2021-11-09 14:39
“Men talk to her on planes. She doesn’t invite it anymore; it’s just something that happens. Usually, she travels with things to armor herself against unwanted conversatio… Read More
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Chronic Bibliophilia Blog
chronicbibliophilia.wordpress.com
Chronic Bibliophilia chronicles my journey as I endeavor to become a ridiculously well-read human being. Part of that journey includes probing what I mean by “well-readâ€. Having reviewed countless lists, books about books, awards lists, and literary prescriptions, I am disappointed but not surprised by the lack of diversity represented among the “must-read†lists.
When we, as bookworms and consumers of words, embark upon a book, we are listening to an other’s voice. We are learning an other’s point of view. We are expanding our minds, embracing our world, and acknowledging our differences. We need to push our boundaries and seek broader voices.
Through 2 to 3 posts each week, this blog provides reflections, reviews, and recommendations from a reading list focused on supporting and highlighting the voices that continue to face suppression. I believe that this project has changed not just what I read, but how I read and how I think. I hope you’ll join me on my literary odyssey.
2021-11-02 18:01
“A tree is a memory keeper. Tangled beneath our roots, hidden inside our trunks, are the sinews of history, the ruins of wars nobody came to win, the bones of the missing.
The wate… Read More
2021-10-05 18:46
“She isn’t a footnote, she’s a person. And she – all the Trojan women – should be memorialised as much as any other person.”
– A Thousand Ships… Read More
2021-09-28 18:41
“Doerr has created a tapestry of times and places that reflect our vast interconnectedness – with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us and those who wi… Read More
2021-09-21 14:46
“The pages turned; we traveled easily, everywhere.”
If you’re like me, the words “Richard Powers has a new book out” might be all you need to hear to k… Read More
2021-09-11 17:30
“That was why it was so weird when she left, out of all the adults. Most of them taking off wouldn’t have been that strange in the grand scheme of things. But my mom, Junipe… Read More
2021-09-02 18:32
Thanks to a worldwide pandemic (perhaps you’ve heard?), this year’s winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, usually announced in June, will be announced on September 8th… Read More
2021-08-25 15:27
“If only people understood how difficult it is to teach these students to be better people. He tries and tries and tries, and yet sometimes, even he can’t help them.
Not tha… Read More
2021-08-19 16:25
In Emily Austin’s debut novel, a young woman named Gilda shares the inner workings of her desperately, darkly anxious mind. Obsessed with death and catastrophe, Gilda stumbles through… Read More
2021-07-16 16:20
Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn… Read More
2020-04-21 16:12
Today brings the announcement of which 6 books from the extraordinary 16 longlisted titles remain in contention for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Though the world has changed dra… Read More
2020-03-17 15:44
During my two years of writerly silence, my life and thoughts were frequently focused on increasing diversity, inclusion, and equity, and, because my soul is built around bookish thoughts, m… Read More
2020-03-14 18:37
It has been an extended hiatus for me here at Chronic Bib – not from reading, but from writing and sharing my bibliophilic musings. But the tug of the Women’s Prize is too much t… Read More
2018-04-28 18:14
“A loss is not a void. A loss is a presence all its own; a loss takes up space; a loss is born just as any other thing that lives.”
Among the ma… Read More
2018-04-25 14:35
Included in today’s post are brief reviews of two quick reads with long-lasting impact, their residue lingering in my mind weeks after I’ve finished with their pages.
 &hell…Read More
2018-04-19 17:23
“Mykola had stuck with the nervous, the reluctant like himself among the newly recruited, until he’d learned that another man’s fear was nothing to trust in. Give the fearf… Read More
2018-04-12 17:52
“‘You must understand,’ Saw Lay explained as he and Benny walked one evening in April. ‘The loyalist bond we share with the Brits … what made it stick was our… Read More
2018-04-05 17:07
“I watched people pass by, liked the way their voices filled the air, made everything feel whole, and I felt my lips turn a smile as birds jumped over and under tree branches. For a mo… Read More
2018-03-27 18:19
“During my second week on the island, I woke up in the witching hour between night and day and saw the sky divided into pink, orange, and gold. The l… Read More
2018-03-26 19:31
Late winter and early spring brings the publication of two novels – which I coincidentally read in succession – which have significant thematic as well as tonal overlap. “W… Read More
2018-03-22 21:23
Sister to the Man Booker Prize, the Man Booker International Prize began in 2005 as an award for a body of work and changed in 2016 to be an award for a single work of fiction, translat… Read More
2018-03-09 19:05
The real announcement, the once by the judges themselves in all their feminist glory and bookish wisdom, was announced at the stroke of midnight on March 8, and it was, as always, an excitin… Read More
2018-03-07 16:05
It is selection night – the night the Women’s Prize for Fiction announces its longlist of nominees – and my feminist , bookish heart beats with anticipation. Since its ince… Read More
2018-03-04 19:52
“Strange how normal it’s become for us to lie on the ground and listen while nearby, people try to kill each other.”
