Reminds me of something Baldwin wrote in No Name in the Street: "White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded—about themselves and the world they live in. (...)"

"The reason for this, at bottom, is that the doctrine of white supremacy, which still controls most white people, is itself a stupendous delusion: but to be born black in America is an immediate, a mortal challenge."

Basically, white children grow up with the illusion that there is no such thing as racism, while black people can't escape it. (And the book contains many examples.)

Another literary anniversary: Golding's Lord of the Flies was published 70 years ago.

@NewTopicChallengeSuggestion The James Baldwin proposal needs (at least) two extra votes if we want this reading challenge before the end of his centenary year.

@verbose For my part, I simply have no clue (and don't care) about the skin colour of most of the authors proposed for topic challenges. Maryse Condé and August Wilson, for example - I wouldn't even have known if either/neither/both of them were black, until you mentioned one but not the other in your little list of black authors. I'm interested in their works, but unless they're writing about race issues, I really can't see any relevance in their skin colour.

I'm also personally much more interested in reading African literature than any kind of American literature (including African-American). I'd like to learn more about the many African cultures and peoples and the rich history of that continent, whereas US culture has already imposed itself enough on the world that my default (which may of course change according to the blurb for a given proposal) is to view any American-literature proposal as not being in the spirit of topic challenges.

@Randal'Thor The thing is that if you're white, you have (or: one has, since that includes me) no experience of systemic racism, whereas black authors who have lived in the Western world always have. Skin colour is very relevant to racism.

Of course skin colour is very relevant to racism, but neither of those are necessarily relevant to the appreciation of literature.

Antiquarian booksellers are a weird lot. Sometimes, almost every copy of a book I look up on Buchfreund.de (which allows you to search the catalogues of dozens of such booksellers) is more expensive than when I buy it new, even when the book has no special value to book collectors. They often set prices that are disconnected from real market value.

@Tsundoku “One reason the owners of secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it.”

I had to look that up. I've never read Terry Pratchett.