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Crewel Embroidery from The Crewel Work Company

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Phillipa Turnbull has been producing beautiful crewel embroidery kits for over 25 years. Her crewel work designs are based on original needlework she finds in the attics of British castles and country houses she has spent her career exploring. This is traditional British embroidery at its finest. Take a look!

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With our tufting gun, you can make rugs, pillows, wall art, stool covers, chair covers, and any surface suitable for attaching a soft, tufted piece of cloth.

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Let’s Make Accessories with Shrink Plastic - Japanese Craft Book

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+ ITEM DESCRIPTION + Paperback: 75 pages Publisher: Bunka (2013) Language: Japanese Book Weight: 255 Grams This book introduces 135 items in 58 varieties, including necklaces, rings, earrings, and brooches, with a wide variety of colors. Basic Motifs (Heart, Star, Triangle, Circle, Square, Butterfly, and Ribbon), Anima

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Miniature Dollhouse Furniture made with Recycled Pulp Tapes (Eco Craft

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+ ITEM DESCRIPTION +Paperback: 96 pagesPublisher: Boutique (2022)Language: JapaneseBook Weight: 320 GramsThe book introduces how to make miniature furniture and dollhouse items using recycled pulp tapesSHIPPING INFORMATIONAll items will be shipped by registered method with a tracking number so your item will not get lo

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Cute Geometric Patterns Embroidery in Cross Stitch and Bargello Stitch – Japanese Creative Bookstore

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Cross-stitch patterns inspired by Moroccan tiles, Indonesian textiles “Ikat”, and Islamic fabrics “Damask”, as well as geometric patterns created with Bargello embroidery, featuring 40 cross-stitch and 4 Bargello stitch patterns.

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Indian Kantha Embroidery - Japanese Craft Book

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+ ITEM DESCRIPTION +Paperback: 192 pagesPublisher: Seibundo (2021) by Mari MochizukiLanguage: JapaneseBook Weight: 602 GramsContents:The book introduces a collection of works by Mari Mochizuki, a 95-year-old Kantha embroidery artist, and a valuable vintage collection from India.These works are reference only but there

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Book Shop & Store - Sewing Clothes, Pattern, Embroidery, Textiles Bead

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In Tokyo, Introducing Japanese Sewing books, Coloring books, Embroidery, handicrafts and Pattern Book. Asking us to find the Best Art and Design Books for you!

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Atelier Miyabi – Japanese Craft supply & Kumihimo

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Japanese Kumihimo Cords, Crafted for Fine Jewellery DesignersMade in Japan • Silk & Advanced Performance FiberAvailable in an extensive range of studio-curated colours For necklaces, bracelets, and contemporary craft Trusted by Designers Worldwide Shop Silk Kumihimo Shop Miyabi Jewellery Cord Design Your Own (Simulator) Made in Japan • Worldwide shipping Why Designers Choose Atelier Miyabi…

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Are Hummingbirds Territorial at Feeders and Flowers?

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If you’ve seen hummingbirds fighting and chasing each other, you might wonder if hummingbirds are territorial. Learn how to feed multiple hummingbirds.

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Join us in San Luis Obispo or from anywhere in the U.S. with our shipped craft kits! Explore sashiko, needle felting, and more through classes, DIY kits, and curated supplies. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced maker, we’re here to inspire your next creative spark.

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Explore Threadart.com for personalization and supplies - thread, vinyl, rhinestones, fabrics, yarns & more! Unleash your creativity with personalization, embroidery and sewing.

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3/4-Inch and 1-Inch Garden Hoses | Professional Water Hoses

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Equip your garden with professional-grade 3/4 inch and 1-inch water hoses. These durable hoses provide reliable performance for all your watering needs.

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Guaranteed to last a lifetime, our premium garden hose is kink-, UV-, and freeze-resistant as well as drinking water safe. With a matte green exterior and brass fittings.

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A Detailed List of the Longest Books in the World - Capitalize My Title

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Looking for a new book that you can read throughout days? Check out these longest books in the world! One of which is over 11 million words.

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Send us your design with or without a photo of your finished braid.

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Braidweaver - Carol Miller Franklin, My Fascination with Kumihimo

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Just as gold is the standard for many monetary systems, silk is the standard for kumihimo or Japanese braiding. For many fiber enthusiasts, silk is a precious commodity, as valuable as gold.
Continue reading the article by clicking on the pages below...

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Just as gold is the standard for many monetary systems, silk is the standard for kumihimo or Japanese braiding. For many fiber enthusiasts, silk is a precious commodity, as valuable as gold. Continue reading the article by clicking on the pages below...

