What to Read When Judging a Book by its Cover
I'm back with my BS
Welcome to another edition of Amateur Bibliotherapy, my weekly newsletter about book-y things. Use this Google Form at any time to tell me about what you’re reading—you might be featured here or on my Bookstagram! I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that I may make a small commission if you make a purchase through my affiliate links.
Welcome back, pals. I missed you last week, but I was too busy eating bonbons to send a missive.
The Books
I’ve been reading a lot of books with illustrations of women on the covers lately. Some include minimalistic, bold-colored, flat design depictions of women; these covers look timeless and grant readers an access point to characters whose full depth fleshes out upon reading. Others include faces of only negative space, framed by genre-specific markers to let readers fill in whatever features they please within aesthetic parameters. Even more include literal and specific illustrations so that opening the book means inhabiting a story tethered by that particular vision of a character. A book cover is “a thing-between-things, a middle ground between text and context, a zone of interaction between the writer’s vision and the culture in which the book is published” (LitHub). This means that I’ve been flitting between worlds of women, and can consider these book covers tokens from my travels.
ok but which books
I succumbed to the pressures of the internet and read Outlawed by Anna North. In case you’ve missed the torrent of publicity about this book, it tells the story of a 17-year-old newlywed named Ada who, after a year of being unable to conceive, is driven out of her hometown and into an outlaw gang of sharpshooters and robbers who are all women or nonbinary. “The heroes of the traditional Western were always sure about what made them the way they were; what made a man a man,” explains NPR. “For Ada and the other ‘outlaws’ of this spirited novel, the frontiers of gender and sexuality beckon to be explored.”
I really enjoyed this fast-paced book while playing that murder-mystery-ghost-pirate-ship video game I talked about last time, Return of the Obra Dinn. Both manipulate conventions of their respective genres to create something distinct from their predecessors, and both feature laudanum as useful plot facilitators.
I also have been slowly working through an advanced readers copy of The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo, a collection of essays that blend “natural, culinary, medical, and personal history” to talk about 26 fruits. Much like Outlawed and Return of the Obra Dinn, each of Lebo’s essays unravels competing legacies. Some fruits have histories as herbal remedies that turned out to be nothing more than flimflam; others have cultural significance that hasn’t yet been stamped out. I’m not done with it yet.
okokok enough on that, what else
I also read an advanced readers copy of Ariadne by Jennifer Saint and truly loved it. I’ll write more about it in an upcoming newsletter, but do add it to your list of anticipated 2021 publications.
Finally, I read A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas, the highly-anticipated fourth book in her YA-to-adult fantasy/romance/Beauty and the Beast-y series, A Court of Thorns and Roses. This was a delightful junk food book (a la @chaoticbookshelf).
Next up is Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers, which I started last night, and probably A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet.
See you next time, friends. If you have some money to spare before we meet again, this Texas Mutual Aid Directory outlines urgent action items and groups in need of funding as a result of the state’s winter storm emergency.