Fiction

The book 'The Vanishing Half' by Brit Bennett is about black twin sisters, whose skin is so light they can pass for white. They grow up in a small town in the South, not found on a map, full of other light skinned black people. They witness their father's racially motivated murder and even though they are so close, they have their own unique personalities and deal with this as well as other parts of life differently. They runaway as teenagers and take two very different paths - one lives a life as a black woman and the other as a white woman. Their paths diverge and are brought together in a unique way much later in life. The book touches on race, family, and both understanding and loving the uniqueness of yourself. I was entranced by the story and understand why it was chosen as a New York Times Best Seller.

"The Long Ships" by Frans Bengtsson is a joy to read. It is rollicking, spirited, funny, and historically accurate. Bengtsson's hero, Red Orm, is a Viking who ranges the known world. He fights alongside the Moors in Spain, encounters Irish monks and British warlords, and sails deep into Russia to retrieve hidden gold. Little known in English, this is one of the finest Swedish novels of the twentieth century.