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NOTE: The Eyes and the Impossible is being released simultaneously as a deluxe wood-bound hardcover from McSweeney’s, and as a no-less-deluxe-but-bound-in-a-more-traditional-style hardcover from Knopf Books for Young Readers. It is also available in an extra deluxe, extraordinarily oversized edition here . WINNER OF THE JOHN NEWBERY MEDAL Named a best book of 2023 by NPR, Publishers Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, Common Sense Media, Shepherd, the New York Public Library, the Chicago Public Library, Booklist, Kirkus, and Powell’s Books. A New York Times and ABA Indie bestseller, Today Show Summer Pick and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection The Eyes and the Impossible is the story of a dog named Johannes. Johannes is a free dog, a fast dog—such a fast dog! He lives in an urban park by the sea, and every day, he runs through the park, seeing all, missing nothing, and reporting what he sees to the park’s three ancient Bison, the Keepers of the Equilibrium. But the Equilibrium has been disrupted. Mysterious rectangles are hypnotizing Johannes, humans are erecting a strange new building, and an entirely new kind of animal has arrived in the park—and there are hundreds of them. Johannes must run faster, see better, and ultimately do more than run and see—he must liberate those he loves. Gorgeously illustrated throughout by Shawn Harris (author of Have You Ever Seen a Flower? and illustrator of Her Right Foot by Dave Eggers, among many others), Dave Eggers’s The Eyes and the Impossible is a lyrical, soulful book full of wit and passion—a timeless story for readers of all ages. VIEW THE OFFICIAL TRAILER BELOW: Praise for The Eyes and the Impossible “Certain children’s books take the voices of animals, or toys that become animals, and are so pure, so sincere, that they become part of our own voices. Winnie-the-Pooh is one, The Velveteen Rabbit and Charlotte’s Web others, and Dave Eggers’ The Eyes and the Impossible takes its place among them. Johannes, the Eyes of the park, who runs like light, who sees you but is never seen, is a dog who wants nothing more than to be free. With Shawn Harris’ grand illustrations, straight from the Hudson River School, Johannes is a hero for all time.”
— Juanita Giles, NPR, Books We Love “A warm, comedic tale of interspecies friendship. Johannes is a highly engaging narrator whose exuberance and good nature run like a bright thread through the novel’s pages. It is in the way Johannes speaks about his greatest passion that Eggers shows he has done the imaginative work required to bring us closer to an animal perspective. There is a deeper story here, too, about being yourself and finding freedom. It is hinted at in the natural beauty of the deluxe version of the book, with its solid-wood front and back covers, and in Shawn Harris’s sublime illustrations. Harris places Johannes in classical landscape paintings, running free, demonstrating an appeal that is wilder and more profound than mere canine charm. We need brave, big stories like these, stories that help children (and adults) find their place in a sometimes frightening world.”
—Nicola Davies, New York Times Book Review “Immerse yourself in this novel, and let Eggers’ physical, fast-paced writing — which is at the height of its power here — carry you through his wildly inventive narrative. With gorgeous illustrations by Shawn Harris, here is a book that is truly for all ages, as only the best stories are.”
—Isaac Fitzgerald, The Today Show (author’s pick) “Animal lovers will be enthralled, and even for readers who mostly stick with humans, this is a standout example of the power of chosen family rather than biological ones.”
—starred review, The Bulletin “The voices and personalities of Johannes and his comrades are endearing; their unique story will enchant readers and encourage them to focus on what is most important in life.”
—starred review, School Library Journal ”[An] exuberant illustrated novel. Eggers crafts a marvelous, fully fleshed protagonist in Johannes, who is at once an ebullient braggart, a faithful and intrepid operative, and a drolly humorous reporter whose compassionate narration delivers a rousing tale of community, joyful self-reliance, and the pleasures of running very, very fast.”
—starred review, Publishers Weekly “Johannes’ narration feels unique, and the story itself feels like an instant classic. This is a heartwarming adventure story with the right combination of emotion and suspense.”
—The Joplin Globe “A work of dazzling ingenuity, powered not only by Eggers’ impressive knack for inhabiting the minds of other species, but also by the physical form of McSweeney’s deluxe, all-ages edition.”
—San Francisco Chronicle “This is an exciting read for readers ages eight and up. The animals in this story are very bright, funny and engaging. People of all ages who appreciate good animal fiction will enjoy this read. Besides beautiful writing, the book is enhanced with classical landscape paintings with the main character, Johannes, added to each painting by artist Shawn Harris.”
—Sue Domis, bookseller at Inklings Bookshop in Yakima, WA, published in Yakima Herald-Republic “An exhilarating, funny, frightening, mind-warping, heart-squeezing tale. Told at the speed of light. A must read. For all humans.” —Jon Scieszka, New York Times–bestselling author and First Inaugural National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature “So clever and engrossing and sweet. I loved it.”
