What are you reading these days?

Hi blogland! After a long hiatus I'm back!

I love writing this little blog, so I'm trying to make it more of a priority, and I hope to post a bit more regularly around here. I want to write the type of lifestyle blog that I want to read - simple, honest, and fun! I plan to cover a few more topics than before - style and culture (books, TV, movies), as well as food, travel, and life in Montreal. I hope you enjoy reading along!

To today's topic - books! I love to read and am always on the hunt for new titles, so I thought I would share a couple of books that I've read recently. The first is Swing Time by Zadie Smith. Zadie Smith is one of my absolute favourite authors - I loved White Teeth when it first came out (16 years ago!), and really enjoyed NW and On Beauty as well. Swing Time - the story of a friendship between two mixed-race girls in northwest London - didn't disappoint. The book deals with race, class, music, dance, celebrity, girlhood (and more) in both funny and poignant ways. Smith is such a talented writer and does an amazing job of immersing you into the geography of her stories and engaging you with her characters. I would definitely recommend checking out Swing Time.

Another book I read recently was Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. This was a powerful exploration of the effects of slavery and colonialism over many generations. Each chapter of the novel tells the story of a different descendant of two half-sisters, with half of the book set in Ghana and the other half following the story of slavery in America. This book was intense, but incredibly rich in its storytelling, and shows the long-reaching impact of captivity, colonialism, and slavery. I know some people found the book disjointed or felt like it was a collection of short stories and not a novel, but I disagree - I found the book to be compelling and wanted to follow the story and themes through the multiple characters and generations.

Thoughts? What are you reading these days?

XOXO

(Photo by Eli Francis)