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don't stop your growing.

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if you loved Stranger Things...

7/22/2019

2 Comments

 
If you drag your feet leaving the world of Stranger Things, allow me to cure your ST hangover. Whatever your favorite part of Stranger Things, there's a book here for you. Do you crave something creepy? Nostalgic? Girls fighting monsters? Youth solving mysteries? Here's your next binge list.
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Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

The summer of 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster--another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids. 1990. The former detectives have grown up and apart, each haunted by disturbing memories of their final night in the old haunted house. There are too many strange, half-remembered encounters and events that cannot be dismissed or explained away by a guy in a mask...The time has come to get the team back together, face their fears, and find out what actually happened all those years ago at Sleepy Lake. It's their only chance to end the nightmares and, perhaps, save the world.
Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

A  frightening stand-alone contemporary teen horror novel about three girls who take on an insidious monster that preys upon young women. Who are the Sawkill Girls? Marion: The newbie. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she's sure she'll never find. Zoey: The pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she's broken--or maybe everyone else is. Val: The queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives; a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight...until now.
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Scream Site by Justina Ireland

Sabrina Sebastian's goal in life is to be an investigative reporter. For her first big story, she researches a popular website called Scream Site, where people post scary videos and compete for the most "screams." While Sabrina's friends and her sister, Faith, talk nonstop about the creepy viral videos, Sabrina just hopes that covering this trend will get her the internship she's wishing for. But as she digs into the truth behind the website, she begins to suspect that these aren't only aspiring actors and videographers at work. Some clips seem a little too real. And when Faith goes missing, Sabrina must race against time to save her sister from becoming the next video "star."
The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Frey, Ovie, Juniper, and Runa are the Boneless Mercies--girls hired to kill quickly, quietly, and mercifully. But Frey is weary of the death trade and, having been raised on the heroic sagas of her people, dreams of a bigger life. When she hears of an unstoppable monster ravaging a nearby town, Frey decides this is the Mercies' one chance out. The fame and fortune of bringing down such a beast would ensure a new future for all the Mercies. In fact, her actions may change the story arc of women everywhere. Full of fierce girls, bloodlust, tenuous alliances, and unapologetic quests for glory, this elegantly spun tale challenges the power of storytelling--and who gets to be the storyteller.
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The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein
by Kiersten White
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Elizabeth Lavenza hasn't had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her "caregiver," and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets . . . until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything--except a friend. Victor is her escape from misery. Elizabeth does everything she can to make herself indispensable--and it works. She is taken in by the Frankenstein family and rewarded with a warm bed, delicious food, and dresses of the finest silk. Soon she and Victor are inseparable. But her new life comes at a price. As the years pass, Elizabeth's survival depends on managing Victor's dangerous temper and entertaining his every whim, no matter how depraved. Behind her blue eyes and sweet smile lies the calculating heart of a girl determined to stay alive no matter the cost . . . as the world she knows is consumed by darkness.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children , an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow--impossible though it seems--they may still be alive.
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Open Mic Night at Westminster Cemetery
by Mary Amato 

​When Lacy wakes up dead in Westminster Cemetery, final resting place of Edgar Allan Poe, she's confused. It's the job of Sam, a young soldier who died in 1865, to teach her the rules of the afterlife and to warn her about Suppression--a punishment worse than death. Lacy desperately wants to leave the cemetery and find out how she died, but every soul is obligated to perform a job. Given the task of providing entertainment, Lacy proposes an open mic, which becomes a chance for the cemetery's residents to express themselves. But Lacy is in for another shock when surprising and long-buried truths begin to emerge.
The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Sixteen-year-old Ruby breaks out of a government-run 'rehabilitation camp' for teens who acquired dangerous powers after surviving a virus that wiped out most American children.
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The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron

Canaan is a quiet city on an idyllic world, hemmed in by high walls, but every twelve years the town breaks out in a chaos of bloody violence, after which all the people undergo the Forgetting, in which they are left without any trace of memory of themselves, their families, or their lives--but somehow seventeen-year-old Nadia has never forgotten, and she is determined to find out what causes it and how to put a stop to the Forgetting forever.
It by Stephen King
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they were grown-up men and women who had gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them could withstand the force that drew them back to Derry, Maine to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.
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Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan
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In the early hours after Halloween on 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and supernatural mysteries collide in this series about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

