last book i read essay

How to Answer: What Is the Last Book You Read?

Asking about recent reads is a common question many interviewers will ask. Sometimes this question will be phrased as “what book would you recommend that I read?” Or perhaps, “tell me about your favorite book.” If you are not an avid reader, do not fear! Here is how to craft a response that is genuine, intelligent, and insightful.

What Is The Purpose?

Talking about books with a potential employer – what is the purpose of this? What are they really trying to find out? There are a few differing opinions on the matter. First, this could simply be a conversation starter. The interviewer wants to get to know you a little bit and is curious about what kinds of books you read. Another purpose of this question could be to see how well-read you are (in other words, how many books you read, and what kind). In some corporate environments, being well-read is really important to the company.

Take Time To Prepare

Regardless of the purpose behind the question, we will help you to answer it to the best of your ability. Having a quick summary and keynotes from your book of choice at the ready can be an extreme advantage during your next interview. The truth is, you can choose to talk about any book you have read in the past, not just your last read. Carefully explore options available in the literary world and find ways to professionally talk about them. If you’re having trouble deciding which book to bring up in conversation, this is the blog for you. Keep reading to learn how to answer: what is the last book you read?

Choose a Book You Have Actually Read

While in theory, it might seem like a good idea to do a quick google search for a complex and scholarly novel, it is best to choose a book you have actually read. Simply reading the SparkNotes version will not give you the ability to intelligently summarize the book and have a conversation on it. What if that happens to be the interviewer’s favorite book, and wants to talk more about it? Nope, better to be honest, no matter what book you choose. Maybe choose a book that shares a little bit about you as a person. If you are interested in airplanes, pick a book that focuses on aviation. If you are a history geek, choose a book that focuses on the era that you are most interested in. This is a great way to spark some interesting conversation and help the interviewer get to know you better.

Example: My father was a piolet so I have always been interested in airplanes. The aviation-based novel I just completed inspired me to get my piolet’s license!

Or: To be honest, I’ve always loved cooking books. I enjoy simply reading them to learn about different recipes and techniques. I read them as someone else would read a novel!

Why these are good responses:

You are sharing a unique personal fact about yourself
These responses sound genuine, truthful, and personal
Further conversation might spark from your responses

Choose a Book That Teaches a Lesson

If you are still having trouble finding the perfect book to talk about, and are not an avid reader, find a book that teaches a lesson. Pieces of literature that are based around morals, values, and lessons will show your interviewer that you strive to learn. Being interested in growing and learning new things is a great trait that is very attractive to many interviewers. Try looking into The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey. You can order yourself a copy off Amazon, here ! If you like reading YA novels, try to think about one that you learned something from.

Example: The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People has helped me uncover methods to work more productively in a team-based environment.

Why this is a good response:

Choosing books that specifically focus on teaching the reader show that you are willing to learn
Shows that you have a growth mindset
Communicates that you are committed to teamwork

Find a Success-Based Read

Another fabulous topic you can search for when finding a book to discuss in an interview are success story-based reads. These can be autobiographies or short stories of triumph in any area that interests you. For example, you can choose a book that tells the story of a successful businessperson, inventor, athlete, or artist. Stories that focus on success are a great way to show your interviewer you strive for the best. It can also be a great way to segue into talking about your own personal success stories. If you are looking for a book that is sure to get you inspired, check out Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. You can find the link to order yourself a copy on Amazon, here !

Example: The book Grit by Angela Duckworth inspired me to never give up on any task I set my mind to. The success stories in this book inspired me to go back to school to finish my undergraduate degree.

Shows that you learned something from the book you read
Communicates that you have been impacted positively
Segways into sharing more accomplishments and strengths

What if Books Are Just Not Your Thing?

For some people, the thought of finishing an entire book seems almost impossible. If your most recent read was not a book, that is okay, too! Be honest with your interviewer if you prefer to spend your time reading other types of writing. If you are interested in poetry, for example, you can talk about your favorite poet. If you are a movie fan, speak about a script you have read recently and films you have watched that were inspired by your reading.

Even if your answer might sound a little unconventional, it will help your interviewer get to know you and discover if you are a good fit for the company. Sometimes revealing a hobby that is writing-related will allow you to connect further with the interviewer. Even if the only reading you do is the newspaper, that says something about your style, and you should be honest and genuine with the interviewer!

Example: I enjoy reading poetry in my free time, my favorite poet is Edgar Allen Poe. His poetry inspired me to begin writing poems myself.

Shows your genuine interests
Does not seem fabricated/lets the employer know more about you
Gives you a unique competitive edge to help your interview stand out

More to explore:

How to Answer: What are your pet peeves? – here
How to Answer: How do you boost your confidence? – here
How to Answer: What salary expectations do you have? – here

If you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to impressing your interviewer. Do you have any book recommendations you would like to share? Let us know!

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How to answer: What’s the last book you read?

Reading is not only a great way to relax and unwind, but it can also be a valuable tool for personal and professional growth. As a job seeker, it’s important to stay informed and continuously expand your knowledge base. One way to do this is by reading books that are relevant to your industry or that can help you develop new skills. So, what’s the last book you read?

Whether you’re actively searching for a new job or simply looking to enhance your career prospects, reading can provide you with a competitive edge. By immersing yourself in books that cover topics such as leadership, communication, or industry-specific knowledge, you can gain valuable insights and stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments. Additionally, reading can help you improve your critical thinking abilities, enhance your vocabulary, and even boost your creativity. So, don’t underestimate the power of a good book when it comes to your professional journey.

What's the last book you read?/books you must read

How to Answer a Question: What’s the last book you read?

There are actually several ways to approach this question, but let me break it down for you. First, let’s talk about why interviewers ask it and what a typical answer might be. Then, I’ll share with you what the ideal response should be, as well as what makes a good or even a great answer.

And of course, I’ll throw in an extra tip to help you absolutely nail this question. Sound good? Let’s dive in!

Why did the interviewer ask this?

To understand more about your interests, values, and how you spend your free time.

Typical Answer

[Specific book title].

Wrong Answer

Does the back of the cereal box count?

Good Answer

State the title and give a brief summary or takeaway.

Great Answer

[Specific book title]. I found the insights on [specific topic or theme] particularly enlightening because [personal connection or application].

Last Tip on How to Answer What’s the last book you read?

Be honest. If you don’t read much, share another way you learn or consume content.

If you’re into this tip, you can download 121 Interview Questions and Answers for free! It’s a great way to get more insights on how to answer those common questions in the best way possible.

