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Kelsey Ford: New Year, New You: 9 Books for a Better You, 9 Books for a Worse You (0 comment)

I’m not a huge believer in new year’s resolutions — they always feel like set ups for failure and disappointment instead of the well-meaning self-bettering they’re intended to be. However, I do believe in the fresh promise of a new year and taking the opportunity to deliberately (and gently) think about your routines and what you might be missing...

Keith Mosman: Powell's Picks Spotlight: Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham's 'Lunar New Year Love Story' (0 comment)
Kate Brody: What If the Real Monsters Were Inside Us All Along: Kate Brody’s Movie Playlist for ‘Rabbit Hole’ (0 comment)

Hatred of Translation

Nathanael

Hatred of Translation is a must-read for anyone interested in the practice, art, and theft (?) of translation. But this book is not easy (though if it were hard you could grasp it). Feel your hands slip off its oiled body as you try to wrestle it. Read it forwards and backwards and sideways and let it confound you. Let yourself forget about it, and then when you are ready, you will not be able to avoid the dead pigeon in the road.
Recommended by Adie B.

Postcolonial Love Poem

Natalie Diaz

Postcolonial Love Poem is earth-bending, earth-breaking, earth band-aiding. These are the hottest basketball poems I've ever read, the hardest long night wolf poems I've ever read, the smoothest river poems that you cannot stop.
Recommended by Adie B.

The First Bad Man

Miranda July

The single word to describe The First Bad Man is unforgettable. Nobody writes characters like Miranda July. Nobody. Prepare to fall in love (and fall over laughing/crying). But seriously, just read the plot description! I'm dying all over again. How do you even come up with this stuff?! And not only that, how do you write it WELL? Okay, I'm going to go read it again now, bye.
Recommended by Adie B.

Saturday

Oge Mora

Oge Mora started off with a bang when she was awarded a Caldecott Honor and won the Coretta Scott King and Ezra Jack Keats awards for her debut picture book, Thank You, Omu! She didn't let up one bit with her second title, Saturday, which was without question my favorite picture book last year. Combining Mora's now staple collage style with a stunning and original color palate, this sweet story is all about the simple beauty of... (read more)
Recommended by Adie B.

Belladonna

Dasa Drndic, Celia Hawkesworth

With Belladonna, the late Croatian maestro Drndic forces us to hold our gaze again and again at the interminable horrors of the 20th century. The first in a trilogy that forms one of the masterworks of the decade.
Recommended by Adie B.

Promise

Silvina Ocampo, Suzanne Jill Levine, Jessica Powell

Thanks to City Lights, the only novel written by the author that Borges called "one of our best" is finally available in English translation. Ocampo shows us the self as a spiraling cavern lined with the mirrors of other people. It's a terrifyingly beautiful and perfectly confounding sight.
Recommended by Adie B.