PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

We are still in the middle of a pandemic. We've had four long years of broken norms and endless, horrifying, exhausting outrages. 2020 brought a long-overdue and ongoing reckoning with racism. We have spent January watching armed domestic terrorists attempt to stage an insurrection at the behest of political leaders. It feels like a strange time to be a policy wonk, but once it was the job of politicians to do that "boring" work and it was the job of an informed citizenry to learn about, advocate for, and criticize that work.

We can't put things back the way they were before and, in many ways, we shouldn't want to, but we can take time this inauguration day to reset, refocus, and think about the concrete policy changes we want to see made. As a small step towards that lofty goal, we have put together a reading list based on President-elect Biden's publicized policy goals for his first 100 days in office. From pandemic response and criminal justice to immigration and the economy, these books are a starting point for understanding the social issues that underlie the policy priorities of the incoming administration. May the next four years bring more time spent on policy and less time spent on Twitter...

While it may be hard to look at our fledgling new year and see what 2021 has in store for us, we’re already confident that it will be another banner year for literature in translation. Authors, editors, and translators have been working tirelessly on your behalf, lovingly preparing that new novel or story collection bound to be the one you rave tirelessly about to friends, family, and complete strangers (c’mon?, they looked bookish!I). Each month, we’ll post a roundup of new and forthcoming fiction written by authors from around the globe.

Perhaps your New Year’s resolution is to broaden your reading habits. Maybe you’ve committed to reading at least one book from a different country or culture each season. Perchance you want to fill your literary passport until you can resume filling your real one. It’s possible you just want to be a better global citizen. Whatever your reasons, we’re certain you’ll find enough new books each month to sate even the most voracious literary appetite...

The author's previous book, The Factory, was so strange and interesting, plus it's another slim volume that's so easy to carry around...

Picture this. You're a writer. You've been working on your book for a long time: doing research, writing, editing. You've put in all the often-frustrating hours (weeks? months? years?) of submitting the book, getting rejections, finally hooking an agent and/or a publisher, and then the day arrives: you're putting out your very first book! And... (sigh) it's 2020.

But even as bookstores closed and in-store launch events evaporated, the books endured. One of the things that has sustained me in this very different year has been discovering new voices telling their stories. In honor of that, I've put together a list of some of my, and my fellow booksellers', favorite debuts of 2020. We hope you'll discover someone new...

In my experience, Hanukkah books are schmaltzy. Like the holiday, they can try too hard to fit in, coopting mainstream Christmas traditions like elves and reindeer. Or else they overflow with American Yiddish stereotypes, fretting bubbes and Moishes on every corner. It’s a shame, because traditional Yiddish literature is a sly treat, simultaneously bitingly funny and mournful — grieving the near-constant loss of the people and conventions it’s satirizing. That’s a tall order for a kids’ book celebrating Hanukkah, but when I look for books to share with my interfaith children, I seek just a thread of that poignancy, a point of access to the tension between stubborn joy and angst that defines Jewish literature across time and cultures...