Practice Your Answers in a Mock Job Interview

Answering this question is a breeze if you know how! But what really counts is practice. The best way to do that? Give mock interviews a shot! You can learn more about mock interviews here , or try out this Free Mini-Interview .

Final Thoughts on the Question: What’s the last book you read?

In conclusion, by following these simple tips on how to answer the question, “What’s the last book you read?”, you will be able to confidently share your reading journey with others. Remember to be honest and authentic in your response, as it will not only showcase your true interests but also inspire others to explore new literary adventures. Embrace the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations about books, and who knows, you might even discover a new favorite author or genre along the way!

So, the next time someone asks you about the last book you read, don’t shy away from the question. Instead, embrace it as an opportunity to connect with others through the power of storytelling. Share your thoughts, recommendations, and the impact the book had on you. By doing so, you will not only inspire others to pick up a book but also create a ripple effect of curiosity and passion for reading. Remember, every book holds a unique story, and by sharing yours, you have the power to ignite a love for reading in someone else’s life.

Jan Tegze, author of the bestseller “ Full Stack Recruiter ” and “ Job Search Guide: Be Your Own Career Coach ,” has over 15+ years of invaluable experience. Jan’s extensive background in full life cycle recruiting and profound understanding of international sourcing, recruitment branding, marketing, and pioneering sourcing techniques.

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How To Answer “What Is The Last Book You Read?”

Do you have an upcoming job interview? Check out my example answers to the interview question: “ What is the last book you read? ” Other similar interview question are: “What is your favorite book that everyone needs to read?” or “Which book inspired you most, and why?”

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Hiring managers often ask this question to find out if the candidate is truly informed and receptive to new concepts. An employer might be very keen on netting a bookworm because they are often seen as life-long learners. Try to structure your answer so that it matches the company culture and job role.

Example Answer

For job seekers WITH EXPERIENCE

“ The last book I read was ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. It’s certainly my favorite book on forming the right habits, and ditching the bad ones. Basically, the author encourages you to lose unproductive habits and start adopting productive ones. The idea is that 1% change each day adds up to long-term success.

The book also covers other topics like adopting better systems rather than setting objectives, focus on identity rather than outcomes etc. However, the idea of being 1% better everyday really stood out to me. I applied the power of compounding as a [ Job title ] and this technique tripled my productivity.”

For job seekers WITH NO EXPERIENCE

“As an aspiring copywriter, I’ve always been interested in consumer behavior. Recently, I read Seth Godin’s book: ‘This Is Marketing’, to better understand what makes up great marketing. Do you know this title? The idea is that frequent and consistent content outreach, delivered to a target audience, will earn brand awareness, loyalty and ultimately more sales. I highly recommend anyone interested in marketing to read this book!”

√ Do explain why you chose to read that particular book and briefly summarize the book to prove your understanding. Try to highlight some of the learnings that you’ve adopted in your daily life.

X Don’t feel obliged to mention your last read . Choose a book that you actually like (and read) that teaches a lesson. You’ll come across as someone with a growth mindset that is willing to learn.

What was the last book you read? – Question 11

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Woodward English Conversation Question 11

What was the last book you read? What was it about?

The last book I read was ….
It was about …

Fiction or Non-fiction – What is the difference?

Was the book fiction or non-fiction?

fiction ( not real , created from the imagination of an author) e.g. a book about a princess and a dragon

non-fiction ( real , provides us with facts and/or events based on real people or true events) e.g. a biography, history books, 1001 facts about a topic

What do you like to read?

I like to read…

short stories
online articles
motivational stories
self-help books
biographies
encyclopedias / wikipedia
non-fiction books

Where do you like to read?

in bed at night
in a library
on a blanket in a park
in a quiet place
on a beanbag

English Conversation

English conversation questions 10-19.

What is your favorite movie? Why do you like it? - Question 10
What was the last book you read? - Question 11
What is important for a healthy relationship? - Conversation Question 12
What would be an ideal date for you? English Conversation Question 13
How would you describe yourself in three words? Question 14
Why are you learning English? Q15
What is your country famous for? Q16

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How to Answer "What Was the Last Book You Read?" in an Interview

Introduction

Interviews can be interesting & sometimes the interviewer hits you with interesting questions that you haven’t been expecting. Job interviews often include the question, "What was the last book you read?" While it may seem like a simple question,how you answer can be important.

So, let's prepare to answer this common question, even if your reading habits are missing.

1. Make a List of Your Favorite Books, Articles, and Essays

By preparing a list of books, articles, and essays you are communicating to the recruiter that you are organized and well prepared. This also makes it easy for you to recall the most interesting topic you can touch at the time of interview. Note down a list of books that covers all aspects of the theme like leadership, time management, self improvement etc.

2. Analyze What You Liked and Your Big Takeaways

Every book you enjoy has something special about it. Maybe it's a great story, useful life lessons, or interesting ideas. Take some time to think about what made you like each of your favorite things to read. Was it an exciting story, or did you learn something about dealing with people that helps you at work? These thoughts will help you answer more honestly and convincingly.

3. Relate Your Favorites to Relevant Skills or Lessons

A book is knowledge of the river, lessons that may be relevant to us are following through it. Always try to communicate those key learnings you have utilized in a real scenario if possible. By mentioning your learning and application in practical life shows that you are a productive person and you can use what resources you have available to do your job better.

4. Tell a Story About Your Favorite Reads

Story is a powerful way to communicate. Tell a tale about the book rather than just naming it. Share how a book has affected your life and career. You should have a story that is meaningful and makes your answer more interesting and memorable. This shows you have good communication & presentation skills.

In job interviews, even simple questions like "What was the last book you read?" can be important. Our reading choices can become a powerful way to show your adaptability, knowledge, and ability to use what you learn in real life. So, the next time you get this question, be ready to share your reading journey and show employers how it can benefit them. By Tapesh Kushmi Tharu

Recruitment Officer, Jobs Sniper Pvt. Ltd.

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Topic 1: Describe a book you have recently read

What kind of book it is
What it is about
What sort of people would enjoy it
And explain why you liked it.

