New top story from Time: The Best Books of 2021 So Far

https://ift.tt/3vr16s6

Some of the best books of the year so far provide welcome respite from the outside world—while others aim directly for the turbulence, providing frameworks to understand how the past informs our present. Michelle Zauner crafts a devastating tribute to her late mother, circling universal themes of grief. Torrey Peters examines what makes a family in her refreshing debut novel. And Annette Gordon-Reed explores the history behind Juneteenth, offering a comprehensive account of the holiday and its place in our culture. Here, the best books of 2021 so far.

Who Is Maud Dixon?, Alexandra Andrews

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The most original and engaging thriller of the year so far takes place in an industry better known for selling mysteries than for being home to them: book publishing. In Alexandra Andrews’ propulsive debut, an ambitious editorial assistant finds herself working for the anonymous writer of a huge bestseller—and in way over her head when a research trip to Morocco turns into a deadly misadventure. Set to be adapted into a film, with The Post screenwriter Liz Hannah writing and directing, Who Is Maud Dixon? takes readers on a wildly fun ride.

Buy Now: Who Is Maud Dixon? on Bookshop | Amazon

The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman)

The translated trilogy of memoirs from Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, published as a single volume, takes a startling look inside the mind of an artist. In Childhood, she describes her coming of age and yearning to be a poet. In Youth, she captures in visceral terms her desperation for artistic freedom as Europe becomes ravaged by war. And in Dependency, she boldly examines her failed marriages and drug addiction. Together, these memoirs read like gripping fiction, an intense and intimate journey of reckoning with one’s many selves.

Buy Now: The Copenhagen Trilogy on Bookshop | Amazon

On Juneteenth, Annette Gordon-Reed

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger read out a declaration telling the enslaved people in Texas that they were finally emancipated, two long months after Appomattox. Juneteenth was a day long-celebrated by many Black communities in Texas and across America, but only in the past year or two has it become a more widely recognized holiday. In her slim but potent book, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning historian and Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed explores the story of that day and all the ways that Black and Native people’s lives have been obscured in culture. As a Texas native, Gordon-Reed offers a book that is both profound and personal in its exploration of the ways history shapes our lives and becomes distorted and reinvigorated over time.

Buy Now: On Juneteenth on Bookshop | Amazon

Libertie, Kaitlyn Greenidge

Growing up in Brooklyn through the Civil War and into the Reconstruction era, Libertie Sampson’s path is prescribed: she is to follow in her mother’s footsteps to become a physician. A character based on Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the first Black female doctor in the state of New York, Libertie’s mother cares for the members of her community, including formerly enslaved people. But Libertie’s confidence in the value of caring for others wavers when her mother’s attempts to heal a man from the mental toll of being enslaved fail, and soon, she begins seeking paths beyond the study of medicine—severing her deep connection with her mother. Blending careful attention to historical detail with a focus on themes that remain timeless—how children grow into themselves and away from their parents, and the ways racism and colorism manifest—author Kaitlyn Greenidge explores through Libertie what it means to truly be free.

Buy Now: Libertie on Bookshop | Amazon

Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe

In a year of endless death due to COVID-19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that opioid and other drug overdoses killed more than 90,000 Americans in 2020. To understand the origins of this deadly 20-plus-year epidemic, Patrick Radden Keefe, one of the top narrative nonfiction authors of his generation, offers an engrossing and deeply reported book about the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma. Their company created Oxycontin, the opioid introduced in the mid-90s that sent a wave of addiction and death across the country. Unlike previous books on the epidemic, Empire of Pain is focused on the wildly rich, ambitious and cutthroat family that built its empire first on medical advertising and later on painkillers. In his hands, their story becomes a great American morality tale about unvarnished greed dressed in ostentatious philanthropy.

Buy Now: Empire of Pain on Bookshop | Amazon

Milk Blood Heat, Dantiel W. Moniz

The haunting debut short story collection from Dantiel W. Moniz finds a cast of characters navigating life’s biggest challenges: heartbreak, inheritance, grief and growing up. Through these intergenerational narratives all set against the swampy backdrop of Florida, Moniz creates a portrait of women taking stock of their lives and what matters most to them. There are sisters, daughters and mothers all grappling with crises, from a 13-year-old on the cusp of becoming a teenager who is rocked by tragedy to siblings who are brought together by a trip across the country with their father’s ashes. Quiet and unnerving, Milk Blood Heat explores the most sacred relationships, and the lingering effects of loss and loneliness.

Buy Now: Milk Blood Heat on Bookshop | Amazon

Aftershocks, Nadia Owusu

At two years old, Nadia Owusu was abandoned by her mother. A decade or so later, Owusu’s sense of stability was again upended when her father, a United Nations official, passed away. In between these traumas and after, Owusu lived all over the world, from Tanzania to Ethiopia to the U.S. In her memoir, she contemplates the many pieces of her life that have been defined by these experiences in an attempt to understand what is left of herself in the aftermath. A bruising exploration of identity and belonging, Aftershocks is Owusu’s space to survey the damage, but also to interrogate and reevaluate the definitions of home and family.