​It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night...
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A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

​Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.
The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue
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Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, 10-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire.
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Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy
by Noelle Stevenson,  Grace Ellis, Faith Hicks
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At Thistle Crumpet's camp for hardcore lady-types, things are not what they seem. Three-eyed foxes. Secret caves. Anagrams. Luckily, Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five rad, butt-kicking best pals determined to have an awesome summer together-- and they're not gonna let a magical quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way!​
​Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 
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​One night after an evening out, Jason Dessen, forty-year-old physics professor living with his wife and son in Chicago, is kidnapped at gunpoint by a masked man, driven to an abandoned industrial site and injected with a powerful drug. As he wakes, a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." But this life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife; his son was never born; and he's not an ordinary college professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something impossible. Is it this world or the other that's the dream? How can he possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could have imagined--one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.
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No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz 
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​Teens Shay, Marco, Lexi, and Ryan, quarantined in a shopping mall when a biological bomb igoes off in an air duct, learn that in an emergency people change, and not always for the better, as many become sick and supplies run low.
Hotel Dare by Terry Blas,  Claudia Aguirre

​Olive and her adopted siblings, Darwin and Charlotte, are spending the summer with their estranged grandma at her creepy hotel and it's all work and no play. They're stuck inside doing boring chores but they soon stumble upon an incredible secret... The simple turn of a knob transports them to a distant magical world filled with space pirates. Behind the next door are bearded wizards. Down the hall is a doorway to a cotton-candied kingdom. But once the doors are opened, worlds start colliding, and only one family can save them before they tear themselves apart.
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Gemina (The Illuminae Files #2)
by Amie Kaufman,  Jay Kristoff
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When the space station Heimdall is invaded, Hannah and Nik must work together to defeat the enemy
The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson
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This one is like Stand By Me crossed with Stranger Things. Set in 1980s Niagara Falls, Jake spends most of his time with his conspiracy theory-obsessed uncle. The summer he turns 12, he and his friends create the Saturday Night Ghost Club. But what begins as a seemingly lighthearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined.
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Wilder Girls by Rory Power
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​Friends Hetty, Byatt, and Reece go to extremes trying to uncover the dark truth about the mysterious disease that has had them quarantined at their boarding school on a Maine island.

enjoy!

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july love list

7/19/2019

1 Comment

 
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Heya, readers,
We're back with another love list, with the same message as usual: pleasure matters. I wrote about this on my Instagram:

pleasure matters, and taking stock of such pleasure is essential.
lately the news really gives me big feelings. not just anger, but like, this place has a lot of straight up evil in it, and i am very helpless to stop any of it. i heard about a little girl who said if she could have any super power, it would be softness- she could touch any bad guy and soften them. honestly, yeah. add in the people who have apathy. anyhoo, i’m remembering that it’s okay to stop taking in the news for a bit to relearn/remember joy and beauty and pleasure. that’s political activism too.... to remember and prove that life is worth saving and loving. long way to say: i like leaves with water droplets. they make me feel better.

love longer,
m

listening

→Holst’s Venus, the Bringer of Peace from The Planets. 
nadine: this month’s classical rec is for those soft summer mornings. Holst’s Planets Suite in general inspired many movie scores -- you may hear echoes of popular movie themes in Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune… what i like most about Venus is the gentle dreamy dancing tune. there’s a depth and an undeterrable idealism in that tune. i hope Venus does indeed bring you some peace this month.

→ Mother’s Daughter by Miley Cyrus
nadine: to me, this is about the very contradictory messages that our generation has received growing up -- especially those of us who were afab and raised by at least one feminist adult. i think we were taught to stand up for ourselves, to affirm our boundaries, to accept no ill treatment, to tear down walls and smash glass ceilings… but then we inevitably had other adults around us send us the (sometimes very clear and unambiguous) message that doing so made us “freaks,” “nasty,” “evil.” sometimes it was the very same adults saying “you can do anything,” and “no, not that, sit back down young lady.” this song is almost like: “see the monster you created? it’s beautiful. we’re beautiful. we will not change. we will not make ourselves small. we will not try less. and don’t you dare try to take away our freedom.”

