All posts tagged: MustRead

3 Must-Read Costa Rican Writers

3 Must-Read Costa Rican Writers

Published by Jenni Sidey

John Manuel Arias is the author of Crocodilopolis, out this week from Bloomsbury. Below, he recommends three must-read Costa Rican writers. Costa Rica is often described as lush—one pictures its forests housing 5% of the world’s biodiversity: orchids, monkeys, reefs with resplendent fish. But its literature is just as sprawling, as full of life as any tropical landscape. Publishers like La Universidad de Costa Rica or La Editorial de Costa Rica keep Costa Rica’s rich literary legacy thriving. Costa Rica’s National Book Festival graces San José on the final Saturday of August. When one needs a beach read, Costa Rica is the place to go. Here are some writers to get you started.  Yolanda Oreamuno Yolanda Oreamuno was an author far ahead of her time. Of her beauty, it was said the sun stopped to gaze at her; yet her first and only novel contains large, imposing shadows, cast by Costa Rica’s inescapable patriarchy in the 1940’s. La ruta de su evasion (Her Way Out) documents a family under the violent rule of its despot …

Must-Read Books About Colonialism

Must-Read Books About Colonialism

Published by Jenni Sidey

Edna Bonhomme is the author of Tending To Our Wounds: A Diasporic Memoir, out now from Haymarket Books. Below, she recommends three must-read books about colonialism. (Photo credit: Jasmin Valcarcel) All empires are obsessed with the prospect of their own decline. For marginalized people born and raised in the heart of empires, some plot and hope for their demise. As someone who is part of multiple diasporas forced to leave their lands, I often turn to theorists and scholars who not only grapple with colonialism’s chains but also make sense of how it shaped the psyche, family, or rebellions. There are so many books to choose from, texts that nourish my spirit and inspire me to work toward building a better world. The texts I have chosen are not only case studies of the psychological cost of colonialism but also testaments that the colonized are not passive victims. Hopefully, they provide some hope in these times. The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon Fanon’s text is a revolutionary pamphlet and a psychiatrist’s diagnosis of French …

9 Must-Read Cookbooks to Liven Up Your Kitchen

9 Must-Read Cookbooks to Liven Up Your Kitchen

Published by Jenni Sidey

My mother’s side is from the South, so there are certain regional staples that we cling to (shout out to the “meat and three” and fried fish sandwiches!), just as there are dishes we like that seem to be more mainstream American. But we also never shied away from trying different cuisines that popped up in our neighborhood, on TV, etc., and then trying to make those same dishes at home. I remember watching a Jamaican stew with dumplings being made on the Cooking Channel with my grandmother sometime in the early 2000s. Within a few days, she had procured the ingredients and whipped herself up a mean stew that I think could rival anyone’s in the Caribbean. I’ve carried this love of trying new-to-me food with me well into adulthood. That’s why I was excited to write a list of suggestions for the Read Harder Challenge Task #12: Read/try a recipe from a cookbook about a culture whose food you’ve never eaten. There were a few things I had to consider, though. For one, …

Ann Patchett’s luminous ‘Whistler’ is the must-read novel of the season

Ann Patchett’s luminous ‘Whistler’ is the must-read novel of the season

Published by Sam Flores

Book Review Whistler By Ann Patchett Harper: 304 pages, $30 At the recent glitzy PEN America Literary Gala at the Natural History Museum in New York City the evening’s MC, B.J. Novak, declared that the crowd was there to celebrate more than just freedom of speech — they were there for “literary glamour.” “Writing is glamorous,” he declared. “Reading is glamorous.” For Novak, bestselling novelist Ann Patchett — who has also worked tirelessly on behalf of independent booksellers and in support of her fellow writers, and was one of the event’s honored guests — epitomizes that allure. “I think it’s great that Ann Patchett is a smoke show. She doesn’t have to be,” he quipped. “It’s just cool that she is.” With “Whistler,” Patchett’s 10th novel, she definitively proves that the “smoke show” moniker, if at all relevant, is icing on the cake. This exquisite writer has once again delivered an incandescent work of fiction — sweet, but never sentimental, infinitely wise and suffused with love. It’s also an ode to New York City itself. …

