Deedi Brown 8/28/25 Deedi Brown 8/28/25

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

This is an incredibly researched, empathetically rendered, deeply poignant book. I learned so much, and I am about to shove this book into everyone’s hands. (I also listened to the vast majority of it on audio, and I think it worked great.)

About the book

Author: Michael Waters
Publisher: FSG

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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My Review

Trans rights are women’s rights.

This is an incredibly researched, empathetically rendered, deeply poignant look at the ways the oppression of women and the oppression of trans people arose together at the advent of women’s sports and the 1936 Olympics that took place in Nazi Germany. It’s eerily relevant to this exact moment, between the rise of fascism here in the US and the recent announcement that women Olympians will now need to submit to genetic testing to confirm their gender. I learned so much, and I am about to shove this book into everyone’s hands. (I also listened to the vast majority of it on audio, and I think it worked great.)

I won’t lie, I often felt disheartened while reading this book — if a nationwide movement to have the US boycott the 1936 Olympics BECAUSE NAZIS WERE MURDERING JEWISH PEOPLE was no match for one clever and determined antisemitic white man administrator, what will we do today? If these men continue to insist on policing women and trans people’s bodies for the show of it, and their momentum is this great, how will we stop it?

But at the end of the day, this is the truth: Gender testing didn’t work back then, and it isn’t going to work now. And this book does a great job of showing why that is.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Transphobia and homophobia
Antisemitism / Naziism
Deadnaming
Misogyny
Suicide (minor)

Deedi Brown 7/31/25 Deedi Brown 7/31/25

Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service

If you’re looking for a quick, hopeful piece of nonfiction filled with interesting facts, look no further. Who Is Government? fits the bill exactly.

About the book

Author: Michael Lewis (Editor)
Publisher: Riverhead

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My Review

If you’re looking for a quick, hopeful piece of nonfiction filled with interesting facts, look no further. Who Is Government? fits the bill exactly. In it, Michael Lewis gathers together a group of all-star journalists to each write about an interesting unsung civil servant and the office they work for. These are folks who show up, day after day, for the love of the job and the good they are able to do with the authority granted to them by their governmental role.

The episodic structure of the book and the feel-good subject matter made this the perfect audiobook to dip in and out of. The last chapter — about a family desperately searching for a cure to their daughter’s rare, deadly condition and the woman who spearheaded a database for Hail Mary treatments — even made me tear up.

A good, solid read!

Content and Trigger Warnings

Child abuse (minor)

Deedi Brown 7/24/25 Deedi Brown 7/24/25

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

I think anyone who loves language or is a creator (or is simply very online) will love this book, but if you’re both of those things, it’s an absolute MUST read.

About the book

Author: Adam Aleksic
Publisher: Knopf

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My Review

Algospeak is the first book by Adam Aleksic, a linguist who has millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram as @etymologynerd. As promised, he breaks down “how social media is transforming the future of language.” Reader, I’m obsessed.

As a word nerd and book person, I’ve read a LOT of books about shifting language in the modern era — it’s a catnip topic for me. But I’m happy to report that this book is NOT just more of the same. It stands firmly on its own two feet for its deep focus on the algorithms themselves as an accelerant and instigator of language’s rapid evolution. Everything he teaches feels recognizable (“ah yes, of course that’s true”), but it’s taught and arranged in ways you may not have fully considered before. I inhaled it.

I think anyone who loves language or is a creator (or is simply very online) will love this book, but if you’re both of those things, it’s an absolute MUST read. It’s also short (only about 5 hours on audio) and particularly timely right now. So I would advocate to read it sooner rather than later — it will still be relevant down the line, but I think it will hit harder if the slang and trends he discusses still feel current.

Do it do it do it!

Content and Trigger Warnings

Misogyny (discussion of incel culture)

Deedi Brown 6/29/25 Deedi Brown 6/29/25

Wear It Well: Reclaim Your Closet and Rediscover the Joy of Getting Dressed

Very glad I read this, and I’m already looking forward to revisiting her advice probably twice a year (fall and spring)!

About the book

Author: Allison Bornstein
Publisher: Chronicle Prism

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My Review

I’ve been meaning to pick up Wear It Well for months, as I’m one year postpartum and really wishing I had more outfits that feel like the current version of me — more color and more classic cuts. So when I needed a short book to pick up next, this was the perfect fit. (Pun unintentional but delightful.)

