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The Hadza and the Honeyguide (02/23)
In Dan Saladino's book
Eating to Extinction, readers find themselves in the midst of the Hadza people. The Hadza live in northern Tanzania, in camps that average between 20 and 30 individuals.
The Hadza have been in this region for thousands of years, and they are well-known for their honey harvesting. Making up
roughly 15% of their ...
The Toronto Raptors (02/23)
In
Fight Night, grandmother and granddaughter Elvira and Swiv are both big fans of the Toronto Raptors, a Canadian basketball team that competes in the NBA's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. The novel has a few autobiographical elements, as author
Miriam Toews lives in Toronto in a household that includes her own mother (whose name ...
The Democrats, Race and the 1994 Federal Crime Bill (02/23)
In
How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi recalls his adolescence during the 1990s, frequently referencing comments made and policies enacted by President Bill Clinton. Author Toni Morrison famously called Clinton the '
first Black president,' a fairly controversial comment that was nevertheless frequently repeated by Clinton supporters ...
True Crime (02/23)
Sarah Weinman's Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free sits squarely in one of today's hottest genres: true crime. Consumers of the genre may crave the rush that comes from real-life crime stories, especially ones that prove the cliché that...
Abortions in the U.S.: Who Has Them? (02/23)
Jennifer Haigh's novel, Mercy Street, centers around a clinic that provides women's health care services, including abortion.
As most know, it is already difficult to gain access to legal abortion services in many parts of the United States; but legislation to outlaw access is now gaining traction, both by the Supreme Court and in many...
The First and Second Sudanese Civil Wars (02/23)
Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas takes place in an NGO (non-government organization) facility in Saraaya, a town close to the border between northern and southern Sudan, during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005), which was essentially a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). While there were multiple complex factors ...
The Photography of Spencer Ostrander (02/23)
Thanks to the numerous photographs that accompany Paul Auster's prose, Bloodbath Nation reads like an extended photo essay, the combination of words and pictures creating a truly indelible work. The images were recorded by New York City–based photographer Spencer Ostrander, for whom this work is deeply personal.
Ostrander, who ...
The Impact of Climate Change in Florida (02/23)
Climate change is an international problem but its impact can already be felt more intensely in certain areas. This is particularly true in locations that are warm and coastal, which are more susceptible to the effects of increased temperatures, rising sea levels, worsening tropical storm systems and erosion. Florida is one such example, ...
Speciesism (02/23)
In Between Light and Storm, Esther Woolfson critiques the idea that humans have a unique moral status that grants us the right to exploit animals for our own purposes without regard to their interests and welfare. This belief system, founded on the notion of human exceptionalism, is often referred to as 'speciesism,' a term coined by ...
"Degenerate Art" in Nazi Germany (02/23)
In David R. Gillham's Shadows of Berlin, the protagonist's mother was a modern artist whose work was banned by the Hitler Regime.
Adolf Hitler didn't originally intend to have a career in politics, planning instead to be a professional artist. In 1907 at the age of 18, he applied to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts, but was rejected &#...
The SCOPE Project (02/23)
Diane Chamberlain's protagonist Ellie Hockley in
The Last House on the Street participates in the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) project against the wishes of her family. SCOPE was created in the spring of 1965 under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC proved to be a...
Feminism and Water Imagery in Literature (02/23)
In Sara Freeman's debut novel Tides, after undergoing a harrowing loss, the protagonist Mara takes to the road, leaving everything and everyone she loves behind. She doesn't know where she will go, but if asked, she knows she will say, 'without hesitation, [t]he sea.' She is drawn to a town — any town — by the sea because her ...
Frontotemporal Dementia (02/23)
In Julie Osaka's novel,
The Swimmers, one of the main characters suffers from memory loss due to dementia.
The
Mayo Clinic defines 'dementia' as 'a group of symptoms affecting memory, thinking and social abilities severely enough to interfere with your daily life.' It's not one disease, as many different conditions can cause dementia. ...
