I read my first James Baldwin novel (Go Tell it on the Mountain) in late 2013, so for the entirety of #ReadWomen2014, I was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to read more James Baldwin. The events of Ferguson made his writing all the more relevant (unfortunately), and Melville House recently published his last interview, making James Baldwin very top-of-mind for me.

I can't really describe Giovanni's Room without revealing that it disappointed me. The prose is stark and beautiful and it's an intensely rendered love story, BUT -- it's probably the first novel to make me realize how much #ReadWomen2014 has changed me. The fact that there's a few very minor female characters doesn't necessarily bother me; it is, after all, one of the most significant gay novels ever published, so it's not really a book about women. But that said, I just wasn't able to connect with it in the way I expected to, nor in the way that I did with Go Tell it on the Mountain. It's such a brief little book, but it just left me cold in a way I haven't experienced in a long time.