Black women stepped out from its current: graceful Oshun and beautiful Emanjah, water goddesses both, anger terrible on their unearthly faces.

Mami took Ti-Jeanne and Tony into the kitchen, where she filled a basket with all kinds of odd things: three bunches of dried herbs; two white potatoes--those were hard to come by, and Mami usually hoarded them; a margarine tub into which she had poured cornmeal; some of her homemade hard candy; her sharpest kitchen knife; a pack of matches; and a cigar, which she took from a cookie tin on the topmost shelf.

Ti-Jeanne reached out to touch the cards, then looked at Mami. Her grandmother nodded in encouragement. The Five of Cane, five men dancing the Stick Fight; the Jab-Jab; a prancing, nearly naked man, his body completely covered with red paint, horns stuck to his head, and a snaky, rude-looking tail tied on to his body. But thing I see is some kinda animal, thought Ti-Jeanne, not a man in costume.

When Toronto's economic base collapsed, investors, commerce, and government withdrew into the suburb cities, leaving the rotten core to decay. Those who stayed were the ones who couldn't or wouldn't leave. The street people. The poor people. The ones who didn't see the writing on the wall, or were too stubborn to give up their homes. Or who saw the decline of authority as an opportunity.