Recently, I've been reading a lot of books with complicated, contradictory characters. These are the best characters, in my opinion, because they feel real. People in the real world are rarely simple. Straight-up evil villains are few and far between. So are perfectly upright role models who never mess up or say the wrong thing.... Continue Reading →
I just read Their Eyes Were Watching God for the first time since high school, and I cannot stop thinking about it. It is so easy to get swept up in the excitement of new releases. I've just started dabbling more seriously in the bookish internet, and it can get overwhelming. There are so many... Continue Reading →
For this week's Fierce Feminist Friday, I want to highlight some forthcoming books by black women that I cannot wait to read. Sometimes, when I talk to people about the importance of reading diversely (especially reading books by nonwhite authors), they say things like, "but I only read science fiction" or "but I just want... Continue Reading →
I started this blog just over a year ago, in direct response to Trump's election. I believe that reading can be a meaningful and important part of resistance. Book Open's first year was spotty and inconsistent. I moved to a new place, started a new job, adopted a dog, and started writing for Book Riot... Continue Reading →
This week, I turned to comics for escape. Sometime that's what reading is about: comfort, escape, the illusion that everything works out in the end and happily-ever-afters exist. I'm also on a quest to read comics that I can discuss with and pass on to my almost-seven-year-old nephew. He is a voracious reader, and on a... Continue Reading →
I couldn’t sleep on Saturday night. I stayed up until almost two o’clock in the morning, scouring the internet for books written by writers from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen. These are the seven countries from which Trump has banned immigrants from entering (or re-entering) the country. The Muslim immigration ban is... Continue Reading →
Welcome to Comics Gobble! Staring today, you can look forward to Comics Gobble every Friday. It’ll be a weekly roundup of my favorite comics from the past week, accompanied by my observations and thinkings about those specific comics and reading comics generally. I’m new to comics and I have fallen for them hard, fast, and... Continue Reading →
Science fiction and fantasy stories have so much to teach us about how to live in our own world. They speak to problems that we face every day. They are about families and lovers and friendships—small, intimate, human things. They are also often about about war and disaster and injustice—big, terrifying, human things. But the... Continue Reading →
I was a big (flawed, naive, self-righteous, bumbling-but-oh-so-earnest) activist in high school. I feel a lot of tenderness for my seventeen year-old self, despite my misguided ways. Sometimes I cringe when I remember some of what I did with the best intentions and the littlest understanding. But I also remember how much determination and certainty... Continue Reading →
Back in the fall of 2015, Corinne Duyvis, the author of several YA novels (Otherbound, On the Edge of Gone) coined the #ownvoices hashtag on Twitter as a way to uplift books about diverse characters written by authors who share those identities. All too often, authors from marginalized groups struggle to get their work in... Continue Reading →
Book Open 