Sample Answer:

I consider myself as a bookworm so when it comes to describing a book I read, I am really confused since I don’t know which one to choose, but I will tell you about the book that I have just ﬁnished most recently – Angels and Demons – a bestselling mystery-thriller novel written by Dan Brown. The whole story revolves around the protagonist named Robert Langdon who is on a quest to rescue the Pope and discover the underlying mysteries of the Catholic church. Though the book involves a lot of religious issues, it can cater to all kinds of readers as there aren’t many technical terms. From my point of view, it is a true masterpiece, enchanting and captivating, ﬁlled with conspiracies and plot twists that really send shivers down my spine. I was so fascinated by the book that I had to ﬁnd the ﬁlm adaptation online to watch afterwards, and it did not let me down at all. The movie was so action-packed that it kept me on the edge of my seat.

What I especially like about the book is that it is very thought-provoking and it kept me thinking for a very long time after I had ﬁnished reading. I appreciate the moral lessons of the book. The story, though may sound distant to our lives, conveys meanings that are relatable to readers, and I am grateful that I learnt something from the book.

All in all, it is an outstanding book that I would deﬁnitely recommend to my friends.

Topic 2: Describe a book that you would like to read again

What the book was about
Why you read it the first place
What you learned from this book
And explain why you would like to read it again.

Sample Answer

Okay so I would like to tell you about the book called Harry Potter, which is a fantasy novel, written by the British author J. K. Rowling. It’s one that I can reread time and time again.

The book describes the life of a young wizard named Harry Potter and his two best friends, Ron and Hermione. Harry has to struggle to kill the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, whose aim is to become immortal and destroy all those who stand in his way of ruling the world.

The reason why this book comes to mind is that it is a reminder of my childhood. It was a gift for my birthday from my parents to reward my high score in an exam at school. Up until now, I can still remember clearly how fascinated I was when I received it.

Thanks to this book, I realized that determination and effort play essential roles in achieving my goals. Since then, I have always worked hard to overcome all obstacles and challenges in my life.

Harry Potter will always be on my to-read list for a number of reasons. Firstly, I have always been a great admirer of science fiction books so I love the way that the author describes the whole magical world with the magic school, Hogwarts, and the flying brooms. Secondly, reading this book not only helps me to relax after a long day of work or study but also cheers me up whenever I am feeling blue.

Source: zim.vn

Another Topics:

Describe a book that enjoyed reading because you had to think a lot.

IELTS Speaking Part 2: describe a book answer

Describe a book you liked to read in your childhood

Describe an exciting book you have read

Describe the book you read that you found useful

[…] Sample Answer […]

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Describe a Book You Have Read Recently

Posted by David S. Wills | Jan 6, 2018 | IELTS Tips , Speaking , YouTube | 0

Today we’re going to look at a question from IELTS speaking part two, also known as the “long answer” question. In this part of the exam, as you probably know, you are expected to speak for about two minutes on a given topic . The topic will be presented to you on a “cue card” and you will then have a minute to make notes before you speak. Today, the topic is books and we will explore how to describe a book you have read recently .

There are lots of different ways that this question could be phrased, and so, as always, you can’t just memorise an answer. In fact, in IELTS it’s always a bad idea to memorize answers. You have questions like “describe your favourite book” or “describe a book that you read in your childhood,” but today I’m going to give you a more general question.

In this lesson, we will learn several things:

How to read the cue card
Note-making skills
Some useful vocabulary
How to answer this cue card fully

The Cue Card: Describe a book you have read recently

As I said, there are many IELTS cue cards about books. You could be asked about your favorite book or a book you really love, but in this case we will just look at a book you have read recently:

Describe a book you have read recently. You should say: what kind of book it is who wrote the book what the story of the book is and explain if it is a good book or not.

Once you have read the cue card, you must think about it quickly. Analyse the topic and ask yourself what exactly you should talk about. In this case, you may ask:

Can I talk about any book? – no, only one you’ve read recently
Could it be a book that I dislike? – yes, that is possible
Must it be a book that I enjoyed? – no, the final part of the question makes it clear that you don’t have to have liked it
Should I talk about the plot? – yes, that is fulfilling the third bullet point

You should quickly choose a book, think about how to explain it, and then try to talk about the ideas on the cue card.

describe a book you have read recently [ielts speaking]

Making Notes

So the first thing you should do is make a few notes on the topic. Of course, as we’ve discussed before, you really shouldn’t write too much. Remember – you just have one minute! Don’t write down sentences or else you’ll only have enough to speak for ten or twenty seconds. Instead, write the ideas you want to discuss or the vocabulary you may need.

In this case, of course we first have to think about the book itself. What was its name, and who was the author? It doesn’t have to be an English book, but you do need to be able to give the English title and – if it was written by an English-speaking author, you also must be able to say their name. Here in China, many famous foreigners have Chinese names, or at least their names are adapted to make it easier for Chinese speakers to pronounce, and so they sound weird to an English speaker. For example, my students always talk about “Jobs” when they mean “Steve Jobs.” So make sure you know the name.

Then you need to think about the tasks outlined in the cue card and make notes on them so that you don’t forget any part of it. This is where you need to make useful notes.

So the first thing we need to talk about, according to the cue card, is the “kind of” book. Another way of saying that is “ genre .” This means, is it a mystery novel or a romance? Is it a horror novel or a coming-of-age story? There are so many kinds of novels. Of course, you don’t need to know them all, but being able to talk about the ones that you actually like is important. Go beyond that and consider being able to discuss the book further in terms of adjectives – is it thrilling? Hilarious? Shocking? Provocative? These are some good vocabulary items to note down during your one minute.

When it comes to genre, you can borrow many words from your movie vocabulary . Here is a video about describing movies. Most of those words can be re-used for describing books:

Next you should really think about the plot of the novel. You don’t need to say everything. Instead, summarize it. Think about the main action and key scenes. Talk briefly about the beginning and ending, or any important moments.

When talking about the plot of a film or book, you can use the present simple or past simple. This is because these events exist outside of time as they are immortalized in a text. They are, in a sense, always happening.

For example, you could equally say:

Romeo kissed Juliet

Romeo kisses Juliet.

A great way of learning how to do this effectively is to go on Wikipedia or IMDB and then find descriptions of movies. Obviously, you should not try to memorize these, but you can definitely borrow some language or even structure.

Structuring your Answer

The important things about IELTS speaking part 2 are that you actually answer all parts of the question, and that you do it in between 1 and 2 minutes. The order in which you give the details is not important. Therefore, you can talk about any of the cue card suggestions first or last. However, be sensible and think of a logical order in your head. Make sure these are in your notes so that you don’t forget anything.

Sample Answer – Describe a Book

Here’s my answer to the above question.

