Word of Mouth: Really, Truly, Almost Spring

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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: Early Winter

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Novel: The Bandit Queens — Parini Shroff

Non-Fiction: Your Face Belongs To Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest To End Privacy as We Know It — Kashmir Hill

Psychology: Spite: The Upside of Your Dark Side — Simon McCarthy-Jones

Memoir: Foolish: Tales of Assimilation, Determination, and Humiliation — Sarah Cooper

Memoir: Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the ’80s — Gary Gulman

Movie: Nyad – Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Novel: The Thursday Murder Club — Richard Osman

Podcast: What Now? –– Trevor Noah

WORD OF MOUTH: FALL

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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

Making real the promises of democracy

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Sixty years after the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the nation still needs to be reminded of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.” My husband, the brilliant and thoughtful Alexis Romay, recently had the honor of translating Dr. King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech into Spanish. The book has a forward by National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, also translated by Alexis. 

Tonight, Monday, January 16 (at 7PM), on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Alexis will be reading and reflecting on the experience of translating this important work at Watchung Booksellers, in Montclair, NJ. The event will be in Spanish. You can register here. 

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

WORD OF MOUTH — FALL

Novel: DEATH UNDER THE PERSEIDS — Teresa Dovalpage

Non-fiction: THE SCIENTIST AND THE SPY: A TRUE STORY OF CHINA, THE FBI AND INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE — Mara Hvistendahl

Resource: Ask the Trace: Are Militias Legal? — Jennifer Mascia, THE TRACE

Essay: Elizabeth McCracken Traces the Life of a First Edition: Her Own — Elizabeth McCracken, LITHUB

Opinion: Oh how the powerful wail and whine — Robin Givhan, THE WASHINGTON POST

Opinion: Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn’t? — Michael Gerson, THE WASHINGTON POST

TV: PAPER GIRLS – Stephany Folsom

TV: A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN – Will Graham, Abbi Jacobson

Podcast: Migrant relocations echo a dark past: Reverse Freedom Rides, CODE SWITCH

Podcast: Putin’s Nukes (with Julia Ioffe), STAY TUNED WITH PREET