INTERESTING ARTICLES

If you read an interesting article, book related or book adjacent, share it with the rest of us!

love that photo!

A few lists of books to look out for, in 2025:

The Guardian - Fiction to look out for in 2025
The Guardian - Nonfiction to look out for in 2025
Lithub: 20 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward to in 2025
Arabic Lit in Translation: Forthcoming in 2025
Literary lineup - 2025 Books from India
RTE (Ireland): 10 Books to Look Forward to in 2025
Foreign Policy: The Biggest Foreign-Policy Books of 2025
Polygon: The 44 most exciting science fiction and fantasy books for your 2025 reading list
Financial Times: What to Read in 2025
The Times: The 40 books to look out for in 2025 — the critics’ picks
TODAY: 50 books we can't wait to read in 2025

And off these lists, some books I'm personally looking forward to. I've included short blurbs (either from the publisher page or from one of these lists above)

Nonfiction:

- Phillipe Sands - 38 Londres Street (W&N, out April 2025)
Phillipe Sands is a well-known international law expert who wrote a very interesting memoir recently (East West Street). He's a good writer, and this new book is about the link between the Chilean dictator Pinochet and the fugitive SS officer Walther Rauff, who fled to Patagonia to avoid being tried for war crimes.

- Emily Callaci - Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise (Allen Lane, February 2025) - Callaci is a historian at UW Madison in the US, and this book is a history of the Wages for Housework movement by 1970s American women, and beyond, in Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. The publisher page says she uses new archival sources, and I’m looking forward to reading the book.

- Frances Wilson – Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark (Bloomsbury, June 2025) – Wilson wrote a very well-regarded biography of DH Lawrence recently (Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence). I’m sure this will be interesting and a good chance to re-read Spark herself.

- Robert Macfarlane – Is a River Alive? (Hamish Hamilton, May) – Macfarlane is one of my favourite contemporary authors, and Underland is such a fabulous book – one of the most romantic pieces of nonfiction that I’ve read. I’m really looking forward to this global account of how we regard rivers as entities.

- Viet Thanh Nguyen – To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other (Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press)
What is the role of the outsider in literary writing? And how can communities build global solidarity amid war, imperialism, and violence? Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, turns to literary, political, and historical analysis in his quest to answer these questions in six essays originally delivered as the prestigious Norton Lectures.

- Josephine Baker – Fearless and Free (translated from the French by Anam Zafar and Sophie Lewis, Vintage)
“Singer, entertainer, raconteur, muse, spy — Baker was a woman of many lives and blazed a trail through 20th-century Europe and America. Here, in the first English-language translation of a book based on extensive interviews with a French journalist, she tells her own story.”

Fiction:

- Han Kang – We Do Not Part (Hamish Hamilton, translated from the Korean by E Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris)
Beginning one morning in December, We Do Not Part traces the path of Kyungha as she travels from the city of Seoul into the forests of Jeju Island, to the home of her old friend Inseon. Hospitalized following an accident, Inseon has begged Kyungha to hasten there to feed her beloved pet bird, who will otherwise die.

- Abdulrazak Gurnah – Theft (Bloomsbury)
It is the 1990s. Growing up in Zanzibar, three very different young people – Karim, Fauzia and Badar – are coming of age, and dreaming of great possibilities in their young nation. But for Badar, an uneducated servant boy who has never known his parents, it seems as if all doors are closed. Brought into a lowly position in a great house in Dar es Salaam, Badar finds the first true home of his life – and the friendship of Karim, the young man of the house. Even when a shattering false accusation sees Badar sent away, Karim and Fauzia refuse to turn away from their friend.

- Michelle de Kretser – Theory & Practice (Sort of Books)
It's 1986, and 'beautiful, radical ideas' are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda, she meets artists, activists, students - and Kit. He claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on 'the Woolfmother' into disarray.

- Colum McCann – Theft (Bloomsbury)
I know many people here enjoyed his last book Apeirogon. The Guardian called this book “a Graham Greene-ish thriller about the hunt for a missing sea captain off the coast of South Africa. It’s dark, moving and enormously entertaining.”

- Jia Pingwa – Old Kiln (Sinoist, translated from the Chinese by Christopher Payne, Olivia Milburn and James Trapp. 1966, China is on the cusp of a decade of upheaval, and the furnaces of Old Kiln have never been this cold. The village’s once-famed ceramics production has almost ground to a halt. Only ancient grudges smoulder beneath its poverty-stricken streets, never forgotten by the two families that preside over the village. Between them stands the adopted Inkcap, whose mysterious origins leave him unloved and barely tolerated.