This book reads very self-help-y, but it’s so short (you can read it in a day) that it’s worth wading through for the good advice. I found a lot of value in Bornstein’s recommended method of sorting through my existing wardrobe; it really helped me think about what I wanted to keep and what the commonalities of those pieces were. Her 3-word method also feels like it’s going to be super useful in the future; I’ve already started calling my words to mind as I’ve (thoughtfully) begun to shop for pieces that I felt were missing from my closet.

Very glad I read this, and I’m already looking forward to revisiting her advice probably twice a year (fall and spring)!

Content and Trigger Warnings

None

Deedi Brown 6/28/25 Deedi Brown 6/28/25

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

Searches is a timely, personal, and incredibly smart look at our techological present and immediate past, probing what AI is doing and will do to our lives with a healthy dose of skepticism while holding the giants like Meta, Amazon, etc to task.

About the book

Author: Vauhini Vara
Publisher: Pantheon

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My Review

I am the head of content marketing at a tech startup, so I am no stranger to generative AI. (Using it skillfully is literally in my performance review.) At the same time, I don’t think there is any community out there who is more outspoken against AI than the book community. So it often feels like I live in two entirely different worlds.

I think, against all odds, this book actually manages to bridge them, and it does it in the best way: where essay writing meets performance art. Searches is a timely, personal, and incredibly smart look at our techological present and immediate past, probing what AI is doing and will do to our lives with a healthy dose of skepticism while holding the giants like Meta, Amazon, etc to task.

Between more traditional essays about how she grew up and became a journalist alongside Facebook and the rest of them, Vara publishes everything from her Amazon reviews to a giant list of her Twitter “interests” to attempts at getting AI to try to finish a narrative about grief her sister (who died of chilchood cancer) to full chats with ChatGPT, asking it to critique and interpret the very book we’re reading. The result, when considered as a whole, is deeply resonant.

I really hope this gets some prize attention later this year — it deserves it.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Cancer
Death of a sibling
Grief

Deedi Brown 6/11/25 Deedi Brown 6/11/25

Is a River Alive?

If you love nature writing, you simply must read this, and you must not rush it. Macfarlane’s prose is sumptuous and his sense of wonder is palpable.

About the book

Author: Robert Macfarlane
Publisher: W. W. Norton

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My Review

This was my first book by Robert Macfarlane, but it absolutely won’t be my last. I’m so excited to have an entire backlist of his full of nature writing of this caliber, holy smokes.

Is a River Alive? is part travelogue, part journalism, part essay, and (dare I say it) part poetry, chronicling the author’s journey along three rivers. One is in Ecuador, one is in India, and the last is in Canada. He wonders at the power of rivers and examines the idea of personhood in service of the “Rights of Nature” movement, in which activists fight to earn natural entities like rivers the same legal rights and protection as people (or corporations).

If you love nature writing, you simply must read this, and you must not rush it. Macfarlane’s prose is sumptuous and his sense of wonder is palpable. The introduction, especially, flows like poetry, begging to be read aloud — and while this would get exhausting if he’d attempted to sustain it for a whole book, he brings it back in just the right moments and quantities.

Pair this with the novel There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak and go read it by a river. You’ll thank me.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Climate anxiety

Deedi Brown 5/21/25 Deedi Brown 5/21/25

Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put ― A Biographical Exploration of the Unexpected Joys of a Quiet Life

The essays are short and the tone is warm (but never saccharine), which made book feel easy to sink into. I was sad when it was over. I look forward to reading whatever Jones writes next!

About the book

Author: Annie B. Jones
Publisher: HarperOne

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My Review

Everyone who’s listened to bookstore owner Annie B. Jones’ podcast, From the Front Porch, knows she’s warm, lovely, and passionate about books. All of that, plus more, is fully present in this memoiristic essay collection about her experience living (and staying) in a small town near where she grew up.

As someone who married her high school sweetheart and lives 45 minutes from her childhood home, I knew I needed to read this one as soon as it was announced. And I’m so glad I did. I loved the way Jones finds all the best parts about living a quiet life and highlights the ways in which it can be just as much of an adventure. I even loved the chapters she wrote on her faith and experiences with the church, even though I’m not religious myself. Her writing is just that good.