—Roddy Doyle, Man Booker Prize and Irish PEN Award winner “The Eyes and the Impossible is Exhibit A in the argument for children’s books being great literature. What a hero! What a story! What a read! Honestly, it’s one of the best novels I’ve read in years. Honestly, I wish I’d written it.” —Annie Barrows, New York Times–bestselling author of the Ivy + Bean series “The Eyes and the Impossible is a total delight: a heroic dog’s account of a thrilling adventure, during which a community determines, separately and together, how to live. I loved it.” —E.B. White Award winner Maile Meloy, New York Times-bestselling author of Liars and Saints “The Eyes and the Impossible is hilarious, bighearted, and beautifully written. If you want to know what I think, this book right here is a significant contribution to children’s literature.” —New York Times–bestselling author Mac Barnett, three-time winner of the E.B. White Read Aloud Award “What a beautiful book! What a funny book! What a wise book! Through the eyes of his proud but sensible canine hero, Dave Eggers invites readers into a place we think we know—a city park—and shows us a hidden world of bravery, loyalty, and muddle-headed ducks. I mean, come on, how can you not love a book where the raccoons declare, ‘We only bite for justice’?” —Bruce Handy, author of Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult “Utterly delightful...Eggers touches on deep topics with a light hand, effortlessly building suspense and a wonderful sense of adventure. A merry reminder to face the truth about the world and ourselves with compassion, curiosity, and joy.” —Booklist, starred review “This beautiful book is destined to be a classic.” —Buffalo News “Immersive. Timeless. A thought-provoking examination of identity, belonging, and freedom. The Eyes and the Impossible is compelling and heartfelt, destined to be read again and again.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review “Exuberant. Johannes’ first-person narration is an interesting mix of poetic language, sophisticated vocabulary, philosophy, humor, [and] hyperbole. Johannes’ loyalty, friendship, and commitment to a noble purpose, even as his sense of self shifts, the stakes are raised, and last-minute changes to the plan occur, make him an admirable character. The artwork consists of double-page spreads reproducing magnificent fine art landscapes into which Harris has seamlessly inserted Johannes, cleverly adapting to each painter’s style and color palette. One remarkable creature vividly shows readers that ‘there is so, so much to see.’”
—Kirkus, starred review “Funny and warm and alive. This book will make you feel good to be an animal, taking your run. The Eyes and the Impossible is the sun on your face and the wind at your back.” —Adam Rex, New York Times–bestselling author-illustrator of On Account of the Gum “This book is a magic trick. The kind of magic trick where you want to know how to do it so you can also write a book this good.” —Caldecott Medal winner Jon Klassen “This book has stayed with me long after finishing it. . . . Better put it on your radar. There’s something to this. Something good. Something memorable. And a lot of goats.”
—Betsy Bird, School Library Journal, Fuse 8, Newbery / Caldecott 2024: Spring Prediction Edition “I absolutely loved this all-ages novel. A friend of mine, a middle school math teacher, likes to say, ‘If you can’t explain it to an 8-year-old, you don’t get it.’ The older I get, the more I think he’s spot-on with that observation. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading. The Eyes and The Impossible is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read – and then I found myself weeping at the end. All the cleverness and silliness lulled me into its strange and beautiful world, and then it took an existential turn that I’ll never forget, and then I found myself deeply invested in the lives and decisions of talking animals. It reminds me of Richard Linklater’s School of Rock (2003) in that it is a great work that can be enjoyed – the full spectrum of enjoyment! laughter and tears and big feeling! – by anyone of any age who enjoys good art. I don’t think I’ll ever look at a duck without chuckling again.”
—Riley Rennhack, Community/Bookstore Manager, Deep Vellum Publishing “Dave Eggers’s latest middle grade novel is so pure and wonderful! Johannes is a free dog living in a park on an island. He’s the eyes for the Bison who rule and keep the park in harmony. Strange things are happening in the park and Johannes has a big idea. A touching and thought-provoking novel with an irresistible character. The Eyes and the Impossible is truly a delight, I loved seeing the world thorough Johannes’ eyes”
—Jen Steele, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee “Johannes is a free dog, refusing to let himself be kept as a pet the way other dogs do, and he’s a keen observer. He has to be, with his senses trained on everything needed to survive in a huge urban park. He’s the Eyes, and other animals act as his Assistant Eyes. Together they watch for any changes that upset their park Equilibrium, and they report directly to the bison who have long lived as kept animals. Some of the people in the park are a stable and likable part of the Equilibrium. Others pose a threat, and human threats become harrowing in a flash. Young readers will be drawn to the original thinking, wisdom, and sly humor of the animals, as they comment on the strange behaviors of people without seeming human themselves. We get a marvelous look inside a world easily overlooked in our daily lives. We get a spine-tingling, profound conclusion, and we’re treated to a uniquely beautiful book. The artwork, the paper quality, the gilded edges, and the carved wooden cover all make this a book lovers dream!”
—Tim McCarthy, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI

