L'Etranger & Reading in French

A few weeks ago, I finished reading my third complete book I've read in French,  L'Étranger by Albert Camus. It was the first French book that I read that I felt had complex literary meanings, and it was pretty daunting to try and absorb that in a different language. But it was so worth it.

New Zealand: The Bone People Review

Title: The Bone People
Author: Keri Hulme
Genre: Fiction

Blurb: In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon's feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge. Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.

Me: Unconventional and groundbreaking, but also confusing and unresolved.

ReRead: My Life on the Road Review

Title: My Life on the Road
Author: Gloria Steinem
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Random House

Blurb: My Life on the Road is the moving, funny, and profound story of Gloria's growth and also the growth of a revolutionary movement for equality--and the story of how surprising encounters on the road shaped both. From her first experience of social activism among women in India to her work as a journalist in the 1960s; from the whirlwind of political campaigns to the founding of Ms. magazine; from the historic 1977 National Women's Conference to her travels through Indian Country--a lifetime spent on the road allowed Gloria to listen and connect deeply with people, to understand that context is everything, and to become part of a movement that would change the world.

In prose that is revealing and rich, Gloria reminds us that living in an open, observant, and "on the road" state of mind can make a difference in how we learn, what we do, and how we understand each other.

Me: Revisiting this old favorite was such a necessary decision. It has brought me clarity and a solid foundation in navigating the new year.