Word of Mouth: Really, Truly, Almost Spring

Featured

Musical: A Sign of the Times Lindsay Hope Pearlman, Richard J. Robin, Gabriel Barre, JoAnne M. Hunter, Joseph Church.

Extrauterine Children: The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children — Dahlia Lithwick in SLATE.

Novel: Lady in the Lake — Laura Lippman

Podcast: The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t — Richard Haass on the Ezra Klein Show.

Podcast: Trump and the Age of Disinformation — Barb McQuade on Stay Tuned with Preet.

Double Standards: Israel, Gaza and Double Standards, Including Our Own — Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.

TV: Avatar: the Last Air Bender — Albert Kim.

Movie: Shortcomings — Randall Park.

Idea: Dobbs was never self-limiting to abortion—it was a save-the-date card for the religious right’s plan to come for the rest of our reproductive freedoms. …

This is the two-step wherein the state forces women to have babies they cannot raise, does nothing to help support them, then swoops in to seize the babies when their parents are seen as endangering them—a phenomenon that of course predominantly hurts poor women and women of color. The state also ensures that adoptions flow in the direction of more “worthy” parents, which means heterosexual and Christian parents, a regime also built into the legal framework. The list of people who cannot assert autonomy and control over their potential children has, in the course of a few weeks, now expanded from LGBTQ+ parents, single parents, poor parents, and parents of color to anyone who has started the process of IVF in Alabama.” —The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children — Dahlia Lithwick in SLATE.

WORD OF MOUTH: FALL

Featured

Short Stories: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies — Deesha Philyaw

Novel: How To Love Your Daughter — Hila Blum, translated by Daniella Zamir

Non-Fiction: Kill’em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul — James McBride

TV: Never Have I Ever — Lang Fisher, Mindy Kaling

Novel: The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac — Sharma Shields

Podcast: How to Think About AI — Freakonomics, Steven Dubner

WORD OF MOUTH: Early Winter Edition

Featured

Novel: Take My Hand — Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Novel: The Work Wife — Alison B. Hart

History: Polio: An American Story — David M. Oshinsky

Middle Grade Novel: Merci Suarez Changes Gears— Meg Medina

Podcast: Ask a Librarian, With Julie Chavez: Translating Ways of Being, with Meg Medina and Alexis Romay.

Anthology: Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness — Anjanette Delgado

TV: My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — Rachel Bloom, Aline Brosh McKenna

Movie: Vengeance — B.J. Novak

Music: Tinta y Tiempo — Jorge Drexler

BEST OF 2021

NON-FICTION: The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together — Heather McGhee

FICTION: Gold Diggers — Sanjena Sathian

FICTION: Impostor Syndrome — Kathy Wang

MEMOIR: Beautiful Country — Xian Julie Wang

ESSAYS: People Love Dead Jews — Dara Horn

DOCUMENTARY: A Thousand Cuts — Ramona S. Diaz

MOVIE: Plus One —Jeff Chan, Andrew Rhymer

MOVIE: Rocks — Sarah Gavron

MUSIC: An Evening with Silk Sonic — Bruno Mars, Anderson.Paak

TV: Taste the Nation — Padma Lakshmi

PODCAST: The Story of America’s Founding You Weren’t Taught in School: Jamelle Bouie interviews Woody Holton on The Ezra Klein Show

Late September Word of Mouth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Song: Turntables [Emotion Picture] — Janelle Monáe

Documentary: All in: The Fight for Democracy — Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes

Memoir: My Time Among the Whites — Jennine Capót Crucet

Mystery: Who Is Vera Kelly? — Rosalie Knecht

TV Series: Taste the Nation — Padma Lakshmi

 

April Word of Mouth

Coffins of Khnum-Nakht and Nakht-Ankh, photo courtesy of the Manchester Museum

DNA: 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummies were thought to be brothers. Genetics tells a different story — Ben Guarino, Washington Post

Non-Fiction: The Bridge to Brilliance: How One Woman and One Community Are Inspiring the World — Nadia Lopez and Rebecca Paley

Fiction: Improvement Joan Silber

Productivity: The 12-Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months — Brian Moran

Music: Blue Soul — Blue Mitchell Sextet

TV: Jessica Jones — Melissa Rosenberg

Podcast: The Good Fight — Yascha Mounck

Ancient Inspiration: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Meditations, 8.47 — Marcus Aurelius