- Hassan Blasim – Sololand (Comma Press, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright)
A collection of short stories.

- Fatima Qandil – Empty Cages (AUC Press, translated from Arabic by Adam Talib)
“Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, Empty Cages is an urgent and raw confessional of memory and family and all that is lost and won in one woman’s lifetime The discovery of an old tin of chocolates, its contents long ago devoured, marks the entry into this intimate story that reaches back through a lifetime of memories in search of self and home.”

- Miguel Ángel Hernández – Anoxia (translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West, Penguin Random House)
Set 10 years after the sudden death of her husband, Anoxia tells the story of Dolores Ayala, a photographer who receives an unusual request from a man by the name of Clemente Artés. Clemente is obsessed with the tradition of photographing the dead on the day of their funeral, and begins to train Dolores in this practice. What unravels is a nuanced ghost story in which the lines between the living and the dead become increasingly blurred.

- Tash Aw - The South (Fourth Estate)
The first in a planned quartet of novels that will follow one family through a tumultuous period, The South is concerned with a relationship that blossoms between two boys over the course of one eventful summer.

>4 rasdhar: Thanks for those links, Rasdhar. The forthcoming novels by Tash Aw and Abdulrazak Gurnah sound especially appealing.

>4 rasdhar: So many tempting titles. I'll wait and see which you like ;-)

World Lit Magazine's 75 Notable Translations of 2024 https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/lit-lists/world-literature-todays-75-n...

Some of these names will be familiar: I know >5 kidzdoc: has Elias Khoury's Star of the Sea on his list, and several of us read Andrey Kurkov's The Silver Bone, Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos, Bothayna Al-Essa's The Book Censor’s Library, and Asako Yuzuki's Butter. But there are a few more interesting titles I wanted to flag:

Linnea Axelsson, Ædnan, trans. Saskia Vogel (Knopf) - a big multigenerational saga about two Sámi families (Sámi are indigenous people from Scandinavia). Guardian review here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/18/dnan-by-linnea-axelsson-review-an-...

Olivia M. Coetzee, Innie Shadows, trans. Olivia M. Coetzee (House of Anansi) - I believe this is the first translation from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Silence of the Choir, trans. Alison Anderson (Europa Editions) - a French novel about the African diaspora in Italy, winner of the 2021 Goncourt Prize and dozens of other awards. It centres around the arrival of a group of refugees to a small Italian town.

>7 rasdhar: Thanks for this! Ædnan is lovely. It's an poem, so there is a lot of filling in what is unsaid.

>7 rasdhar: A treasure trove. I didn't realize that Bothayna Al-Essa had a second book published this year. And there are a couple of authors whose works I have enjoyed in the past who have a new book out, as well as new names. So much to explore!

>7 rasdhar: Thanks for this link, Rasdhar. I have three of those books, Star of the Sea, as you mentioned, Kairos, and The Joyful Song of the Partridge. One Archipelago Books title on this list is The Brush, which was apparently published last April, but I don't believe that I received it. Several other books look interesting, especially the ones written by Michel Houellebecq, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Olga Tokarczuk, and especially Lamia Ziadé.

>10 kidzdoc: You should have received it -- I did. It is a very thin book and I think it was in a parcel with another one (who remembers anymore...)

>11 AnnieMod: Thanks, Annie. I don't always remember to document the books I receive in my LT or Goodreads libraries, including the two books my brother gave me for Christmas, so I'm sure you're right.

>7 rasdhar: nice. I was surprised to not see Not A River by Selva Almada

At her "Woman of Letters" blog, Naomi Kanakia asks "which publisher has the best classics line"?

>14 KeithChaffee: Huh. Interesting. I was surprised that she primarily reads e-versions, because part of what attracts me to a specialty line is the look and feel of the paper. I would find it hard to judge presses solely by their e-versions. Also, she seems not to care much about translator, which is a big deal for me. I thought her remarks about front and end matter was good. I thought her remarks about what constitutes a classic vs a forgotten classic, seemed to me to be based on an Anglo-centric perspective. Many books are classics in their own country, and when translated does that make them less a classic? And the line, it's book piracy but who cares, threw me. What did you think?

>15 labfs39: Yes, she's writing from an English-speaking perspective; how can she not? We can only write from the perspective of who we are, and unless you're going out of your way to offend people, I'm not bothered by that. I'm sure there are books that we consider classics that the average German or Chinese or Ethiopian reader has never heard of, but I wouldn't be offended or consider that a flaw in their education.

