City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence

Hello my lovely readers! I had high hopes for this one and was left feeling...meh. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks or plastic, its entire economy is grey, and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary. Among them are Guled, a former child soldier who lives for football; Nisho, who scrapes an existence by pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; Tawane, the indomitable youth leader; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education.

In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there.

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Lereoux

Hello my lovely readers! Can you believe that I've seen the play (in London), watched the 2004 film, but have NEVER read the book, despite having it on my shelf for 22 YEARS!? Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
First published in French as a serial in 1909, The Phantom of the Opera is a riveting story that revolves around the young, Swedish Christine Daaé. Her father, a famous musician, dies, and she is raised in the Paris Opera House with his dying promise of a protective angel of music to guide her. After a time at the opera house, she begins hearing a voice, who eventually teaches her how to sing beautifully. All goes well until Christine's childhood friend Raoul comes to visit his parents, who are patrons of the opera, and he sees Christine when she begins successfully singing on the stage. The voice, who is the deformed, murderous 'ghost' of the opera house named Erik, however, grows violent in his terrible jealousy, until Christine suddenly disappears. The phantom is in love, but it can only spell disaster.

Paule Marshall: A Writer's Life by Mary Helen Washington

 

Hello my lovely readers! Don't you love it when you stumble upon a book in the library that relates to a book you recently read? Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Growing up in World War II–era Brooklyn among West Indian immigrants, Paule Marshall (1929–2019) was fiercely driven to become a writer, making art from the world she knew, the life she lived, and the world she imagined. Though her novels and stories are understood by scholars as the beginning of contemporary Black feminist literature―bridging Harlem Renaissance writers like Zora Neale Hurston to such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou―Marshall’s legacy is often overlooked.

In this elegant literary biography, distinguished scholar of African American literature Mary Helen Washington draws on exclusive access to the writer’s papers, including her newly discovered unpublished memoir, and scores of interviews with family and friends to give us the first account of Marshall’s life as an artist and of the depth and brilliance of her work.

Beginning with her 1959 debut, Brown Girl, Brownstones, a coming-of-age story set among Barbadian immigrants and African Americans in Brooklyn, and moving through her later works set in the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States, Marshall’s novels chart the diasporic life that Marshall herself lived, defined by Black women’s experiences, an unapologetic and sometimes queer sexuality, and the history of the African diaspora. Despite the lush and finely observed inner lives of her heroines, however, Marshall was famous for tightly guarding her own privacy, and it is this enigma―Marshall’s deeply expressive writing versus her guarded public exterior―that Washington draws out.

Here is the first look at a prescient, brilliantly talented writer, a complex and fascinating woman, whose fiction single-handedly stages a reverse middle passage that extends from the United States and the Caribbean to Africa.

"I Can't Wait to Call You My Wife": African American Letters of Love, Marriage, and Family in the Civil War Era by Rita Roberts

 

Hello my lovely readers! This book was sitting on my shelf for years and I'd been dying to get to it. I finally read it and my heart swooned. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Amidst bloody battles and political maneuvering, thousands of African Americans spent the Civil War trying to hold their families together. This moving book illuminates that struggle through the letters they exchanged. Despite harsh laws against literacy and brutal practices that broke apart Black families, people found ways to write to each other against all odds. In these pages, readers will meet parents who are losing hope of ever seeing their children again and a husband who walks fifteen miles to visit his wife, enslaved on a different plantation.

The collection also includes tender courtship letters exchanged between Lewis Henry Douglass and Helen Amelia Loguen, both children of noted abolitionists, and letters sent home by the young women who traveled south to teach literacy to escaped slaves. Roberts' expert curation allows readers to see the wider historical context. The transcriptions are accompanied by reproductions of selected original letters and photographs of the letter writers.

BOOKISH THOUGHTS....new goals and updates!

 Hello my lovely readers!

A couple of bookish updates for you....

NEW GOALS
My goal (retroactive as of 2025) is to read a book from EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY in the world and a book from all 50 states.

It's ambitious, but I'm giving myself until 2029 to do so (more so for the Read Around the World challenge.) Just this year alone, I've read books from 20 countries and I wasn't even trying! Last year, I read books from 16 countries and again, I wasn't keeping track or trying to do so. 

I've spent about a week researching books that I want to read and adding tagging them on Libby, so I'm ready! I have between three to five books for each country, so I'll have options--just in case I have to DNF one. I'm excited! I truly think I can accomplish this goal.

The 50 states challenge was a spur of the moment thing. This year, I've read books from 19 states, so I figure I can get this knocked out by next year or this year if I'm super intentional. No pressure though!

OTHER UPDATES
I bought a third Kindle. Shame on me...but this one is my active Kindle! I have two Kindles. One is the basic Kindle that my hubby bought me in January 2025. The second is the Colorsoft that I bought myself for Christmas. Both have all of the books from my Libby tags (nonfiction/fiction) on them, so they aren't coming off airplane mode for a VERY LONG TIME.

This third Kindle, I bought used off Facebook Marketplace and it's the Paperwhite. I've even gone down the rabbit hole and ordered some stickers and Kindle inserts to go with it. Holy consumption, Batman! I have used it a lot more than my other two. It's my immediate Kindle, so whatever books I want to read immediately from Libby, go straight to this one. Yes, I did have the Kindle app on my tablet, but it hurts my eyes to read on that one, so here we are. The tablet is solely for Libby books that can't send to Kindle and Hoopla books. Don't ask, just nod your head and agree, we're all about consuming books in all forms!

I recently discovered reciprocard.com and got a library card from Orange County, which I'm very excited about! Next weekend, I'm going to stop by Randolph County and Chatham County either on my way to or from Greensboro, and pick up my library cards. This means I'll need to free up space on my Libby account because I'm currently maxed out at 50 cards, but I have a few expiring this year that I won't renew, so it all works out!

W.E.B Du Bois: A Biography 1868-1963 by David Levering Lewis

 

Hello my lovely readers! These biographies also languished on my shelves for a minute before I finally decided to pick them up. I partially read the first biography along with its new audiobook (heyyy Courtney B. Vance), but for the second biography, it was a 100 percent audiobook. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator.  In his magisterial prose, David Levering Lewis chronicles Du Bois’s long and storied career, detailing the momentous contributions to our national character that still echo today.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee

Hello my lovely readers! I finally got around to reading this book after buying it in 2015! Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS
Go Set a Watchman is Harper Lee's earliest known novel. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014, and is now published for the first time. Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman is set during an era of rapid change and significant progress in Civil Rights legislation, and it engages with questions of racial equality and justice that are still at the forefront of our national conversation.