February 16, 2016 – Brown Girl Reading

Day 17 – A Short Story Collection – I’m not usually a fan of short story collections because they always seem to leave me hanging (so that’s it?!) or wanting more. However, last year put me on the right track with getting back into them. I read Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Blackberries, Blackberries, A Piece of Mine, and Water Street. All four collections had me captivated and made me want to explore other short story collections. So, at the end of last year I picked up Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones which I have heard no one really talk about. Jones is most known for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Known World in 2004. I didn’t even know he’d written a short story collection. Actually he’s written two, the second collection is called All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Hopefully, I’ll make the time to explore Lost in the City this year and it will join the list of short stories that keep me captivated and leave me satisfied. How about you? Do you like reading short story collections? If so, what are some of your favorites?

“The nation’s capital that serves as the setting for the stories in Edward P. Jones’s prizewinning collection, Lost in the City, lies far from the city of historic monuments and national politicians. Jones takes the reader beyond that world into the lives of African American men and women who work against the constant threat of loss to maintain a sense of hope. From “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons” to the well-to-do career woman awakened in the night by a phone call that will take her on a journey back to the past, the characters in these stories forge bonds of community as they struggle against the limits of their city to stave off the loss of family, friends, memories, and, ultimately, themselves.

Critically acclaimed upon publication, Lost in the City introduced Jones as an undeniable talent, a writer whose unaffected style is not only evocative and forceful but also filled with insight and poignancy.” (Lost in the City, back cover description)

My copy: Lost in the City, paperback 268 pages

I’m an affiliate for The Book Depository. It would be much appreciated to click the link below if you’re interested in picking up any of my recommendations. It will help fund my incessant book buying.

http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=browngirlreading

Day 16 – Book You Want to Own The book I’d love to own is John Oliver Killens’s The Cotillion One Good Bull is Half the Herd. I’ve always been interested in reading and owning this book, as well as his others Youngblood, And Then We Heard the Thunder, and Sippi. I’ll have to save up for this one because it’s a little pricey in the old 1970s edition I want with the dust jacket. One day….

“Beautiful, high-stepping Yoruba of Harlem is invited to the annual cotillion thrown by African American high society of Queens. Caught between the indifference of her father, the excitement of her social-climbing mother, and her prodigal boyfriend’s militancy, Yoruba persuades her sister debutantes to challenge the aging doyennes in one of the most sidesplitting scenes in American literature. john olliver killens

Nominated for a Pulitzer in 1972, Killens’s uproarious satire captures the conflicts within black society in the 1960s. The Cotillion is the fourth title in Coffee House Press’s acclaimed Black Arts Movement series.”(The Cotillion, Goodreads description)