The Blacker the Berry

This was another book from the Harlem Renaissance.  I didn't care for the main character Emma Lou as I found her snooty.  I was involved though with the book and finished it in a short time.  It's about Emma Lou's struggle to find a place where she belongs.  Her skin is too dark for the African Americans around her and the Caucasians. She goes to college for a few years.  Then she goes to Harlem where she falls for a loser player called Alva.  He even has the gall to tell her she is imagining the discrimination.  However, you as a reader see it happening everywhere around her.  The reader is frustrated by some of her actions like her quitting college and going back to Alva.  However, the ending left me satisfied.  

Borges: A Life

It's kind of weird that I chose to read this whereas I've never read one of his books of short stories.  Nevertheless, I picked it up on the shelf and read it.  It's cool that a high school dropout was able to become one of South America's best writers.  However, Borges comes across as very smart and determined.  He sent his work to millions of places, not over that he started many literary magazines himself.  This book also goes over all of the trials in his life: his blindness, his hatred of the Perons, and his several unrequited crushes.  The most frustrating of which was the writer Norah Lange.  She was a woman clearly in love with another man.  Whenever the man dumped her she went right back to Jorge only to go back if the man showed the slightest interest.  I felt like telling Jorge she's not into you.  This book made me read The Aleph which I reviewed earlier. 

The Clean House

This play is about a doctor Lane and her maid.  Lane's sister Virginia loves cleaning and secretly takes over the maid's duties.  The maid has dreams about making it as a stand-up comedian.  Lane's world falls apart as her husband announces that he has found his soul mate in an older woman.  I found this play amusing and it was funny at times.  I don't know the concept that someone would love cleaning was funny to me. The play was pretty original.  

The Aleph and other stories

I've been reading Edwin Williamson's "Borges a Life."  I've found it fascinating.  I've only read The Book of Imaginary Creatures which I loved.  It's kind of weird that I picked a biography of a guy I haven't really read.  I knew it was time I read more.  So I picked up some of his short stories to read.  He writes in a detached sort of way.  He has his own style and it took me a while but then I liked it.    He's not an author to skim.  The story I liked the most was "The Other Death" about a soldier who was a coward but God manages to change almost everyone's memories, that is except the narrator who remembers the truth. I found the concept of God doing that interesting.

The School for Scandal

This is the story of two brothers Charles and Joseph.  Charles is a gambler and considered a bad guy.  However, the real truth is that Charles has some integrity while Joseph, the truly evil one just knows how to put on an act.  A wealthy uncle shows up and pretends to be someone else.  He finds out the truth about the brothers.  This play written in the 1700s is still relevant to his day as gossip has always been considered entertainment.  The play is quick to show its destructible nature.  I like the discussion also of people being deceiving in their appearances.  This is a comedy and there are some funny moments particularly when the uncle pretends to be a poorer person around Charles.  Do not let the fact that it was written a few centuries ago scare you off as it is a simple play to read.  I enjoyed it.  Except for the occasional Shakespeare play I haven't really read that many plays from before the 1800s so The School for Scandal was a revelation to me.  I need to read more "old" plays.   

Sapphira and the Slave Girl

This is the fourth book I've read from Willa Cather.  It's also the weakest.  This was one of her last novels.  Still, it had some good points about it.  It deals with the jealousy between the wife Sapphira and the beautiful African American girl Nancy.  A nephew Martin arrives that lusts after the slave.  Sapphira's daughter Rachel plans a getaway for Nancy.  I was more involved when Martin came into the mix.   The four books I've read from Willa Cather shows that she had a lot of range.  It doesn't seem like it's the same author from Death comes from the Archbishop.  That's good.  A lot of authors repeat themselves. 3/5

Not without Laughter

In my American Literature class, we had to read some poetry from Langston Hughes.  I'm not the best at understanding poetry but Hughes was easy to read and very good.  When I found out he wrote novels too I had to read one.  This is his first.  It's a coming of age story about a boy named Sandy, probably semi-autobiographical.  It's about a boy whose father is a drifter and his grandmother who mostly takes care of him. The grandmother wants him to become a somebody like Booker T. Washington.  She has a lot of aspirations for this boy.  His aunt Harriet takes a shady road but ends up becoming a successful singer.  Along the way, the boy gets a job at a hotel and as a shoeshine boy.    I've been reading books from the Harlem Renaissance lately.  Why didn't I read books like this in high school?  Why wasn't I introduced to the movement till college?  But then I did go to a lackluster school so that might have something to do with it. 3.5/5