“Saint who?” I asked. “Eh-meh-ren-tsya,” Olga Tokarczuk repeated. Saint Anne’s mother. I was nonplussed. The mother of the mother of the Virgin Mary? Tokarczuk blew out cigarette smoke at high speed, then inhaled with excitement and impatience. I needed a lesson.

We were midway through a nine-hour-long exchange about her life and writing, the edited version of which you can read in the Review’s Spring issue. Throughout our conversation, I often felt that, like her books, Tokarczuk’s speech requires footnotes and annotations.

Tokarczuk researches her short stories and novels with academic intensity. She digs up forgotten, esoteric myths and legends and shows how this esoterica is woven into the warp and woof of European culture. Beneath a Europe of rational, religious, racial, and ethnic dogmatisms, she unveils a continent  rife with ethnically and linguistically syncretic visionaries, mystics, and half-pagan storytellers. There is a hopefulness to these counterhistories that puts its faith in humanity’s capacity for creativity and imagination—in the loosening and intermingling of top-down stereotypes and norms by collective acts of retelling and elaboration. Emerentia, Tokarczuk explained to me, was one such esoteric discovery that she wove into her latest novel, Empuzjon, which has yet to appear in English.

I was raised a devout Catholic, and in my early teens I kept a book of saints by my bedside, arranged in the pages from January to December following the order of their feast days. Each evening, I would read the day’s entry before going to bed, committing the saints’ names to memory. Saint Scholastica, after whom the family elders named one of my great-aunts, was Saint Benedict’s sister. Saint Perpetua, the ancient Roman martyr tortured by Septimus Severus’s henchmen in the Colosseum; Saint Audifax, a Persian protector of early Christian converts about whom so little is known that he was taken off the official roster of holy days shortly after the publication of my hagiographic compendium. And yet I’d never heard of the saint who Poles call Emerencja, and English speakers Emerentia—a figure as important as the great-grandmother of Jesus himself.

I had recently begun attending Sarah Lawrence College when Anzia Yezierska’s novel Bread Givers was first introduced to me. I was twenty years old, but as a married Orthodox Jewish woman with a one-year-old child to show for myself instead of a high school diploma, I had been enrolled in the continuing education program for one year in order to prepare for proper matriculation. The blunt hairline of my voluminous wig paired with my over-the-knee skirts would have been enough to render me the exotic outsider to my worldly classmates even if I hadn’t revealed my heavy accent or my ignorance of basic cultural references. So when an older classmate who hadn’t previously made much effort at conversing with me thrust the worn paperback into my hands, I was caught unawares by her sudden attention.

“Maybe you’ve already read it, but I thought, just in case …”

Eyeing the title and the unfamiliar name of the author, I shook my head in bemusement. “Is this some famous classic,” I asked, “some essential part of the canon I’ve missed and need to catch up on?”

She laughed. “Not really,” she answered. “But back when I was in college the first time around, some acquaintances of mine were instrumental in its republication, so that’s how I know about it. I came across it again recently while I was spring cleaning, but you know how it is with coincidences. They rarely are. I thought of you immediately; I felt strongly that this book was meant for you.”

It’s a HUGE pod debut for… Sammy Ameobi the dog!

In other news, Franky Lampard’s back! But is it all a bit… cruel? Marcus, Andy, Jim, Pete and Sammy are asking that, plus we go to South America where there’s a new Guy Goma and there’s HUGE news from Forest! They’ve not sacked Steve Cooper. I repeat, they’ve not sacked Steve Cooper.

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When book banning started to heat up two years ago, many wondered how long until a library worker would be seriously hurt over defending the right to read. Now, we know it’s not going to be long at all.

Over the last month, several libraries have faced bomb and shooting threats as a direct result of the books housed in their collections. Books that were reviewed by professionals and deemed appropriate for those school and public libraries. Books that, of course, feature queer and/or BIPOC writers and characters who do not align with the views of those who believe that dialing in murder threats is an appropriate way to handle those who do not follow their radical right-wing Christian nationalist agenda.

