When We Were Birds By Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

 

When We Were Birds

By Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

 4 stars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Image
The Cider House Rules by John Irving I loved everything about this book! Homer Wells is an orphan growing up in St. Cloud's, a small town in main, under the care of Dr. Larch and his nurses Angela and Edna. Dr. Larch is an ether addict and abortionist, which is illegal in Maine during the story. Homer knows he belongs in St. Cloud's and has several failed foster placements, always ending up back in the orphanage. Dr. Larch decides Homer should be of some use, and teaches him all about obstetrics, how to deliver unwanted babies that will end up staying at the orphanage, and how to provide abortions to those women who want them and are not too far along in their pregnancies. Unlike Dr, Larch, Homer decides, as he is older, that he believes abortion should be legal and women should be able to choose to have them, but that he will not be performing them. As a young adult, still living and working at the orphanage and hospital, Homer meets Candy and Wally who arrive because Candy wa...
Read more

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Image
  The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton One of my favorite book tropes is the adolescent or pre-adolescent boy with psychological or social trauma and self-discovery. Some of my favorite books involve this theme: Catcher in the Rye , I Know This Much is True , and The Perks of Being a Wallflower , to name a few. The Outsiders is another book that carries this theme, following Ponyboy Curtis and a gang of greasers in the mid-20th century. Ponyboy and his two brothers navigate a world of delinquency and violence, though the three of them are smart and savvy in there own ways. The greasers and the socs have turf wars and throughout the story Ponyboy discovers that even though the two groups are very different, they are both beset by there own problems, both societal and psychological, and that they can be taken down by the prejudices of their respective social groups. After a tragic incident involving Ponyboy, his friend Johnny, and two socs, Ponyboy and Johnny go on the run to escape a murde...
Read more

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Image
  Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier Everyone seems to have read this book in the last year, owing no doubt to its film adaptation remake starring Armie Hammer. I figured I would give it a go and see if it lived up to the hype. Rebecca is the story of an unnamed young woman who marries the mysterious and wealthy Maxim de Winter and is swept away to his English mansion Manderley. Maxim's previous wife Rebecca died a few months before this second marriage for Maxim, and the book chronicles the new Mrs. de Winter's struggle with Rebecca's memory. Mrs. de Winter's real first name is never revealed, an interesting and obvious choice for Du Maurier to make, causing her to be a shadow, a ghost herself living at Manderley, always imagining conversations and scenarios, afraid to truly live herself. She is set against her husband's stoic silence and the indomitable housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, who would love nothing more than to sabotage the marriage and to ruin Maxim's life. Thr...
Read more