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I don’t remember buying this book, but I found it on my shelf and I’m very happy I did. Includes short stories by Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Parker, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Alice Munro, Virginia Woolf, Anita Desai, and A.S. Byatt. It is divided into three themes that appear in the title: LOVE, LOSS, and THE LIVES OF WOMEN. I like having anthologies like this on my writing desk or bedside table to dabble in every now and then. #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #books #womenwriters #shortstories #literature #bookstagrammer #booksandcoffee #reading #bibliophile #bookish #bookcommunity #booktography

In 1990, Jaballah Matar – a prominent opponent of Gaddafi’s regime – was abducted from his exile in Egypt and taken back to Libya where he was imprisoned along with several family members. Hisham Matar, his son and the author of this book, was nineteen years old. It was the last time he saw his father. Matar begins his memoir at Cairo airport: it is March 2012, the Arab Spring has swept into Libya and the revolutionaries have ousted Colonel Gaddafi. Matar is about to board a flight to Libya for the first time since he was forced into exile with his family as a young boy. Gaddafi’s prisons are emptying and its political prisoners are free after two decades in captivity. Matar reunites with his newly freed uncles and cousins, his aunts and old friends, and to try find out what might have happened to his father. Accompanying him on this visit are his mother and wife, his memories, questions, and also, the painful, undying hope that has stuck to him throughout his life, that after all these years, despite reason, he might still find his father. Matar writes about his return home after so many years of learning how “to live away from places and people I love”. Cutting back and forth in time, he writes about Libya’s history, its Italian occupation, the resistance and violence, its fight for independence, Gaddafi’s takeover and the brutality of his regime. He writes about his childhood and family, his life in Cairo and then in London, his campaign to free his father and other political prisoners (even as Tony Blair visited Libya to shake hands and strike a deal with Gaddafi), his bizarre meeting with Gaddafi’s son. He writes about family, love, loyalty, cruelty, separation, belonging. A contemplative, illuminating memoir of a son searching for a father, a story steeped in sadness and violence but told with a determined dignity. I urge everyone to read it. #bookstagram #hishammatar #memoir #books #readersofinstagram #bookish #bookblogger

I went to @readings.pk in Lahore to get Elif Shafak’s Three Daughters of Eve but they didn’t have it. Of course I still didn’t come out empty handed; I bought three other books as if I don’t have shelves of unread books at home. Have heard great things about An American Marriage and I love Toni Morrison. #instaread #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksandcoffee #toberead #tbr #readersofinstagram #readers #books #bookcommunity #bookworm #bookhaul #bookish

I think above all else, literature teaches us empathy. That’s why reading fiction as a child is so important — it builds the habit of reading and the habit of empathising. In my classes I tell my young students that writing compelling characters in stories is all about empathy, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and understanding (without judgement) how it feels to be them. #Repost @lastnightsreading with @get_repost ・・・ Madeline Miller at Shakespeare and Company, 4/2/18 athy in my writing classes

Going through my to-read pile to decide what to read next. Sometimes I’ll know exactly what I want to spend the next few days or weeks reading. Sometimes I start reading a book or two (or five) and see what sticks. (No tea was spilled during the making of this post.) . . . #bookstagram #readersofinstagram #books #latestbookhaul #tbr #toberead #instareads #amreading #booksandtea #reading #lovebooks #bookstoread #bookstagrammer #books

Becoming a mother was one of the toughest things I’ve done. I don’t mean giving birth — I mean the fundamental shift in your identity that happens when you become a mother. You are no longer the person you were before. Not only did no one prepare you for that loss, no one seems to think it’s a big deal at all, because all women have been doing it for thousands of years. . It blew my mind that women had been experiencing this cataclysmic event and no one talked about how gut-wrenchingly hard it is for a woman’s mind, body and soul. Going through something tough is hard enough, going through it alone (and having to pretend it comes easy) is even harder. I remember thinking, here is another thing women do that isn’t given value (and that’s an understatement.) . Naomi Wolf has said: “Giving birth is natural — but ‘becoming a mother’ is not necessarily natural. It is a far greater work of stoicism, discipline, patience, and will than the ideology of ‘motherhood’ allows for.” . In AND NOW WE HAVE EVERYTHING, Meaghan O’Connel describes this work with honesty and humour: the shock, mess, vulnerability, rage, love, and fear that define those early months. (She also describes her pregnancy, and delivery in equally honest and graphic terms.) . It’s not the best or most definitive book on motherhood, only one woman’s very personal reaction to it, but all mothers will feel they can relate to at least some parts of this honest acknowledgment and recognition of motherhood in all its messy, hard won glory. . “Day and night bled into each other, coalescing into one big nightmare. My clothes were indistinguishable from pajamas. A lamp was always on. We were in the middle of what felt like an ongoing emergency. Like someone was playing a joke on us. Endure the car crash of childbirth, then, without sleeping, use your broken body to keep your tiny, fragile, precious, heartbreaking, mortal child alive. Rock, sway, bounce, pace, sing, hum —“ . . . #bookstagram #books #readersofinstagram #motherhood #booksonmotherhood #becomingamother #meaghanoconnell #bookish #instabook #reading #amreading #memoir

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