Looking for new additions to your TBR pile or gift list? LitHub's Natalie Zutter is recommending seven sci-fi and fantasy books that are published this month, including Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ's debut novel, "Dazzling," which is about two girls coming of age at a Nigerian boarding school, and Geoff Ryman's "Him," which muses on what would have happened if Jesus Christ was born a girl.
It is a rare bravery to face the factors of our lives that have fallen down, fallen short, and fallen apart. It's being present with unflinching resolve. It's grieving without giving up or giving in. That's what gives us a chance. A chance to be new and renewed. A chance to be deeper and different. A chance to begin and, more importantly, to begin again.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque. You are a teenage German boy who signs up to fight in WWI with your classmates, and you never find anything worth fighting for, just mud and death in the trenches, as any sense of yourself or any recognizable future fades. 4 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈 🐈.
Today in Labor History December 2, 1867: British author Charles Dickens gave his first public reading in the United States at Tremont Temple in Boston. He described his impressions of the U.S. in a travelogue, “American Notes for General Circulation.” In Notes, he condemned slavery and correlated the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad. Despite his abolitionist sentiments, some modern commentators have criticized him for not condemning Britain’s harsh crackdown during the 1860s Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica. During his American visit, he also spent a month in New York, giving lectures, and arguing for international copyright laws and against the pirating of his work in America. The press ridiculed him, saying he should be grateful for his popularity here.
You have an affliction. A malady. Everything in the world, all its equipment and armaments, its slings and arrows, its sticks and stones, its words that always hurt you, that break your heart and your bones. Osteogenesis imperfecta. All your inner structures turn brittle, little, and weak.
Five stars: How Spider Saved Halloween by Robert Kraus (1973) was published the year I was born. I think I had it read to me way back when. I came across it again via social media — Instagram, I think. As it was coming up on Halloween, I though it was a good time to read or re-read it.
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#FridayReads
There are three books I'm reading at the moment and all have drawn me in in their different ways:
Botticelli's Secret by Joseph Luzzi - an account of the commission the artist Sandro Botticelli was given by a member of Florence's powerful Medici family to illustrate all hundred cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy
The Housekeepers by Alex Hay - a terrific revenge heist story pitting downstairs vs upstairs masterminded by a former housekeeper of a grand London Mayfair house who has a hidden agenda
Into the Forest - an anthology of retellings of Baba Yaga stories by a wide range of horror and fantasy writers