January 6-7, 2018: Crowd-sourced Books for the New Year

[Whatever else 2018 brings for us all, I hope it brings lots more great writing and voices to read and engage with and learn from and share. To that end, this week I highlighted five recent or upcoming books that I’m excited to read. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the nominees of fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours in comments, please!]

Andrew DaSilva writes, “For nonfiction, The Romanovs: 1613-1918, by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I am looking forward to reading it, but I got like 4 other books I wanna plow through before I get to anything new such as this.”

Nicole Sterbinsky shares, “I'm hoping to read Planet for Rent by Yoss very soon. It's a translated version of a Cuban science fiction novel. Judging from what the back of the book said it also has some satirical elements about life in Cuba under Castro. So, I'm very interested to see what the author has to say.”

Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel is reading Lisa Brooks’ Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War.

Derek McGrath writes, “In the immediate future, I need to read more #MyHeroAcademia to get weekly reviews going again. And I need to re-read some classic literature related to a particular animated show. (Ever wanted to see F. Scott Fitzgerald as an anime supervillain?)”

Ellak Roach Tweets, “Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer reads like it could have been written yesterday, and I think is just as relevant now as it has ever been.” He adds, “Another book I just finished reading in my Political Theory class is How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley. It’s a pretty brisk read, but I really enjoyed my time with it (covered the first 5 chapters or so in class, read the rest myself).”

Dan Sheppard shares, “Homesick for Another World by Otessa Moshfegh. A collection of short stories that are simultaneously mundane and jarring.”

Since they were kind enough to Retweet my request for nominations for this post, I wanted to share the website of Is a Rose Press.

And Jeff Renye, like so many of us, is just waiting for The Winds of Winter.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Books you’d add to the list?