Citizen Reading: 27 March 2017.
27 March 2017
A weekly selection of reading and book news, sometimes with completely inappropriate commentary.
Becky at RA for All's latest call to action: Think like a reader. (And she has unveiled a new column: Advice on Dealing with Difficult Patrons. Awesome.)
Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter: has died. (Related: How he "changed the face of crime fiction.")
Robert Silvers, the founder of The New York Review of Books: has died at age 87.
Sophie Kinsella has signed a deal to write two YA novels.
A previously "lost" F. Scott Fitzgerald story is going to run in The New Yorker.
John Scalzi has a new novel out. I like John Scalzi.
Jane Austen's newest groupies: white nationalists?
YA novel Dumplin' film adaptation: news and casting.
George Saunders's new novel Lincoln in the Bardo will be adapted as a movie.
Charlaine Harris's Midnight, Texas, tv adaptation: premiere date.
2017 Whiting Awards: Winners.
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards: Winners.
Romance Writers of America Awards: Finalists.
Audiobook of the Year Audie Award: Finalists.
NONFICTION BOOK NEWS
Heard about this book on NPR and it sounds fascinating. Lost ships, polar exploration, Inuit hunters, this book has it all!
I want to read this book: Death by Video Game. (Update: just got it from the library today. It looks so good. Sadly there are a million other books on my TBR shelf that look good too. Sigh.)
New Yorker writer Ariel Levy has written a "thoroughly modern memoir." Oh, okay. I'm reading that article and thinking, I know her name, and now I know why. She's also the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, in which she "wondered just how liberated the heroines of “raunch” culture actually were."
This looks good, but might make me hungry: a posthumous collection of food essays from novelist Jim Harrison.
Did you know that Duncan Hines was a real person?
Can the story of Adam and Eve help you learn how to better your marriage?
Like the movie Super Troopers? If yes, you'll probably love actor/director Jay Chandrasekhar's new memoir about making it in Hollywood.
Oh God, now Sheryl Sandberg can use the tragedy of her husband dying to write another book, this one about resilience. We get it Sheryl, lean in, be resilient, blah blah blah, you're just a better woman than we are, okay?
Why are books about the "hillbilly problem" so popular? The author of this piece (Elizabeth Catte) has a book coming out herself, titled What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, that I'd like to see.
Jamie Oliver will publish a new "five-ingredient cookbook" this autumn.
Marie Kondo is back atop the bestseller lists after an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning.
A new micro-history...this one on dictionaries.
New York Times: The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution (about economic inequality; I kind of want to see this one); why do mountains "attract war"?; ooh, here's another one that smacks of micro-history: the tale of one very expensive stamp; how does a biography author actually work?; and, and this one I absolutely must get, a new book on "beauty, class, and the history of dentistry".
BOOK LISTS
IndieBound: bestselling books the week of March 23.
Vogue: Must-read books of spring 2017. Can't say anything on this list appeals overly, but you never know.
Paste Magazine: Best new YA books of March.
Audiobooks about women who "worked the crown and owned the throne."
Bustle: 11 new historical fiction novels.
A new list service from Booklist: Further Reading. This month it's on Russia.
8 new graphic novels for teens.
Five fictional women detectives of note.
25 kid and YA books that "lift up immigrant voices."
New YA novels that explore themes of race and racial profiling.
MY READING NOTES
I got Paolo Bacigalupi's novel The Windup Girl, because I thought his dystopian novel The Water Knife was fantastic. I started this one but am just not in the mood right now. Mr. CR started it and said it was too scary (in much the same way The Water Knife was scary--too "possible"); I still want to read it.
I got and read some of the essays in the updated collection The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier. I actually enjoyed it more than the first collection, The Bitch In the House. For one thing, this is largely an older woman's book, with older women's concerns (which I have always found more interesting than younger women's concerns, frankly). Mr. CR says that, by temperament, I've been a 60-year-old woman the entire time he's known me. I can't wait to catch up to my actual age!
I looked over Ann Gadzikowski's Creating a Beautiful Mess: Ten Essential Play Experiences for a Joyous Childhood, but didn't read it. It was nice and straightforward, and listed the following things kids should be doing for play: building with blocks, pretending, running around like crazy, cuddling something soft, laughing, making a mess, playing turn-taking games, collecting things, telling stories with toys, and making things happen with machines. Not only do we do most of that stuff, we did most of that stuff yesterday.
AND NOW, YOUR OBLIGATORY NEIL GAIMAN LINK
This is old news, but I don't think I listed it here before: Neil Gaiman is now a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.