Octavia E. Butler, one of the foremothers of Afrofuturi… Read More
2018-03-03 21:15
Every February I find myself somehow taken by surprise by my overwhelm. Winter’s endless dark, life’s continuous pressures, the world’s relentless disasters, racism’s… Read More
2018-01-27 19:05
“But there is nowhere that they can be or feel safe. No place where there are jobs. No city, no block, where what they know, all they know, is that their lives matter, that they are lo… Read More
2018-01-23 19:56
“White people think it is a compliment when they do not ‘see’ you as a black person. In their minds, black people embody the biggest clus… Read More
2018-01-20 20:25
Like Jesmyn Ward’s previous novel set in Bois Sauvage, a Mississippi town of her imagining, “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is achingly honest, unmistakably southern, and award-winn… Read More
2018-01-16 01:29
It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the United States, a holiday that is all too quiet and under feted, in my opinion. My bookish heart beats with equal parts giddiness and gravity as… Read More
2018-01-13 16:36
“If they planned every detail, the Shakers had believed, they could create a patch of heaven on earth, a little refuge from the world, and the founders of Shaker Heights had thought th… Read More
2018-01-09 20:30
“‘How dare you speak of being in charge?’ Mukri’s gaze was contemptuous. ‘You are not even accredited by the Bombay… Read More
2018-01-08 01:18
“As of this moment Art has had enough of Christmas. He now knows he never wants to see another Christmas Day again. … Read More
2018-01-06 20:46
“It occurred to Kate that all the definitive images of New York City she’d accumulated were views from a distance. That it was a place best seen from bridges and water and sky. H… Read More
2017-12-31 21:10
Over the past month my writing has limped along, overshadowed by year-end responsibilities, winter holidays, school vacation for my little one, and seasonal elevations in anxiety. Fortunate… Read More
2017-12-31 18:53
“Fidel himself always gambled that the long run would make him look good, whatever sins he needed to be absolved of in the short term. He remains a giant, but like any giant, the effec… Read More
2017-12-21 19:42
“Mother of All Pigs” by Malu Halasa
“‘Such a party last night.’ The words come out long and heavy like a sigh, but the inflec… Read More
2017-12-11 19:29
“Life is just this, Jama thought, a long journey, with lightness and darkness falling over you, companions all around on their own journeys. Each person sitting passively or impatientl… Read More
2017-12-04 19:07
“The difficulty of seeing clearly haunted me long before my eyes went bad, in life as well as in art. It’s a problem of the viewer’s perspective – as Matt pointed out… Read More
2017-12-01 13:43
“because a life based on incomprehension and misinterpretation and erroneous ideas must end just as springtime must end, budding and greening must end, and everything will be just as i… Read More
2017-11-30 18:12
Editor John Freeman has been making his mark in the publishing world with his relatively recent creation of the “Freeman’s” Journal. In this, the fourth, edition, Freeman h… Read More
2017-11-27 20:29
“There is a notion out there that black people enjoy the Sisyphean struggle against racism. In fact, most of us live for the day when we can struggle against anything else. But having… Read More
2017-11-23 19:02
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.” – Henry David Thoreau
The days are getting shorter, the holidays abound in which we are led to reflect on the p… Read More
2017-11-20 19:15
“Is unbelievable, I arriving London, ‘Heathlow Airport’. Every single name very difficult remembering, because just not ‘London Air… Read More
2017-11-14 18:18
“‘The thing to remember about love affairs,’ says Simone, ‘is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney.’ … Read More
2017-11-10 23:39
“Every historian writes in – and is impacted by – a precise historical moment. My moment, this book’s moment, coincides with the televised and untelevised killings of… Read More
2017-11-04 21:30
“Do not think that time simply flies away. Do not understand ‘flying’ as the only function of time. If time simply flew away, a separatio… Read More
2017-10-29 19:19
“Numbers and maps tell horror stories, but the stories of deepest horror are perhaps those for which there are no numbers, no maps, no possible accountability, no words ever written or… Read More
2017-10-20 18:38
“Sometimes it was as if Daddy was torn apart by our questions. He wanted to be an honest man who shared what he knew with his children, imparting details of his current and former live… Read More
2017-10-18 13:34
