The Thread's Must-Read
"The Power"by Naomi Alderman
Buy this book
There’s a scene in this deliciously original novel by British writer Naomi Alderman where the young leader of a new convent, Mother Eve, leans in to confide her master plan to a new arrival.
“I want to...tell them that there are new ways to live now,” Eve says. “That we can band together, that we can let men go their own way, that we don’t need to stick to the old order, we can make a new path.”
The "we" Mother Eve is talking about are all of the girls and women who are discovering their new power — a “skein” of muscle across the collarbone that allows them to arc electricity out of their hands. Women share the power worldwide in a sudden feat of evolution, showing one another how to harness, maximize and control it.
What if, Alderman is asking, we flipped the gender power equation? What if men feared being overpowered and subjugated? How would women use their power?
I started reading this novel just as the headlines filled with the details of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s alleged escapades. Media discussions ensued about the imbalance of power in Hollywood and why so many women kept quiet and felt like they couldn’t reveal what they’d endured.
Here’s a thought experiment: What might Angelina, Gwyneth, Ashley or any of those other women he reportedly harassed have done if they’d held The Power in their hands?
-Kerri Miller
 |
How living in a library gave one man "the thirst of learning" Ronald Clark's father was a live-in custodian at a New York City library. Clark tells his daughter about growing up surrounded by stacks of books — and how that shaped the man he would become.
More
Exclusive first read: Philip Pullman's "The Book Of Dust" Buy this book
Calling all "Golden Compass" fans: Find a quiet place to hole up and read the first chapter of Philip Pullman's return to the world of the Dark Materials trilogy.
More
Electrifying "Power" flips the gender script to unsettling effect “The Power" by Naomi Alderman
Buy this book
Kerri Miller isn't the only one to fall for this book this week. We've been passing it around the office. Check out NPR's review, too: It's "a dizzy, unsettling book that doesn't let readers turn away from the horrors at its core."
More
Chris Jackson and the book industry's attempts to diversify Chris Jackson is revitalizing One World, a division of Random House known for publishing black authors. To celebrate, it's releasing Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, "We Were Eight Years in Power."
More
Raising the specters that haunted America “The Apparitionists" by Peter Manseau
Buy this book
Peter Manseau skillfully weaves together spirituality, technology and the legacy of the Civil War to tell the story of a "spirit photographer" on trial for claiming he could take pictures of ghosts.
More
Poet Rupi Kaur: "Art should be accessible to the masses" “the sun and her flowers” by Rupi Kaur
Buy this book
Rupi Kaur came to Canada from India when she was 4 and didn't learn English well for years; she says her raw, minimalist poems are tailored for readers like her, with limited English.
More
On the outdated romance of the family farm “This Blessed Earth" by Ted Genoways
Buy this book
Journalist Ted Genoways spent a year on a small farm in rural Nebraska, and he says American nostalgia for the family farm overlooks the pressures farmers face and the realities of food production.
More
In 1960s New York, witchy women learn "The Rules of Magic" “The Rules of Magic" by Alice Hoffman
Buy this book
In Alice Hoffman's prequel to "Practical Magic," two sisters uncover their family's supernatural gifts and curses while growing up in the city.
More
A "hypnotic," "pointillistic" novel “Reservoir 13" by Jon McGregor
Buy this book
David Enyeart recommends a new novel by British writer Jon McGregor: "He's not very well known in this country yet, but I think he certainly will be."
More
Transposing the plantation's cruelty to the stars “The Unkindness of Ghosts" by Rivers Solomon
Buy this book
Rivers Solomon's novel is set on a giant generation ship, on an interstellar voyage of centuries, divided between the wealthy, light-skinned upper-deckers and the oppressed, laboring lower-deckers.
More
You're going to hate "TheMystery.doc," and that's OK "TheMystery.doc" by Matthew McIntosh
Buy this book
Matthew McIntosh's fractured and fracturing 1,600-page tale of a writer with amnesia and a missing manuscript isn't fun, and it probably isn't supposed to be. But it is magnificently weird.
More
Update Profile ❘ Preference Center ❘ Unsubscribe This email was sent by: Minnesota Public Radio  |