But like you, I was bothered by her cavalier dismissal of piracy. I am on the side of the publishers in their current legal batte with the Internet Archive. It's one thing to make available books that are no longer in print and cannot be obtained commercially; there's a reasonable argument to be made for that. But pirating stuff that can be legally purchased crosses the line for me.

>16 KeithChaffee: I see what you are saying, but I do think it's possible to talk about classics with an eye to appreciating and including classics from other countries without relegating them to second class status of "forgotten classics". I would also bet that the average reader in other countries has heard of (and possibly read) far more British and American classics than vice versa. Anyway, it's a nice compilation of publishers, and a good reminder that I want to search the back catalogs of some of them.

>17 labfs39: I think that (a) not all "forgotten classics" are from other countries, and (b) there's nothing second-class about "forgotten classic" status.

Today's issue of The New York Times features an article about the rise of the African publishing industry, as authors and publishers are no longer relying solely on large Western publishers based in New York, London and Paris to tell their stories to their own people. As the South African writer Zukiswa Wanner mentioned, "We are discussing us and then telling our stories."

In African Publishing, ‘There Is a Renaissance Going On’

And its about time

Bookshop.org created a platform for indie bookstores to sell ebooks:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bookshoporg-launches-revolutionary-eboo...

>21 ELiz_M: Oh, this is good stuff. A better place to buy my ebooks from is very welcome.

They have *some* ebooks that you can get to from a separate page (not the main search page) and you can't gift them. You also have to read the ebooks in their specific app, not in your own ereader unless it also runs apps. Since I don't want to download, install, and use yet another app and I never want to read on my phone, I'm not that excited about this.

It's a good start though. I just need it to be more fully-functional.

>21 ELiz_M: cool, thanks!

>23 reconditereader: good point about the apps. (I read on my phone a lot)

They are a bit pricey and clunky, but Boox e-readers do run on an Android system. I got one cause my library has Hoopla, which also can't be accessed on Kindle.

Also worth noting that all of this only applies to the U.S.

>26 reconditereader: In the FAQs, it says that they can only take US-based payment but if you can manage that there's no other limitations on getting the books. I don't know how much of a pain it would be to get a US credit card, or if you can do it with Paypal or the like.

I'm not interested, at least at the moment, because I don't want to read (and buy) in yet another app. Apparently it's possible to download a few books (ones published without DRM) but most are trapped in the app (browser or mobile). We'll see how this shakes out over time.

Great news for fans of translated literature: the British publisher Tilted Axis will begin publishing its books in the United States for the first time this year. The initial set of 20 books includes the award winning novel Delicious Hunger by Hai Fan, which was translated into English by Jeremy Tiang. According to this article from The New York Times, "With only eight employees working part-time on a tight budget, it has published 42 books translated from 18 languages, including Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Eastern Armenian, Kazakh, Kannada, Bengali, Uzbek and Turkish."

A Tiny Press Took a Big Risk on Experimental Books. It Paid Off. (gift article)

>28 kidzdoc: This is wonderful news. I've subscribed to their mailing list. I keep seeing Jeremy Tiang's name everywhere. He's a translator (and author) I'm keen to follow.

>14 KeithChaffee: Great article, thanks! I read almost exclusively ebooks, and with classics in e public domain it’s sometimes hard to figure out which edition to buy. I think I will save this for future reference.

(sorry, catching up on my LT reading!)

>28 kidzdoc: This is great news. Jeremy Tiang is a good translator: he's won several prizes, and I really enjoyed his translation of Zhang Yueran's book Cocoon last year.

An article about Fitzcarraldo Editions, their branding and their success in publishing. I liked this bit from their publisher, Jacques Testard:

“It’s important for us to remain small enough to never have to publish a book for commercial reasons and to be able to keep publishing books because we think they’re really good.” Has he ever thought about becoming part of a larger conglomerate? “Never. I want to stay independent forever.” But have they ever approached him? “There have been a few lunches.” But the answer has always remained no? “I’m not interested in selling the company. I like my job.” And maybe that’s the real story. Fitzcarraldo is not what it is because of branding and not because they publish excellent books, either – or, not only. Testard likes pushing the boat over the mountain. If he didn’t, there’d be no story.

https://032c.com/magazine/fitzcarraldo-the-biggest-little-press-in-the-world

The International Booker Prize Longlist is here!

https://thebookerprizes.com

Which ones have you read? Which ones interest you?

There are two books of short stories, which I'm excited about. It's interesting that there are two books about women with mental illness and neither of them are On a Woman's Madness.

I’m exploring it. Solenoid is the big whopper. Heavily reviewed and gigantic.

A very interesting interview of Percival Everett appeared in the most recent issue of the Sunday Observer; in it he announced that Stephen Spielberg would adapt his National Book Award winning novel James for the big screen.