Don Quixote: The First Modern Novel (02/23)
In Vladimir, Julia May Jonas's debut novel, Don Quixote is something of a minor motif. The protagonist and her husband—both English literature professors at a liberal arts college—are fans of the work and have even retraced the famous character's journey through Spain. Late in the novel, the protagonist's husband, who has been...
The Iliad (01/23)
In Call Me Cassandra by Marcial Gala, the main character is visited by the Greek goddess Athena and instructed to read a Cuban edition of the Iliad, the epic poem attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer and maintained through centuries of oral tradition.
The poem focuses on certain events towards the end of the Trojan War, including...
BRCA Gene Mutations and Prophylactic Mastectomy Surgery (01/23)
In This Boy We Made, author Taylor Harris finds out that she has a BRCA2 genetic mutation that puts her at about a 50% higher than average risk of developing breast cancer, and decides to have a prophylactic double mastectomy.
A mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene is associated with a higher risk of certain types of cancer. Dr. Mary-...
The Influence of Pygmalion in Art and Entertainment (01/23)
Tracing Jennieke Cohen's My Fine Fellow and its influences through time offers a fascinating thread stretching back all the way to the ancient Greeks.
Cohen's novel is a playful reworking of the musical My Fair Lady, about a snobbish English professor determined to make over a Cockney flower seller. The musical was written by composer ...
Who Really Has Your Back? Queerness and the Black Community (01/23)
In Nobody's Magic, a novel about three different black women with albinism who are on journeys of self-discovery, the social circles readers become privy to serve to normalize some of the characters' queerness. There are multiple queer moments throughout the novel; in Suzette's story, a character named Drina struggles with telling Suzette...
Heartbreak Day and Family Separation During American Slavery (01/23)
For American slaves, January 1 was a day to dread. For on that day, many were hired out to new plantations without warning, and some were sold off. Anxiety was rampant the evening before the new year, which was possibly the last time family members would see each other. It was a tumultuous night for parents wondering if their children ...
Segregation and Integration in Northern Irish Education (01/23)
The history of mostly separate education for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland is a complicated one, existing alongside discriminatory and segregated employment, marriage and housing laws. In Michelle Gallen's Factory Girls, school is one of the most significant areas where the period of intense sectarian conflict between ...
The Famous Forgeries of Han van Meegeren (01/23)
In Con/Artist, Tony Tetro explains the value of provenance, meaning how a painting came to be in a seller's possession. Sometimes, the provenance of a forgery is what we remember. In 1945, Dutch police arrested Han van Meegeren for collaborating with Nazis by selling them art. During the trial, van Meegeren explained what really...
A COVID-19 Nonfiction Reading List (01/23)
Between autumn 2020 and spring 2021, lots of COVID-themed books started to appear on bookstore and library shelves in the UK, where I live. It felt like nonfiction was quicker to respond to the pandemic than fiction. Some of my favorites were too niche for US publication because they focus on the UK’s National Health Service (...
The Japanese Occupation of Korea (1910-1945) (01/23)
Juhea Kim's Beasts of a Little Land covers half a century of Korean history, including the Japanese occupation of Korea. The occupation began in 1910, when Japan annexed the Korean peninsula. This occurred after years of attempts by the Japanese government to exert rule over Korea, due in part to its economic interest in the country's ...
Wellness Retreats (01/23)
The events of This Might Hurt by Stephanie Wrobel take place predominantly at Wisewood, a fictional island retreat off the coast of Maine that purportedly focuses on self-improvement techniques and conquering one's inner fears. The concept of a mental health 'retreat' is by no means foreign to Americans, and wellness tourism has grown ...
The Murder of Leo LaChance (01/23)
In Lisa Bird-Wilson's novel Probably Ruby, a chapter set in Ruby's teenage years features references to the real-life 1991 murder of a 43-year-old Cree man, Leo LaChance, by a self-proclaimed white supremacist and member of the Ku Klux Klan named Carney Milton Nerland. LaChance was killed in a Prince Albert, Saskatchewan pawn/gun shop on ...