Shove your thoughts and prayers. You need to show up and have your voice heard. This is unacceptable, it’s abhorrent, and it is going to end in bloodshed.

Which is exactly what the bigots want. They see this as their holy war and they themselves joyful warriors.

Analog horror books are a riff off of the ever-popular found footage sub-genre of horror that came to popularity in the late 2000s notably on YouTube. The sub-genre is often full of grainy, “dated” looking footage, mysterious circumstances, and in the style of analog electronics like television, VHS tapes, FM radio, etc. Viewers are presented with fake news reports or “documentary” style videos that start seemingly normal and then delve into depicting things like alien invasions, cryptid sightings, or all kinds of mysterious happenings after being taken over or corrupted by someone or something. Often, there are few to no characters at all, instead you as the viewer are the witness to whatever is happening to the hijacked footage on screen.

Some big examples on the YouTube scene are “Local 58” which is a series depicting a TV station that’s “taken over” numerous times over the years, “Gemini Home Entertainment” with its VHS tapes showing aliens attempting to take over the Earth, and “The Mandela Catalogue“ which is a Wisconsin-based doppelganger horror story set in the ’90s.

Since this is such a visual medium, I got to wondering if there were any analog horror books out there that captured a similar type of horror. Here are eight I was able to find that fit at least some aspect of the analog horror genre if you’re in the market for a literary version!

If you spend a good amount of time in manga circles, you may have heard the term dōjinshi before. And you may have certain assumptions about what it is, which I fear is quite common, particularly for those in the west. But for those who’ve ever been curious about dōjinshi and want to learn more about the medium, here is a quick and easy guide to what it actually is, where to find it, and even a few recommendations!

It is a common misconception that dōjinshi is equivalent to (mostly erotic) fan fiction. And while there are many dōjinshi that do fall into this category — especially given the fact that self-publishing means there are no restrictions from publishers on content — it is certainly not all that dōjinshi is. Alongside all the dōjinshi that is based upon existing characters and stories (this category of dōjinshi is also known as aniparo), dōjinshi also includes plenty of completely original work. It is also important to note that dōjinshi is not exclusively created by amateur creators. Many professional mangaka got their start in dōjinshi, and some even continue to participate in the practice in addition to their official projects.

It first emerged as early as the Meiji period, in the 1870s and 1880s. Often created and distributed within small groups, it reached a peak during the prewar years of the Shōwa period as a popular vehicle for creative expression among young people. Though the prevalence of this category has experienced various rises and falls throughout its history, it has grown increasingly popular since approximately the 1980s when aniparo became a more predominant part of the market, and with the founding of Comiket — an event dedicated specifically to dōjinshi and now the largest comic convention in the world — in 1975. Today, with the rise of technology and ease with which creators are able to not only create, but also promote and distribute their own work, dōjinshi has expanded even more significantly.

If you’ve been on the bookish side of the internet for long enough, you’ve most likely come across the sub-genre Dark Academia. Popular as both a literary sub-genre and fashion aesthetic, Dark Academia has inspired other “academias” including the seasonally appropriate Light Academia. As a newly emerging sub-genre, Light Academia is finding its style. Let’s breakdown what we do know of Light Academia and the differences between Light and Dark Academia.

The student characters of Light Academia may be intelligent, but not driven by hubris, greed, or vengeance. Learning, for the Light Academic, is a pleasure and education is a prize. The stuffy, oft Eurocentric Dark Academia catalogue is swapped for visual arts, music, and world literature. Visually and thematically, Light and Dark academia lie on opposite sides of the spectrum. While Dark Academia focuses on bleak literary themes of oppression, death, and existentialism, light academia focuses on themes of friendship, resourcefulness, joy, and the beauty of life.

