We are thrilled to announce that The Paris Review has won the 2024 ASME Award for Fiction, marking the second year in a row that the magazine has received the honor. The three prizewinning stories are Rivers Solomon’s “This Is Everything There Will Ever Be,” a disarmingly warm portrait of “just another late-forties dyke entirely too obsessed with basketball, dogs, and memes”; “My Good Friend,” Juliana Leite’s English-language debut, translated from the Portuguese by Zoë Perry, a story written in the form of an elderly widow’s Sunday-evening diary entry (“About the roof repair, I have nothing new to report”) that turns into a story of mostly unspoken, mutual decades-long love; and James Lasdun’s “Helen,” in which a man writing about his parents’ upper-class milieu in seventies London—the time of the IRA’s mainland campaign in Britain—stumbles upon the journals of a family friend, a woman who lives in what the narrator calls a “state of incandescent, almost spiritual horror.” All three stories will be unlocked from behind the paywall this week, and you can also listen to Rivers Solomon’s story on our podcast here. Enjoy!

Today we are publishing a previously unpublished poem by the poet, critic, and editor Delmore Schwartz. Schwartz was hailed as a promising short story writer and poet in the generation that included Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Berryman; a longtime editor at the Partisan Review, he was the youngest person ever to win the Bollingen Prize in 1959. (Some of Schwartz’s poems and letters were published in the Review in the eighties and nineties.) The poem below was discovered without a date, but is immediately recognizable for its recasting of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from an alcoholic’s perspective. This riff is made poignant by the fact that Schwartz’s later years were characterized by mental illness and alcoholism. He died, largely isolated, at the Chelsea Hotel in 1966.

Whose booze this is, I ought to think I know.
I bought it several weeks ago.
It stands there stolid on the shelf
Making me feel lower than low
Reminding me how I am low,
Making me think of Crane and Poe.

My fatlipped mouth must think it queer
To stop without a single beer,
To stop without a single beer
The deadest day I ever spent
In boredom and in self-contempt,
Sober, sour, discontent.

My fingers have begun to shake,
My nerves think there is some mistake.
The only other thought I think.
Is how I failed to be a rake,
A story which should take the cake.

In Franz Kafka’s first published story, “Description of a Struggle,” the narrator is sitting in a drawing room at a rickety little table, eating a piece of fruitcake that “did not taste very good,” when a man walks up to him. The man is described as an “acquaintance,” but we soon realize he is a double, or another part of the narrator’s self. The acquaintance has fallen in love and wants to boast about it. “If you weren’t in such a state,” he scolds, “[you] would know how improper it is to talk about an amorous girl to a man sitting alone drinking schnapps.” The comment seems to threaten an unchecked appetite. What would the lonely, schnapps-drinking man do if tempted by the girl? The struggle that follows, metaphorically speaking, is between the sides of the protagonist’s character—on one side, the man who desires to stand apart from society and guard his creative self, and on the other, he who wishes to fit in and reap the pleasures of fruitcake and amorous girls.

The tension in Kafka between appetite and its fulfillment is a crucial aspect of the writer’s work. Kafka’s characters are often hungry—the performer from “A Hunger Artist” has made starving himself into an art; Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis slowly stops eating and wastes away. But their hunger is often not for the foods of this world. Gregor refers to himself as hungering as for “an unknown nourishment.” The hunger artist’s last words are a confession that fasting was not difficult for him because, he says, “I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.” Instead the characters seek the deeper forms of sustenance—emotional, societal, sexual, spiritual—and don’t find them.

When I first started reading, I was only recommended books with a clear plot line. I would be compelled by my curiosity to keep reading. I would want to know how the story unfolds and the events that move it along. Some books I wouldn’t be able to put down because the chapters would end with cliffhangers, and others because I was too engrossed in that world of high fantasy. After a year or two of reading this way, I found my way to books with a less compelling plot or sometimes even no plot at all. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed them just as much, if not more, than those with the plot as the center of the story. I have read a ton of “no plot, just vibes” books since, and I adore them. I like sitting with a character-driven narrative and appreciate how the story ebbs and flows along with the tides in its characters’ hearts. I like being immersed in a person’s thoughts, idiosyncrasies, irrationality, insecurity, and just their way of life. I like getting a look into quieter, more introspective perspectives as opposed to a thrilling plot that keeps me on the edge of my seat.

