Marc > Recent Status Updates

Memorable line (on first read): “There's a telos of self-improvement baked into the immigrant experience.”

Hua Hsu's cadence & style are immediately engaging & inviting to know more. And wanting to know more.
Always fun to read of global students' reaction to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, aka UIUC. The author's parents-- both Taiwanese immigrants gaining an education-- met & married there. Never having lived anywhere else, I grew up contemporaneously in the exact same area & ended up attending UIUC. Twice.

"Ambition and pride are not generally muscles women are encouraged to cultivate."
Uttered candidly by Lady Caroline, this statement encapsulates the modern twist & needles Sophie Irwin is attempting to thread and knit together in a Regency romance novel with decidedly modern perspectives, motives, and attitudes.

Over 50% read, the energy after chapters 18 and 19 is flagging.
Unfortunate as, from the first pages, the book & its characters were engaging & quite energetic with possibilities.

At times tragic in its truth of a hard & (at times) ugly life lived in racist America, "The Bluest Eye" is worth the time.

Toni Morrison shines a light of beauty and truth to illuminate the courage and tenacity of her characters, like "but the unquarreled evening hung like the first note of a dirge in sullenly expectant air."