Undirected Reading

 I usually do set a numerical goal on the Goodreads reading challenges each year, and find them to be a great way to feel some sense of accomplishment in reading [x] number of books in a given year. Since I also started reviewing some digital ARCs through NetGalley last year, I've been writing more reviews in general (though the non-ARC books I read I may or may not review). I've toyed with the idea of doing some additional challenges before, but haven't--so I'm going to try for it this year! Because this is my first time doing this, I tried to choose challenges that mesh pretty well with what I already tend to read. This means, basically, that they're challenges I could have done okay on with books I read naturally over the course of a year. Yeah, that might not quite be in the "move out of your comfort zone" spirit of many challenges, but it seems like a way to ease into it. So, without further ado, I'm going to be trying the following:   Rose City R

I received an electronic ARC of this book via NetGalley. This is not an easy book to assign a star rating. It's beautifully written--the language is poetic, and as the story and characters shift through time and perspective, the writing itself reflects this. This is a credit to both Glissant and to translator Betsy Wing. The book itself is not always pleasant--but that is part of the point. The narrative dips back and forth through time, and deals with themes of slavery, colonization, sexual exploitation, etc. in Martinique. The shifting narrators and time periods can become somewhat confusing to the reader, and I think it is this more than anything else that made this relatively short book take me a fairly long time to read--that, along with the extended discussion of narrator vs. author toward the beginning of the novel. It was worth reading. It would be worth reading again, with a little more background on Glissant's other work and the history of Martinique, to