Recently, I read a novel called Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, who is the writer of some popular TV shows. It’s hard to give the genre because it’s a quite unusual book; however, it is both a drama and a mystery to some degree. The story is about a plane crash. This happens at the beginning of the book, and after that we get the back story of the people who were on the plane. We don’t know why the plane crashed although it seems like an accident. However, the mystery element comes into the book as the story develops because we are shown too many coincidences. The book also details the relationship between a man and a boy who survive the crash, and this gives the story its heart. I really enjoyed this book. Normally I prefer to read non-fiction books but in this case I was attracted to Before the Fall because I really liked the writer’s TV work and I was curious about how he would handle a novel. Ultimately, I was not disappointed. His ability to tell a good story made him an excellent novelist.

Here’s my recording of the sample answer. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more IELTS videos. I try to post about once every 1-2 weeks.

I answered the “who wrote it” and “what kind of book” parts very quickly at the beginning and spent more time on the plot and my reaction to the book. It’s important you take into consideration while planning that some parts of the question simply aren’t possible to talk about that much.

Note also the verb “detail” in that second paragraph. It’s a reporting verb used in slightly formal speech meaning roughly the same as “tells”.

About The Author

David S. Wills

David S. Wills is the author of Scientologist! William S. Burroughs and the 'Weird Cult' and the founder/editor of Beatdom literary journal. He lives and works in rural Cambodia and loves to travel. He has worked as an IELTS tutor since 2010, has completed both TEFL and CELTA courses, and has a certificate from Cambridge for Teaching Writing. David has worked in many different countries, and for several years designed a writing course for the University of Worcester. In 2018, he wrote the popular IELTS handbook, Grammar for IELTS Writing and he has since written two other books about IELTS. His other IELTS website is called IELTS Teaching.

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How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

Who is telling the story?
How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved September 7, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

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Describe a book you have recently read – IELTS Cue Card Sample Answers

Updated On Aug 14, 2024

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This article contains the Describe a book you have recently read Cue Card Sample Answers.

During Part 2 of the IELTS Speaking test, you will have exactly one minute to prepare and speak on a specific topic. This is the IELTS cue card task. You can learn how to communicate clearly and successfully by reviewing sample answers.

This IELTS cue card gives you an opportunity to share one of your opinions about a book you have recently read.

Practise IELTS Speaking Part 2 by referencing the Cue Card Sample Answers below.

Before you start, take a look at the introduction to Speaking Part 2 below!

Learn How to Prepare a Cue Card now!

Describe a book you read

You should say:

Who wrote this book?
What it is about?
When you read it?
And explain why you liked it.

Being a bibliophile, I try my best to complete at least one book a week. Earlier, I used to read 4-5 books a month. However, gradually, the numbers declined as I got held up in other important tasks. So, with the new year, I have taken a resolution to finish a minimum of 2 books a month. Having said that, I spent the last week reading A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks.

The main protagonists of this book are Miles Ryan and Sarah Andrews. The former loses his wife to a hit-and-run accident. After going through a tough time in his life and spending two years trying to find the person behind this accident, Miles begins dating his son – Jonah’s – teacher, Sarah Andrews.

With time, their relationship turns stronger, and they fall deeply in love with each other. However, Miles comes across new evidence pertaining to the death of his wife. And, this person is somehow related to Sarah.

This is a romantic novel that showcases the attributes of love, sacrifice, and letting go. I like the way the author described diverse emotions keenly and precisely. Also, I liked the way of writing that the author put forth in this book.

On a Saturday evening, I was lying down with this book called “ Tell me your dreams” by Sidney Sheldon. Thanks to the maid, who served hot tea.

The book had an irresistible start. Initially, it describes three women, their love life and the mysterious ways in which their lovers are killed. After some time, the plot becomes gripping. It is revealed that they are three personalities of the same woman, Ashley, who suffered from multiple personality disorder and had murdered the men mercilessly.

Later, it is revealed that Ashley had a traumatic childhood which caused her to create these identities. Ashley is represented by a lawyer friend of her father. The court finally accepts that it was Ashley’s condition that made her kill and orders psychiatric treatment. She gets treated in the hospital and regains sanity.

The book has revealed an episode in the life of a psychiatrically affected person. It gave me an insight into the lives of women experiencing wounding disturbances in their childhood. Infact, when I come across news about murders, especially when the charges are against a lady, I suspect whether the woman is really guilty. The book cast such an effect on me.

Grant: agree to give or allow (something requested) to. Eg: He was granted permission to take leave
Curious: interested in learning about people or things around you Eg: Rose was curious about her results.
Impulsively: without forethought; on impulse; suddenly. Eg: Rose impulsively decided to buy the diamond necklace.
Found out: discover something or come to know about something. Eg: The treasure box hidden in the backyard was found out.
Novelty: the quality of being new, original, or unusual Eg: The tourists are still a novelty on this remote island
In hindsight: the ability to understand an event or situation only after it has happened Eg: In hindsight, I should have taken the job offer.

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Janet had been an IELTS Trainer before she dived into the field of Content Writing. During her days of being a Trainer, Janet had written essays and sample answers which got her students an 8+ band in the IELTS Test. Her contributions to our articles have been engaging and simple to help the students understand and grasp the information with ease. Janet, born and brought up in California, had no idea about the IELTS until she moved to study in Canada. Her peers leaned to her for help as her first language was English.

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6 Paragraphs on ‘A Book I Have Recently Read’

A Book I Have Recently Read: Books are the best resources of people. With which no earthly wealth can be compared. By reading books we can keep our mind healthy and happy. A good book opens the eyes of the human mind as well as expands and develops the knowledge and intellect and helps to light the mind. Many people like to read story books or other kinds of books. Reading books is a good habit. ‘A Book I Have Recently Read’ is an important paragraph for the students. In this post I have presented 6 paragraphs on ‘A Book I Have Recently Read’.

A Book I Have Recently Read

Reading books is my passion. I have recently read a book named “ Pather Panchali “. It was written by famous writer Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay. The novel is about a little village boy named Apu. The main characters of the book are Apu, Durga, Harihar and Sarbajaya. Harihar and Sarbajaya, a rustic couple, spent their days in miserable distress. But they dreamt of a rosy future. Apu and Durga are their children. Durga died a premature death. It was a great shock to the family. One cannot shed tears when one reads about the death of Apu’s dearest sister Durga. The novel gives us a very living picture of the beauty of a remote village in Bengal. The story reminds us of the hardship of the thousands of poor and helpless people of our country. Really it is an immortal creation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay.