Here’s a list of “no plot, just vibes” books that I’ve read and enjoyed. The vibe could be anything from being a millionaire in New York to living in a one-bedroom apartment as a family of four in Mumbai to defying all concepts of time and space. It can be about teenagers figuring out their lives, or a grown man trying to see where his marriage went wrong, or a family navigating the immigrant experience.

I hope at least one of these brings you to the vibe you’re looking for!

1.

Once I had to go to Disney World with my small children. On the way to the airport our taxi driver exhibited signs of Obsessive Disney Disorder—when he found out where we were going he started obsessively describing and listing and explaining everything that had to do with Disney World, even though he was a grown man.

We stayed at the Portofino Bay Hotel, a Disney-owned property that is a replica of the storied village on the Italian Riviera. There were imitation Renaissance churches and Mediterranean piazzas clustered around a fake harbor with old Fiats parked on the cobblestones and fishing boats moored in the fake bay. Outside cafés ranged on the harbor, serving espresso under green-and-white striped awnings. Italian cypresses were planted along the pools. If you didn’t know it was a Disney replica of a real place, it would have to be characterized as being extremely tasteful and lovely. So you did tend to get confused between: Is this a theme park of Italy or is it just lovely and pleasant.

There is a REAL Florida out there that is TRULY historic. I madly drove out to find the REAL Orlando, forgetting my phobia of freeways. After almost getting killed (horns blasting at my side, cars swerving out of my way), I did find the real Orlando. It is situated on several lakes lined by turn-of-the-last-century Victorians and bungalows. I went to the history museum. The number one industry in central Florida is cattle. Has anyone in Florida ever seen a head of cattle? No. But maybe that was before Disney.

It’s been close to two years since writing about why libraries need to have strong book challenge policies; in the fall, this guide helped to consider where and how to actively incorporate inclusivity in collection policies. Because library collection policies are living documents and need to be regularly updated to accommodate the climate around them, it’s time to revisit this topic and look at what contemporary book banning has made clear needs to be better articulated in these policies.

This guide is for library workers, of course, but it is also useful for library advocates. It is an opportunity for you to look at your local library’s policies and champion strengthening them in order to encourage and support the most inclusive collection possible.

Below are four areas of consideration. It’s not comprehensive, but instead, a series of places to start now.

Demco, Broadart, and other library suppliers create an array of stickers for use in helping readers find items of interest quickly while browsing. These stickers include genre — mystery, science fiction, romance — as well as themes — humor, holiday, LGBTQ+. What is meant to help readers find, though, can be used to not only stigmatize but to target those titles.

Welcome to Read this Book, a newsletter where I recommend one book that needs to jump onto your TBR pile! Sometimes, these books are brand-new releases that I don’t want you to miss, while others are some of my backlist favorites. I adore cookbooks, food writing, and food memoirs. There’s just something special about diving into a world of culinary enthusiasm that sparks so much joy. This week, I’m recommending a cookbook that I can already tell will be my favorite cookbook that I read this year.

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We all know that kids love to play and that it’s a crucial way they learn about the world, but did you know that play directly helps children develop early literacy skills? That’s part of why how-to books for kids are so important, as they can help guide children in making and building things in imaginative ways. Learning to craft and build is a form of playtime and is especially important for the development of a five to nine-year-old’s brain. Additionally, skills like origami, drawing, gardening, and cooking can help with promoting physical abilities; think of how using craft tools like scissors can help work on movement control and improve gross motor skills. Play is so crucial to children’s development that the American Library Association has emphasized the importance of play as an early literacy skill.

These eight how-to books for kids will engage the makers and tinkerers in your life, teaching them while broadening their interests. I’ve also included a couple of simple picture books that encourage building and creating; if you know a younger maker, they might enjoy getting started through those.

An additional note: at Book Riot, we do our best to actively promote diversity in books and publishing. This list features very few authors and illustrators of color because I wasn’t able to find many that had written how-to books for the K to 3 set (if you know of any I missed, please share!). I did, however, find some excellent digital creators of color making fun and educational craft content for kids. Tabitha Brown’s YouTube series, Tab Time, has how-to craft and snack videos that are aimed at preschoolers, and Cheryl Gavrielides’s Instagram, creative_mama_che, has some fantastic and easy craft projects as well. Make sure to check them out too!