It’s a new year…but a great program from last year continues!
Queens Public Library hosts online book talks on Tuesdays at 6 pm. Called “Literary Thursdays,” the sessions are free and open to the public. Plus, they’re enriching and interesting. The schedule for January 2025 is below.
Jan. 2
Rahad Abir’s novel Bengal Hound is a story of love and loss, tracing the turbulent years in East Pakistan before a mass revolution and the creation of Bangladesh. Abir explores the dynamics of nationalism, family, religion, and gender relations, revealing how the fracturing and making of a country leaves indelible marks on its people. Click here to join the Jan. 2 discussion on Microsoft Teams.
Jan. 9
Award-winning Nigerian-American journalist Rita Omokha’s Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America chronicles race-related activisim over the last century and draws on her own experiences as a Black immigrant in the United States. Click here to join the Jan. 9 discussion on Microsoft Teams.
Jan. 16
Tyriek White’s We Are a Haunting won the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. The supernatural saga and searing social critique follows three generations of a working-class family and their inherited ghosts. Click here to join the Jan. 16 discussion on Microsoft Teams.
Jan. 23
Evan Rail’s The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit looks at a drink that was banned globally for a century, but is currently legal and popular. He sets out to discover the truth about a mysterious dealer who claimed to possess a collection of 100-year-old bottles of absinthe. Along the way, he drinks with absintheurs who are frantically chasing down pre-ban bottles. He also visits modern distillers who have seen their status rise from criminal bootleggers to sought-after celebrities and relates absinthe’s history from its birth in Switzerland through its coming of age in France and its modern revival. Click here to join the Jan. 23 discussion on Microsoft Teams.
Jan. 30
Souvankham Thammavongsa’s How to Pronounce Knife was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN Open Book Award. It won the 2020 Giller Prize. The story collection honors characters who are struggling to make a living and find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary “grunt work of the world.” Click here to join the Jan. 30 discussion on Microsoft Teams.
Image: Queens Public Library