Also read : Paragraph on Black Fungus or Mucormycosis

I have little time to read books other than school books. But l heard the story of “Ramer Sumati” written by Saratchandra Chattapadhyay from my grandpa. The story charmed me very much. Recently I managed to have a copy of the book which I finished in a single sitting. It is entirely the story of a joint family of rural Bengal. Here are a few principal characters – Ramlal, the hero, Shyamlal, his step-brother and Narayani, the wife of Shyamlal. Apart from them there are Shyamla’s son and Digambari, his mother-in-law. Ramlal lost his mother when he was only two and a half years old. Narayani, the sister-in-law brought him up with all motherly love and affection. Digambari could not tolerate the sweet relationship between the two. Ramlal was very wayward and that was at the root of all problems. The ancestral home was partitioned and Ramlal was separated much to the pain of Narayani. The author’s portrayal of the characters of Ramlal and Narayani is simply unique. Details of the book cannot be given in this short span. But everybody should go through the book whenever he gets a chance.

Also read : Paragraph on Corona Virus (Covid-19)

I am a genuine book lover. Reading books is my passion. Whenever I get spare time I read story books, novels etc. I am a big fan of cricket as well. My father recently gifted me the autobiography of Sachin Tendulkar “Sachin Tendulkar – Playing It My Way” on my birthday. The book is really very interesting. Sachin Tendulkar is not only a great player but also has become an icon. So a chance to peek into the life of such an icon is always sought after. The chapters describe all the important events of his life. The reader is bound to respect the legend more after going through the book. The book not only brings out Sachin’s passion for cricket but also reveals how caring a father and gentle son he is. I will cherish the experience of reading the book forever and this will be a guide force in my life. I wish to read it once again in future.

A Book I Have Recently Read

Miranda in “The Tempest”

Reading books is my passion. I have recently read William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. It is the last play of the great playwright, which was written in 1611 at Stafford. Prospero was a learned man. He did not like to rule Milan as merely a Duke. His power was his wisdom. His brother, Antonio, took advantage of this craving for knowledge and conspired to drive him away from Milan with the help of the king of Naples, Alonoso.

Prospero and his daughter eventually took shelter in an alien island. It was a mystic land of which Prospero was little aware. Caliban was an evil spirit which was living in that island. Gradually, Prospero dominated Caliban and became a supreme power by way of his white magic. Dr. Faustus of Marlowe exercised necromancy, but Prospero used his magic for the welfare of the world. Hence his magic was a boon not a bane. His daughter, Miranda, was a lovable and beautiful young lady. Caliban wanted to seduce Miranda, but in vain. At last Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, came to the mysterious land. Miranda was very much appalled to see a beautiful young man for the first time. Seeing Ferdinand, she cried out, “O brave new world.” Later Miranda and Ferdinand fell in love. Prospero wanted to test Ferdinand’s devotion to his daughter. Ferdinand won the mind of Prospero. Using his white magic, Prospero taught everyone including his brother good lessons. Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian realized their misdeed. Gonzalo, who helped Prospero once to escape from his cruel brother, was rewarded.

Finally, everyone was reconciled. Prospero returned to Milan with his daughter and he freed Ariel, the spirit which helped Prospero in fulfilling his desires while living in the alien island. The happy reunion of the play implies the fact that Prospero is a major figure who by way of using his white magic helps everyone reconcile in spite of shortcomings. Honesty and goodness have been rewarded. I felt much aesthetic pleasure while reading the play. Shakespeare’s language, his style, above all, his blending of tragedy and comedy gave to my mind a soothing effect which I cannot forget ever.

Books are our best friends. Even in today’s world of internet and mobile, the importance of books cannot be ignored. I am a genuine book lover. Reading books is my passion. Whenever I get spare time I read story books, novels etc. Recently I have read Bibhutibhushan’s classic novel ‘Chander Pahar’. I loved the book so much that I have lost count of the number of times I flipped through the book even after I had finished reading it.

The book ‘Chander Pahar’ records the adventures of Shankar, the main character of the novel. Shankar, a young bengali boy, faces many adventures in Africa where he goes in connection with his job on the railways. He encounters many ferocious animals like lions, black mamba etc. But the real adventure begins when Shankar accompanies Diago Alverage, a European adventurer, to the Kilimanjaro mountain in search of diamonds. In the course of the events Diago gets killed by a terrible animal called ‘Buniyp’ and Shankar is left all alone in that unknown land of adversity and danger. But he braves it with extraordinary courage and valour.

After a great struggle, he is saved from the desert. Shankar is the embodiment of courage. I love the character very much. I am attracted by Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay’s great narrative skill. He makes the description of African jungles and Shankar’s adventures alive with his narrative skill. Author’s creativity makes Shankar’s character one of the most popular characters of Bengali literature. Whenever I read the novel, I find myself engrossed in it. My mind also travels with Shankar in the land of Africa and feels the adventure. This is why ‘Chander Pahar’ holds such a special place in my mind.

‘The Story of My Life’ by Helen Keller

Books are our best friends. Even in today’s world of internet and mobile, the importance of books cannot be ignored. I am a genuine book lover. Reading books is my passion. Whenever I get spare time I read story books, novels etc. Of all the books I have read, I like ‘The Story of My Life’ by Helen Keller the most. The episode centres round the hard struggle of life of Helen Keller. She writes with a natural ease and power, hardly equaled by any other writer of that category. In this book we see that Helen Keller became blind and deaf after a serious illness in her childhood. However, the day when Miss Sullivan came to her as her teacher was the most memorable day in her life. After a long hard process Helen learnt to read, in raised letters in Braille method . She learnt to write also in a special type of typewriter. In the book ‘The Story of My Life’ an account of the first twenty two years of Helen Keller’s life has been given. During this time she came into contact with many noble and affectionate persons. In her autobiography Helen describes her experiences with so much ease and sincerity in such a lucid style that it cannot but arouse love and wonder for her. But the most striking feature of this book is her strong will and iron determination to cross all the hurdles of a handicapped person in her own life. And therefore, it has the universal appeal to all the readers throughout the world. Everybody should go through the book whenever he gets a chance.

