- The Best LGBTO Books of the Year, According to Lambda Literary
- The 2022 Pride Reading List: 72 New Books to Read All Year
- 11 Forgotten Books of the 1920s Worth Reading Now
- The Self Is a Fiction: Jenny Xie Interviewed by Mariam Rahmani
- What I Learned from Reading All 56 of the Original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories
- Pushing Boundaries: Literature in Translation 2022
- How a Book Gets Banned in America
- 8 Surprising Titles from Beloved Authors
- The Weirdly Specific Trend That Has Taken Over Women’s Fiction
- The Complexity of Keeping House is Worthy of Great Literature
The Best LGBTO Books of the Year, According to Lambda Literary
BookRiot has some reading suggestions for Pride Month.
Category: Book Recommendations
The 2022 Pride Reading List: 72 New Books to Read All Year
This list from Goodreads includes books that are currently available as well as books that will be published later this year (2022).
Categories: Book Recommendations, Literature & Culture
11 Forgotten Books of the 1920s Worth Reading Now
“Writers from the 1920s to Prime You for the 2020s”
From Bob Batchelor, for LitHub:
Many books from the 1920s can provide deep insight on current pressing issues, from extensive presidential corruption to clashes over alcohol and marijuana policies. Race, our most pervasive and harrowing challenge, (then and now) was a principal concern.
Categories: Literary History, Literature & Culture
The Self Is a Fiction: Jenny Xie Interviewed by Mariam Rahmani
An interview with poet Jenny Xie about her debut book, Eye Level:
The poems in the first and third sections of the book are precisely about the provisional nature of selfhood, how it gets generated and regenerated depending on context. When I’m writing, I’m often interested in stripping away the selves that feel artificial—that I can easily inhabit when I’m moving through the world—to turn inward toward the interior flux.
Categories: Author News, Literature & Psychology
What I Learned from Reading All 56 of the Original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories
Book blogger Krysta spent a year recently reading all the original Nancy Drew mystery books. Here’s her conclusion:
In the end, I enjoyed revisiting the Nancy Drew books, even though I cannot overlook their flaws. They provide a fascinating glimpse into a period of history when questions of femininity were being debated and discussed–just as they still are today. Nancy walks the line between domestic and independent, showing that a woman can be smart, assertive, and bold, even as she can be charming and polite. Nancy Drew inspired me when I was growing up, telling me that I could do anything if I had enough daring.
Categories: Literary History, Literature & Culture, Literature & Psychology
Pushing Boundaries: Literature in Translation 2022
As international writers expose themselves to considerable danger to protest injustice, look back on historical repression, or express radical ways of living in the world, the role of the translator to effectively render a story into another language grows ever more crucial.
Publishers Weekly talks with translators “about how their work shines a light on issues of oppression and on our shared humanity.”
Categories: Literature & Culture, Literature & Psychology, Life Stories in Literature, Publishing
How a Book Gets Banned in America
As efforts “to remove books by Black and LGBTQ+ authors from school libraries across the US” increase, Vice examines the process:
Documents show the step-by-step process that gets a book banned from schools: All it takes is an anonymous letter, a principal underlining words like “condom,” and some poorly written policies.
Categories: Censorship, Libraries, Literature & Culture
8 Surprising Titles from Beloved Authors
We all have those favorite authors whose every new publication we pick up because we just know we’re going to love it. But even writers like to shake things up a bit sometimes. Here’s a chance “to see a different side to your favorite authors with this list of books showcasing their departure from a usual genre or style.”
Categories: Author News, Literary History, Reading
The Weirdly Specific Trend That Has Taken Over Women’s Fiction
Heather Schwedel discusses the popularity of “the Protagonist Does a Thing [title] formula” across multiple genres.
Categories: Publishing, Writing
The Complexity of Keeping House is Worthy of Great Literature
unless it is recommended by a man, domestic labor—cleaning and organizing living spaces; cooking; care work—is gendered female and thus invisible. One can travel quite deep into the literary archive without finding a single reference to the activities that keep households running, and keep those within them alive.
Lisa Locascio lists several literary works “that make the invisible visible.”
Categories: Writing, Literature & Culture
© 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown
