halfbrick | Pagebound

halfbrick wants to read...

3d

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . . Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it. The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.

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halfbrick wants to read...

3d

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

Dina Gilio-Whitaker

The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy. Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.

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halfbrick wants to read...

3d

The Sea Cloak & Other Stories

Nayrouz Qarmout

The Sea Cloak is a collection of 11 stories by the author, journalist, and women’s rights campaigner, Nayrouz Qarmout. Drawing from her own experiences growing up in a Syrian refugee camp, as well as her current life in Gaza, these stories stitch together a patchwork of different perspectives into what it means to be a woman in Palestine today. Whether following the daily struggles of orphaned children fighting to survive in the rubble of recent bombardments, or mapping the complex, cultural tensions between different generations of refugees in wider Gazan society, these stories offer rare insights into one of the most talked about, but least understood cities in the Middle East. Taken together, the collection affords us a local perspective on a global story, and it does so thanks to a cast of (predominantly female) characters whose vantage point is rooted, firmly, in that most cherished of things, the home.

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halfbrick created a list

3d

Recent Translations - Norwegian

by halfbrick

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9 books

The University of Rochester found that only 3 percent of books published in the US are in translation. I want to create lists of recently published (fiction) literature (2022-2025) in translation from different languages, out of curiosity. Will mostly be sourced from the university's database, which goes up to 2024, and then sourced from publishers for 2025 (won't be comprehensive for 2025). Feel free to suggest titles, from the last 5/10 years if you like them, or other languages of interest!

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halfbrick created a list

3d

Recent Translations - Chinese

by halfbrick

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16 books

The University of Rochester found that only 3 percent of books published in the US are in translation. I want to create lists of recently published (fiction) literature (2022-2025) in translation from different languages, out of curiosity. Will mostly be sourced from the university's database, which goes up to 2024, and then sourced from publishers for 2025 (won't be comprehensive for 2025). Feel free to suggest titles, from the last 5/10 years if you like them, or other languages of interest!

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halfbrick created a list

3d

Recent Translations - Turkish

by halfbrick

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7 books

The University of Rochester found that only 3 percent of books published in the US are in translation. I want to create lists of recently published (fiction) literature (2022-2025) in translation from different languages, out of curiosity. Will mostly be sourced from the university's database, which goes up to 2024, and then sourced from publishers for 2025 (won't be comprehensive for 2025). Feel free to suggest titles, from the last 5/10 years if you like them, or other languages of interest!

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halfbrick created a list

3d

Recent Translations - Korean

by halfbrick

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19 books

The University of Rochester found that only 3 percent of books published in the US are in translation. I want to create lists of recently published (fiction) literature (2022-2025) in translation from different languages, out of curiosity. Will mostly be sourced from the university's database, which goes up to 2024, and then sourced from publishers for 2025 (won't be comprehensive for 2025). Feel free to suggest titles, from the last 5/10 years if you like them, or other languages of interest!

1

halfbrick created a list

3d

Recent Translations - Arabic

by halfbrick

//

10 books

The University of Rochester found that only 3 percent of books published in the US are in translation. I want to create lists of recently published (fiction) literature (2022-2025) in translation from different languages, out of curiosity. Will mostly be sourced from the university's database, which goes up to 2024, and then sourced from publishers for 2025 (won't be comprehensive for 2025). Feel free to suggest titles, from the last 5/10 years if you like them, or other languages of interest!

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halfbrick DNF'd a book

3d

Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.

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halfbrick wants to read...

3d

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

Carmen Maria Machado

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction. The husband stitch -- Inventory -- Mothers -- Especially heinous -- Real women have bodies -- Eight bites -- The resident -- Difficult at parties

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Literary Fiction Starter Pack Vol I 🖼️⭐️📔

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An introduction to Literary Fiction, these books are part of the cultural zeitgeist or the 'canon' that many would recognize. Look for more niche titles in later Starter Pack volumes.

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Quiet Novels 🏡💭🤫

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Contemporary Literary Fiction where nothing out of the ordinary happens but the characters’ inner lives are rich, complicated, and layered.

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Octavia Butler's Afro-Futuristic World 💫🌑🧬

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All of her groundbreaking works, exploring themes of Afrofuturism, power, and survival.

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