Paragraph on ‘My Hobby”

Paragraph On ‘My Aim In Life’

8 thoughts on “6 Paragraphs on ‘A Book I Have Recently Read’”

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The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it. –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read. –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.” –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture. –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think. –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel Lost Children Archive (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a good conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment. Tell Me How It Ends is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.” –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing Bad Feminist that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell. This Young Monster (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from Artforum , Dazed & Confused , and Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic, This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) · Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012) · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014) · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014) · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014) · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) · Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016) · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016) · Lindy West, Shrill (2016) · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016) · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016) · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016) · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016) · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017) · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017) · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017) · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017) · Joan Didion, South and West (2017) · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017) · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017) · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) · Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017) · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018) · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018) · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018) · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018) · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018) · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019) · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019) · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019) · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019) · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019) · Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019) · Robert A. Caro, Working (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

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The Last Book I Loved: Took House

Kasey jueds.

March 7, 2023

Took House was one of the first books of poems I’d read since the start of the pandemic. One of the first and only poetry books I could read, for months. In the middle of the night, anxious and insomniac, I read one poem, read it again, read another. The poems knew something about me, something I myself didn’t know, or couldn’t articulate. The poems did the saying, the impossible saying, for me.

That fall I walked the dirt road between the house in upstate New York where we were staying and the larger, paved road that led to the post office and to an old cemetery. Evenings, we often heard coyotes call from the narrow valley between two mountains, as clear and close as I had ever heard them before. I read that coyotes call to their packs after hunting alone. I felt the poems in Took House calling me. There, in the words and the silence surrounding them, a kindred wildness. The way they said, You do not have to be alone.

I’d never met these particular poems before but immediately felt, Oh, I’ve missed you .

“Set the dark to hushing,” the poem “A Brief History of Coyotes” begins. This oddness of diction—strange but somehow familiar, startling, touching a truth that feels unsayable otherwise—is a hallmark of Camp’s poems, one of the first things I loved about her work. “Set the dark to hushing”: in my mind, a dial, tuning the night to a frequency only just audible to humans, turning our ears toward the mysterious beings near and within us. In conversation with Camp, she said, “It’s where I want to live in a poem, where the language makes sense but isn’t predictable.”

The poem “Beyond our house, their muzzles” contains the gather and surround of wildness, the way the humans, “listening through the wall” to the coyotes’ howls, feel both protected and not by those walls, and seem to long for the world outside, even with its violence, as inside they have “knuckled back to silence.”

I wanted to read the poems in Took House in two opposing ways. I wanted to read and keep reading, to read the book like a novel, turning page after page in the small light of my lamp in the middle of the night. And I wanted to read slowly, to read each poem over and over, to take into my lungs the richness of their language and imagery, their capacious selves.

Among the many things I love about this book: its focus on a heart in extremity, and the way—though the circumstances are different—the poems bring me closer to my own interior life, show me something necessary and hidden about myself in their startling language.

Took House is composed of three braided strands: poems centered on a relationship, compelling and un-refusable and doomed; poems speaking with and to pieces of visual art (in a former career, Lauren Camp worked as an artist, and her knowledge of visual art is wide and deep); and poems responding to the more-than-human world of the southwestern U.S., raptors in particular. The poems comprising the different strands stand next to each other without overt explanation of their relationships, allowing those relationships to be intuited.

Another of the many things I love about this book: the way the poems question the relationship of art to suffering help me to ask that question myself in a new and urgent way. A question without an answer, or maybe as many answers as there are poems. “Find the Color of Survival” begins

I want to talk about what I believe is beautiful, and this is complicated by all the oil of that year.

What is, or can be, beautiful in the midst of anguish? How does art help us to hold our brokenness, the brokenness of the world? The poems of Took House use art—making it, being with it—to think and feel toward a way to contain, absorb, and make meaning of the overwhelming feelings the speaker’s relationship calls up in her. From “Find the Color of Survival”:

… at home I lifted a broad brush to each sorrow. One day soon every form will be transparent— but first, with you I’m looking at even what I cannot stand to see.

Another of the many things I love about this book: the wild beings that inhabit it. Of course the humans, who bring their own wildness, but also the birds and trees and huge sky of the desert Southwest. The raptors of the poems, like the pieces of visual art the speaker loves, are real and true, dimensional, alive. And, too, they hold up the speaker’s inner being, her wildness, to herself. The raptor poems seem to ask, how do we understand desire, the sometimes-violence of it? What is “natural” to us, in terms of want, and how can it be honored? Where are its limits? In “Golden Eagle,” the bird’s

narrow awful face quickens on perishable landscape, everything in the open— In the very next lines, the poem swerves, much like an eagle tilting suddenly toward prey: At the table, was I greedy? I hardly ate. Only what I needed.

This vertiginous shifting, present in so many poems, also feels wild to me, and thrilling, and disconcerting, and real. The elements of Took House’s world—sky, wine, paint, desert, desire—exist in such proximity, sometimes colliding, their connections inexplicable but revealed in the way Camp places them as they are: side by side, appearing and disappearing and returning.

From the restraint—conscious, willed—of “I hardly ate,” to the next poem, “Flavor,” which begins “I’d been careful all my life” and then shows us what happens when care and restraint can no longer be maintained:

the taste of punishment as strong and sweet as pardon.

Wildness both compels and repels. The speaker doesn’t always want to look but can’t help seeing. She wants and doesn’t want the wildness that overtakes her.

One last thing, for now, that I love about this book: its willingness to dwell, despite everything, in beauty. And beauty in the widest, deepest sense: beauty that encompasses desperation and need as well as “the bones of roses” and the desert sky. Perhaps this is joy rather than beauty, a desire to open to all of life. Or not a desire: the speaker cannot help herself. She can’t not look, can’t refuse immersion. But the wild world, the capaciousness of art, the poems themselves—all these help in their ways. From “Perennials”:

Because I was opened by another, I will always carry these remnants of pouring light in my body.

The first time I read this poem, I read “another” as the lover, but now I read it as all the beings that inhabit this pulsing, expansive, and wildly alive book: the lover, the coyotes, the hawks and eagles, the paintings and sculptures, the mountains, and the moon and sun.

Kasey Jueds’s first book of poems, Keeper , won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Salamander, Provincetown Arts, Cave Wall, Water~Stone , and Crazyhorse , and her reviews appear in Salamander and Jacket2 . She lives in Philadelphia.

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Essay on My Favourite Book for Students and Children

500+ Words Essay on My Favourite Book

Essay on My Favourite Book: Books are friends who never leave your side. I find this saying to be very true as books have always been there for me. I enjoy reading books . They have the power to help us travel through worlds without moving from our places. In addition, books also enhance our imagination. Growing up, my parents and teachers always encouraged me to read. They taught me the importance of reading. Subsequently, I have read several books. However, one boom that will always be my favourite is Harry Potter. It is one of the most intriguing reads of my life. I have read all the books of this series, yet I read them again as I never get bored of it.

