Stepping in the Write Direction

Don’t start out reading This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone if you’re sleep deprived, as I did.  Nothing written in the book’s early pages seemed comprehensible to my brain, addled by lack of sleep, regarding what  I was about to embark upon. I actually felt angry, and was thinking, “What the heck am I reading?!” I got back to reading after a few hours sleep, and it was a game changer for me.   The Amazon book blurb tells us the book is “ Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers”  There are two main characters, Red and Blue; Max wrote all of Red, and Amal wrote all of Blue. Editors at  Vector, the critical journal of the   British Science Fiction Association, in their 3/11/20 author interview “This Is How You Produce The Time War Part 1: Powder Scofield interviews Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone”  describe the book: “It’s an intense, lyrical, tragicomic novella about two elite warriors, Red and B...

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston is like a vivid crazy quilt of a book. It starts out with a Foreword by Alice Walker, who states, “Those who love us never leave us alone with our grief. At the moment they show us our wound, they reveal they have the medicine. Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ is a perfect example of this.” The book includes more than simply the description of her interviews with former slave eighty-six-year-old Kossola aka Cudjo Lewis, which lasts about 94 pages of the 210 page book. The balance of this narrative is followed by a 20 page Afterward which discusses many aspects related to the process of writing Barracoon, a controversy, and issues connected with the book. This is followed by a brief Acknowledgements. Also included is a list of Founders and Original Residents of Africatown where Kossola lived. Next is a very interesting Glossary that reads like a story itself, and the Bibliography of supporting and related books is a must read for anyone inte...