The aesthetic of Light Academia is nearly identical to Dark Academia, with only the brightness turned up. Think light, earth toned shades. Tweeds and ties, fluffy white dresses and ribbons, vintage knits, classical statues, bouquets of wild flowers, and stacks of worn leather books. Imagery of coziness and domesticity feature heavily in these books — a squashy couch with sleeping kittens, freshly baked bread, paint splatters, and floral tea cups. Now that we’ve covered the basics, here’s a few Light Academia books to get your bookshelf started.

We need better ways to describe romance novels — particularly in terms of sexual content. In terms of genres, sub-genres, and tropes, I think we’re set. Of course, there is sometimes some overlap or cross-genre mingling. But in general, if I pick up an enemies-to-lovers contemporary romance or a marriage of convenience historical romance, I know what I’m getting. However when it comes to romance novel descriptions that communicate how sexually explicit a romance novel is, I pretty much hate every term available. I dislike them on a gut level. But I also find most of these terms pretty confusing.

And I don’t think I’m alone. I constantly see romance readers upset because a book they read had more sex than they wanted or not as much sex as they wanted. And a lot of times, both sides can blame the book or the author instead of our inability to correctly categorize and communicate about romance novels. I think this is what’s also behind the frustration some readers have of the dominance of illustrated covers (although that’s another story for another article). Readers want to know what kind of book they have before they start reading and don’t want to feel tricked.

Categorizing books based on sexual content isn’t as simple as separating genres or tropes. Gatekeepers and readers alike often rate queer romances or romances by authors of color as more sexually explicit than books featuring comparable writing by straight, white romance authors. So finding a universal rating system we can all agree on would both be impossible and potentially harmful. But even though I have read (and enjoyed!) romances ranging from a librarian romance with no sex to a monster romance with a dragon man who has more than one penis…I think it’s fair to want to know what end of the spectrum your next read is going to be on. And I personally cringe when I see romance novels described as hot or sweet or dirty. Let’s break down some of the problems with these terms.

Are you ready to add a whole lot of excellent nonfiction to your spring TBR? I hope so, because there is so much of it coming out in the next few weeks. There was a time, years ago, when I didn’t read nonfiction, and while I am grateful every day that this is no longer the case, I am also overwhelmed by the sheer number of nonfiction books on my TBR. If you have the same problem, I am very sorry to tell you that I am not here to help you with it. I am here to make it worse (better).

These April releases are especially rich in genre-expanding nonfiction, but there are also plenty of memoirs and some fantastic history books if that is what you love! You’ll find two brilliant Asian American memoirs that tackle American history and contemporary life through intimate family stories. I’ve got a fantastic memoir about drag for you that features art and photographs alongside the writing! And if that kind of hybrid book is your jam, I’ve got another treat in store: a collection of writing about trees and the natural world featuring illustrations that will take your breath away. I’ve also highlighted some new books by some of today’s most brilliant scholars and poets, including Christina Sharpe and Maggie Smith.

Ready? I promise it’s okay to just preorder and/or place library holds for the entire list.

Happy April, bookish friends! April may bring showers and cold blustery days, but it is also bringing us some amazing new YA releases that are making me think of SUMMER. This month’s round up includes some summery reads that are jumping straight to my summer reading list, along with some big name releases, new series, exciting anthologies, and some promising sophomore novels. Whether you’re game for a summer romcom, a high fantasy novel, or something queer, April has got you covered!

As always, I couldn’t possibly begin to cover all of the great new YA books hitting shelves this month, so this is just a choice selection of what you will find. For this month’s round up, I didn’t include some books that I figured were already on your radar — the new Alexandra Bracken novel Silver in the Bone, for example, as well as the new Wibbroka book, Never Vacation With Your Ex. You’ll also want to make sure you don’t miss the latest installment in Charlie Jane Anders’s Unstoppable series, Promises Stronger Than Darkness. But the rest of these books are going to be amazing, so open up your wishlist and library accounts and get ready explode your TBR!