Where is your nonfiction section please.
Three weeks of Women in Translation Month left to go, so plenty of time to pick up something to celebrate! Over this past year, the number of books I've read since last year's WITMonth surprised me -- I think it was so many thanks to the Annie Ernaux odyssey I mentioned. Here's what I read:... Continue Reading →
It's August, which means: Women in Translation Month! Head over to that link to learn more about Meytal Radzinski's project to emphasize literature written by women and translated into English, a vastly underrepresented genre (books published in English translations by female authors account for less than 30% of translated literature every year). There are also... Continue Reading →
On the Wandering Paths, by Sylvain Tesson, translated from French by Drew S. Burk Buy used or new @SecondSale.com Every long march has its moments of salvation. We set out on the road, we make our way forward by seeking out perspectives in the bramble and avoiding the village. We seek out shelter for the... Continue Reading →
July is already half over and I'm only now getting around to my mid-year favorites list. I'm a mess! But better late than never, right? Especially when it's a favorites list, I feel. But I have to get really real with you: It has not been the best reading year for me so far. I've... Continue Reading →
When I was growing up, Go Ask Alice, the "true diary" of an anonymous teen girl, nicknamed Alice, was still an ubiquitous must-read despite being released in 1971, already decades old at that point. It's a salacious, haphazard diary of a young girl who is dosed once with LSD at a high school party, from... Continue Reading →
Great British Bake Off contestant and Guardian columnist Ruby Tandoh's book melding food, memoir, and life philosophy, Eat Up: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want, has been a UK bestseller since its 2018 release, and apparently is getting a US release next month, although the Queens Public Library already had it. I read it... Continue Reading →
Some minis on remarkable women doing amazing things today, because we can always use more of that. The Double Life of Katharine Clark: The Untold Story of the Fearless Journalist Who Risked Her Life for Truth and Justice, by Katharine Gregorio. Published March 15, 2022 by Sourcebooks Used or new @SecondSale.com Quite the incredible story... Continue Reading →
Sadly, Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine just passed its 100th day. Although Russia is forever one of my favorite reading topics, I had been pretty measured about it in recent years. Wanting more information about what's going on led me to push a few titles off my backlist, plus some in-translation new releases. I'm... Continue Reading →
Editor Natalie Eve Garrett's Eat Joy was an essay collection I adored: well-known writers from a spectrum of backgrounds and genres writing about their favorite comfort foods, or what that concept meant to them. Her latest curated collection The Lonely Stories: 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone follows a similar... Continue Reading →
I've been in the mood for these lately! It started with a visit last fall to the Sammlung Scharf Gerstenberg, a collection of surrealist art close to our Berlin apartment. In the bookshop there I found Desmond Morris's The Lives of the Surrealists. Morris, a painter (and zoologist!) himself, is one of the last surviving... Continue Reading →
Melissa Febos' Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative is both memoir and guidebook, and a meditation on what life writing does for us and the importance of it to women and underrepresented groups. Febos is the author of several works of memoir and autobiographical fiction, and although I haven't read her before, she's... Continue Reading →
Given my obsession with Indian food and curries of all kinds it only seemed fitting to learn more about them. Madhushree Ghosh's memoir-in-essays Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family (April 4, University Of Iowa Press) weaves together fragments of her life, both brighter and darker ones, loosely linked through food. It includes... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 