Harry Potter Series

Harry Potter was a series of books authored by one of the most eminent writers of our generation, J.K. Rowling. These books showcase the wizarding world and its workings. J.K. Rowling has been so successful at weaving a picture of this world, that it feels real. Although the series contains seven books, I have a particular favourite. My favourite book from the series is The Goblet of fire.

When I started reading the book, it caught my attention instantly. Even though I had read all the previous parts, none of the books caught my attention as this one did. It gave a larger perspective into the wizarding world. One of the things which excite me the most about this book is the introduction of the other wizard schools. The concept of the Tri-wizard tournament is one of the most brilliant pieces I have come across in the Harry Potter series.

In addition, this book also contains some of my favourite characters. The moment I read about Victor Krum’s entry, I was star struck. The aura and personality of that character described by Rowling are simply brilliant. Further, it made me become a greater fan of the series.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

What Harry Potter Series Taught Me?

Even though the books are about the world of wizards and magic, the Harry Potter series contains a lot of lessons for young people to learn. Firstly, it teaches us the importance of friendship. I have read many books but never come across a friendship like that of Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. These three musketeers stuck together throughout the books and never gave up. It taught me the value of a good friend.

Further, the series of Harry Potter taught me that no one is perfect. Everyone has good and evil inside them. We are the ones who choose what we wish to be. This helped me in making better choices and becoming a better human being. We see how the most flawed characters like Snape had goodness inside them. Similarly, how the nicest ones like Dumbledore had some bad traits. This changed my perspective towards people and made me more considerate.

Finally, these books gave me hope. They taught me the meaning of hope and how there is light at the end of the tunnel. It gave me the strength to cling on to hope in the most desperate times just like Harry did all his life. These are some of the most essential things I learned from Harry Potter.

In conclusion, while there were many movies made in the books. Nothing beats the essence and originality of the books. The details and inclusiveness of books cannot be replaced by any form of media. Therefore, the Goblet of Fire remains to be my favourite book.

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Films and computer games which contain violence are very popular. Some people believe they have a negative effect on society and so should be banned. Other people, however, say they are just harmless and help people to relax. In this cutting edge era, action games and combact skills based films are most famous among youth. Many people believe that it may hazardous for society and it has been forbidan while bunch of people consider that it is non-toxic and useful for releave the stress. In my prespective although it has s ...
You agreed to take a particular job over the summer, but due to unforeseen circumstances, you can no longer take the position. Write a letter including: - Explaining your situation - An apology - Express that you would be interested in the position next summer Dear Sir, I am writing this letter to inform you that I will be unable to join the job over the summer due to unavoidable circumstances as mentioned below. I have always dreamt of working for this position ever since childhood. Working as locomotive pilot has always been my dream. Knowing that I wo ...
More and more companies allow their employees to work from home or 'remotely' rather than going into an office each day. Do the advantages of this policy outweigh the disadvantages? Now a days, it can be seen that technology is playing a vital role in the modern age. That is why specially companies allow their employees to work from home or "remotely" rather than going into an office each day. I extremely prefer for working from home. There is unprecedented pros and cons. Some ...
The air we breathe has a major impact on our health and the environment. However, the air pollution is constantly growing and at current level it can be fought only globally. that is to say, individual efforts to improve air quality will not give any results, and it is solely responsibility of our governments to reduce air pollution. The air which we breathe everyday is nescessary for us. Not only it affacts on our health but it also impacts on our environment. Some people believe individual cam not improve air quality and it is responsibility of our governments. In my opinion, both governments and each citizen should join their ...
In most developed countries shopping is not only about buying the goods you need, it is also perceived as entertainment. Is it a positive or negative development? Give your own opinion and examples based on your experience. Nowadays, in most developing nations, shopping is the most important part of people’s life. A person loves to do the shopping, for their shack of mood. Because of that, people face detrimental effects on their lives. Firstly, due to influence market strategies, people get easily influenced by produ ...
The charts below show the proportion of people’s total spending in a particular European country was spent on different commodities and services in 1958 and in 2008 The given charts provide information about the percentage of citizen’s sum expenditure on six divergent types of merchandise and services in a specific European nation in two years, including 1958 and 2008. From an overall perspective, it is evident that there are significant changes in the spendin ...
You are unhappy about a plan to make your local airport bigger and increase the number of flights. You live near the airport. Write a letter to your local newspaper. In your letter • explain where you live • describe the problem • give reasons why you do not want this development. Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing this letter to explain that I am worried about expanding the U-tapao airport area and increasing flights a day. This project may have effects on local residents, especially, noise and reducing a community park. However, I would like to inform these problems in the lo ...
Nowadays museums and historical sites are visited mainly by foreign tourists rather than by locals. Why is this happening? What can be done to get locals to visit museums and historical sites more often? In the epoch of modernization, numbers of visit to the museums as well as historical buildings are dramatically increased among overseas travellers as compared to the local inhabitants. There are several reasons why this is happening and there are few solutions to encourage the local peoples to visi ...
A huge number of students choose to study English independently on a self-study basis rather than attend a formal course. However, without the assistance of a teacher, students often find it difficult to manage their studies. Especially in recent years, the development of technology relating to the internet, social media has led us to learn English easily because high-tech has a lot of content useful for self-learning at home. However, it is believed that students find many obstacles without the teacher’s guidance. Perso ...
You have received a bill from a mobile phone (or cell phone) company for international call charges relating to a time when you did not use your phone for international calls. Write a letter to the company, complaining about this giving your reasons asking for the bill to be changed Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing this letter to express my dissatisfaction regarding the phone bill which I received from your company on December 23, 2021, stating that I made international call amounting to $900. As you may know, I have been using your services for the past 3 years and I have never ...
increasing car usage in many large global cities has caused a number of problems. some cities have proposed banning private vehicles from the city center. As the global population has increased significantly, so has a rise in the number of cars on our roads. This dramatic increase has led to the suggestion that large urban areas should prohibit private vehicles from the city center. I completely agree with this to a large extent for two reasons: impro ...
Some people believe that it is good for students to have the same teacher for several years. Others think students benefit more from having new teachers each year. Which do you think is better? Give specific reasons to support your opinion. currently, I would like to write research in management of college about complaint management and marking however the basics of that research is how to I giving band for companies the majority companies they claim that they know about knowledgable the knowledge substantial of management betweens m ...