“Granny notices the look in her eyes and leans forward before whispering in their secret language: ‘One day we’ll take those losers at you… Read More
2017-10-16 18:42
This past July, the Man Booker Prize judges panel announced the longlist, a selection of 13 novels, written in English, which are eligible to win the coveted Man Booker Prize. As Barone… Read More
2017-10-16 18:04
“We have to hope, Daniel was saying, that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not muc… Read More
2017-10-15 17:21
“A man entered the office, carrying Isma’s passport, laptop, and phone. She allowed herself to hope, but he sat down, gestured for her to do th… Read More
2017-10-08 19:14
“Until that moment, it had never occurred to him that he might not be an American, or, more precisely, that his way of being an American was any less authentic than the way Dougie and… Read More
2017-10-06 17:34
“It had been more than six months and still there was nothing. No footprints, no clothing, no persons of interest, no sightings on any security camera. It was as though the ground had… Read More
2017-09-27 21:13
“Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. It is our constant anxiety about that violence… Read More
2017-09-23 19:41
“Since starting college, I hadn’t admitted to anyone that my mother had cancer. I didn’t want anyone’s pity. My classmates and I th… Read More
2017-09-20 18:17
As a bibliophile and book blogger, I have a not-surprising weak spot for books about books, especially those that surrender to the madness that is an all-consuming love of reading and surrou… Read More
2017-09-18 15:45
“‘Now, Julian, we don’t want a sermon,’ said Winifred. ‘You know Mildred would never do anything wrong or foolish.’
I r… Read More
2017-09-17 20:46
“My generation had never know a world without the OASIS. To us, it was much more than a game or an entertainment platform. It had been an integral part of our lives for as far back as… Read More
2017-09-14 19:56
“Accommodation is such a common thread for women in the workplace, even strong women at the top of their game. They feel a need to adjust and swivel and make space for male partners/co… Read More
2017-09-12 17:25
“Language (saying, listening, reading) can encourage, even mandate, surrender, the breach of distances among us, whether they are continental or on the same pillow, whether they are di… Read More
2017-09-05 20:15
“This time, as with every time, when the fighting starts it will be more terrible than the fight that came before. Always it is the worst, the most v… Read More
2017-09-02 20:57
“Bayard listens without understanding, rocked gently by the tone, which is simultaneously didactic and projected, melodious in its way, underpinned by a sense of rhythm, an extremely p… Read More
2017-08-31 19:36
“Johannesburg is a huge city filled with hundreds of thousands of white people, and what white people need more than anything is black people to labor for them. What white people do no… Read More
2017-08-29 19:35
“Tell me what you eat, I longed to say to each woman, and then tell me whether you like to eat alone, and if you really taste the flavors of food or ignore them, or forget them a momen… Read More
2017-08-28 16:07
“I loved my family, I believe. Even though I’d known no other and couldn’t really tell, I thought they were all right, decent people. But oblivious. They got lost in their… Read More
2017-08-22 20:00
“I am a poor girl. I was born into a world of cheap. Food that is picked from the fields outside your door is the tastiest food you will ever eat. Gr… Read More
2017-08-21 14:04
“hapiness is accepting that sadness will always exist
and then decidimg to be hapy anyway”
(and yes, I know, the spelling makes your brain squeak, but it is sooo worth it.)
Folks… Read More
2017-08-16 21:43
“I have always taken great pride in managing my life alone. I’m a sole survivor – I’m Eleanor Oliphant. I don’t need anyone else – there’s no big ho… Read More
2017-08-06 23:30
Born in the UK of Nigerian descent and (after having spent formative years living there) obvious cultural heritage, Lesley Nneka Arimah has unleashed a sparkling debut collection of short st… Read More
2017-08-03 19:29
“My brother sings to save the good and make the wicked take their own lives. At twenty, he’s already intimate with both. This is the source of his resonance, the sound that holds… Read More
2017-07-31 00:05
“I don’t know, man. I’m just dubious of spending the majority of my awake minutes with someone I show my privates to who also needs to know how much money I am making and i… Read More
2017-07-29 17:52
This past week, the Man Booker Prize judges panel announced the longlist, a selection of 13 novels, written in English, which are eligible to win the coveted Man Booker Prize this fall.