The "Lost Cause" Myth and Its Physical Legacy (01/23)
Following defeat and widespread destruction in the Civil War, people in the former Confederate states set about rebuilding their communities and coping with the enormity of their loss. This effort included physical and psychological measures, such as building cemetery monuments and establishing Confederate Memorial Day to honor fallen ...
Mapping the Ocean Floor (12/22)
In Charmaine Wilkerson's novel
Black Cake, one of the main characters has made a career as an oceanographer, concentrating on mapping the ocean floor.
Water covers about 70% of the Earth's surface. And yet surprisingly little is known about what lies beneath it; just a little over 20% of the seabed had been mapped as of 2021. It's ...
Escalating Anti-Muslim Sentiment in India (12/22)
At the time of the
partition in 1947, what was once the British colony of India was split, separating the predominantly Hindu Dominion of India (modern-day Republic of India) from the predominantly Muslim Dominion of Pakistan (modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh). Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru envisaged India as a secular socialist ...
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (12/22)
Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Demon Copperhead is largely based on Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) wrote 15 novels during his career, the eighth of which he ponderously dubbed The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone ...
A Short History of the Cooking Show (12/22)
In Lessons In Chemistry, the main character is the reluctant host of a popular TV cooking show.
Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray are just a few of the many modern TV chefs who’ve become household names. Cooking shows are now not only daytime television staples; they're featured in the primetime lineup. Such was not ...
Dala Horses (12/22)
In Shelby Van Pelt's novel
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Tova Sullivan treasures her collection of Dala horses brought to the United States from Sweden decades ago by her mother.
A Dala horse, also known as a Dalecarlian horse (or 'Dalahäst' in Swedish), is a type of hand-carved, painted statuette in Swedish culture. According to
...
The History of Antler and Horn Décor (11/22)
In Courtney Summers' I'm the Girl, much of the plot focuses on the mysterious, imposing Aspera resort. Part of what gives Aspera its exotic and vaguely menacing atmosphere is the fact that its luxurious interiors are heavily decorated with deer antlers (the book's endpapers also contain images of antlers). For Matthew Hayes, the owner of ...
Beyond the Book: Claire Keegan and the Art of Short Fiction (11/22)
Claire Keegan is a writer’s writer — lauded by the likes of William Trevor, who chose her first short story collection, Antarctica (1999), for the William Trevor Prize; Hilary Mantel, who gave her second short story collection, Walk the Blue Fields (2007), the Edge Hill Short Story Prize; and Richard Ford, who awarded Foster ...
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (11/22)
In Percival Everett's novel Dr. No, a character named John Sill vows to become a 'Bond villain' after his parents' deaths, which he suspects are connected to the assassination of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. When Sill visits James Earl Ray, the man convicted of murdering King, Ray insists that the FBI was behind the ...
Tang Dynasty Poet Yu Xuanji (844-871) (11/22)
Chinese poetry has a long and varied history. The Tang Dynasty (from 618-907) is considered one of the most vibrant cultural periods for poetry and other arts.
In Qui Xiaolong's mystery novel The Shadow of the Empire, set during the Tang Dynasty, detective Judge Dee professes to be a poet, and much of the plot is driven by clues held ...
Contemporary Korean Literature in Translation (11/22)
From Parasite to BTS to Squid Game, there's no shortage of brilliant Korean media and entertainment that has had international reach lately. Books are no exception, with Sang Young Park's Love in the Big City, translated into English by Anton Hur, being just one example. Here is a sampling of some other exciting novels that have been ...
Sumptuary Laws in Early Modern England (11/22)
The heroine of Lucy Jago's A Net for Small Fishes, Anne Turner, has a unique claim to fame: she holds the patent for the saffron-yellow starch that is taking the Jacobean fashion world by storm. Jago beautifully depicts the colorful world of the court at Whitehall, where all the courtiers are constantly trying to outdress each other. ...