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Powell’s Books | The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore

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Powell’s Books | The World’s Largest Independent Bookstore

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Why Independence Matters

Think about the last good book you read. Did it make you feel more connected to others? Maybe it served as a welcome escape. Maybe it helped you rediscover the beauty in life. Did it surprise you?

As an independent bookstore, we strive to offer the same variety and richness of experience as the books on our shelves. And because the only people we're beholden to are our customers and ourselves, we can focus on what really matters - promoting diverse perspectives, upholding the free exchange of ideas, championing the enduring power of books, and bolstering the great community of readers and authors we're lucky to be a part of.

Thank you for supporting these lofty goals. Your choice sustains a family business with over 500 local booksellers, and allows us to follow our passion for getting the right books into the right hands, 365 days a year.

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Powell's Books | The World's Largest Independent Bookstore

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Shop for new, used, and rare books online and in-person at Powell's Books, the world's largest independent bookstore, based in Portland, Oregon. We sell new and used books and gifts. Read Powell's blog, browse staff picks, and find your next read today!

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Used Books and Rare Books from Antiquarian Booksellers

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Used Books and Rare Books from Antiquarian Booksellers

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Used Books and Rare Books from Antiquarian Booksellers

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Biblio offers nearly 100 million used books and rare books for sale from professional antiquarian booksellers around the world. Uncommonly good books found here.

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Legendary Home of 18 Miles of Books. Independent & Family Owned

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Alibris - Buy new and used books, textbooks, music and movies

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Alibris - Buy new and used books, textbooks, music and movies

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The premier media marketplace connecting you to over 270 million books, movies, and albums from thousands of independent sellers worldwide.

Shop By Category

Books, Music, and Movies You Might Like

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Alibris.com: Save on New, Rare & Used Books - Movies & Music

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Alibris is your source for new and used books, textbooks, music and movies. Alibris has been selling books, movies and music since 1997.

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Buy New & Used Books Online with Free Shipping | Better World Books

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Buy New & Used Books Online with Free Shipping | Better World Books

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New & Used Books | Buy Cheap Books Online at ThriftBooks

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New & Used Books | Buy Cheap Books Online at ThriftBooks

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We have more than 13 million titles to choose from, from the earliest board books to the all-time classics of literature.

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Used books are often treasures that are out-of-print or rare. With Wish Lists you can choose to be notified the instant we find a copy, see how often we find rare titles, and see who else is interested.

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When you've found the books you want we'll ship qualifying orders to your door for FREE in 100% recyclable packaging. If there is no demand for a book, we will donate it to charity, or we'll recycle it.
More About Us

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New & Used Books | Buy Cheap Books Online at ThriftBooks

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Over 13 million titles available from the largest seller of used books. Cheap prices on high quality gently used books. Free shipping over $15.

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Peter Beagle, Author of ‘The Last Unicorn,’ Is Back In Control - The New York Times

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Peter Beagle, Author of ‘The Last Unicorn,’ Is Back In Control - The New York Times

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books From the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books From the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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31 BookTok Books to Read in 2023 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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31 BookTok Books to Read in 2023 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Best Books From the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books From the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books For Women 2014 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Best Books For Women 2014 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books to Read From 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books From the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Best Books From the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2018 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Reading Challenge 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Reading Challenge 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Best Books For Women 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Best Books For Women 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Books to Read For POPSUGAR Reading Challenge 2017 | POPSUGAR Love & Sex

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Reading Challenge 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Reading Challenge 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Books Coming Out in 2023 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Books Coming Out in 2023 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Amazon's List of the Best Books of the Year 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Amazon's List of the Best Books of the Year 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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The Best Books Being Made Into Movies | 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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The Best Books Being Made Into Movies | 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Reading Challenge 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Reading Challenge 2019 | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Take the 2021 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Take the 2021 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge | POPSUGAR Entertainment

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Read Harder: An Oprah Book Club Selection

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Read Harder: An Oprah Book Club Selection

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Read Harder: An Oprah Book Club Selection

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Ten great selections from Oprah’s Book Club, including Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy, to help you with the 2018 Read Harder Challenge.

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A children’s classic published before 1980: Read Harder 2018 | Daniel Boone Regional Library | BiblioCommons

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A children’s classic published before 1980: Read Harder 2018 | Daniel Boone Regional Library | BiblioCommons

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A children’s classic published before 1980: Read Harder 2018 — a staff-created list from Daniel Boone Regional Library

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The books on this list fulfill a task from Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge 2018.

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Read Harder with Works of Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

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Read Harder with Works of Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

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Sponsored by Libby. The one-tap reading app from OverDrive. Meet Libby. The one-tap reading app from OverDrive. By downloading Libby to your smartphone, you can access thousands of eBooks and audiobooks from your library for free anytime and anywhere. You'll find titles in all genres, ranging from bestsellers, classics, nonfiction, comics and much more. Libby works on Apple and Android devices and is compatible with Kindle. All you need is a library card but you can sample any book in the library collection without one. In select locations, Libby will even get your library card for you instantly. Learn more at https://meet.libbyapp.com/. Happy Reading. See all the Read Harder 2018 tasks here. What exactly are colonial and postcolonial literature? Before we get to some book recommendations, let's learn a little more about these terms.