50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Essay collections: Like short stories, but TRUE! When you're in the mood for fact over fiction, check out these must-read contemporary essay collections.

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone. Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read Would Everybody Please Stop? is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food, Longthroat Memoirs is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails, Longthroat Memoirs explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as The Believer , The New Yorker , and Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience. Betwixt and Between is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In Look Alive Out There, whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on Gossip Girl, befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview, Idiophone is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch . From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick , Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby

“With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays by Scaachi Koul

“In One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead Rolling Stone to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues, Shrewed is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber), Double Bind could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology. The River of Consciousness is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God) by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else. We Wear the Mask , edited by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes, A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico. Acid West illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening, Acid West is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexographies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This? presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

The Most Read Books On Goodreads in August

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Essay on Book Reading
What is one lesson I learned from the last book I read?
The Importance of Reading
The book I read essay 150 words
The Importance Of Reading Books Free Essay Example
What is one lesson I learned from the last book I read?

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What Was The Last Book U Read, & Studied, Thats Biblical & Spiritual?
What’s the last book you’ve read, #DishFam? 📚🤣 #dishnation #garywithdatea #bookrecommendations
the last book you read
The last book you read is your book boyfriend #geronimostilton
unboxing books 😭 last book is my favorite thank you @PanMacmillanIndia
Last Book Read w Senator Aird

COMMENTS

How to Answer "What Was the Last Book You Read?" in an Interview
How to Answer "What Was the Last Book You Read? ...
How to Answer: What Is the Last Book You Read?
First, this could simply be a conversation starter. The interviewer wants to get to know you a little bit and is curious about what kinds of books you read. Another purpose of this question could be to see how well-read you are (in other words, how many books you read, and what kind). In some corporate environments, being well-read is really ...
How to answer: What's the last book you read?
How to answer: What's the last book you read? Reading is not only a great way to relax and unwind, but it can also be a valuable tool for personal and professional growth. As a job seeker, it's important to stay informed and continuously expand your knowledge base. One way to do this is by reading books that are relevant to your industry or ...
Interview Question: "What Was the Last Book You Read?"
3. Briefly explain the book. If an interviewer asks you this question, start with the title of the book and a brief explanation. Describe either the premise of the book if it's nonfiction or a plot summary for a fiction story. This helps introduce the interviewer to the book and can allow them to understand the essence of what you've read.
How To Answer "What Is The Last Book You Read?"
"The last book I read was 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear. It's certainly my favorite book on forming the right habits, and ditching the bad ones. Basically, the author encourages you to lose unproductive habits and start adopting productive ones. The idea is that 1% change each day adds up to long-term success.
"Tell Us About The Last Book You Read" Interview Question
4. Briefly describe the book. Begin your response with the book's title, author name and a concise explanation. Mention the book's genre, central theme and intended audience. This helps you to introduce the hiring manager to the book, allowing the interviewer to understand the context for the remaining answer easily. 5.
How do I answer, "What's the last book you read?"
"The last book I read was Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. I liked it, but it was a best seller a few years ago and the information now ironically feels unoriginal." Scenario #3. If you're applying for any role, you might say: "I have been trying to read more classic books and just finished Catch-22. The audiobook was great ...
What was the last book you read?
fiction (not real, created from the imagination of an author) e.g. a book about a princess and a dragon. non-fiction (real, provides us with facts and/or events based on real people or true events) e.g. a biography, history books, 1001 facts about a topic.
How to Answer "What Was the Last Book You Read?" in an Interview
So, let's prepare to answer this common question, even if your reading habits are missing. 1. Make a List of Your Favorite Books, Articles, and Essays. By preparing a list of books, articles, and essays you are communicating to the recruiter that you are organized and well prepared. This also makes it easy for you to recall the most interesting ...
Describe a book
Describe a book - you have recently read/ that you would ...
Describe a Book You Have Read Recently
The Cue Card: Describe a book you have read recently. As I said, there are many IELTS cue cards about books. You could be asked about your favorite book or a book you really love, but in this case we will just look at a book you have read recently: Describe a book you have read recently. You should say: what kind of book it is. who wrote the book.
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay
How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by- ...
PDF Strategies for Essay Writing
Center to ask for help on a paper before reading the prompt. Once they do read the prompt, they often find that it answers many of their questions. When you read the assignment prompt, you should do the following: • Look for action verbs. Verbs like analyze, compare, discuss, explain, make an argument, propose a solution,
Describe a book you have recently read
Sample Answer 1. Sample Answer 2. Limited-Time Offer : Access a FREE 10-Day IELTS Study Plan! Download Study Plan. This article contains the Describe a book you have recently read Cue Card Sample Answers. During Part 2 of the IELTS Speaking test, you will have exactly one minute to prepare and speak on a specific topic.
6 Paragraphs on 'A Book I Have Recently Read'
6 Paragraphs on 'A Book I Have Recently Read'. A Book I Have Recently Read: Books are the best resources of people. With which no earthly wealth can be compared. By reading books we can keep our mind healthy and happy. A good book opens the eyes of the human mind as well as expands and develops the knowledge and intellect and helps to light ...
The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade ‹ Literary Hub
The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade
The Last Book I Loved: Took House
Fall, 2020. Took House was one of the first books of poems I'd read since the start of the pandemic. One of the first and only poetry books I could read, for months. In the middle of the night, anxious and insomniac, I read one poem, read it again, read another. The poems knew something about me, something I myself didn't know, or couldn ...
Essay on My Favourite Book for Students and Children
500+ Words Essay on My Favourite Book. Essay on My Favourite Book: Books are friends who never leave your side. I find this saying to be very true as books have always been there for me. I enjoy reading books. They have the power to help us travel through worlds without moving from our places. In addition, books also enhance our imagination.
IELTS Cue Card # 184
IELTS Cue Card # 184 - Describe a book you have recently ...
THE LAST BOOK I HAVE READ
The book I read last time is a book by famous Uzbek writer Chingiz Aitmatov's, The Bird's Cry. It consists of short stories based on various events. This book well appeal not only to the reader but also to young people. The poet who wrote this book says: The village lives by its own laws like a living being, the most important of which is to ...
50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections
Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes. "Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change.
essay on last book i read
A "who am I" essay is a simple type of open-ended introductory essay. It is used in certain schools, workplaces and around the world to help members of a group introduce themselves through their writing. They are generally about a page long..... A "hook" is something irresistibly interesting in the first sentence or two of an essay that draws readers in and inspires them to keep reading.