Writer Percival Everett: ‘Deciding to write a book is like knowingly entering a bad marriage’

>33 RidgewayGirl: I am surprised I haven’t heard of any of these writers. I will probably have a go with the Spanish language one first as I feel half Spanish living in New York.

>35 kidzdoc: Hope Spielberg doesn’t whitewash it. His movies, to me, are to film what MacDonalds is to hamburgers.

>37 dianeham: >35 kidzdoc: he’s the wrong director for this in so many ways

>36 kjuliff: i’ll put my notes in Just Lists later tonight

>37 dianeham:, >38 dchaikin: Don't shoot the messenger! I'm just reporting the news. 😎

>40 kidzdoc: lol

>40 kidzdoc: better phone home!

>37 dianeham: >38 dchaikin: I would say that Spielberg has certainly made plenty of "McDonald's hamburger" movies, but his filmography also includes Schindler's List, Lincoln, Amistad, and a fine remake of West Side Story. He probably wouldn't be the name that would leap to mind for an adaptation of James, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume he'll be wrong for it.

If you're interested in the International Booker long list, but are unfamiliar with the books, there's a quiz to help you pick one.

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/quiz-which-book-from-the...

I got There's a Monster Behind the Door and coincidentally, it was the one I was most interested in.

>44 RidgewayGirl: Nice. I got A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre.

You should read: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon

>44 RidgewayGirl: Thank you for the link! I got There's a Monster Behind the Door too.

I got On a Woman's Madness by Astrid, translated by Lucy Scott, which definitely checks some boxes for me.

I got Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda.

>49 markon: I got it too!

>44 RidgewayGirl: I got The Book of Disappearance which was a bit of a surprise to me. As it is unlikely to come out in audio I’m unlikely to read it. I was hoping I’d get Eurotrash which I’m currently reading and enjoying.

>51 kjuliff: The fun thing about a quiz like this is that you can get a different book each time you take it.

>44 RidgewayGirl: I got Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary, which is great because I was planning on reading it anyway.

It's awards season everyone!

The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction longlist:

https://carolshieldsprizeforfiction.com/2025-longlist

And the Tournament of Books has kicked off:

https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/2025/play-in-match

Interesting article about some oft overlooked female Irish writers:

https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/irish-women-writers

>55 AlisonY: Thanks for that!

Optimism is less a belief that things will be good, and more a belief that you can handle whatever comes.
The pessimist sees the tunnel, the optimist sees the light at the end, the realist sees the tunnel and brings a flashlight.
Optimism isn't blind faith; it's seeing possibilities where others see only problems.
A day begun with optimism is a day half won.
Optimism is the engine of progress; pessimism is the parking brake.
Don't confuse optimism with naivety. Optimism is courage dressed in hope.
The optimist plants seeds, even in a barren field.
Optimism is the art of turning stumbles into stepping stones.
Optimism is not denying the storm, but believing in the rainbow.
Cultivate optimism like a garden; it will yield unexpected blooms.

https://psyche.co/ideas/why-its-possible-to-be-optimistic-in-a-world-of-bad-news

>55 AlisonY: Thanks for this. Maeve Brennan is the only one I had heard of before: Anne Enright had an essay about her in the Guardian some time back. I'm noting the others for future reading. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/21/anne-enright-real-maeve-brennan-ne...

>58 rasdhar: Many were new to me as well. I'm also noting them, as Irish literature of old really is male-dominated.

A lot of new Irish authors coming through. Wendy Erskine I know of - I've been to a couple of events she's spoken at. She's an English teacher at a local girls' school in Belfast.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250109-books-to-read-in-2025

It may be behind a paywall, apologies if so. It's mostly about podcasts, related to audiobooks, but there were a couple of relevant paragraphs directly about audiobooks themselves.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/addicted-podcasts-cut-down-sharper-less-stre...

The audiobook material read:
Reading is active in a way listening isn’t. You must turn pages and focus, while an audiobook plays passively. This changes how we absorb information.
A study conducted at the University of Waterloo has shown that people who listen to the narration of a passage, like the audio storytelling found in traditional audiobooks, retain less information, are less interested in the content, and are more likely to daydream than those who read the same book out loud or silently to themselves. Most people – around 65 per cent – are visual learners, meaning they retain information better through reading. Thirty per cent are auditory learners, while the remaining 5 per cent learn best by doing.

I have to say that I've largely moved away from audiobooks, personally finding them less satisfying or involving, but still listen to a fair amount of podcasts (mostly about books!).

