Book Reviews
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
Year of release: 1977
Genre: Historical drama, magical realism, coming of age
Date finished: May 27, 2026
Star rating: ✮✮✮✮✩
Favorite quote: "You got a life? Live it! Live the motherfuckin life! Live it!"
Favorite scene: The men in the barbershop discuss the murder of Emmett Till.
Favorite characters: Guitar, Pilate
Review: Toni Morrison's prose is unlike any other, equal parts stunning and visceral. It will dazzle you so that you are helpless when it buries its teeth in your throat; one would be a perfect fool to see Morrison's abiding love for all of humanity and take it for naivety. While Song of Solomon gets off to a slow start, do not for a moment let its quotidian beginnings fool you into believing this novel is one in which nothing much happens. This is a book which will make you laugh, make you gasp, and give you chills. Morrison's slow, cinematic, evocative passages gradually gain momentum until halfway through, at which point Song of Solomon becomes a thrilling family mystery. Morrison weaves a story about generational trauma, horror, reconciliation, and responsibility that fell into my lap just when I needed it most.
Feast of Souls - C.S. Friedman
Year of release: 2007
Genre: Dark fantasy, political fantasy
Date finished: July 15, 2026
Star rating: ✮✮✮✩✩ (actually more of a 3.5)
Favorite quote: "And forgive the gods, who have decreed that all birth must be agony."
Favorite scene: Kamala takes flight to do battle with an existential threat.
Favorite characters: Kamala, Colivar, Gwynofar, Siderea
Review: Friedman crafts an intriguing and layered tale of vampiric sorcery, political intrigue, and the weight of a human life—but the book through which she delivers that tale is in serious need of a proofreader. Though lush and beautiful, with a special aptitude for the grotesque, Friedman's prose is littered with elementary-level grammar and spelling mistakes, as well as the occasional tense mixup. One of this novel's greatest strengths is its presentation as a series of vignettes, all of which are connected, some of them in surprisingly linear fashion. Through this style, Friedman gives us the opportunity to explore multiple facets of a world that feels colorful and lived-in, and she manages to evoke our sympathy even for snakes, scoundrels, and parasites.
On Critical Race Theory - Victor Ray
Year of release: 2022
Genre: Nonfiction
Date finished: July 18, 2026
Star rating: ✮✮✮✮✩
Favorite quote: "Across these decades, the immorality of racial segregation was always clear. The immorality was the point."
Review: Ray's book is an excellent and easily-digestible primer for laypeople. Far from the bland and pernicious "objectivity" that white supremacy often demands of people who examine it, Ray approaches white supremacy with exactly the contempt it deserves, while providing concrete examples of its origins and its destructiveness. Ray's willingness to build on the work of previous scholars is also admirable; working toward an anti-racist future is, and always has been, a communal effort. That the people who need to read this book the most will likely never even pick it up is a testament to just how necessary it is. I appreciate that Ray makes no efforts whatsoever to coddle the people of a past that is not all that distant from now, and his dedication to ensuring that his readers have access to further information. In doing so, Ray sufficiently upholds his duties as a researcher.
Dietland - Sarai Walker
Year of release: 2016
Genre: Thriller, mystery, feminist
Date finished: July 23, 2026
Star rating: ✮✮✮✮✩
Favorite quote: "I looked at the photo and thought that in death, Eulayla had finally achieved what had eluded her in life. As a corpse she was as thin as she could ever hope to be."
Favorite scene: Plum looks through a torrent of emails sent by frantic teenage girls.
Favorite characters: Leeta, Plum, Sana, Huck
Review: Walker is a feminist who knows her stuff. I will readily admit that, in spite of Dietland's promising synopsis, I am generally inclined to be wary of feminist novels because of what I feel is an overwhelming lack of intersectionality. In the best possible way, Dietland smashed all my expectations and more; Walker's list of suggestions for further reading is fantastic. That she writes a bit like a scholar is both a blessing (in that it produces a highly intelligent, witty parable, rife with language at times gorgeous and at other times brutal) and a curse (characters' dialogue is, in my opinion, a little samey). Walker also has a dreadful habit of breaking past tense in very specific instances that I wish an editor would have mentioned. Dietland has a vast and cosmopolitan knowledge of the horrors women face every day; and, through it all, it's fun, brimming with dark satire so delectable I finished it in a day and wish for seconds.
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