The essays are short and the tone is warm (but never saccharine), which made this book feel easy to sink into. I was sad when it was over. I look forward to reading whatever Jones writes next!

Content and Trigger Warnings

Religious bigotry
Pregnancy, miscarriage, infertility (minor)

Deedi Brown 4/13/25 Deedi Brown 4/13/25

Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives

Democracy in Retrograde is a fun, short, super accessible guide to becoming more civically engaged. It’s easy to digest in bite sizes and offers some useful tools for thinking about the ways you might derive the most satisfaction from getting involved and presents an excellent case for why you should.

About the book

Author: Emily Amick and Sami Sage
Publisher: Gallery Books

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My Review

Democracy in Retrograde is a fun, short, super accessible guide to becoming more civically engaged. I think it tips a little too far in attempting millennial relatability in a few spots (ie, the metaphor of a glass half-full of iced coffee instead of water), but overall, it’s easy to digest in bite sizes and offers some useful tools for thinking about the ways you might derive the most satisfaction from getting involved and presents an excellent case for why you should.

I liked the way Amick and Sage make the case for civic engagement as an antidote to hopelessness and despair — even more timely now, in early 2025, than when they wrote it just after the January 2021 insurrection. Their evidence and conviction is convincing and inspiring. I also really liked the tools they offered, in particular the pragmatist/realist/optimist/pessimist/idealist outlooks and the four activism “personality types,” complete with a Buzzfeed-style quiz. It was a genuinely helpful (albeit slightly cheesy) way to help me assess where my strengths lie, what energizes me the most, and how I might bring that unique mix to my own civic engagement in ways that fit with my real life and are rewarding.

All in all, a quick read that I recommend.

Deedi Brown 3/22/25 Deedi Brown 3/22/25

Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism

This is a meticulously researched and excellently written examination of history that everyone who has a child, works in education, or cares about education should read.

About the book

Author: Eve L. Ewing
Publisher: One World

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My Review

I’d heard nothing but great things about Original Sins, and I had to pick it up for myself. In fact, I covered in in depth and pulled out detailed key takeaways for my Conversation Pushers column on Substack. I’m so glad I did! This is a meticulously researched and excellently written examination of history that everyone who has a child, works in education, or cares about education should read.

Ewing exposes the myth that American schools were designed as a “great equalizer.” Instead, our educational system was deliberately built to serve different purposes for different racial groups. For white students, schools were designed to turn them into model American citizens. For Native students, as many of us know, schools (especially Indian boarding schools) were instruments of forced assimilation designed to “civilize” them by erasing their cultures and languages. And for Black students, schools were meant to give them just enough education (and indoctrination) to become laborers content with their lot in life. The book traces the way schools have continuously evolved to continue to achieve these aims, from Thomas Jefferson’s time through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and into our present day — where standardized testing, academic “tracking,” and the school-to-prison pipeline continue to drive race-delineated outcomes.

Ewing is a master of her craft, and her arguments are expertly crafted. Despite being largely focused on history, it never feels academic or bogged down in details. It really is a must-read!

Content and Trigger Warnings

Racism
Colonialism (historical)
Slavery (historical)

Deedi Brown 3/13/25 Deedi Brown 3/13/25

Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices

I feel genuinely better prepared to decide what kinds of things are personally worth my effort (and my guilt). The time I spent listening to this audiobook was time extremely well spent.

About the book

Author: Travis Rieder
Publisher: Dutton

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My Review

Catastrophe Ethics is pitched as “a warm, personal guide to building a strong ethical and moral compass in the midst of today's confusing, scary global problems.” As someone who often agonizes over decisions like whether it’s okay to throw away an old, unusable comforter because it’s just so hard to find a way to ethically recycle it, this book was calling my name. And even though it kind of answers that question and kind of doesn’t, I found it to be very helpful and clarifying.

I would only recommend this book to someone who has never studied ethics. I get the sense that if you took even an introductory class on ethics in college, a lot of this might feel basic. But for me, I enjoyed and deeply appreciated the tour Rieder gives us through modern moral reasoning, laying a foundation and building layers on top of it like all good teachers do. He uses both big and small, timely questions to put that reasoning to the test — from recycling to abortion to activism to whether to have kids. Because he’s so clear and engaging, the book also works very well on audio.

