What can’t be contained? Not much. We are given the resources, mental or physical, to contain our emotions and our belongings. Failing to do so often registers as weakness. 

The smallest container you can buy at the Container Store is a rectangular crystal-clear plastic box available in orange, purple, and green. It can contain one AA or two AAA batteries, half a handful of Tic Tacs, or a folded-up tissue. The largest container you can buy at the Container Store is a four-tiered metal shelving unit. It can contain other containers.

Containers mediate us and our stuff. They create boundaries and allow our items to exist multiple feet above the ground. Most spaces are divided by containers. These containers might then be divided by additional containers. Containers form a scaffold, or an architecture. They make walls scalable and underbeds reachable. They allow you to put something down and know where it is the next time you want to pick it up. 

One of the best ways to understand containers is to imagine a world without them. We would have piles. Bracelets, creams, stick-shaped kitchen items, fruit. Small things would get lost under big ones. Or, an alternative: a line of items that snakes through an apartment or house, up and down stairs and spiraling into the center of the room. When you want to find something, you simply walk along the line of items, confronting each individual thing. 

The National Book Critics Circle honors excellence in literature and focuses its work on elevating the conversation about books, reading, and criticism nationwide. The group formed in 1974 at New York’s legendary Algonquin Hotel. There are currently 600 members who are editors or literary critics.

Every year, the group honors the best of the prior year’s books published in English with the National Book Critics Circle Award in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism. The 2024 awards were given this year on March 21.

This year’s winners in each category are:

Fiction: I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore Nonfiction: We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian Biography: Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage  by Jonny SteinbergAutobiography: How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair Poetry: Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee ChoiCriticism: Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression by Tina Post 

Additional awards were handed out by the group as well. They included:

The John Leonard Prize for best debut: Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide by Tahir Hamut Izgil, translated by Joshua L. FreemanThe Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: Judy BlumeThe Toni Morrison Achievement Award: The American Library Association The Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, which honors both the book’s author and translator: Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü and translated by Maureen Freely.

You can learn more about the National Book Critics Circle at their website and discover the previous award winners.

Misconceptions about book bans are legion. When they’re perpetrated by folks who are against book banning, the truth is, those myths emerge not out of evil or desire to misinform. Instead, they come because this moment in book bans is unlike any other in American history. They also come because the average person—be they a book lover, a library worker, an educator, or simply someone who cares about democracy—is not steeped in this news day in and day out and, thus, does not see the whole of the picture. It’s not bad information. It’s a lack of information.

Let’s talk about a small number of misconceptions and why it is important to get these facts correct.

Book bans make kids/teens hurry to read the books being banned

This is not true, and it’s a statement that is shared with all of the love, thought, and care in the world—it’s also perpetrated by some of the biggest names in the book world who think they’re doing a favor by repeating it. Unfortunately, the sentiment and belief is not true.

There’s a whole lot to love about science fiction and fantasy (SFF): fabulous world-building, epic adventures, fantastical creatures, awe-inspiring technology. Surely no nonfiction title could live up to the excitement that a good SFF book can deliver?

As a devoted nonfiction reader, I can assure you that is not true! Nonfiction can weave a tale just as irresistible as anything that sprang from a fiction writer’s imagination. A skillful nonfiction author uses the same methods that make fiction so entertaining and applies them to events that happen in real life. And, in some cases, nonfiction books can also shed light on plot points or devices you see in sci-fi and fantasy or on the authors themselves, giving you a better appreciation of their work.

This list features eight nonfiction titles that will interest SFF fans in different ways. No matter which one you choose to dive into first, it is sure to satisfy your need for larger-than-life adventurers and fantastic quests that are far out of the ordinary. You’ll get to travel to places that are inaccessible to most readers, and you’ll even get to see how common SFF tropes bring life to other genres. It’s a great reminder that literary categories are neither discrete nor set in stone—that’s part of the magic of reading.

Accidental Gods by Anna Della Subin An unfortunate and outdated trope you sometimes see in SFF is the white savior: a white person who discovers and is inevitably revered by “inferior” Native peoples, who require the savior’s protection against myriad threats. Accidental Gods is a breathtaking yet respectful exploration of how certain men (always men) were, at various times and for various reasons, regarded as divine entities.

The Dive by Stephen McGinty In this underwater thriller, two men are trapped in a nonfunctional submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Those on the surface must race against time—and the men’s dwindling oxygen supply—to do the impossible and bring them home safely. If you like suspenseful sci-fi tales where people are menaced by inhospitable environments, this is the nonfiction book for you. (J.R.R. Tolkien also gets a brief mention toward the end, for you LOTR fans!)

Welcome to the shady corner between the mundane and the unknown. Light horror, a subcategory of horror, delicately balances all the suspense, eeriness, and supernatural expected from horror with subtlety. Light horror gently calls to the reader, inviting them to explore darker themes without the necessity of jump-scare terror and gore. Think of the imaginative gothic settings of films like Edward Scissorhands over slasher flicks like A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Weaving elements of the supernatural and the uncanny with the quietly macabre, light horror is more about creating an environment of quiet unease rather than racketing up the tension and dread.

Without gore and violence, light horror showcases both the dark and light within characters and settings. Using settings like haunted houses, light horror often explores deeply human themes like grief.  Despite the darkness, whether literal or physical, light horror always makes space for hope.

The gas lamps are lit with dancing shadows on the wall, but it’s nice and warm inside. Light horror can be cozy, even relaxing, despite the lingering unsettling feeling. The monsters may have teeth, but at least they’ve brushed.  

Dear reader, get ready to explore a different kind of fear with these light horror books.

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. This week, I’m talking about one of my most anticipated memoirs of the season!

Splinters by Leslie Jamison I’ve read just about everything Leslie Jamison has put out, and while her writing has matured and changed over the course of time, she still writes some of the most incredible prose. She has a way of writing a sentence that reads like magic. Previously, she has investigated the personal lives of others, researched writers and other artists who struggled with alcoholism, and explored her own experience with sobriety. This time, she’s writing about the birth of her daughter and her divorce from her daughter’s father.  Splinters looks at Jamison’s splintered identity — as a daughter, mother, wife, girlfriend, artist, academic, writer — and how these many facets of who she is have informed her art. The memoir is divided up into different sections, each examining a state of mind or a phase in Jamison’s life. They build on one another, giving us a more complete picture of Jamison’s lived experience. Jamison loses herself in her new daughter, discovering a new love of her life while simultaneously trying to cope with the disintegration of her marriage. Her divorce is messy and complex, the bitterness lasting years as they both struggle to figure out a way to co-parent their young child. Jamison explores sex and dating, wondering how on earth she can start over with another person, but try again she does. I particularly enjoyed the audiobook edition, which she reads herself. Much of the listening experience feels like we’re sitting across from Jamison at her favorite grungy diner as we listen to her describe these many facets of her personhood. Listening to her narrate her story feels like we’re witnessing her verbally process her experience of early motherhood and all of the messiness that has entailed.

February 18 – March 24, 2024

February 6 – March 23, 2024

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a 'scrappy and overcomplicated' reboot