It’s always an exciting day when Bonny and Carole and I announce the next Read With Us title . . . and today’s the day!

Our next Read With Us selection is  . . .
How To Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair.

You might remember that I just included How To Say Babylon on my most recent Top Five Books list. In my post, I mentioned that this book is getting “a lot of buzz” these days. It was hard for me not to add . . . that it was about to get just a little bit more. (At least here in our little blogland!)

Bonny and Carole and I decided to mix things up and choose a memoir for this season of Read With Us. The three of us enjoy well-written memoirs, and we thought you might be interested in joining us to read this “buzzy” book. (It was just named as finalist for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, it was a “Jenna’s Pick” on the Today Show for November 2023, and it was on many best-of lists in 2023.)

Is it a perfect book? No; I won’t go that far. But it is beautifully written (the author is a poet), heartfelt, and . . . will give us MUCH to discuss. And . . . it is a perfect follow-up for us after our reading and discussion of The Poisonwood Bible. (Yep — we’ve got another domineering father, more colonization fallout, and an opportunity to learn some history that we most likely missed.)

We’ll be talking more about the book and providing additional background information over the next several weeks. Then . . . mark your calendars for our blog book discussions/Zoom discussion on Tuesday, June 11, 2024 (7:00 pm Eastern time).

Please be sure to visit the new Read With Us resource page for more information about the book and our discussion. (I’m working on the update now – I got a little behind because of my eye; it should be ready before week’s end).

We hope you’ll be as excited as we are to read How to Say Babylon.

C’mon along!
Read With Us this spring!

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Here’s a quote from Hannah Giorgis from her review of How to Say Babylon, published in The Atlantic on October 14, 2023:

“As much a story of hard-fought survival as it is an artistic coming-of-age tale … Sinclair’s prose etches the surrounding ecosystems, and the histories that birthed those disparate landscapes, into her intricate family portrait … Sinclair’s deep dives into Jamaican history reflect both collective grief and reverie. Memoir is a craft of relentless observation, and the author’s wondrous, studied descriptions of the world around her make How to Babylon feel expansive … Directly acknowledges the immense emotional toll of its eventual writing, and the book is better for that transparency.”