Welcome to Litsy!

This Africanfuturist novella reads like a folktale from a near-future Ghana about Sankofa, “the adopted daughter of Death.” It‘s important to know that the Sankofa bird is Ghanaian symbol of retrieval from the past. This left me with more questions than answers, but it is a meditation on tradition and technology as powerful as it is brief. (On #petsandpagesmonday, I share a photo of an adoptable shelter cat with my current read for our bookshop.)

On Mondays, I take pictures with an adoptable pet at our local animal shelter for #petsandpagesmonday! A retelling of the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, Spindle‘s End is by one of my favorite childhood authors, Robin McKinley, but this was my first time reading it! This comforting, gentle fantasy is a perfect read for Spring and for anyone who needs a little escape from the worries of our world. Read for March Bookland: Fantasy—green cover.

[Every Monday I go to our local shelter to take a picture of an adoptable cat for our bookstore‘s social media—this is Edward!] Like First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, This One Wild and Precious Life is like a whole-hearted, big-spirited, deep-into-the-night conversation with a good friend. And like any rich conversation, you‘re bound to find disagreements or blind spots, but the process is life-affirming, imagination-wilding, heart-enlarging.

Freshwater is like no book I‘ve ever read. From a Western lens, Ada appears to suffer from multiple personality disorder, but Freshwater narrates her experience through traditional Igbo spirituality and the concept of the Ogbanjé, an evil spirit. Psychologically, sexually, and spiritually, Ada transcends definition, and this book is a wonderful reminder of all we don‘t know.

(On #petsandpagesmonday, I highlight an adoptable cat—this is Bagels!)

This book is not a social media detox—it‘s way weirder than that! How to Do Nothing is about resisting the attention economy—directing our attention with intention, valuing activities that cannot be commodified and are thus defined as “nothing.” Through examples of cool ass performance art, bioregionalism, radical history, and more, artist Jenny Odell blazes a way back toward repossessing one of our most endangered, vital resources—our attention.

This book is the ORIGINAL YA dystopian novel, but it is so much more than that. In 2024, America is impoverished, lawless, and environmentally devastated. Lauren Olamina is a 15 year old Black girl with the hidden birth defect of hyperempathy and an even bigger secret: a religion of her own creation called Earthseed. Her home destroyed, Lauren becomes the leader of a ragtag band of survivors, eager to prove whether Earthseed can provide salvation.