For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Courtney Zoffness has a way with beginnings. Consider the opening sentence of her essay, “Boy in Blue”: “Most mornings, my four-year-old arrests me.” Or the instructions at the start of “Holy Body” on how to prepare your body for a mikveh, which involves not just washing every limb and hair but emptying both your … Read more
[ad_1] Being a teenage girl is hard. Especially on Long Island during the summer of 1999. No one knows this better than Forsyth Harmon. Author of the illustrated novel Justine, Harmon digs deep into the lives of two high school friends, Ali and Justine, using their multi-layered relationship to explore all the complexities and confusion … Read more
[ad_1] Releasing a debut novel is always a fraught endeavor, and in a pandemic, it’s even more so. But the luckiest debut novelists see buzz building for their books well in advance of publication. Right now, that buzz belongs to Sarah Penner and her inventive, compelling historical novel, The Lost Apothecary. It’s been named among … Read more
[ad_1] When recalled over morning coffee, intense, meaningful dreams dissolve into confused fragments that escape language and leave even a sympathetic listener out in the cold. But what if a dream could be pinned down with all of its illogically tantalizing details, its particular atmosphere, primal details, shifting scenes, to arrive, finally, at some essential … Read more
[ad_1] Daniel Borzutzky’s newest collection of poetry, Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018, examines specific violence in America, explicit within the global economic order. This collection, like his 2016 National Book Award-winning The Performance of Being Human, and Lake Michigan, examines a psychogeography of movement. There’s Pittsburgh, Chile, the American Middle West. Bodies … Read more
[ad_1] An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura is an immigrant story turned on its head. In traditional tales, a foreign-born young person arrives on American shores unable to speak the language but grows up to become a great success. An I-Novel, instead, is about two Japanese sisters in America who long to go “home.” But what … Read more
[ad_1] Perhaps this notion seems obvious: we can’t separate ourselves from history. It determines our circumstances and perspective. It is deeply and intimately intertwined with our lives and identity. However, for those who belong to dominant cultures, history can be taken for granted. They were raised amidst their history. They were taught and celebrated their … Read more
[ad_1] The self-help book never goes out of style because we always want more. The billion dollar market continues to grow each year, but the gist remains the same: make money, save time, be present, find joy. They promise that we all have the potential to self-actualize in the career of our dreams. But what … Read more
[ad_1] Karin Tidbeck is one of those writers whose work is delightfully hard to pin down to a genre—their work includes fantasy and science fiction, but slips between genres to new and stranger places. In their new novel, The Memory Theater, Tidbeck has crafted a kind of modern folktale. Inventive, surreal, at times violent, the … Read more
[ad_1] Excited for Shadow & Bone to drop on Netflix this April? SAME. But waiting is hard. So, here are 9 fantasy books we think you should read while you wait! Fireborne by Rosaria Munda The dragons of Callipolis could certainly give the volcra of the Shadow Fold a run for their money… or … Read more