"Colonial literature" is most easily defined as literature written during a time of colonization, usually from the point of view of colonizers. The classic example is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a novel about a man employed in the ivory trade who sails up the Congo River and witnesses the terrible effects of colonization and imperialism. Though Conrad's novel is critical of the ivory trade, his focus is on the emotional and psychological effects colonization has on the colonizers themselves. The black people the narrator encounters are rarely portrayed as fully human. I'd place this book firmly in the colonial category. "Postcolonial literature," then, refers to literature written in a "postcolonial" period, generally by members of the colonized community. This literature is a reaction to colonization. Often, postcolonial literature turns established narratives upside down by responding to or reinterpreting popular colonial texts (as do some of the books below). I have to note that are a few problems with the term "postcolonial." For one thing, it implies that the period of colonization is over. But some scholars argue that colonization continues in subtler ways, through things like Jim Crow laws, incarceration rates and police brutality, and the lingering effects of residential schools and Western interference in foreign governments. It's hard to define just when exactly a period of colonization was "over" and people began to react against it, especially when colonized people were likely protesting against it all along but silenced by their oppressors. Some critics protest that postcolonial literature defines work only in relation to a period of colonization rather than by its own qualities. There are no easy answers when we talk about colonization and decolonization. In this list, I've tried to focus on works from colonial and postcolonial periods by members of a racialized or colonized community-especially books that deal explicitly with the lingering affects of colonization. Equiano was born in Eboe, an area now part of Nigeria, and kidnapped and sold into the slave trade as a child. He was moved around from plantation to plantation and sold multiple times, enduring horrific treatment. Eventually, he was able to purchase his freedom and settle in London. His autobiography, published in 1789, was so widely read and influential that it helped spark the Slave Trade Act of 1807, ending slavery in Britain and its colonies. Achebe's 1958 novel is an urgent, complex read, a true classic. The novel is about the protagonist Okonkwo's life in an Igbo village and how that way of life is threatened and irrevocably damaged by white Christian missionaries and colonizers. Things Fall Apart looks at how colonialism works on both an individual and societal level, and how Okonkwo internalizes colonialist attitudes. Achebe's success as an author was hugely influential and paved the way for many other Nigerian authors. And if you have read Heart of Darkness, this is a great counterpoint to that book. If you've read , then you'll remember that Mr. Rochester met his first wife in Jamaica and brought her back to England, only to eventually lock her in his attic. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys reinterprets this story from the perspective of Bertha Mason, aka Antoinette Cosway, imagining her difficult upbringing and the beginning of her unhappy marriage to Rochester. To say any more would spoil the book, but if you're a Bronte fan, you must read this. You will look at Jane Eyre in a whole new way. (And that is what many works of postcolonial literature help us do-examine our internalized colonial ways of thinking and reading.)

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The story of childhood sweethearts Ifemelu and Obinze, reunited after years spent apart in other countries, Americanah is an entertaining and powerful novel. Adichie examines how race, and the lingering effects of colonialism, differ across borders. While Ifemelu attends an American university and becomes a well-known blogger on race issues, Obinze lives as an undocumented immigrant in the UK. Reunited in Nigeria after 13 years, the two have been altered in different ways by their experiences, a fact that forces them to learn each other all over again. I recommend this book to everyone I know, and have even written about it on Book Riot before, but it's just that good. In this work of nonfiction, part cultural criticism and part history lesson, King examines how colonizers in North America created and exploited Indigenous stereotypes (and continue to do so). The Inconvenient Indian is a clear-eyed, darkly funny look at how colonization has been and is still embedded in all aspects of North American society, from movies to court rulings. King's essay "Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial," in which he writes about his problem with the term "postcolonial," is also worth reading. This collection of short stories by Canadian Nishnaabeg writer and activist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson follows a wide spectrum of Indigenous characters in small towns, cities, and reserves. Simpson's writing is one of a kind, a mix of prose and poetry that explores how communities survive and thrive even in the face of continued oppression. She is also a musician and has released an album of the same name. Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic, the island where Christopher Columbus landed in 1492. Although already inhabited by the Taino people, the site became a European settlement until independence was declared by Dominicans in 1821. Diaz brings the full weight of this history to his hilarious, moving, and inventive novel The Brief Wondrous life of Oscar Wao. Oscar is a nerdy teenager, a Tolkien fanatic whose family is haunted by a curse. He lives in a Dominican community in New Jersey and dreams of finding love, or at least his first kiss, despite the curse he's sure has doomed him. Sharing an island with the Dominican Republic, the independent country of Haiti began with a slave revolt. It's also the country where Roxane Gay's parents were born and the setting of her novel An Untamed State. When Mireille Duval Jameson and her family visit her parents in Haiti, the unthinkable happens: she is kidnapped, gang-raped, and tortured. As she waits for her wealthy but stubborn father to pay her ransom, she deals with unimaginable trauma. Gay's writing is gripping, and the novel explores healing and forgiveness in intimate detail. Mireille's feelings toward Haiti itself are complicated and nuanced, affected by her American upbringing just as much as her Haitian ancestry. Set in Kerala in 1969, The God of Small Things is about fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel and their fractured family. Their mother escaped an abusive husband and returned to her family home, where her brother, Chacko, runs a pickle business and has an English ex-wife who comes to visit. A sprawling and imaginative novel, The God of Small Things examines the caste system, the position of women in Indian society, and the shifting postcolonial relationship between India and Britain. I'll end my list here because Homegoing is a great example of both colonial and postcolonial literature. Yaa Gyasi's sweeping novel, set before, during, and after the slave trade came to West Africa, is an ambitious look at one family over the course of hundreds of years. Focusing on two half-sisters, one sold into slavery and the other married to a white man and colonizer, the novel follows each woman's descendants from plantation to coal mine to the streets of Harlem.