>61 Willoyd: Very interesting, and in my 3 month journey so far with audiobooks there's nothing there I would disagree with. With practice I am getting better at limiting my daydreaming when I'm listening, but I definitely can't absorb audiobooks in the same way as physical books (or even enjoy them in the same way). But I am enjoying them as it makes my commute feel more purposeful, and I am choosing books that wouldn't probably make my physical wish list so I don't feel too annoyed about not taking them in so well.

>61 Willoyd:, >62 AlisonY: I also think this is true because we're coming from a culture that transfers knowledge by reading & writing. I think oral cultures that transfer information differently might have different habits.

"Media evolve like rivers: from paper banks to digital rain, they carry the same water – truth – but the riverbed shifts, and those who cannot swim drown in the flood". https://medium.com/@richardgingras/the-evolution-of-media-and-democracy-how-we-g...

>61 Willoyd: I think that may be true for many, maybe even most, people. But there are auditory learners who absorb more information when they hear it than when they read with their eyes. I also suspect that the vast majority of people do not know how to listen and instead have an audiobook or podcast playing while they do other things. I know I do. And I know I'm a visual learner and so the audiobooks I choose are of the simpler, plot-oriented variety.

And we can't forget the many people who need audio versions of books to be able to read at all.

>61 Willoyd: I’ve found audiobooks can provide a better experience than reading - in some cases. Audiobooks books can add voices and accents and tone - all of which can be done badly much more easily (and commonly) than well. But when done well are really nice. Authors who read out loud well are often better to listen to than to read. If the reader captures the nuance, and rhythms of the text, it really can help make the book better for a reader like me.

But also there are challenges i deal with. I listened to several books in the 2023 Booker longlist. My enjoyment was similar to other readers, but my memory of the details was much worse. I tend to have a good overall sense of story, tone, and characters. But I forgot names and specific events. In 2024 I chose not to listen to any.

Irish writer Ken Bruen has died.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/03/30/irish-crime-writer-ken-bruen-dies-...

A recent BBC article on books to look forward to this year:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20250109-books-to-read-in-2025

>68 AlisonY: That is an excellent list that includes my most looked forward to book of 2025 -- The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride.

Happened upon this while looking up something else

https://forward.com/yiddish-world/699316/chaim-grades-last-yiddish-novel-sons-an...

"Will Chaim Grade’s novel ‘Sons and Daughters’ come out in Yiddish, too?"

Grade is an unknown author to me, who wrote yiddish novels in Poland. the article makes me want to find out more about him and to read the novel in English that came out in March, Anyone else interested?

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Most American Literature is the Literature of Empire
https://lithub.com/viet-thanh-nguyen-most-american-literature-is-the-literature-...

>71 rasdhar: Wow. So much to think about there.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist and winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, died in Lima yesterday. He was my favorite living novelist, and I particularly loved The Feast of the Goat, Conversations in the Cathedral, The War of the End of the World, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,

Mario Vargas Llosa, giant of Latin American literature, dies aged 89

The lost 1934 novel that gave a chilling warning about the horrors of Nazi Germany
BBC
Sally Carson was not an oracle or a prophet, just a young woman from Dorset, born in 1901. Yet she foresaw a dark and violent future for Europe and gave voice to those fears in a 1934 novel that is now for the first time this spring, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Controversial in its day, her novel had to tread a careful path to avoid the accusation that it was alarmist about the Führer’s aims. A stage adaptation was even censored, shorn of all its “Heil Hitlers”.

English writer’s forgotten ‘masterpiece’ predicting rise of Nazis gets new lease of life
Guardian

>74 kjuliff: how interesting!

>76 dchaikin: I forgot to mention the name of the book - Crooked Cross

The Paris Review has made available their interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, one of my favourite contemporary writers. Her short story collections, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories, and There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved her Children Until They Moved Back In are chilling, yet funny fables. In 2023, she announced that she was retiring from writing to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/8390/the-art-of-fiction-no-267-ludmill...

What else was I supposed to do in all those orphanages and sanatoriums? Every night before bed I’d tell the whole ward a scary story⁠—the kind that makes people hold their breath, which is the only kind of story that people really listen to. Humor doesn’t cut it, or romance, or lyricism⁠—no, no, no. Only terror works.

Not an article, but a discovery. I recently learned that bookshop.org does ebooks. They have their own app. For those who don't want to support Bezos, or Barnes&Noble (Nook) or Apple, or other giant companies with mixed or bad reputations, this might be a really nice option.

>79 dchaikin: see >21 ELiz_M: ;)

>80 ELiz_M: 😁 I missed that. Thanks!

