itsbooktime

[itsbooktime]

Young adult author Randy Ribay is Filipino American and says his latest book Patron Saints Of Nothing is dedicated to people like him: “The Hyphenated,” he calls them. And not just Filipino Americans, Ribay tells NPR’s Noel King, but also anyone else who would consider themselves more than one thing.

“The difficulty with a dual identity is just trying to figure out what does it mean to be more than one thing in a world where people want you to be one thing,” he says.

Check out the full conversation here.

– Petra

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In his stump speeches, Ronald Reagan used to talk about a woman in Chicago who’d scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money and spent it on fancy cars and homes – the “welfare queen” became a stereotype applied to countless women, but it turns out there really was one strange, singular woman in Chicago behind the stories. Josh Levin examines her strange, troubled life in The Queen – check out our review here.

– Petra

[itsbooktime]

This is SUCH a cool story –  five hundred years ago, a son of Christopher Columbus assembled one of the greatest libraries the world has ever known. The volumes inside were mostly lost to history. Now, a precious book summarizing the contents of the library has turned up in a manuscript collection in Denmark. Edward Wilson-Lee, author of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, a biography of Columbus’ son Hernando, calls it “an absolutely gorgeous thing.” Check out his conversation with NPR’s Ari Shapiro here.

– Petra

[itsbooktime]

Happy Easter to those who celevrate. And your recommended Easter read is the newest entry of the Frozen in time blog, dedicated to skaters who became unfairly forgoten by most long-time fans or simply uknown to the newer fans.

This latest entry is about Ilia Klimkin and it makes for a fascinating read. Klimkin is, indeed, a great talent that was unfortunately wasted. During his career he experienced bad luck, unfortunate timing, serious injuries, lack of support from his own federation, and personal tragedies. It all resulted in a talented skater not fully utilizing his abilities and realizing his potential. If you want to know more, check out the entry.

Also, if you’d have any suggestions, tips or comments, you can send them to the blog’s owner, @anyway-how-is-your-sex-life (which is a great URL and I’m surprised nobody got it before you, btw)

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Congratulations to this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners! There was so much great journalism honored this year – but this being the Books tumblr, we’re gonna focus on this year’s winning fiction, nonfiction and poetry writers – check out our full coverage here, and find Lynn Neary’s lovely conversation with fiction winner Richard Powers here.

– Petra

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the signs as richard siken poems

ARIES: detail of the fire TAURUS: snow and dirty rain GEMINI: you are jeff CANCER: wishbone LEO: landscape with a blur of conquerors VIRGO: detail of the woods LIBRA: road music SCORPIO: sheherazade SAGITTARIUS: little beast CAPRICORN: the language of the birds AQUARIUS: litany in which certain things are crossed out PISCES: straw house, straw dog

[itsbooktime]

Rat Queens, Volume 2: The Far Reaching Tentacles of N’rygoth - written by Kurtis Wiebe and illustrated by Roc Upchurch and Stjepan Sejic

“Your life is your own. I will never stand in the way of it.”

Read: 03/30/19

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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami.

“And you know, this thought crossed my mind at the time: maybe chance is a pretty common thing after all. Those kinds of coincidences are happening all around us, all the time, but most of them don’t catch our attention and we just let them go by. It’s like fireworks in the daytime. You might hear a faint sound, but even if you look up at the sky you can’t see a thing. But if we’re really hoping something may come true, it may become visible, like a message rising to the surface.”

Started: 03/20/19

Finished: 03/23/19

[itsbooktime]

Joan Biskupic has written four biographies of sitting Supreme Court justices, and she says the charming yet enigmatic Chief Justice John Roberts was her “toughest subject, start to finish.” Our own Nina Totenberg breaks down the book for us – check it out here.

– Petra

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There was a time in Summer Brennan’s life when she wore high heels almost every day — when she was working at the United Nations. It was a place, as she describes it, of “suits and ties, skirts and silk blouses … freshly shined wingtips and yes, high heels.”

The heels were critical, as Brennan saw it, to being the kind of woman — professional, feminine, poised — who marched those halls of power with confidence. Brennan is now a writer, and she explores all this in her new book, High Heel. She talked to NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly about beauty, power, expectations and of course high heels – find their conversation here.

– Petra (who is wearing boots with stupid heels today)

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The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic, Nick Joaquin.

“PERICO: To feel that driving urge, that imperious necessity to write poetry, a poet needs an audience; he must be conscious of an audience- not only of a present audience but of a permanent one, an eternal one, an audience of all the succeeding generations. He must feel that his poems will generate new poets. Well, poetry withered away for the writers of my time because we knew that we had come to a dead end, we had come to a blind alley.”

Started: 03/11/19

Finished: 03/22/19

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I’m Not Leaving, by Carl Wilkens.

“While the stories written here happened during the genocide, this is not another book about genocide. It is about choices people made, actions people took, courage people showed, and sacrifices people gave in the face of genocide.”

Started reading: 03/08/19

Finished reading: 03/20/19