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Read Harder with Works of Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

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An explanation of what colonial and postcolonial literature is, as well as a list of books to read for the book of colonial or postcolonial literature task of the Read Harder Challenge.

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100 Must-Read Books of the American West

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100 Must-Read Books of the American West

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100 Must-Read Books of the American West

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Novels, nonfiction, comics, and more essential reads of the American West.

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21 Best Nature Books – Inspiring Books for Nature Lovers 2021

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21 Best Nature Books – Inspiring Books for Nature Lovers 2021

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Haunting Dystopian Books to Read Right Now | Penguin Random House

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Haunting Dystopian Books to Read Right Now | Penguin Random House

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Haunting Dystopian Books To Read Right Now | Penguin Random House

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Offering a vision of the near future, dystopian books offer an unnerving, unshakeable sense of familiarity.

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NYPL's Suggestions for the 2016 Read Harder Challenge | The New York Public Library

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NYPL's Suggestions for the 2016 Read Harder Challenge | The New York Public Library

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A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1980s ‹ Literary Hub

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A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1980s ‹ Literary Hub

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Some books are flashes in the pan, read for entertainment and then left on a bus seat for the next lucky person to pick up and enjoy, forgotten by most after their season has passed. Others stick around, are read and re-read, are taught and discussed. sometimes due to great artistry, sometimes due to luck, and sometimes because they manage to recognize and capture some element of the culture of the time.

In the moment, you often can't tell which books are which. The Great Gatsby wasn't a bestseller upon its release, but we now see it as emblematic of a certain American sensibility in the 1920s. Of course, hindsight can also distort the senses; the canon looms and obscures. Still, over the next weeks, we'll be publishing a list a day, each one attempting to define a discrete decade, starting with the 1900s (as you've no doubt guessed by now) and counting down until we get to the (nearly complete) 2010s.

Though the books on these lists need not be American in origin, I am looking for books that evoke some aspect of American life, actual or intellectual, in each decade-a global lens would require a much longer list. And of course, varied and complex as it is, there's no list that could truly define American life over ten or any number of years, so I do not make any claim on exhaustiveness. I've simply selected books that, if read together, would give a fair picture of the landscape of literary culture for that decade-both as it was and as it is remembered. Finally, two process notes: I've limited myself to one book for author over the entire 12-part list, so you may see certain works skipped over in favor of others, even if both are important (for instance, I ignored Dubliners in the 1910s so I could include Ulysses in the 1920s), and in the case of translated work, I'll be using the date of the English translation, for obvious reasons.

For our ninth installment, below you'll find 10 books that defined the 1980s. (Head here for the 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s).

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Raymond Carver has a fair bid for being the most iconic and influential American short story writer ever-but he's certainly the most iconic and influential American short story writer of the 1980s, due to this collection (just think of how many times you've seen the title construction parodied and reused) as well as Cathedral (1983) and Where I'm Calling From (1988). "Carver stands squarely in the line of descent of American realism," Marilynne Robinson wrote in a 1988 review of the latter.

His weaknesses are for sentimentality and sensationalism. His great gift is for writing stories that create meaning through their form. Much attention has been paid to his prose, and to his preoccupation with very ordinary lives and with disruption, divorce, displacement, sadness, the thankless business of cadging income from small and unlikable jobs. He should be famous for the conceptual beauty of his best stories, and disburdened of his worst, which could then pass into relative neglect. The narrative foreground in Mr. Carver's fiction is typically muted or flattened. The stories have in common a sort of bafflement, justified in the best ones by the fact that their burdens are truly mysterious. Anecdotes - for want of a better word - looming and untranslatable like remembered dreams (which they sometimes are) figure so largely in these stories as to suggest that they are analogues to fiction itself, and also to consciousness, specifically to consciousness as it is shared, collective or bonding. It has been usual for a long time to lament the absence of myth in modern life, as if intuitions of the primordial and essential were the products of culture and would be dispelled with the loss of certain images and illusions, as if the forces myth describes were not real or powerful enough to impose themselves on our attention all unbidden. The bafflement in the best of these stories does not render an absence of meaning but awkwardness in the face of meaning, a very different thing.

His work sold exceptionally well ( for short stories) in his lifetime and is still a staple of contemporary literary culture, taught widely at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and copied everywhere. Even whispers that his editor Gordon Lish had too much of a hand in his stories have not much tarnished his legacy-or appeal.