Even though there are no clear answers that apply to everybody, I feel genuinely better prepared to decide what kinds of things are personally worth my effort (and my guilt). The time I spent listening to this audiobook was time extremely well spent.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Climate anxiety
Abortion

Deedi Brown 3/9/25 Deedi Brown 3/9/25

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

I’m on a mission to deepen my critical reading skills this year. Only a few months into that journey, it became clear that Playing in the Dark was a foundational piece of criticism that I needed to read ASAP if I was going to do the thing right.

About the book

Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Harvard University Press

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My Review

This short book (~100 pages), published in 1992, is actually three adapted lectures Morrison gave at Harvard University. Those who have only read Morrison’s fiction might be unprepared for how academic the tone of her nonfiction can be, but she was a genius, so it’s no surprise. Be prepared to take this book slowly to really absorb what she’s saying.

Morrison’s thesis is that all work in the American “canon” is shaped or influenced by an awareness of Black people in American history — what she calls American “Africanism”:

“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.”

Today, in 2025, it doesn’t feel radical (in fact, it feels like critical race theory), but her arguments still made me think about things in new or different ways — and there’s no doubt that this book sharpened my own critical lens.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Racism

Deedi Brown 2/28/25 Deedi Brown 2/28/25

Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe

This book is not only hopeful and optimistic, but also instructive and motivational in terms of what kinds of policies and proposals are worth fighting for here in the US.

About the book

Author: Natasha Hakimi Zapata
Publisher: The New Press

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My Review

When Natasha Hakimi Zapata’s publishing team planned the release of Another World Is Possible for February 2025, they couldn’t have known it would come just as Trump took office for a second term and put out an avalanche of vindictive executive orders (ostensibly) dismantling any progress this country has made over the last decade or so. And yet, what perfect timing for a book that shows us that social and environmental progress is not only possible, not only well within humanity’s reach, but actively in practice elsewhere in the world as we speak.

Clearly organized, thoroughly researched, and approachably written, this book is a buoy in the storm. Zapata shows us the mechanisms of successful progressive initiatives around the world, such as universal healthcare, paid family leave, net neutrality, wildlife conservation, clean energy, addiction treatment, and more. Her skillful reportage balances the micro (real people she met who have shaped or been impacted by these policies) and the macro (the history of the policies and their resulting impacts). There were certain portions where I felt my attention wander — she’s at her strongest at the start and end of each chapter — but overall, I thought this was excellently done.

My biggest takeaway from this book is that in order for these important initiatives to succeed, they cannot be implemented in drips and drabs. It’s ALL or nothing. No single policy can succeed on its own; it is the combination of many policies working in concert toward the same end where the magic happens. And this is not only hopeful and optimistic, but also instructive and motivational in terms of what kinds of policies and proposals are worth fighting for here in the US.

Deedi Brown 2/28/25 Deedi Brown 2/28/25

How to Read Now: Essays

This book is not what I had naively expected — my brain ignored the “essays” part of the title in favor of the “how to” part — but it is, without a doubt, excellent.

About the book

Author: Elaine Castillo
Publisher: Viking

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My Review

How to Read Now has been on my TBR since it was published in 2022. This year, I’ve been on a mission to sharpen my critical reading skills, so I finally picked it up. Alas, this book is not what I had naively expected — my brain ignored the “essays” part of the title in favor of the “how to” part — but it is, without a doubt, excellent.

Written with more than a dash of spunk, personality, and sarcasm, How to Read Now is a collection of whip-smart essays on the current state of the politics of reading. Castillo draws from a lifetime of deep, wide, critical reading to call out all the BS: the impossibility of nonpolitical art, the empty allyship of “reading for empathy,” the false promises of the publishing industry’s box-checking, the hypocrisy of calls to “separate the art from the artist” for white authors while BIPOC authors cannot have their work evaluated separately from their identities, and so much more.

What will stick with me longest, I think, is Castillo’s construction of the “unexpected reader,” ie the person an author never would have or could have expected to read their work. For example, Hemingway never would have expected someone like, say, a Black trans woman from New York City. However, white readers have never lived in a world where they were not the expected readers of literally everything. And so when they find themselves to be the unexpected reader, they criticize (or vilify) the author for it.

I can’t wait to inhale whatever Castillo puts out next.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Racism
Xenophobia
Colonization
Death of a parent

Deedi Brown 2/17/25 Deedi Brown 2/17/25

Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People Perry, Imani

Trust Imani Perry to rewrite the rules on what it means to tell the history of an entire people. If this isn’t nominated for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, I will riot.

