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.

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Booklist Reader

Graphic Novels • The dynamic variety of these 10 titles demonstrates not only the quality of the current graphic-novel landscape but the breadth of stories available to readers.

Palestinian Poets • Palestinians call many places home: Gaza, the West Bank, the Occupied Territories, adjacent Middle Eastern nations, Europe, America, and beyond. Wherever they reside, Palestinian poets turn their eye to conflict and injustice in their own country, but also speak to the wider world in urgent and evocative terms. A recent surge in poetry by Palestinian and Palestinian American writers in the United States provides the perfect opportunity to peruse this important aspect of the global literary canon.

Katie Beaton • Kate Beaton’s forthcoming graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands began as an online journal comic in 2014, and her many fans will be pleased to know that this full-length version is definitely worth the wait. With lucid vulnerability and moments of delightful comedy, she presents a coming-of-age story that examines her own realizations about herself as well as her growing awareness of not only the environmental impact of the fossil fuel industry in Canada but the economic and human impact, as well. Read on for Beaton’s further thoughts on the project, what she’s learned since her time at the oil sands, and the importance of comedy for telling the true story.

Hanif Abdurraqib • Terry Hong, Booklist Contributing Reviewer and chair of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence selection committee, had questions for Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Here is their exchange.

Tom Lin • Terry Hong, Booklist Contributing Reviewer and chair of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence selection committee, had questions for Tom Lin, winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for his first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu. Here is their conversation.

Small Towns with Quirky Characters • In The Patron Saint of Second Chances, Speranza, the de facto mayor, rallies the 212 residents of Prometto, Italy, with a fake film production and the promise that superstar actor Dante Rinaldi will, eventually, show up to star in the movie. This tiny mountain town is full of big personalities, all of whom want to play their own part, leading to hijinks and hilarious disasters. These read-alikes feature small towns around the world populated with quirky characters in funny, sentimental stories.

Woman and the Vote • The Nineteenth Amendment, which granted some women the right to vote in America, was ratified on August 18, 1920. While Black and white women could legally vote (although Black women were frequently prevented from doing so), it would be four more years until American Indians could vote and 23 years until Chinese Americans could. Beginning during the abolitionist movement, the battle for the Nineteenth was long and arduous, yet courageous and ingenious suffragists persisted. Now, more than a century later, women have to, once again, stand up and demand their rights and equality with men. These books tell the remarkable stories of the first wave of women’s rights pioneers.

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

LibraryReads August Picks

AUGUST 2022 • The LibraryReads Hall of Fame designation honors authors who have had multiple titles appear on the monthly LibraryReads list since...