Reading, Writing, and Me

The Coin  by Yasmin Zaher Overview: The narrator arrives in New York City with a curated designer wardrobe and her mother's Birkin bag to teach at an all boys charter school for promising underprivileged children. The narrator recounts her first eight months in New York after her lover convinces her to move from Palestine to America while on a trip together in Cuba. The novel follows her eccentric teaching practices, the middle schoolers she teaches, and the bond that she forms with a homeless man who takes a liking to her Burberry trench coat. This is a novel of a young woman's undoing that scratched a somewhat similar itch to My Year of Rest and Relaxation  in a new tone. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 3 The narrator takes all the oxygen in the novel. It's a very close first person, and she has a very big personality. Everyone who comes into her life is a side event, therefore, her perspective doesn't leave much room for their development. Unfortunately, there isn't muc...

I went to New York City to see A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM, spend time with my grandmother, and see as many bookstores as I could plausibly drag her to way back at the start of March. That meant doing way more book shopping than I should be months before an international move... I've discussed my impression of all the stores in a previous post, but I thought I'd recap what I bought at each. I will say, since I'd only traveled there with an oversized backpack and also bought clothes and brought way too many pairs of shoes to start with, my guiding principle was "pick slim, light paperbacks that would be easy to pack". I only caved on one hardcover in the end, so I'm pretty impressed. Also, my grandmother bought the copy of White Teeth  I'd contemplated purchasing and promised she'd send it to me when she was done, so hopefully, I end up with one more book from this trip one of these days.  It turns out the unintentional theme was French translation...