Friday Friyay: 'Giovanni's Room' by James Baldwin

Happy Friday! Today I'm blogging to you from London, where I'm visiting friends and family. I went to the British Museum yesterday and lived my best The Secret History-life, so I also found myself in the mood for something classic, something heart-breaking, something ... sumptuous. Thankfully, a friend of mine lent me her Penguin copy of Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, which I've been meaning to read for years. 

When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened – while Giovanni’s life descends into tragedy. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love’s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love …

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. Freda is taking a break at the moment, but we're keeping the spirit going! I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. 

BB: 

'I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.' p.3

I love how this sentence moves, the way in which it so strongly evokes an image, but how it switches into this statement of almost doom at the end. Love the excitement of night falling in a great house to the dread of the worst morning ever.

F56:

'Here in the south of France it does not often snow; but snowflakes, in the beginning rather gently and now with more force, have been falling for the last half hour.' p.56

When I saw this quote I was like, perfect, because of how it echoes the setting, the south of France, and how it again kind of plays with expectations? It's the same kind of see-saw like the opening, I think, of establishing something and then shifting it into the opposite, or at least something other, by the end. Or am I overthinking this?

BBH:

This week's question was submitted by Laura from Laura's Book Binge:

Do you keep an active list of favourite authors - that you would spend your milk money on - to have it when they publish a book?

Great question and I can't wait to see what everyone answers! For a while most of my favourite authors were dead ones (big into the Classics as a teen and now into medieval literature, so...) but over the past few years I've begun to build a little bit of a list indeed, mostly of female authors, whose worlds and creations I really enjoy. For some I've only read one or two books, others I have been following for a while. Here are some:

• Aliya Whiteley. 
• Obsessed since 'The Beauty' in 2014, up until Three Eight One this January.
• Monica Byrne. 
• Both The Girl in the Road and The Actual Star changed something in me.
• Luanne G. Smith.
• Weird one, perhaps, but her cozy Vine Witch trilogy made me feel all warm and fuzzy so now I'm a big fan.
• Shelley Parker-Chan.
• Adored The Radiant Emperor duology and will therefore read whatever they write.

Those are just some that came to me, but they're definitely among my current favourites. I would spend my pocket money on them in a heartbeat.

And that's it for me this week! What are you reading? And who's on your list?