About the book

Author: Imani Perry
Publisher: Ecco

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My Review

Trust Imani Perry to rewrite the rules on what it means to tell the history of an entire people. Wow, y’all.

Black in Blues explores the ways the color blue has been formative to Black history and identity from the advent of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade through modern day. Touching on everything from indigo to blue jeans, the blues (music) to bluejays, blue-black skin and more, she reclaiming the ways the color blue has been tied to sorrow and hardship in favor of and in service to its mechanism as a symbol of joy, resistance, and pride.

The book is written as a large number of very short essays that weave together personal narrative, cultural commentary, and poetic reporting. They are not only smart, not only beautifully written, but also deeply sentimental and bursting with love. There’s no denying that Imani Perry is one of the best to ever do it, and I know I didn’t soak up all her genius in just one read of this book.

If this isn’t nominated for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, I will riot.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Slavery (history)
Racism

Deedi Brown 2/1/25 Deedi Brown 2/1/25

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

If you’re looking for someone to put very simply why what’s happening in Palestine is not “complicated,” this is it. Required reading.

About the book

Author: Omar El Akkad
Publisher: Knopf

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My Review

If you’re looking for someone to put very simply why what’s happening in Palestine is not “complicated,” this is it.

This short, blistering book is nothing short of required reading — for everyone, but particularly liberals in the United States. In it, El Akkad writes a scathing indictment of the West, taking it upon himself to document our passivity so that the title cannot come true. He asks us to admit it: It’s comfortable to live in an empire because that means the empire won’t come for you. This is “I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people” turned up to 11.

Not only is the message powerful, the book itself is also expertly written. El Akkad uses just the right touch of personal essay to make the broader cultural criticism bite, anchoring on both familiar and novel mental models. I thought the chapters on language (pointed at the media) and craft (pointed at writers and artists) were particularly impactful, but honestly, there are no misses. I listened to the audiobook, which El Akkad narrates perfectly, but I am already planning to reread it in print so I can make sure his points really sink their teeth in.

“It is an admirable thing, in a politics possessed of a moral floor, to believe one can change the system from the inside, that with enough respectful prodding the establishment can be made to bend, like that famous arc, toward justice. but when, after decades of such thinking, decades of respectful prodding, the condition one arrives at is reticent acceptance of genocide, is it not at least worth considering that you are not changing the system nearly as much as the system is changing you?”

Content and Trigger Warnings

Genocide
Death of children (Palestine)
Racism

Deedi Brown 1/31/25 Deedi Brown 1/31/25

How to Read Literature

I’m a non-English-major on a quest to learn more about literary theory so I can become a deeper reader and better reviewer. This was my first foray, but unfortunately it wasn’t a winner for me.

About the book

Author: Terry Eagleton
Publisher: Yale University Press

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My Review

I’m a non-English-major on a quest to learn more about literary theory so I can become a deeper reader and better reviewer. This was my first foray, but unfortunately it wasn’t a winner for me.

Terry Eagleton is clearly very smart AND he also cracks a lot of jokes. Some still land in 2025 and made me laugh, some fall flat and made me roll my eyes, but I can appreciate the attempt at levity and accessibility. Unfortunately, it’s also paired with a very academic tone that I found difficult to concentrate on, and so I ended up skimming most of this book.

In terms of structure, I also feel like Eagleton tipped too far as he tried to make this book not read like a textbook. It’s loosely structured into five or six very long chapters and doesn’t anchor around any clear critical lenses or instructions for analysis; he just talks for a long time about a certain reading-related topic. And I think he had interesting things to say and (often) good examples, but I feel like I just needed more structure for this to feel like information I could put into practice in real life.

Alas, on to the next!

Deedi Brown 1/12/25 Deedi Brown 1/12/25

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

If you haven’t read On Tyranny, please do so as soon as possible. This is an extremely short book — it’s 1:47 on audio and pocket-sized in print — that is nothing short of required reading, especially right now.

About the book

Author: Timothy Snyder
Publisher: Tim Duggan Books

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My Review

On Tyranny was published shortly after Donald Trump took office the first time. Snyder is a scholar of fascism and history. This book looks back at the ways we can learn from the rise of fascism and Naziism in the mid-20th century in order to prevent it from happening again today — because make no mistake, it absolutely could. (Check out a much deeper dive into its 20 lessons and some key conversational takeaways in my Substack post.)