Buy Now: Aftershocks on Bookshop | Amazon

Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

One of the most celebrated novels of the year so far, Detransition, Baby is a story about the great decisions of adulthood, made by people who didn’t know they’d get to make it there. That starts with the title, a playful nod to the classic marriage plot: Reese is a trans woman who desperately wants to be a mother. Her ex Ames, who detransitioned after they broke up, is now expecting a child with his boss Katrina, a cisgender woman who has recently suffered a miscarriage. Can they build a family? Author Torrey Peters takes on big questions about redefining relationships, motherhood and family, but isn’t interested in offering up easy answers for readers.

Buy Now: Detransition, Baby on Bookshop | Amazon

The Man Who Lived Underground, Richard Wright

Like a telegram from mid-century America warning us about our very present, Richard Wright’s novel arrived with the shock of recognition for readers in the midst of a reckoning with racial injustice. It is a richly allegorical, visceral and inspired story about a Black man arrested and tortured for a crime for which he is innocent—and his subsequent escape into the city’s sewer system. First written in the early 1940s after the mega-success of Wright’s Native Son, The Man Who Lived Underground was never published in his lifetime, except in a heavily edited short story that bears little resemblance to the book we now have. We have Wright’s descendants and the Library of America, a non-profit publisher that has been preserving and celebrating American literary history for decades, to thank for bringing this book to us.

Buy Now: The Man Who Lived Underground on Bookshop | Amazon

Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

Michelle Zauner, who records indie rock under the moniker of Japanese Breakfast, has explored her grief following her mother’s death through several mediums: in her reverb-drenched album Psychopomp; in an acclaimed short story published in the New Yorker; and now in this memoir. Zauner recounts her mother’s deterioration due to cancer through prose that is lucid but far from bloodless; she shows how love during illness often looks simply like a pattern of actions and rituals of care. Zauner also writes skillfully about grappling with identity, food, music and how each impacted her relationship with her mother. It’s an at-times challenging work that plumbs her maternal relationship to its deepest depths.

Buy Now: Crying in H Mart on Bookshop | Amazon

Comments

New top story from Time: The ‘Badass Chief of Staff’ of Turkey’s Opposition Faces Years in Jail After Challenging Erdogan’s Power. She’s Not Backing Down

https://ift.tt/2ZKUTZP Snow brings back memories for Dr. Canan Kaftancioglu. Of recess snowball fights in the Black Sea village where she grew up, of warming her hands at her elementary school’s stove before class — and of discovering a poem by Turkish writer Ataol Behramoglu, a favorite of a beloved uncle who would bring left-wing newspapers to her childhood home and discuss the articles inside. “It is about how the snow brings equality between people,” Kaftancioglu says of the poem. “In the snow, we build a new, more equal world.” The Turkish politician is speaking through an interpreter at her friends’ apartment in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, seated in an armchair with a beige and brown-spotted dog curled up beside her. In a matter of days or weeks but likely not months, Kaftancioglu expects she will be taken to jail. For now, she’d rather focus on her work: the poverty rate is increasing, and people in her city are suffering. Kaftancioglu represents something unfamil...

New top story from Time: The Documentary Final Account Is a Rare Trove of Unfiltered Interviews With Former Nazis—Too Unfiltered, Some Historians Say

https://ift.tt/3u2CDYI In 2008, documentary filmmaker Luke Holland was looking for a sense of closure. His Viennese maternal grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and, more than six decades later, he wanted to better understand what had happened. So he decided to ask the people who would know: SS members , Wehrmacht fighters, concentration-camp guards and civilian witnesses. “ At first, I embarked on a project with the completely improbable aim of trying to find the people who had killed [my grandparents]. It was quickly clear that I was not going to achieve that,” Holland wrote in a statement about the project. “But I realized I could actually meet their peers. I could meet people who had also raised their arms and their guns for Hitler , people who had committed atrocious crimes. And maybe through them, I might better understand the context in which the Holocaust played out in the heart of a supposedly civilized Europe.” Holland did more than 250 interviews, bu...

New top story from Time: Keeping Up with the Kardashians Is Ending. But Their Exploitation of Black Women’s Aesthetics Continues

https://ift.tt/3gahnMY The inaugural episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians , which debuted on E! in 2007, begins with an irreverent domestic scene. Kim Kardashian , the undisputed protagonist of the show, rummages through the fridge as she’s teased by her family for the size of her posterior. “I think she’s got a little junk in her trunk,” says Kris Jenner, the family’s matriarch and “momager.” She calls her daughter’s butt “jiggly,” as Kim’s sister Khloé Kardashian chimes in from the kitchen table, “Kim’s always had an ass.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] That the opener of the watershed reality show—which ends June 10 after 20 seasons—centered on the family’s fixation on Kim’s rear foreshadowed the now-ubiquitous public obsession with her body, and particularly that specific feature of it. This outsize fascination was perhaps best embodied by her controversial 2014 Paper magazine cover, shot by Jean-Paul Goude, where her bare bottom is flanked by the line, “Br...

