Who We Are (March Reading)

I think there's an unintentional theme this month. You figure it out.

The Whale Rider (Witi Ihimaera): Reread. Picked it up the first time after seeing the movie. What's picked up a little in the movie is the intersection of the daily and the supernatural. What isn't picked up is how much of the book is influenced by the narration by Kahu's uncle. Paikea's the focus, but Rawiri leaves New Zealand (Aotearoa, to call it by the Maori name) for Australia and Indonesia, which shapes the edges of the narrative. If I haven't said it, this is one of the small novels that stay with me.

The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff): ( Awesome. )

Touchstone (Laurie R. King): Harris Stuyvesant, American Bureau of Investigations agent, strikes out to England on the trail of an anarchist bomber. His nice simple quest for justice - vengeance – is tangled in the fate of Bennet Grey and an explosive conspiracy for – oh, who cares. This was much better after I threw my assumptions out the window and grooved on the instant friendship between the very damaged Bennett and the more subtly cracked Harris. The denouncement was suitably dramatic and entertaining, and I enjoyed the story before and after that point. Many of LRK's themes show up - World War I, British nobility, a little religion, the push of change after the War, all that dissipating jazz - in ways that mostly contribute to the story. Good entertainment reading: not deep, but not completely shallow either.

A Burst of Light: Essays by Audre Lorde (Audre Lorde): Five essays. ( Summaries and personal response. )