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.A Small Place

by: Jamaica Kincaid

April 28, 2000
Ignore the reviews laden with the white liberal guilt or the white liberal defensiveness. This book is about a struggling country that needs the money from the west to survive, yet at its heart wishes the west would just take its rude tourists and away. As tourists we refuse to see that we've created a new form of economic imperialism around the world, we really just want to get away from the cold and draining life we left at home. It is easier to close our eyes and claim that angry brown people are lazy, stupid or senseless. After all we gave them hotel jobs, cruise ships and casinos, how dare they be angry at us. How dare they refuse to close their eyes to the parralells between slavery and the tourist industry maid job. This is not an essay ... Read More:
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.Annie John: A Novel

by: Jamaica Kincaid

June 30, 1997
This coming of age story is sensitive and tranquil. It doesn't shout but is sound. Poetic writing. Worth a detour.
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.Lucy: A Novel

by: Jamaica Kincaid

September 04, 2002
Kincaid's writing style is deceptively simple. There is more to Lucy than the adolescent malcontent, and layers of meaning thrive beneath every lyrical line. The cyclical nature of the story resists typical linear development - there IS character growth and plot development. 'Lucy' will be a boring read if you're a lazy reader: look deeper.
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.My Brother

by: Jamaica Kincaid

November 09, 1998
I'd only ever read a short short story of Jamaica Kincaid's (that I wasn't too impressed by) before picking up this memoir. I enjoyed her memoir thoroughly. Wonderfully crafted and skillfully written, this rendition of her memories surrounding the life and death of her brother in Antigua, Jamaica, are emotionally moving, to say the least. I'm not giving much away by revealing that her brother dies of AIDS, something that is revealed in the first few pages, so I'm okay to say that this story of a sister and family's grappling with the immiment death manages to handle the AIDS story with beauty, poise, and compelling writing.

She highlights the stigma that surrounded anyone who contracted the disease. Were they a drug user? A philanderer? A homosexual? What kind of ... Read More:
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.Autobiography of My Mother

by: Jamaica Kincaid

January 01, 1997
this Book takes you on a journey for knowledge and understanding. it speaks to gaining something that is powerful that will be a stepping stone for better days and times ahead. this Book deals with expierences and coming to terms with life and how it has been dealt and the choices that you have to make.alot of issues and challenges are met head on and dealt with. very strong and well written book.
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.Gone to New York: Adventures in the City

by: Ian Frazier

October 13, 2005
The New York in Woody Allen's movies is beautiful but unreal, like a movie star who's never as stunning in real life as on screen. Ian Frazier's New York, on the other hand, is violent and dirty, but real.

These essays are arranged chronologically, from 1975 to 2005. (Oddly, there are no entries from the eighties.) Frazier writes about neighborhoods and bars and shops and characters. There are floods and robberies and murders.

One of my favorite pieces is about a typewriter repair shop that Frazier finds when he needs his manual typewriter repaired. The owner, Mr. Tytell was one of the few typewriter repairmen left as word processors and then computers replaced typewriters. The article was written in 1997 and the 83 year-old owner had just renewed the lease on his ... Read More:
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.At the Bottom of the River

by: Jamaica Kincaid

October 15, 2000
I got this book because it is one of the required books I need for my college class. When I began reading the book, I didn't like nor dislike the book because it is a strange book comparing to many books I have read so far in college and through out my life. This book consists of many ordinary stories such as our everyday life. For instance, "I am trying to read. The book is lying in my lap. I look around me, trying to find something on which to focus my eyes." Some of the stories are extraordinary or strange if you would want to consider them. For instance, "Now I am a girl, but one day I will marry a woman-a red-skin woman with black bramblebush hair and brown eyes, who wears skirts that are so big I can easily bury my head in them." or "I stood up on the edge of the basin and felt myself move. ... Read More:
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.Georges (Modern Library Classics)

by: Alexandre Dumas

June 10, 2008
I enjoyed this book very much! The translation was perfect, not an emotion or imaginary description was lost. This is a perfect lesson on tolerance, an old story with a timely message. A Must READ!!!
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.The Best American Travel Writing 2005 (The Best American Series)

from: Houghton Mifflin

October 05, 2005
I was very excited to get this book, because I was under the impression that I was going to get to read some amazing writing. Well, it must be so amazing that it's over my head, because I was bored to tears. "A Really Big Lunch" is probably the most boring story I have ever read. The author spends his entire article detailing a gigantic feast he indulges in down to the tiniest detail. Unless you're a foodie or gourmand, it would have been better as photography. "My Thai Girlfriends" is about an American lecher sitting around doing nothing in Thailand, and it only makes me sorry that Thailand had to suffer through the author's presence. The only funny and/or interesting story in the book is "Trying to Like India." I don't think I've ever laughed as hard as I did reading that one. But one story doesn't make ... Read More:
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.My Garden (Book)

by: Jamaica Kincaid

May 15, 2001
If Jamaica Kincaid's book were a garden, it would be a very weedy one indeed. I've enjoyed her occasional pieces on gardening for The New Yorker, but I quickly guessed (and a check in the front of the book confirmed) that the book is a compilation of pieces that have been published elsewhere. How else to account for the wearying repetition of names, places, incidents, and (worst of all) thoughts? There are some bright spots, particularly Kincaid's meditations on English and Antiguan gardens, and thus on the relationship between colonizer and subjects. However, even this subject becomes, as its themes are repeated, tedious. It's hard to say who this book is intended for. Even non-gardeners may enjoy an occasional piece about gardening, but how does such a reader know what Kincaid is talking about when she describes (more ... Read More:
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