New top story from Time: City Heat is Worse if You’re Not Rich or White. The World’s First Heat Officer Wants to Change That

https://ift.tt/2Us9kTo Jane Gilbert knows she doesn’t get the worst of the sticky heat and humidity that stifles Miami each summer. She lives in Morningside, a coastal suburb of historically preserved art deco and Mediterranean-style single-family homes. Abundant trees shade the streets and a bay breeze cools residents when they leave their air conditioned cars and homes. “I live in a place of privilege and it’s a beautiful area,” says Gilbert, 58, over Zoom in early June, shortly after beginning her job as the world’s first chief heat officer, in Miami Dade county. “But you don’t have to go far to see the disparity.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] A mile or two inland, in lower income, mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods like Little Haiti, Little Havana and Liberty City, tree cover can be as little as 10%, compared to around 40% in upscale coastal areas, according to Gilbert. Residents wait for buses on unshaded benches. Many can’t afford to buy or run an AC unit. “You ...

New top story from Time: ‘Most Heinous Attack.’ Merrick Garland Pledges to Take on Domestic Terrorism as Attorney General

https://ift.tt/3dGuLHC As the federal government continues to grapple with the fallout of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol Building by pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, the Biden Administration has remained close-lipped about how it plans to confront the rising threat of domestic terrorism. This week, Americans got a first look into how that effort may unfold with the testimony of Merrick Garland, the nominee to be the next attorney general. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday and Tuesday, Garland declared that investigating the Capitol insurrection was his “first priority” and promised to “do everything in the power of the Justice Department” to stop domestic terrorism. He also warned that the events of Jan. 6 were not a “one-off,” and that the U.S. is facing “a more dangerous period” than any in recent memory. Garland would know. More than 25 years ago, he led the Justice Department’s prosecution of the perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma Cit...

FOX NEWS: Man modeled ex-fiancée's wedding dress to try and sell it: Video Sometimes you’ve got to do a little more to snag that sale.

Man modeled ex-fiancée's wedding dress to try and sell it: Video Sometimes you’ve got to do a little more to snag that sale. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3iwCTgo

New top story from Time: We’re in the Third Quarter of the Pandemic. Antarctic Researchers, Mars Simulation Scientists and Navy Submarine Officers Have Advice For How to Get Through It

https://ift.tt/2MtohAV McMurdo Station, an Antarctic research base 2,415 miles south of Christchurch, New Zealand, is a strange place to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s been a home of sorts for Pedro Salom since he took a dishwashing job there in 2001, when he was 24. Now an assistant area manager with more than a dozen Antarctic deployments behind him, Salom has grown accustomed to the ebb and flow of life on the ice. There’s the surge of excitement when new arrivals join the camp, the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world when earth and sea disappear in the endless night from April to August; and the joy when the sun finally appears behind the mountains once again. He’s also been around long enough to know that, as people reach the end of their deployments, many begin to struggle—whether they’ve been at McMurdo for over a year, or even just a few months. “One of the things I look for is dramatic changes in people’s habits,” says Salom. “If somebody has...

New top story from Time: China Says It Will Provide COVID-19 Vaccines to Almost 40 African States

https://ift.tt/3f34nYP BEIJING — China said Thursday it is providing COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 40 African countries, describing its actions as purely altruistic in an apparent intensification of what has been described as “vaccine diplomacy.” The vaccines were donated or sold at “favorable prices,” Foreign Ministry official Wu Peng told reporters. Wu compared China’s outreach to the actions of “some countries that have said they have to wait for their own people to finish the vaccination before they could supply the vaccines to foreign countries,” in an apparent dig at the United States. “We believe that it is, of course, necessary to ensure that the Chinese people get vaccinated as soon as possible, but for other countries in need, we also try our best to provide vaccine help,” said Wu, who is director of the ministry’s Africa department. While the U.S. has been accused by some of hoarding vaccines, President Joe Biden on Monday pledged to share an additional 20 mi...

FOX NEWS: Alligator invades Florida post office This gator needs to say later to the post office.

Alligator invades Florida post office This gator needs to say later to the post office. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3gdiGdY

New top story from Time: House Democrats Pass Sweeping Voting Rights Bill Over GOP Opposition

https://ift.tt/3bVXJAY (WASHINGTON) — House Democrats passed sweeping voting and ethics legislation over unanimous Republican opposition, advancing to the Senate what would be the largest overhaul of the U.S. election law in at least a generation. House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process, was approved Wednesday night on a near party-line 220-210 vote. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes. The bill is a powerful counterweight to voting rights restrictions advancing in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s repeated false claims of a stolen 2020 election. Yet it faces an uncertain fate in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it has little chance of passing without changes to procedural rules that curr...

My precise view

Search This Blog