This is an interesting article from today's issue of The New York Times, which describes the unusual role that Deepa Bhasthi, the translator of this year's International Booker Prize winning title Heart Lamp by Bantu Mushtaq, played in crafting the work.

Prize Highlights Evolution of Translation

>79 dchaikin:, >80 ELiz_M: There is also libro.fm, where a portion of your sale is given to the independent bookstore you select.

>82 kidzdoc: Thanks for the link Daryl. I really want to read Heart lamp this year.

>83 markon: ooh. Thanks!

>82 kidzdoc:
Very interesting. I hadn't realised that this was a 'new' book. Bought it last week! I can't understand why historically so many governments have worked to suppress languages (pretty horrible record here in the UK) - it always has the opposite to the desired effect, and impoverishes culture. There's also a huge difference between enabling through having a common language and suppressing 'minority' ones.

>85 Willoyd: Great. I look forward to your thoughts about Heart Lamp, Will.

>78 rasdhar: Interesting. I'm not familiar with this author - I'm intrigued.

I'm in the process of watching a webinar at work on the making of a film about the history of black librarianship in the US that is being released this year, hopefully in Philadelphia at the ALA conference later this month. This article at BookRiot gives an overview. You can watch the pre-interviews that were recorded as research on YouTube. Funded by a GoFundMe page, the project is in editing. The makers are planning to tour and tweak it after ALA, and hope to distribute it on the festival circuit next year.

Because of the gutting of the IMLS, a couple of grants they wrote in hopes of creating an interactive map of segregated libraries and a curriculum to present the documentary at elementary and middle schools will not be funded.

>88 markon: Thanks for that information, Ardene. Every new day provides a new reason to despise Trump and his lackeys.

not an article but an ad in Archaeolgy Magazin Author William Sullivan has written historic novels based on actiual sites with sagas from the beginning of the viking life in Norway to Haralds Blue Tooth of denmark, the swedes conquered Russia and the Icelanders who explored America. Now Ive read several of the old Sagas from that time period but am curious about ths author Any one know anything about him?

>90 cindydavid4: No, but it sounds right up my alley. Added to my TBR ocean.

'It opened up something in me': Why people are turning to bibliotherapy

Excerpt: Some trace the origins of bibliotherapy to World War One, when fiction and non-fiction books were used to ease soldiers' suffering and trauma. But the idea made a return in the 1990s, Carney says. Today it takes many forms – from bibliotherapists like Berthoud who offer tailored recommendations for £100 ($130) per session, to some GPs who point some of their patients to fiction, like Andrew Schuman. He's an NHS physician who advises the bibliotherapy charity ReLit and co-wrote the 2016 Lancet paper about the benefits of bibliotherapy.
BBC article 17th June 2025

>92 kjuliff: Interesting. I once took a graph of the precipitous decline in my reading to the doctor's, and said, See, something is wrong with me!

There is no doubt that reading fiction and non-fiction helps me make sense of my or other people's feelings, or understand the world, which is good for my mental health. Full-on escapism isn't something I seek personally, but I can see how it works for others.
Incidentally, did anyone here read the book mentioned in the article (Ella Berthoud’s The Novel Cure)? I was given the French version (basically the original with a handful of extra French novel recommendations) one Christmas and it wasn't for me.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/22/look-how-well-read-i-am-how-books-...

Summer is here, journalists are going on holiday, and it’s time for another article about people who sell books by the metre for interior decoration…

>95 thorold: Well, nuts. I was pleased when the whole "bookshelf wealth" home decor idea became popular -- the idea that your home decor should consist of "having a collected and curated space of things that represent yourself, your story and your interests..." -- because it is such a move away from the hotel lobby look of modern farmhouse, which has dominated home decor for so many years, and a move toward authenticity. The books and items on display should be those that are meaningful to you and so it isn't surprising that people would look for a shortcut.

Sometime it would be fun to research this properly and establish when someone clever first mocked uncultured people for decorating their homes with books. I suspect there would be plenty of hits from the nineteenth century, probably the 18th too. I wonder if the meme even goes back to Roman times. You can imagine Catullus or someone aiming squibs at a wealthy-but-culturally-illiterate collector of manuscripts…

The author of The Salt Path, a best selling memoir about walking in nature and dealing with severe health diagnoses, has been accused of lying. In the Guardian, Alex Clark has a piece on the popularity of confessional-style memoir/nature writing, and what the Salt Path scandal means for the genre. I've read and enjoyed some books in this genre (Robin Wall Kimmerer, Helen McDonald's H is for Hawk, etc) so this was interesting. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/02/the-end-of-the-road-what-the-salt-...