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Walker's most famous novel was a critical hit upon its release, winning the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer (she was the first black woman ever to win it). It was a groundbreaking work and remains an essential womanist text, hailed for its literary excellence as well as its frank portrayal of impoverished black women, domestic abuse, and lesbian relationships. The 1985 film adaptation made it a full-blown sensation, for all Americans, but particularly for black women. As Victoria Bond put it in The New Republic, " The Color Purple lingers as perhaps the cultural touchstone for black women in America, a kind of lingua franca of familiarity and friendship." As far as the controversy, she goes on:

Spike Lee said that the Steven Spielberg-produced film was "done with hate," and that the Mr.- character was a "one-note animal." The Coalition Against Black Exploitation protested The Color Purple's 1985 Los Angeles premiere for its depiction of black men abusing black women. The novelist Ishmael Reed called The Color Purple "a Nazi conspiracy," and even suggested that both the novel and the film were critically acclaimed expressly because they slam black men.

Reed was wrong then and he's wrong now. The popularity of The Color Purple has very little to do with besmirching black men. Instead, it has everything to do with black women's rejection of respectability politics: from the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug, Mr.-'s ex-lover; to the representation of traditional Christianity as small-minded and stifling; to the narrative's assertion that domestic violence arises from patriarchal hysteria about women's strength, not our weakness.

Black women turned out in droves to see the film. We continue to reference it today because it breaks a certain cultural silence about abuse. Respectability politics imperil black women by demanding we stay mute; they insist that black people are a monolith whose reputation must be protected and preserved, whatever the cost. This extends to art, which appears only to be acceptable if black characters are struggling to "get better," to put checkered pasts firmly in the past. But the truth is obvious. We aren't interested in stories about the perfect; we're interested in stories about the real.

"There is no way to overstate how radical Gibson's first and best novel was when it first appeared," Lev Grossman wrote in TIME. "Violent, visceral and visionary (there's no other word for it), Neuromancer proved, not for the first or last time, that science fiction is more than a mass-market paperback genre, it's a crucial tool by which an age shaped by and obsessed with technology can understand itself."

The book, Cory Doctrow told The Guardian, "remains a vividly imagined allegory for the world of the 1980s, when the first seeds of massive, globalised wealth-disparity were planted, and when the inchoate rumblings of technological rebellion were first felt."

A generation later, we're living in a future that is both nothing like the Gibson future and instantly recognisable as its less stylish, less romantic cousin. Instead of zaibatsus [large conglomerates] run by faceless salarymen, we have doctrinaire thrusting young neocons and neoliberals who want to treat everything from schools to hospitals as businesses."

In it, Gibson popularized the term "cyberspace" (this is the 80s, remember) and predicted the internet, that "consensual hallucination" that we're all now plugged into at all hours. He also more or less invented "cyberpunk," an aesthetic system that has had untold influence on all the SF and fantasy since. It was, after all, the first novel to win the "holy trinity of science fiction": the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award, and it is still read and lionized today.
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
A coming-of-age classic, a staple of middle and high school reading curriculums, and a classic of Chicano literature that by 2002 had sold two million copies in 11 languages, "making Ms. Cisneros one of the best-selling Hispanic authors in the United States." Critic Lorna L. Pérez called the novel "perhaps the most widely read and taught text in Latina literature" and highlighted its "striking revision of the Western literary and theoretical canon."

Her appropriation of the form, style, and philosophical complications of her literary predecessors reveals profound and entrenched assumptions about subjectivity, class, and ethnicity, categories that historically and contemporarily marginalize individuals like her protagonist Esperanza Cordero. In engaging-both explicitly and implicitly-the literary predecessors that haunt the house on Mango Street, Cisneros is able to alleviate what Harold Bloom calls the "anxiety of influence" not by attempting to overshadow or destroy her predecessors, but by revealing the ideological constructs that lay in the foundations of their writing, thereby redefining the grounds of subjectivity and revealing the unhomely-or that which remains hidden-in the work. By engaging her literary influences in this way, Cisneros offers a revision to their assumptions, and as such lays the foundation for a radical literature that can encompass positions that have been relegated to the margins.
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985) Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
This last, of course, being something we gratefully see more and more every day.

There was considerable dissent in the Literary Hub office over this book-or, to be precise, over whether we should replace it with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is also a western published in 1985, and which most of our staff (yours included) prefer, as a novel. But Cormac McCarthy, for me, is on the whole more a writer of the 90s and 00s, and unlike Blood Meridian, Lonesome Dove was loved and appreciated in its time as well as afterwards. And honestly, the literary 1980s was all about Lonesome Dove. It was a stupendously reviewed bestseller, and went on to win the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The New York Times called it the first "Great Cowboy Novel" and the LA Times called it "Larry McMurtry's loftiest novel, a wondrous work, drowned in love, melancholy, and yet, ultimately, exultant." Then, of course, there was the miniseries, which premiered in 1989, and as with Roots, cemented the legacy of its source material (not to mention brought back the miniseries format, which had been considered increasingly unprofitable). It is now a canonical pillar of the American western, perhaps the most uniquely American of all genres-and no more so than in Texas, where it ranks with the Bible and the Warren Commission Report.