What impressed me most about this book, aside from the urgent subject matter, was how powerfully Snyder makes his points in only a few pages per chapter. His word economy is astounding, and the effect is deeply affecting. He is clearly very knowledgable and very smart, and his 20 lessons are clear and compelling and actionable.

I really hope you’ll read it.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Genocide
Antisemitism
Xenophobia

Deedi Brown 12/29/24 Deedi Brown 12/29/24

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

This book is both sad and hopeful, scathing and uplifting. Brb, time to (finally) go read Abdurraqib’s entire backlist.

About the book

Author: Hanif Abdurraqib
Publisher: Random House

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My Review

I’m embarrassed to admit that this was my first Hanif, but don’t worry — I’m fully on board now.

This book is hard to describe; it is about basketball, but it’s also totally not about basketball. It’s more accurate to say that basketball — more specifically, street basketball in Columbus and Lebron James in Cleveland — is a lens through which Abdurraqib remembers, reflects, and critiques. I have a small amount of knowledge about Lebron James (because my husband loves him), but even that small drop was enough for this to hit. I truly think that Abdurraqib could choose any lens and make something incredible out of it. His ability to see the world differently and make connections out of thin air is unmatched.

This is also one of those books that you absolutely must listen to and read along at the same time. Abdurraqib’s prose here borders on poetry, and you would do his words a disservice to miss it in either format.

There’s not much more I can say that others have not. But please know that this book is both sad and hopeful, scathing and uplifting. Brb, time to (finally) go read Abdurraqib’s entire backlist.

Content and Trigger Warnings

Racism
Police brutality and gun violence
Death and grief

Deedi Brown 12/27/24 Deedi Brown 12/27/24

Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

As a lover of all things fantasy and magical realism, obviously I had to pick this up. And the hype is so justified!

About the book

Author: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Publisher: Tiny Reparations Books

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My Review

This burst onto my radar seemingly out of nowhere around the time of its publication, and then it was longlisted for the National Book Award for nonfiction. As a lover of all things fantasy and magical realism, obviously I had to pick it up. And the hype is so justified.

There’s a little something for everyone here — this is cultural criticism combined with memoir, and Villarreal loves not only magic but also music. And of the best essays is on Game of Thrones (considering it through the lenses of border walls and migration), which of course has mass appeal. The chapters on music didn’t hold my attention as well as the others, although that makes sense as I’m not a big music junkie.

But above all, this collection is SO SMART. I loved every single connection Villarreal drew, almost none of which had occurred to me before reading this book. The way she considers pop culture, colonialsm, and consumerism is just plain excellent.

I would like more books like this, where people take pop culture seriously by considering it to be culture (which it is), worthy of criticism. Thank you!

Content and Trigger Warnings

Racism/Xenophobia
Grief
Suicide attempt
Domestic violence

Deedi Brown 12/26/24 Deedi Brown 12/26/24

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

This book was an utter delight, indeed very cozy and interesting and a must-read for bookstore lovers everywhere.

About the book

Author: Evan Friss
Publisher: Viking

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

I borrowed this book from the library on a whim because I was itching for nonfiction, it was December and there’s a Christmas tree on the cover (so it felt cozy and seasonal), and I had access to the audiobook thanks to PRH Audio. Holy guacamole, am I glad that I did! This book was an utter delight, indeed very cozy and interesting and a must-read for bookstore lovers everywhere.

Friss is a history professor at James Madison, the husband of a bookseller at Three Lives & Co in NYC, and a bookstore lover in general. He takes this topic that is so near and dear to all of our hearts (bookstores) and gives us a warm, fascinating, very readable account of its history. I didn’t want it to end! And I also learned so much. As a former resident of NYC who frequented MANY of its bookstores, I especially loved the chapters on key NYC shops that are no longer around but were formative to the city and the culture of bookselling in general (Oscar Wilde, Gotham Book Mart, etc.).

The audio was very well narrated and would be a great choice if you prefer your nonfiction that way. But if you can get a print copy, I recommend it, because there are photos interspersed throughout. I’ll be buying myself one soon!

Content and Trigger Warnings

Homophobia
Racism
Antisemitism
Misogyny