→ Comfortable by Lontalius
​m: i discovered this song through nothing.nowhere’s livestreams, and it stops me in my tracks every time i hear it; it’s one of my favorite songs…

→ wildly idle (humble before the void) by hand habits
gray: idk man i just love hand habits. i love the little “scenes” scattered on this album and their beautiful atmospheric quality. oh, and having the last lyric on the album be, “i’m gonna grow”? here at the sprout club, we stan. fave tracks: in between, cowboy (scene), sun beholds me.


→ high as hope by florence + the machine

gray: file under laying-on-the-floor-and-doing-nothing music. fave tracks: sky full of song, patricia, no choir.

watching

→ Stranger Things season three.
m: 80’s music has been more popular at the pool lately, and i half expect billy to strut by. need i say more?

→ Spider-Verse
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m: i saw this video, and it blew my mind, and that's when i knew i had to actually sit down to watch this movie. i loved it. if anything, watch it for the art.

reading

→ Heartstopper by Alice Osman
m: this webcomic is so stunningly lovely. gives me all the warm and fuzzies, while simultaneously wanting to punch all the mean boys in the world. read for wholesome lgbtq+ content. comes in print and for free online, on tapas.io.

→ on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong
gray: m included this in last months love list, but i hadn’t read it yet. well, now i’ve read it and i just think it needs to be on this month’s list. so now there’s two of us telling you to read it. so if you haven’t, now you have to.


→ Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal
m: men have gone extinct, leaving only women alive, leaving me fighting to keep a straight face as i read this comic at work. hilarious, relatable, and surprising.

→ “the writing advice that’s secretly good life advice” by molly conway
gray: the best writing advice always has the foundation of “just write.” as conway puts it, “the worst thing i’ve ever written is still better than the best thing that only ever lives in my head.”

→ LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2019, Part 2
m: LitHub’s list of books coming out in the remaining months of 2019 is absolutely juicy. it took me ages to sift through, and left me utterly overwhelmed at the amount of good work coming out. if you need something to read, this is your go to.

→ everything by Adrienne Maree Brown
m: this person, and their pursuit of wholeness and justice, is poetry. Start with The Creative Independent's feature, and then start Emergent Strategy asap, on dealing with and creating change.

sipping

→ cold brew everything.
m: finally realized i could make coffee and chai and let them brew overnight in the fridge. actually life changing.

→ trump is a ra_ist
choose one: c / p.
tea that is not new, but true.

thinking

→ nadine: tell me what you want, what you really really want… but seriously. in all-caps in my morning pages, i wrote: “who am i and what do i need from life and what do i want to offer the world?” it’s like part of me knows exactly what the answer is. but then i keep writing: “do i really want this?” with the wild hope that maybe i’ll go, oh, right, i don’t, phew! but i do, i do, i do.

→ m: i retook the personality tests (myer briggs via 16personalities, strengs finder, and enneagram) for the first time in a year and was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see shifts in my self. I was the same myer briggs, but through 16personalities’ percentages, i could see growth such as being more in touch with intuition. feels like healthy growth. on the flip side, i don’t know what enneagram i am, and this leaves me overjoyed… the 6 has felt like a straightjacket, and i am shedding it. moral of the story: we are ever evolving beings, always creating ourselves. and sometimes the worst circumstances teach us to become more like we always wanted to be. i think this is what faith is. i am not thankful for what has happened to me, but i am thankful for who i have become.

