For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” – Anton Chekhov During that terrible summer of 2020, when my wife and I lived only eight blocks from the U.S. Capitol, it felt like we were … Read more
[ad_1] Among the most ancient and revered forms, which the amorphous siren known as prose may assume, is that of satire, used for millennia to critique, to side-eye and expose, to lay bare the ills of society in narrative or verse. From The Frogs of Aristophanes to Voltaire’s Candide, from James Joyce to Larry David, … Read more
[ad_1] There is an inarguable ephemerality about Dante Alighieri, the author of the Divine Comedy (in Italian, Commedia—the “Divine” was a publisher’s later addition). C.S. Lewis put it well in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966): “There is a curious feeling that [the Commedia] is writing itself, or at most, that the tiny figure … Read more
[ad_1] Well everyone, we’ve made it to the start of another year, though not without some bumps and scrapes along the way. As we round day six-hundred-and-seventy of the pandemic, give or take, it can be easy to lose sight of all the good that’s happened, too. There are still things to celebrate. If you … Read more
[ad_1] Last year, we featured 18 notable debuts by trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming authors. This year, the list stands at 34, and still, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg for expansive, compassionate, and daring literature by TGNC authors. While the United States bans or restricts access to queer books across the … Read more
[ad_1] Reading H. Melt’s poetry collection, There Are Trans People Here is like walking through a city you love (sometimes begrudgingly) and being able to see its past, present, and future all at once. Today there might be transphobic landlords, but one day there will be a Trans House. Today there might be doctors and … Read more
[ad_1] Personally, I’ve already made a plan to forget 2021 ever happened—except when it comes to mystery and thriller reading. In that realm, it’s been a banner year. Of course, I haven’t read everything published, so some crime fiction which has already seen huge success in sales or will soon dominate the awards programs next … Read more
[ad_1] Many of us will never forget those precious moments before lockdown, when we had no idea what was about to hit. We went to the grocery store unmasked, saw friends, went to concerts, went to work. No one yet knows how the story of the pandemic will end, or when. But what if these … Read more
[ad_1] In Persian culture, on the winter solstice, we have a variety of rituals to mark the longest night of the year, one of which is to read poetry. Perhaps it’s no surprise that poetry books are some of my favorites to review, given that cultural DNA. Concurrently, at this time of year in the … Read more
[ad_1] If there’s one thing that was certain about this year, it’s that nothing was certain. And yet, the impulse to make sense of our world and its persistent forms continued. Texts that critically surveyed our world—presented in varied genres and approaches—drew us in to consider—with hope, curiosity, dismay, and startling surprise—all that abounds. From … Read more