Booklist Reader

Published by Booklist, an imprint of the American Library Association. Booklist Reader features diverse book and audiobook recommendations, for readers and listeners of all ages. Filled with high-interest, themed lists that showcase books for your family or book discussion group.

From the Editor & Publisher

Booklist Reader

Adult • Get your hands on these hotly anticipated books, all out this month.

The Swimmers, by Julie Otsuka • In The Swimmers, Otsuka creates an exquisite collage of small moments, beginning with the collective “we” of the swimmers who frequent an underground pool until a crack in its floor gradually undermines their precious routines. The focus then shifts to one swimmer, Alice, a retired Japanese American lab technician struggling with dementia. Each of the novels below either delves into the mysteries and sorrows of memory or dementia or has a watery aspect.

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent, by Dipo Faloyin • Africa is not a monolith, despite the ways the rest of the world portrays it. Top of the List winner Africa Is Not a Country seeks to rectify that cultural reduction in seven sections devoted to the history of European colonization, democracy and dictatorship, jollof rice, and the implications of the accents and character choices in Marvel’s Black Panther. It’s a wholly original work, told with wit and clarity. Here are a few titles for readers looking for more on the many facets of Africa and the African diaspora.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton • In her Top of the List winner for Graphic Novel, Ducks, Kate Beaton chronicles the post-college years she worked in Alberta’s oil fields, one of few women there, to pay down her student debt. Looking back, she recalls near-constant sexual harassment (and worse) and the ambiguity of her work in an industry that employed many at the cost of the land and even human lives. Across a range of styles, tones, and subjects, the graphic novels and prose memoirs below explore similar themes of bodily violence and our assaulted planet.

COMICS LOVE

Traveling on Foot • When we dream of travel, we often think of flying to distant lands, cruising the high seas, or driving cross-country. Traveling by foot, the mode for which our bodies evolved, delivers a very different experience, an intimate connection with the ground beneath our feet and its natural and human history, as these narratives so vividly recount.

Island Tales • Islands, viewed as paradisiacal or paradoxical, are irresistible microcosms for fiction writers. The titles below explore the uniqueness and universality of island life, whether from a profound historical and social justice perspective or with a more larky approach.

Biographies • Scientists, activists, artists, a female magnate, and George Floyd are the compelling subjects of these exceptional biographies.

Memoirs • Memoir readers know that there’s no limit to the subjects that outstanding personal writing can illuminate. These 10 unforgettable memoirs celebrate difference and resilience, from the depths of our planet’s oceans to its highest peak.

On the Front Lines for Social Justice • These standout biographies and memoirs tell the stories of individuals well-known and too-little-known who fought and are still fighting against inequality and injustice on many fronts, from myriad manifestations of racism to anti-immigrant policies, gender and disability discrimination, environmental destruction, worker’s rights, and the justice system’s deep flaws and failings.

Georgie, All Along

Listening Still, by Anne Griffin and read by Nicola Coughlan • This year’s adult audio Top of the List winner, the novel Listening Still (Macmillan Audio) by Anne Griffin and narrated by Nicola Coughlan, hits the sweet spot for recreational reading:...