by EmmaV March 21 is World Poetry Day, and it’s a good moment to reflect on this beautiful and ancient art form. Poetry has been written through the ages, and it’s been brought to readers in all sorts of ways. Medieval bards recited their tales in long rhyming forms, while today, [...]
"A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston."
by Lília We start this ABC Staff Picks with an unusual choice: a cookbook! In recent years, we’ve seen many fandom cookbooks showing up on our shelves, and even though we might be a bit skeptical, many are actually quite good. Think about cookbooks based on TV series, games and, yes, [...]
"Jane Ellsworth and her sister Melody's lives still revolve around vying for the attentions of eligible men. While Jane's skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face, and therefore wins the lion's share of the attention. At the ripe old age of twenty-eight, Jane has resigned herself to being invisible forever."
by Natalia March is International Women’s History Month, during which we celebrate contributions to history, society and culture by women. The United States initiated this month in the late seventies, but the UK, Australia and Canada also celebrate it. In The Netherlands, we also celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. [...]
by Lília We all have T-shirts with tears, socks with holes in the heel, jeans torn from the friction between our thighs... You get the idea. Most of the time, the garments we’ve loved to death are all still very wearable, if not for those pesky details. So what can we [...]
"All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother gone at an artist residency, their father decides it’s time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When their father brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away against his will. Furious at her father’s betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of Old Town. Enter George, a queer Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she tracks down Orr. Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink house. In their first summer apart, Iph and Orr must learn to navigate their respective new spaces of music, romance, and sex-work activism—and find each other before a fantastical transformation fractures their family forever."
by Lília Our Luke and Iris are back with the first ABC Staff Picks of 2023. Think cozy titles, biographies, science fiction novellas, a YA horror title and much more…. As the books buyer for Amsterdam’s film section, Luke chose two quite different memoirs from two famous authors. Both have similar [...]
by Lília With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we thought we’d home in on screen adaptations of romantic fiction. Because who hasn’t heard of or watched – maybe many times! –adaptions of Jane Austen’s books such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or Emily Brontë’s Wuthering [...]
"A myth-busting voyage into the female body. A camera obscura reflects the world back but dimmer and inverted. Similarly, science has long viewed woman through a warped lens, one focused narrowly on her capacity for reproduction. As a result, there exists a vast knowledge gap when it comes to what we know about half of the bodies on the planet. That is finally changing. Today, a new generation of researchers is turning its gaze to the organs traditionally bound up in baby-making―the uterus, ovaries, and vagina―and illuminating them as part of a dynamic, resilient, and ever-changing whole. Welcome to Vagina Obscura, an odyssey into a woman’s body from a fresh perspective, ushering in a whole new cast of characters."