→ m: “am i a perfect living realization of my values and beliefs?” -- emergent strategy by adrienne maree brown. your work matters. everything about the world feels heavy and impossible, but the way that you carry yourself and hold responsibility for the energy you bring into a space matters.
find something you loved this month. tell us about it.
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Lights for Liberty protest, July 12
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everyday wonder
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cleaning the poetry closet

7/16/2019

1 Comment

 
Hello, happy July!
I was inspired by Rhiannon McGavin this afternoon to tackle my poetry shelf gone ary, to the tune of Aimee Nezhukumatathil vs. the Garden, on the VS podcast. I loved it. Hearing Aimee's voice made me love her poetry more and more. Such sweetness and generosity flows from this podcast. If you like poetry or words at all, I highly suggest it.
As for my shelf, here's the deal. I work at a library and enjoy minimalism, and thus rarely buy books. However, I do buy 3 types of books: poetry, comics, and books from author events, and I try to write about the occasion on a post it note to keep in the book, as I love getting poetry, zines, or comics on vacation or an occasion. I quite love documenting this, because it equips me to remember stealing a book from the English Department when I turned in my last final ever, and decided I was owed at least one nice thing for free, or a coworker slipping a perfect book into my life midmeeting, or curling up on the floor of a bookstore across the country, overwhelmed with words. I love that. Anyhoo, the poetry section was shelved normally, and there was absolutely no room for any more. And we know I will continue to buy books. That, and the mountainous stack in front of it has been stressing me out. 
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Inspired further by Rhiannon, I flipped the stack, kept it in alphabetical order, and further sorted what I have and haven't read fully (the stack obscuring some comics are either too long to fit, a few of my issues of Poetry, and just a bit of my to-read stack... oh I have so many, piled all over. Just wait till you see the shelf dedicated to books about poetry. And anthologies. I have yet to tackle my bedside table too. Sigh.) I kept a jar of Los Angeles shells, origami flowers, and vintage typewriter ribbon cases out, but this time, they're not squashed behind a stack of books!
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I love seeing people's bookshelves, as well as their book wishlists. What are some books you still just have to buy, and why? My list is based on poetry or fiction that I just have to underline. I'm looking forward to foraging Powell's for On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, Brute by Emily Skaja, Soft Sciene by Franny Choi, and Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. 
I'd love to see your shel(f/ves), and to buy list. What has you smitten lately?
Enjoy the summer time,
m
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a quick guide to diversifying your canon

7/9/2019

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It's no secret or surprise that canon is white, cis, and male, so I'm not even going to delve into this topic. All I'm going to say is that the canon does not have to be this way, because history has not been white, cis, and male, and if you'd like to sink into the diverse, magnificent world through books, it's wonderfully possible, especially armed with the resources below!
Perhaps the most difficult part will be locating the following books, but I suggest requesting your library or local indie book store to purchase such books and writers, and using used bookstores, whether online or in person. Indiebound is also good, if you do not have access to such shops.

feminizing the canon

The Second Shelf, a book shop and magazine, is an invaluable resource for not only rare or collectible books by women, but also discovering that women have been publishing high quality, notable work for a very, very long time. Not only this, but The Second Shelf is a woman owned business, so the purchase of a magazine helps both you and the lit world. While you wait on your magazine, peek into the Second Shelf Instagram.
The Paris Review also has a brilliant series profiling underread women authors, called Feminize Your Canon. It makes my heart flutter.
It's important for me to note that these resources are careful to be intersectional.

creating trans canon

Not all canon to embrace is historic. There are some voices that (as we know it) are only just being equipped to be heard and reached.
RL Goldberg has written a great list for The Paris Review called Toward Creating a Trans Literary Canon.

expanding the canon

Enough of all this all-white canons. I recommend avoiding lists written by white folks, as our view of culture is vastly misrepresentative of reality. This is the whole problem. 
The Well Read Black Girl is an absolutely amazing resource for books by people of color, from people of color.
Books by Native Americans is one of the most difficult tasks for me, but this list is a good start.

queering the canon

Move beyond Oscar Wilde with these titles and articles on and for queer theory and canon via Brown University, or this article via Advocate.

for more...

This is the most brief, incomplete guide one could possibly make, and I am okay with this. I so encourage you to do more research and collect lists as you read, you expand your view of the literary world, and thus people.
An okay place to start is the list ALA has compiled of book, print, and media awards.
You'll notice the lists contain backlist books, but it's important to remember that we are actively creating a new canon for generations beyond us. The books published today matter, and it matters that we read them. Be loud about the books you love. Tell us- and your friends, your coworkers, the social media void- about what you're reading.
Happy exploring,
​m
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