The Children of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa (11/22)
The children of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa form a large part of the cast of Antoinette's Sister by Diana Giovinazzo. This is no surprise: They numbered enough to make up a team roster for many sports, with 10 of 16 surviving to adulthood. Of these, the most famous are her sons Joseph II and Leopold II, both of whom inherited the...
Youth Environmental Activism (11/22)
In Richard Powers' Bewilderment, nine-year-old Robin Byrne is distressed at the plight of endangered species and commits to painting as many of them as he can, as well as undertaking one-kid protests outside the Wisconsin statehouse and in the nation's capital. He specifically emulates a character called 'Inga Alder,' who is clearly based...
The Biodiversity Crisis (11/22)
From the peacock mantis shrimp's remarkable ability to perceive polarized light to the orbweaver spider's time-tracking powers, Jackie Higgins' Sentient showcases the varied sensory powers of a wide range of animals, highlighting the rich diversity of life forms found across the natural world.
Yet as climate change intensifies and ...
The Work of Mark Rothko (11/22)
The story 'Rothko, Rothko' in Gish Jen's collection Thank You, Mr. Nixon features an art forger who is dedicated to mimicking the work of the abstract painter Mark Rothko. Known for his depictions of intensely colored rectangular figures, Rothko is considered one of the most notable artists of the 20th century.
An American of Latvian ...
Multiculturalism and Racism in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, Wales (11/22)
Nadifa Mohamed's novel
The Fortune Men takes place in Tiger Bay, the dockland district of the city of Cardiff, Wales. According to
the BBC, Tiger Bay, now known as Butetown, is considered Wales' oldest multi-ethnic community and people from over 50 countries have settled there. While she was working on her novel, Mohamed explained in an
...
Contemporary New England Fiction Writers (11/22)
The stories in Lily King's Five Tuesdays in Winter include settings in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts, three of the six northeastern states of the USA that are collectively known as New England (the others being New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island). Below we've highlighted some other contemporary authors who reside in and/or set...
What Is Autofiction? (11/22)
As a concept, autofiction can seem like an oxymoron. Short for autobiographical fiction, the term was coined in the 1970s by French writer Serge Dubrovsky, and it quickly became something of a buzzword in the publishing world. This blend of two seemingly disparate forms is best described as a fictionalized account of real-life events, ...
Ghost Girls (Radium Girls) (11/22)
In Laird Hunt's book
Zorrie, the title character takes a job painting watch dials with illuminating
radium in Ottawa, Illinois. The women employed by the company think it's great fun to glow all night after their shifts, and even smuggle extra vials of glow-in-the-dark paint home to create designs on themselves.
During World War I, ...
Animal Domestication (11/22)
In What We Fed to the Manticore, Talia Lakshmi Kolluri uses short stories to explore humans' relationships with various animals, both wild and domestic. Through domestication, people have artificially selected for traits in animals or plants that are useful or appealing to them, creating species that are genetically distinct from their ...
The Shelfie: From the Early Modern Ages to COVID-19 (11/22)
Perhaps it's a quirk of readers, but it seems almost natural to be drawn to other people's books — whether in images on social media or in someone's home. Books offer a snapshot of who a person is, presenting a quick glimpse of what influences them, what they might think about and what holds lasting meaning for them.
So it isn't ...
Susto (10/22)
In Manuel Muñoz's The Consequences, the story 'Susto' describes a man's disturbed psychological state after he discovers a dead body in a field. The Spanish word 'susto' can be translated into English as 'fright,' but it also refers to an illness associated with certain Hispanic and Indigenous populations in Latin America and the ...
Mass Shootings in Oregon (10/22)
Kindra Neely's debut graphic memoir for young adults, Numb to This, documents her experiences as a survivor of the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in October of 2015. This was Oregon's deadliest mass shooting, resulting in 10 fatalities (including the gunman) and seven further casualties.
The incident is part of a larger ...
