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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)

Book of Nightmares

Galway Kinnell

Shattering. Rapturous. Kinnell's often-baroque language belies one of the most frank and powerful reckonings with death I have ever come across. This ten-part poem also wrestles with what it means to build a family and live with tenderness in a world that runs on cruelty.
Recommended by Kai B.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Kate Beaton

Captivating and devastating! With unfailing humanism, Beaton chronicles the extractions — from the environment, from minority groups, from ourselves — in which we are all complicit. She finds empathy for the lonely men of the Alberta oil sands despite her mistreatment at their hands, and moments of humor and warmth despite the bleakness of her experiences. A must-read, especially if you have student loans.
Recommended by Kai B.

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Jane Wong

Jane Wong's poetry has already established her as one of our finest writers at the intersection between food, family, and identity. Her memoir delves even more vulnerably into this vein, exploring what it means to grow up as a working-class artist swirling between depths of care (from friends, family, and sliced fruit) and carelessness (from boyfriends, family, and food bloggers). With playful free-associative prose and a multiplicity of styles... (read more)
Recommended by Kai B.

So Tall It Ends in Heaven Poems

Jayme Ringleb

A thoroughly wonderful debut collection. Tender and viny, these poems sprout from places loved and lost, intimate and estranged, but all grow towards the light.
Recommended by Kai B.

Invention of Morel

Bioy Casares, Adolfo

This intricate, sun-soaked daydream of a novel influenced classic films like The Shining and Last Year at Marienbad, and Jorge Luis Borges and Octavio Paz both called it "perfect."
Recommended by Kai B.

Whereas: Poems

Layli Long Soldier

Challenging, but wonderfully revolutionary in both content and form. Long Soldier shreds and scatters the language of American colonialism, combining the scraps with shards of Lakota and sculpting them onto the page with a masterful freedom.
Recommended by Kai B.

Stoner

John Edwar Williams

Reading this book is like watching your emotionally repressed dad cry. A moving portrait of a quiet academic life, Stoner left my head ringing like a struck bell for days after I put it down.
Recommended by Kai B.

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