Last week, there was talk of Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt, an illustrated book by Spokane-Coeur d'Alene writer Sherman Alexie, and the anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold showcasing a variety of Indigenous storytellers and artists. Now: a novel, a book of creation stories, a children’s book, and a memoir
At first, I thought of arranging these four posts into categories—one for poetry and another for short stories, that kind of thing—but instead I have included an assortment in each post. Hopefully there will be at least one book that interests you, suits your reading taste and sparks your
Here’s a glimpse of some recent reads which lend themselves more to sampling, in a handful of reading sessions, than gobbling in longer periods of time. Not the books which require a sink-into-your-seat focus, rather the ones which afford the opportunity to window-gaze between pages or single-sitting reads. Like
Picking up yesterday's thread, the balance in Seçkin’s novel sways toward the personal, whereas the political scene in Alaa Al-Aswany’s The Republic of False Truths (2021) is more prominent, despite all the attention paid to characterization—a network that grows increasingly complex as readers turn the pages. (And there’s at
This has been a rich year for short stories. Some collections I’ve enjoyed without making notes, like Venita Blackburn’s How to Wrestle a Girl (2021); her stories are vivid and will appeal to readers who prioritize voice, as well as readers who admire a certain playfulness that’s delicately balanced
