Keep Reading
I will continue to post articles with this title. I will review authors and books and include the NLS number for people who use the talking book service. For more information about the NLS talking book program and how to download books please visit:
https://nlsbard.loc.gov/cgi-bin/nlsbardprod/index.cgi
If you have been following my blog you know that in June my husband, grand daughter and I went to Paris. As part of planning for that trip I started reading everything I could find that had anything to do with Paris. This included books about Paris, books written by French authors and books about French artists. As you can imagine, this turns out to be quite a list. I found a lot of great books on BARD.
One of the books I really fell in love with was Giovanni’s room by James Baldwin. I had never read anything by James Baldwin, what rock was I living under?
James Arthur Baldwin was born in August 1924 in Harlem NY. He died In December 1987 inSaint-Paul de Vence, France
Baldwin followed other black artists to France where they could write freely and draw strength from one another. His writing is clear and easy to read while full of reminders of the struggles felt by people who marched to a different drummer.
Now I am about half way through Go Tell It on The Mountain his first novel. Baldwin also wrote essays that are as long as books and that is not a bad thing. He was also a play write. James Bldwin reminds us why books become classics and live forever.
Giovanni’s room: a novel
Baldwin, James. Read by Livingston Gilbert. Reading time 5 hours 25 minutes.
Literature
Homosexuality and the physical aspects of male love are explored in a Paris setting where the narrator, a young American, is involved both with a woman and man, and is eventually compelled to make a choice.
Download Giovanni’s room: a novel, DB12503
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Baldwin, James. Read by John Stratton. Reading time 7 hours 32 minutes.
Historical Fiction
While living in Harlem, John experiences a religious conversion on his fourteenth birthday. Flashbacks portray the lives, suffering, and sins of John’s African-American forefathers, especially their struggles with racism and poverty as they moved from the rural South to this northern ghetto.
Download Go Tell It on the Mountain, DB33488