>98 rasdhar: Love this quote by Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk:

“Nature is considered to be the one place free of human artifice, the place where deep universal truths can be uncovered that are not to do with us,” Macdonald says, “which, of course, is bullshit. That’s not the case. We put all our deepest human meanings into nature. We sort of force them in there, and then we use them to prove the veracity of our own concepts back at us, which is what nature writing does all the time.”

>99 FlorenceArt: I liked it too - thought it was very apt.

>98 rasdhar: Interesting. Thanks for this.

For those who have already read this year’s Booker long list Flashlight, and for those waiting for it to come off hold, this interview maybe of interest. It’s from the New Yorker (8/2020) - Susan Choi on How Much She Can Leave Out and concerns he short story of the same name. You can also read/listen to the short story on line.

Fans of RF Kuang will want to get a hold of The New Yorker from August 25th there is an article about her and her writing and her style I think it's fascinating . I just finished yellow face and her new boook katabasis just came out and is already writing another. Just saying it's worth a read

The September October issue of the Smithsonian has an has a very interesting article about Cormac Mccarthy's books and his legacy librar y with approx 20,000 books. The collection is also being digitized enjoy

An article about the book illustrator Edward Gorey, whose works are currently shown in a New York exhibition:
Edward Gorey Killed His Darlings

>105 FlorenceArt: Thank you! I do love Gorey's work.

this is message It's something I that I have been thinking about for a long time. This is in response to the interview with Abigail Jackson on Facebook

Lock step

Abigail talks about lockstep
in her conversation with the press
and conjures up some images from another time.
Black boots, families ripped From their loved ones and their home
Troops marching off to war,formed from lies in propaganda

I wonder if she chose that word or she just happened to think about it For fun

Deja vu

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24lzd32yjeo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

An article about the Trump Administration revoking Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka's visa.

"Philip Pullman has brought the story of one of his most beloved characters, Lyra Silvertongue, to a close.

Readers first met her in “The Golden Compass” (or “Northern Lights,” if you were in Britain), and came to love her bravery, imagination and recklessness. Along with her daemon, Pan, an animal companion who reflects her soul and eventually settles into the form of a pine marten, Lyra helped to save the universe — all before she even entered adulthood.

Pullman decided to return to Lyra, he said in a recent interview, because of where he’d left her. “She needed another adventure,” he said. “Besides, she was getting to a stage in her life where interesting things go on.”

“The Rose Field” is the final volume chronicling her adventure, and was published this past week. Readers have been anticipating the book with a type of bittersweet fervor — eager to plunge back into Pullman’s universe, but loath to see Lyra off."

oooh this is a must read; also makes me think of a teenager in our online bookgroup who shared the name

>108 RidgewayGirl: This is both infuriating and ironic. I heard Mr Soyinka speak in the main branch of the Oakland Public Library during a vacation in San Francisco, probably in 2006 or 2007, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and his excellent memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn was published. In it he describes his exile from his home country of Nigeria, who was under the control of another autocrat, General Sani Abacha. Mr Soyinka's talk was preceded by a 10-15 minute ceremony of singing and dancing by Nigerian performers, which was unforgettable and immensely enjoyable.

>110 kidzdoc:, >108 RidgewayGirl: I get the impression that he’s quite flattered by the gesture — he says he didn’t have any plans to revisit the US anyway.

An interesting article in the Korea Herald on the genre of 'healing fiction' in Korean literature. These books have become very popular in South-east Asia generally - examples include I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki:

"These are what the industry loosely calls “healing essays.” They are short, comprising brief paragraphs or fragments and designed for quick skimming. Unlike memoirs anchored in life experience, they function less as narratives and more as collections of quotable phrases.
And they sell.

In the monthly bestseller charts of Korea’s largest bookstore chains — Kyobo Book Center, Yes24 and Aladin — at least two or three of the top 10 titles are now these healing essays. According to Yes24’s annual report, more than 4,200 essay titles were released in 2023, almost double the figure a decade earlier. Unit sales in the “Korean Essay” category have grown by more than 30 percent since 2019, while other categories such as nonfiction and translated literature have stagnated.

“It’s the safest bet for publishers,” said a senior editor at a major local publishing house, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“You don’t need characters, research or story. What matters is whether a sentence looks good underlined with a highlighter. Marketing teams literally ask, ‘Can this be photographed for Instagram?’ That is the bar now.”

https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10580442

>112 rasdhar: Fascinating.