When… Read More
2017-07-23 18:34
“These humans, they don’t believe in anything anymore, besides capitalism, of course. Times are good, people are thriving, sickness has been er… Read More
2017-07-20 00:42
“It would be incorrect to say that the boy is wholly idle as he loiters there on the hotel sidewalk. He is, in fact, amusing himself by analyzing the life around him, with an acuity ho… Read More
2017-07-17 19:21
“To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, an… Read More
2017-07-13 16:01
“In my head I need to say what happens to me right after it happens. I need to say it all back to myself because it helps me understand. That’s why I talk inside my brain. It&rsq&hell…Read More
2017-07-10 15:51
In “Tangles”, Sarah Leavitt writes about “Alzheimer’s, my mother, and me”. “Tangles” is a graphic memoir, of sorts, in which Leavitt tries to unpack… Read More
2017-07-08 14:11
“Someday Birds List: Bald Eagle Great Horned Owl Trumpeter Swan Sandhill Crane Turkey Vulture Emu Passenger Pigeon Carolina Parakeet
Dad would be so… Read More
2017-07-07 00:41
“The land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped the wars, the power, politics and social development of the peoples that now inhabit nearly every part of the earth. Tech… Read More
2017-07-01 18:04
It’s July, officially summer – at least in my part of the world. My garden is finally abloom, the vegetables are starting to sprout, and my To Be Read list grows with each summer… Read More
2017-06-30 20:12
“‘What if I promise to just be your typical aimless thirty-year-old looking to delay the inevitable slide into mediocrity?’ ‘Th… Read More
2017-06-29 15:21
“Her hair was thick and brown, and her eyes were large and brown. She had a long face and nearsighted eyes, a figure that was generous without being lewd, and nervous movements. She wa… Read More
2017-06-26 17:47
“His India was neither rich nor poor. There were no huge homes and elaborate weddings, nor were there slums and water shortages and child laborers. The middle ground was too confusing… Read More
2017-06-22 13:47
It matters what you call a thing: Exquisite a lover called me.Exquisite.
Whereas Well, if I were from your culture, living in this country, said the man
outside the 2004 Republican National… Read More
2017-06-19 16:13
“As she drove off, she acknowledged yet again how tiresome the ritual was: her doing whatever task was required; his lavishing her with praise; his saying he didn’t deserve her (… Read More
2017-06-15 17:22
“When I was twelve years old I was raped and then I ate and ate and ate to build my body into a fortress. I was a mess and then I grew up and away fr… Read More
2017-06-13 17:28
“We are mixed up people. We have mixed-up ways of naming too: the Anglo-colonial way, the old Gikuyu way, then the distant names from my mother’s land, a place we do not know. W… Read More
2017-06-06 13:51
“Let me tell you something about being brown like me: your story is already written for you. Your free will, your love, your failure, all of it scratched into the cosmos before you&rsq&hell…Read More
2017-06-03 16:06
“Many Muslims in Britain wished that no one knew they were Muslim. They would change their names if they could and dissolve into the mainstream, for it was not enough for them to openl… Read More
2017-05-29 19:50
“We are in the year of racial, religious, and ethnic mildew. ‘Negro’ families in Montclair, New Jersey; Brookfield, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Mount Vernon, New… Read More
2017-05-28 17:52
“[Papa Moupelo] was our moral compass, the spiritual father of all us children who’d never known their biological father, and whose only example of paternal authority came at bes… Read More
2017-05-24 13:09
Hitomi, I . . . I’m not very good at this, I’m sorry, Takeo said softly. Not good at what? Everything and nothing. That’s not true. I’m the one who’s no good at… Read More
2017-05-22 17:40
“‘[T]is well when we dare not do a thing we think is not good and fair, but not so well when we think a thing not good and fair because we dare not do it.'”
Sigrid Undset w… Read More
2017-05-18 18:24
“They epitomized what I found endlessly intriguing about the sommeliers, which was the fact that they united extremes of personality – devoutly studious and unrelentingly sybarit… Read More
2017-05-17 17:32
“She just needed to find somewhere clean and clear to think. She would find a way of loving that didn’t maim. Then as soon as she was worthy of these people, she’d come bac… Read More
2017-05-15 14:45
“We all live in this world but do not really experience it, seeing only what we can tolerate and ignoring the rest.”
When “Girls of Riyad… Read More
2017-05-10 16:57
“Had he known how the Wasserburg would seduce and corrupt him and his family, Stefan Blau would have taken the train back to New York that day, but to detect rot is often impossible in… Read More
2017-05-09 13:40
“When I was twelve, my parents had two talks with me. One was the usual birds and bees. Well, I didn’t really get the usual version. My mom, Lis… Read More
2017-05-08 21:45
“The Britain that accepted [my grandfather], the place I call home, is now experiencing a period of rejection. The last year has seen a depressing attack on many immigrant communities… Read More
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