Gift Guide Part 3--Literature

So far I've covered beauty products and socks in this year's round of gift guides, which are prefect gift categories for the coming winter. To add to that list--reading!

Here are a few books from my Books Worth Reading Pinterest board, first up--poetry!

James Allen Hall's "I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well" from the CSU Poetry Center

I LOVED Hall's 1st book Now You're the Enemy, which won awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. So this is on my personal wish list to read here during the snowy days to come. 

Anthology from Mason Jar Press

"The Black Ladies Brunch Collective’s Poetry Anthology, Not Without Our Laughter,  is a collection of humorous and joyful poems, riffing on Langston Hughes’s novel Not Without Laughter. It explores topics of family, work, love and sexuality. The women of BLBC believe, like Hughes, that even in these currently tense racial times, laughter and the celebration of life is crucial. Historically, it is what African Americans have done and will continue to do, no matter what challenges face them." 

From University of Pittsburgh Press, "Let's All Die Happy" by Erin Adair-Rodgers

"The poems in Let’s All Die Happy explore apostasy, concerned with what happens after the beliefs and institutions which promised fulfillment leave us empty instead. Darkly humorous, the collection examines a patriarchal culture in which women are defined through their relationship to others." 

Poems from Anay Krugovoy Silver on Amazon

"In her third collection, "From Nothing," Anya Krugovoy Silver follows a mother, wife, and artist as illness and loss of loved ones disrupt the peaceful flow of life. Grounded in the traditions of meditative and contemplative poetry, From Nothing confronts disease and mortality with the healing possibilities of verse. Whether remembering the sound of whispered secrets on a family vacation or celebrating a favorable PET scan, in Silver's keen observations of seemingly mundane moments we glimpse the divine. "

For Non-Fiction Readers--

A memoir by Alex Lemon available from Milkweed

"In Feverland, Alex Lemon has created a fragmented exploration of what it means to be a man in the tumult of twenty-first-century America—and a harrowing, associative memoir about how we live with the beauties and horrors of our pasts. How to move forward, Lemon asks, when trapped between the demons of one’s history and the angels of one’s better nature? How to live in kindness—to become a caring partner and parent—when one can muster very little such tenderness for oneself? How to be here, now? How to be here, good?"

Essays from Gabrielle Union, also available on Amazon

"In the spirit of Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl, and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman." 

And for those novel-readers on your gift list--

"The Mothers" by Brit Bennett

"Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret."

Maria Semple's Latest "Today Will Be Different"

"A brilliant novel from the author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, about a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions and awake to a strange, new future." Having read her previous book, I'm definitely on board for another story about a woman dealing with the challenges of modern life and internal struggle.