5 Must-Read Audiobooks by Latine Authors

5 Must-Read Audiobooks by Latine Authors

Published by José Betancourt

I’m beginning to think there’s a Bad Take Troll out there somewhere with regular reminders in his calendar to start desmadre, and one of his favorite pots to stir is the one about audiobooks counting as reading. Why he decided to send the psychologist from Law & Order SVU as his messenger this time around is beyond me, but let’s just clear this up now: audiobooks count as reading, y punto. Full stop. Shoutout to Roxane Gay (and countless others) for calling out this foolishness. Audiobooks have saved my reading over the last several years. They’ve helped me balance the reading required of me for my job with reading for pleasure. They’ve allowed me to engage differently with poetry and nonfiction, where hearing the words read by their authors added a new layer to the reading experience. They’ve allowed me to keep reading, period, when my focus was too frazzled to do eyeball reading, and pulled me out of the roughest of reading slumps in difficult times. So today, I’m rounding up a few of …

Your Must-Read May 2026 Books

Your Must-Read May 2026 Books

Published by José Betancourt

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Previews of New Books Out May 2026 April is coming to an end and previews of next month’s new releases are beginning to trickle in. The New York Times released its list of 26 books out in May, Library Journal released it Prepub Alert for next month, and the American Booksellers Association published its Indie Next List Preview, to name a few. Here are some highlights from the lists: Canon by Paige Lewis: I’m seeing this book everywhere and it sounds like a romp. I mean, a madcap story following a nonbinary artist with O.C.D. and a prophet? Gimme. Ghalen: A Romance in Black by Walter Mosley: The prolific author of the legendary Easy Rawlins series is back with a coming-of-age novel following a neurodivergent Black man, and it sounds wonderfully tender. One Leg on Earth by ’Pemi Aguda: The celebrated author of Ghostroots, a short story collection and National Book Award Finalist, has a …

A Must-Read Book By One of Our Sharpest Contemporary Voices

A Must-Read Book By One of Our Sharpest Contemporary Voices

Published by Jenni Sidey

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino If you read The New Yorker with any kind of frequency, you’ve probably read a Jia Tolentino piece. I recommend “Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Epiphanies” as an amuse-bouche of her style and tone (it’s also just plain juicy). Beyond The New Yorker, Tolentino is often called-upon to deliver her thoughts on the zeitgeist because she so deftly articulates the collective vibes into punchy nuggets of truth. This is why I snatched up her debut collection when it first published in 2019, and why it became a bestseller and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of that year. Thanks(?) to this book, I will always look at Lululemon leggings and indoor group workout classes with a faint, possibly unfair, hint of revulsion. Beyond this one squeamish scenario, Tolentino writes about big, meaty topics like identity in the age of the internet, reality television with which she has an intimate and personal connection that took me by surprise, and more of-the-moment topics still relevant today in nine exquisitely open and …

Belle Burden’s ‘Strangers’ is a must-read, and soon a must-watch with Gwyneth Paltrow

Belle Burden’s ‘Strangers’ is a must-read, and soon a must-watch with Gwyneth Paltrow

Published by Sam Flores

On the Shelf Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage By Belle Burden The Dial Press: 256 pages, $30 It is often the case that (to slightly amend a line from Joan Didion) we tell ourselves stories in order to love, crafting our own tidy narrative while papering over the danger signs and hidden trip wires that can untangle a relationship. Love is irrational and stands apart from reason, which might account for the nearly 40% divorce rate in this country; we often recognize the hairline cracks when it’s too late, when faith has dissolved and the hard truth is revealed. Such was the case with Belle Burden. She was a child of privilege, the daughter of Carter Burden, a Vanderbilt descendant and media executive, and Amanda Burden, the daughter of Babe Paley and an influential urban planner. An aspiring writer as a teenager, Burden turned her focus to law in college, earning a degree in Juvenile and Immigration Law from New York University. She was, in short, a golden child from a prominent family, bound for …

A Must-Read about Health Inequity and Harm Reduction

A Must-Read about Health Inequity and Harm Reduction

Published by Jenni Sidey

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa Anyone who has needed the healthcare system in the past decade (me included) knows that our system in the U.S. is seriously broken. But for all that it’s bad enough for people in general, the issues of dismissal and dehumanization at the doctor’s office are much, much worse for Black women, and this book lays out those gaps in care with devastating, clear language. One of the concepts in this book that blew my mind was of “weathering.” Villarosa posits the idea that racism itself—the burden of day-to-day anxiety ignited by microaggressions and outright racism, the myth that health is your personal responsibility and no one else’s, and the intersection between police brutality and the criminalization of mental illness and health inequity—all take a real and exacting toll on women of color, impacting their health and making them more susceptible to poor health outcomes. Villarosa also exposes all the ways that institutions are keeping …