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Book Review: Sula by Toni Morrison

Smiling cuz this book exists!      I'm on a Toni Morrison kick and I am NOT sorry.  Seriously, she's incredible. She has this way of flooding a page with the feeling of a place or character.  She identifies and writes down the tiny dust mote details that make life.      Anyway, Sula.   The story is set in Ohio during the first half of the 20th century and focuses on two African-American women who choose very different lives, although they were childhood friends.  I didn't get the impression that Morrison wants the reader to favor one woman's choices over those of the other.  She honestly describes their lives in all their courage, arrogance, smallness, ecstasy, and heartache.  She also explores the lives of the people around the women (she does something similar in  The Bluest Eye ): mothers, grandmothers, husbands, lovers, etc.  She precisely describes how race and gender influence her characters' rela...

The Iris Bookcafe

            Tonight I am not writing to you from New York City.  Tonight I am writing to you from Cincinnati, a half-shuttered and intriguing Ohio city, and I would like to tell you about a book store that I have discovered here.      It is called the Iris Bookcafe , and I love it already.  Today was blowy and snowy and frozen, so I took refuge there for about an hour (although I would have liked to stay much longer).  The Bookcafe sells exactly what the name suggests: books (used ones) and coffee (as well as standard coffee shop foods like soup and pastries).  There are shelves of books in the front 'eating area' of the shop and even more in back.  I got really sucked in while browsing!  Used book stores always have an interesting mix of book topics.  The Bookcafe also sells records.  I spent quite a while going through the "5 for $1" singles box :)  Then I ordered a mocha latte - my firs...