Lit: Uniquely Portable Magic

Time to clean up all of the links I've been saving! As part of the 40 Bags In 40 Days project, we're "allowed" to include cleaning up computer things as part of the project so that's what I'm working on as I type this up. Now I just need to clean up all of the recipes, home organizing tips, and resistance posts!

From Off The Shelf, The New "O" Book Club: 12 Fiction Picks from President Obama - how I'm going to miss having a president who reads. I always loved when I found the President and I were reading the same thing! The New York Times had this great article about Obama's reading, why he chooses some of what he reads and how it impacts him. It really made me think about why I read what I read and how that might change depending on where I'm at in my life.

From Book Bub Blog, this list of The 22 Most Anticipated Book Club Reads Coming in 2017 had me leaving some open spots in my book clubs schedule for the year. I prefer to either read any book I add to the calendar or get a good amount of feedback from all of you about books I'm considering so I won't add any of the books just yet. Have you read any of these? Any you would recommend?

From Longreads comes a list of 10 Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2017, with links to the stories. I have a tough time with short story collections but one story at a time might just work for me and there are certainly some well known authors on this list that deserve reading. What's your take on short stories?

At the end of every year, I scour the "best-of" lists of books, trying to decide which books I missed from that year absolutely need to be kept high on my TBR list. This list from Buzzfeed of The 24 Best Fiction Books of 2016 has a lot of the books I've really been keen to get to (as well as some I read and concurred with). How many of these have you read? Do you agree with them making the list?

I've made no bones about how I feel about our new president so it won't come as any surprise that I saved this list of 11 Books to Help Us Make It Through A Trump Presidency from Book Riot. I'm patting myself on the back for making it a 6 weeks but this isn't a spring, it's a marathon so I'm definitely going to be picking some of these up. Florinda of The 3 R's Blog also has had several recommendations including The Last Post-Election Reading List.

And, finally, this great interview with George Saunders, author of Lincoln In The Bardo, and Ron Charles from The Washington Post.