16 Things This Week

Coming to you a little late today – but I’m excited that it’s the Winter Solstice here in the Northern hemisphere, which is the shortest day of the year … longer days to come! I’m also looking forward to catching a glimpse of the rare Christmas star event tonight, which hasn’t been seen in more than 800 years! Now onto the bookishness for this week.

ONE+ Have you read any books for #DiverseDecember yet? I mentioned last week that I fell into a P. Djeli Clarke rabbit hole that I’m just crawling out of … just amazingly good science fiction! I’m moving on to an upcoming release – Sleep Well, My Lady by Kwei Quartey. It’s a mystery novel set in Ghana and I’m 100% enthralled.

TWO+ Other happenings …

THREE+ Spoiler alert – the book on most of the lists on The Top 50 from the Best Books of 2020 List of Lists is The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett – which we also had as one of our Popular Books Worth the Hype.

FOUR+ Yassss … Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020 … his favorite Movies and TV Shows and his favorite music. I know what I’ll be doing over my Christmas vacay since I won’t be going anywhere.

FIVE+ The Biggest Literary Stories of the Year will help you catch up on all the major literary scandals and important things this year. I think I was most surprised by #PublishingPaidMe when authors started revealed disparities between payment of white writers and writers of color – I mean I knew it … but reading this broke my heart – “I, a totally unknown white woman with 1 viral article got an advance that was more than double @rgay (Roxanne Gay) got for highest advance.”

SIX+ The Carl Brandon Awards are back … given to works of speculative fiction created by a self-identified person of color and to any work of speculative fiction dealing with issues of race and ethnicity. The winners this year are Pet, Akwaeke Emezi (seriously – I’ve already mentioned 100x that this book should be in every school library and read to every young person and by adults too) and Doll Seed, Michele Tracy Berger.

SEVEN+ And also for quick engrossing reads, there’s All of the Books I Read in a Weekend or Less.

EIGHT+ Reading bloggers favorite books is a sure-fire way to expand my own reading list and they’ve started popping up – like Bryan’s Fave Fiction (I also loved All Systems Red, Martha Wells) – 2020 Under-rated Gems at The Gilmore Guide to Books (Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar is also on Barack’s fave list mentioned above – and now on my reading list) – Best 2020 Debuts at Happiest When Reading and Best Books of 2020 at Sarah’s Bookshelves.

NINE+ And this epic list of Favorite Books from Real Life Reading … ummm 30+ books – must have been quite a wonderful year of reading.

TEN+ For more seasonal reads, try 7 Winter Fantasy Books to Read This Season. “Winter” is one of the January words for the 2021 Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge and there’s 2 books on the list that would fit.

ELEVEN+ There’s Hallmark Christmas Movies Based On Books y’all! … Is this something everybody but me knew about?

TWELVE+ If you’re looking for some shorter reads to close out the year, check out Classic Christmas Short Stories You Can Read Right Now. “Did you know that L. Frank Baum–author of The Wizard of Oz–wrote a fantasy story about Santa Claus getting kidnapped by daemons?”

THIRTEEN+ Yes, I’m going to throw up a gift guide now although it’s 4 days to Christmas – because you can buy shit for yourself, friends and family anytime. And because there’s #BuyBlack items on this holiday gift guide.

FOURTEEN+ If you’re looking for something to watch on TV check out Huff Po’s The 17 Best New Shows Of 2020.

FIFTEEN+ Because Reading – Holly Jolly Saturday: Christmas Movies has your holiday movie recommendations. Completely agree with Christmas Chronicles!

SIXTEEN+ I’m keeping a running list of board games so of course I bookmarked Entertaining Games for Winter Nights and Favorite Family Board Games.

Happy Holidays!