Sibylla, an American-at-Oxford turned loose on London, finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand. High-minded principles of child-rearing work disastrously well. J. S. Mill (taught Greek at three) and Yo Yo Ma (Bach at two) claimed the methods would work with any child; when these succeed with the boy Ludo, he causes havoc at school and is home again in a month. (Is he a prodigy, a genius? Readers looking over Ludo's shoulder find themselves easily reading Greek and more.) Lacking male role models for a fatherless boy, Sibylla turns to endless replays of Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai. But Ludo is obsessed with the one thing he wants and doesn't know: his father's name. At eleven, inspired by his own take on the classic film, he sets out on a secret quest for the father he never knew. He'll be punched, sliced, and threatened with retribution. He may not live to see twelve. Or he may find a real samurai and save a mother who thinks boredom a fate worse than death.

 

 

 

"In 2020 I read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, and Solnit’s new inventive biography was a wonderful follow-up to that. A reminder of the importance of cultivating beauty—blooming flowers, fine prose—in a world that has lost its way."

 

 

"In the year 1936 a writer planted roses." So begins Rebecca Solnit's new book, a reflection on George Orwell's passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, and the natural world illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power.

 

Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the surviving roses he planted in 1936, Solnit's account of this understudied aspect of Orwell's life explores his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left), to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit's celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers encounter the photographer Tina Modotti's roses and her Stalinism, Stalin's obsession with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell's slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid's critique of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes her portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as a reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.

 

 

 

Best read aloud in the company of a four-year-old, Emily Jenkins's Toys series is a marvel of complex character development and sly existential anguish. I would kill to write characters this good. There is this stingray named StingRay who always pretends to know stuff that she doesn't know, a buffalo named Lumphy who is brave but also scared, an enthusiastic rubber ball named Plastic, a wise towel named Tuk-Tuk, plus this sheep who is missing one ear who is obsessed with talking about the one time she went outside and ate real grass... as well as a dryer (Frank, he lives in the basement), assorted mice, a rubber shark, and these Barbies who can't talk and who all the other toys despise... at one point a stuffed animal who doesn't talk is described as having "furniture eyes" ... I'm obsessed with these books.

 

 

In these six linked stories from Emily Jenkins, and illustrated by Caldecott Medal winner Paul O. Zelinsky, readers will meet three extraordinary friends. Lumphy is a stuffed buffalo. StingRay is a stuffed stingray. And Plastic... well, Plastic isn't quite sure what she is. They all belong to the Little Girl who lives on the high bed with the fluffy pillows. A very nice person to belong to. Together is best for these three best friends. Together they look things up in the dictionary, explore the basement, and argue about the meaning of life. And together they face dogs, school, television commercials, the vastness of the sea, and the terrifying bigness of the washing machine.

 

 

 

 

 

What is the meaning of being? This is the central question of Martin Heidegger's profoundly important work, in which the great philosopher seeks to explain the basic problems of existence. A central influence on later philosophy, literature, art, and criticism—as well as existentialism and much of postmodern thought—Being and Time forever changed the intellectual map of the modern world. As Richard Rorty wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "You cannot read most of the important thinkers of recent times without taking Heidegger's thought into account."

 

 

 

"There have been other major books about the history of the suburbs, the consequences of redlining, and the pathological American obsession with lawns since Crabgrass Frontier was published in 1985, but this was the one that really brought it all together for me. Before Crabgrass I didn’t understand anything about American cities and after Crabgrass I did—it’s that simple."

 

 

This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how the good life in America came to be equated with a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe.

 

 

 

 

 

As the country goes through various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo's life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.

 

 

 

"Few 20th century novels depict queer female relationships, and few explore female creative partnerships, but even fewer show a relationship that is both. In Fair Play—a book I wish I'd read much earlier in life—Jansson writes the deep intimacy of two women cohabitating and collaborating. Across seventeen sweet, brief chapters, Jonna and Mari travel, bicker, navigate each others' moods, fixate on their own work, doubt themselves, encourage one another, and demonstrate a unique kind of partnership that honors each woman's independence and their mutual devotion."

 

 

Mari is a writer and Jonna is an artist, and they live at opposite ends of a big apartment building, their studios connected by a long attic passageway. They have argued, worked, and laughed together for decades. Yet they've never really stopped taking each other by surprise. Fair Play shows us Mari and Jona's intertwined lives as they watch Fassbinder films and Westerns, critique each other's work, spend time on a solitary island (recognizable to readers of Jansson's The Summer Book), travel through the American Southwest, and turn life into nothing less than art.

 

 

 

 

 

Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women's rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger's racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.

 

 

 

"A message board for male escort reviews possibly unearths a violent and disturbing underworld; the internet peanut gallery layers so many doubts on their story, and becomes so invested in it, that it becomes disturbing whether or not it's true. Published in 2004 but the best "internet novel" for my money. Fun fact, Jackie Ess's Darryl borrows characters and plotlines from this book without even acknowledging it! Probably one of the most nauseating things I've ever experienced, and I saw Silence of the Lambs in theaters when I was seven (my uncle took me + didn't know what it was about, was too cheap to walk out)."

 

 

Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.

 

 

 

 

 

Master of Japanese horror manga Junji Ito presents a series of hissterical tales chronicling his real-life trials and tribulations of becoming a cat owner. Junji Ito, as J-kun, has recently built a new house and has invited his financée, A-ko, to live with him. Little did he know. . . his blushing bride-to-be has some unexpected company in tow—Yon, a ghastly-looking family cat, and Mu, an adorable Norwegian forest cat. Despite being a dog person, J-kun finds himself purrsuaded by their odd cuteness and thus begins his comedic struggle to gain the affection of his new feline friends.