Hi Again,

How are you doing?

Today it is World Book Day here in the UK. The day campaigns for parents to read with children at least 10 minutes a day, the idea is not to make it too taxing and time consuming but parents can still encourage reading and have fun with their kids. So they recommend books, authors, organise events and encourage dressing up as a character from a book.

I think allowing some time to read every day is a good idea, even though you don’t have kids to read to. I am really feeling this because ironically during this lockdown I do feel that reading a whole book can sometimes be a chore. I started to read books that are a collection of short stories or poems, during my lunchtime, so each read can take from 10 to 20 minutes depending on their length.

Here are two books that I recently read and can recommend for you to read. As it is World book day and Women’s History Month, I am recommending books written by women from 2 different parts of the world. These books are great, they give you snippets of how people live but also some history and a bit of folklore in Japan and Haiti.

Ayiti by Roxanne Gay

If you have not read it, read it. If you read it when it first came out, read it again. It is filled with so many good stories and the writing is almost poetry.

Few favourite lines:

The ugly details are trapped between the fragments of our family history. We are secrets ourselves

I understood Haiti was not the only place in the world run through with pain.

The book made me want to read more about Haiti. I learned that Haiti was the world’s first black-led republic and the first independent Caribbean state when it threw off French colonial control and slavery in the early 19th century. To be honest I know nothing of Haiti, all I know before this book is that is in the Caribbean.

Where the Wild Ladies Are – Matsuda Aoko

I read this book for an online book club Komorebi. I find it witty, fun, and scary in some parts. People at the book club read some of the story without realising that they are ghost stories, they are not all ghost stories by the way. It is certainly a fresh look or even a flip of the common views of women in Japan both the living and the dead to something different. I think you have just got to read it to understand what I mean. 🙂 This book won English Pen Award.

Some favourite part:

Narrator starts with

So what’s your superpower?

and ends with

As it happens I am pretty content with my allotted superpowers

Have you read these books? If you have what did you think of it? Have you got recommendations on other similar books, a compilation of short stories, from different countries ? Let me know.

Thanks

Jane