I've been very interested in the recently launched Cercador Prize, which is awarded to translators of books, by independent booksellers. It's been awarded thrice so far, and this year's winner is Christina McSweeney for her translation of Jazmina Barrera's Queen of Swords from Spanish to English (Two Lines Press). The jury citation is:

The Queen of Swords, presented here in a lyrical translation by Christina MacSweeney, astounded the committee. Jazmina Barrera’s study on Elena Garro, a maligned pioneer of magical realism, defies convention and embraces contradiction. This is a book of reversals and research, an unwaveringly brilliant portrait of a complex and undone life, captured in art and destruction, love and pain, faith and persecution.

I find Elena Garro fascinating, she's one of the pioneers of magical realism, and I hope I can get my hands on this book.

https://www.cercadorprize.com/

>114 rasdhar: Another prize to follow! More than the prize, I'm greedy for the list of finalists and have added a few to my wishlist.

>112 rasdhar: “They’re like fast food for the mind,” said Yoon, a 26-year-old graduate student in European literature at Kyung Hee University. “Easy to swallow, instantly gratifying, marketed as nourishing even when they’re mostly empty calories. I don’t blame people for reaching for them, but I wonder what it means if this becomes our main diet.”

I liked this quote toward the end of the article. For me, healing literature is two-fold: books that tide me over during stressful times (often genre fiction of so-so quality) and books that provide comfort (cardigan novels, gentle, slightly humorous books). I think most readers have books or genres that they fall back on during emotionally trying times, but in Asia, publishers are capitalizing on this and creating a genre helped in large part by social media. It's an interesting phenomena. I've not read any of the Korean essays, but I have read both Korean and Japanese novels that would fall into this category.

This is the second time I've heard reference to Two Lines Press this weekend. I guess I need to get on their mailing list!

>116 labfs39: I have thoughts about this -- I think that, at least here in the US, many people have always stuck to one comfortable genre of book, and have done so for decades, if not longer. From westerns to bodice-rippers, genre fiction has often filled that role, it's just that the preferred genres have changed over time -- now maybe the comfort genres are YA fantasy/romantasy and cozy mysteries?

And Daniel Woodrell has died. He wrote noir set in the Appalachian mountains and he may have been the founding father of that genre, one that now includes Donald Ray Pollock, Ron Rash and David Joy. If you're interested in his work, Tomato Red and Winter's Bone are good starting points.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/obituaries/daniel-woodrell-dead.html

Not quite an interesting article - more of a funny video: If Book Titles were Honest

>119 Dilara86: Love it

ALA welcomes reinstatement of all federal IMLS grants to libraries

>119 Dilara86: Thanks for linking that. That's great. I definitely own a copy of Ten Minute Recipes That Actually Take Over an Hour.

Fyi - your 2025 stats!

https://www.librarything.com/stats/MEMBERNAME/year

>123 dchaikin: Yikes. If this is right I've only read 18 books this year; I thought I was closer to the low 20s. Regardless, 2025 has been my worst reading year since the first full year after I finished residency in 2001, when I read 32 books. Hopefully I'll do much better in 2026.

>122 bragan: You're welcome! I also own Ten Minute Recipes That Actually Take Over an Hour :-)

>123 dchaikin: I don't know how I feel about 2025 stats being available over two weeks before the end of the year...

>125 Dilara86: There is the tiny Regenerate link right at the bottom - I suppose the stats are available all year, now-ish is when people might be interested.

>126 jjmcgaffey: Thanks! Will click on it on December, 31 ;-)

>125 Dilara86: They can go right next to 'best books of the year' lists that were published in early November.....

>128 rasdhar: And next to lists of Christmas bestsellers published in November!

The Kindle app will now feature an in built AI chatbot that will give readers “instant, contextual, spoiler-free information,” about “plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements.” Amazon says you can't opt out.

Does anyone actually want this?

https://gizmodo.com/kindle-ask-this-book-ai-2000699503

UGH. Fortunately I don't read on/in a Kindle, so it shouldn't affect me, but good lord.

I love a good explanatory footnotes (Barnes and Noble Paperback Classics Series, my beloved) but I prefer them to be written by educated, knowledgeable people. Not a LLM scraping every random website and essay it can find.

>130 rasdhar: Oh, this sounds dreadful, but how many people would even use this? The lengths companies go to force AI on people is ridiculous.

130
Reading the article, it's authors and publishers who can't opt out. Readers don't need to use it.

Readers cannot disable the feature either, but you're right in saying that this primarily hits authors since readers can just choose not to use it. I wonder how bad this will be for those who don't want their work used to train AI models

For Julian Barnes fans - his soon-to-be-released (in the U.S.) book - Departure(s) is reviewed in the TLS in Making stories happen. No paywall.