Summer Time

Literary Field Kaleidoscope | summer reading | Sandra van Lente

Dear readers,

We’re going to take a break over the summer and hope you’ll be back for our next post in the fall. You can sign up on the bottom of the page to receive an email whenever a new post goes online.

In case you’re still looking for more books to read, borrow, buy or gift over the summer, here are a couple of recommendations:

My favourite of the year so far is Bernardine Evaristo’s new novel Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton, 2019), as I started to explain in my last post. And apparently, I’m not alone: the novel made the Booker Prize longlist! Do have a look at this year’s quite exceptional list of 13 (out of 151 competitors), selected by the jury around chair Peter Florence (founder and director of Hay Festival); Liz Calder (former fiction publisher and editor), Xiaolu Guo (novelist, essayist and filmmaker), Afua Hirsch (journalist, broadcaster and author of Brit-ish) as well as Joanna MacGregor (concert pianist, conductor and composer): link to the Booker Longlist 2019.

The next recommendation is Charlott Schönwetter’s queer reading list that she compiled recently: “A Month of Reading Exclusively Queer Literature – 50 Years After Stonewall” (link to her article). Charlott did an M.A. in African Studies, currently writes her PhD in Gender Studies and focuses on “African literature(s), women/poc/LGBTQ writers and feminist sentiments” in her literary criticism. I would also like to recommend her podcast “Have you read” (link to the podcast). She has great guest, like e.g. Sharon Dodua Otoo, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey and Musa Okwongo – and asks tons of great questions.

And don’t forget: August is Women in Translation month! Meytal Radzinski (@biblibio) launched it in 2014 and is has been going on until then. The official hashtag is #WiTmonth and it was really interesting and enjoyable to follow during the last couple of summers. In addition, Meytal Radzinski features one woman writer from around the world each day for 50 days on @Read_WIT.

So the only thing left to do is wish you a lovely summer and wonderful reads!
So long,
Gesa and Sandra