This is an essential novel of 1980s America not only because it was written then, and not only because it was popular and acclaimed then (it won the National Book Award), but because it hacks directly at the culture of that time. " White Noise finds its greatest distinction in its understanding and perception of America's soundtrack," Jayne Anne Phillips wrote in The New York Times.

White noise includes the ever-present sound of expressway traffic, "a remote and steady murmur around our sleep, as of dead souls babbling at the edge of a dream." Television is "the primal force in the American home, sealed-off, self-contained, self-referring . . . a wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages . . . like chants. . . . Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it." Television, Murray Siskind asserts, "practically overflows with sacred formulas." White noise includes the bold print of tabloids, those amalgams of American magic and dread, with their comforting "mechanism of offering a hopeful twist to apocalyptic events." Fast food and quad cinemas contribute to the melody, as do automated teller machines. Nowhere is Mr. DeLillo's take on the endlessly distorted, religious underside of American consumerism better illustrated than in the passage on supermarkets.

As Lev Grossman put it in TIME: "Though it's pitched at a level of absurdity slightly above that of real life, White Noise captures the quality of daily existence in media-saturated, hyper-capitalistic postmodern America so precisely, you don't know whether to laugh or whimper."

The book was precise about the anxiety, self-absorption, and alienation of the '80s-which, what do you know, hasn't exactly let up. "This turning inward was happening across America in 1985," writes Nathaniel Rich in The Daily Beast.

Exhausted by the paranoia of Watergate era, and the panic of the oil embargo and the Iran hostage crisis, the nation sought the comforts of old-fashioned Hollywood movies, delivered by an old-fashioned Hollywood actor. White Noise was published two months after Ronald Reagan's second inauguration, which followed the most effective marketing campaign in American political history, sounding visceral notes of hope ("It's morning again in America") and terror ("There is a bear in the woods"). In "Supermarket", the narrator asks Americans to judge the state of the country by the contents of their local supermarket-a tactic, incidentally, followed by DeLillo, who ends White Noise with a nightmarish scene inside of one. Walter Mondale, who had tried to make the election about the budget deficit and interest rates, soon realized his mistake, releasing ads with horror-movie music and images of nuclear warheads, but it was too late.

White Noise even eerily presaged the Bhopal gas leak with his airborne toxic event. "In light of the recent Union Carbide disaster in India that killed over 2,000 and injured thousands more," Phillips notes, " White Noise seems all the more timely and frightening-precisely because of its totally American concerns, its rendering of a particularly American numbness."

If you're reading this space, I probably don't have to expound on the importance of Toni Morrison to you. But just to cover all our bases, Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award-though lost out to something called Paco's Story, which rankled then and rankles now. In 2006, the editors of the New York Times asked "a couple hundred" writers, critics, and editors to vote on "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years," and the winner-by a relatively large margin-was Beloved. "Any other outcome would have been startling," wrote A.O. Scott, "since Morrison's novel has inserted itself into the American canon more completely than any of its potential rivals.

With remarkable speed, Beloved has, less than 20 years after its publication, become a staple of the college literary curriculum, which is to say a classic. This triumph is commensurate with its ambition, since it was Morrison's intention in writing it precisely to expand the range of classic American literature, to enter, as a living black woman, the company of dead white males like Faulkner, Melville, Hawthorne and Twain. When the book first began to be assigned in college classrooms, during an earlier and in retrospect much tamer phase of the culture wars, its inclusion on syllabuses was taken, by partisans and opponents alike, as a radical gesture. (The conservative canard one heard in those days was that left-wing professors were casting aside Shakespeare in favor of Morrison.) But the political rhetoric of the time obscured the essential conservatism of the novel, which aimed not to displace or overthrow its beloved precursors, but to complete and to some extent correct them.
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)
In Slate, Stephen Metcalf agrees. "Like two other American novels devoted to race, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved exists wholly beyond its own artistic merits and demerits," he writes.

These books have become something more than mere literature; they're homework, with an afterlife guaranteed by their place (or in the case of Huck Finn, its embattled absence) on the high-school and college syllabus. ("Only Shakespeare rivals her in the number of senior theses devoted to her work," Harvard English professor Barbara Johnson has said.) Were it simply a matter of social redress, we could all go home now, the Dead White Males having been forced to cocktail with a Living Black Woman. But Beloved isn't solely a work of protest and advocacy, as Morrison herself has insisted, nor solely a symbol for the progress and virtue of the prestige-granting institutions in American letters. It's a serious novel and a work of art, and it deserves to be accorded the highest respect. It deserves, in other words, to be asked, Yes, but are you any good?

Reader, it is.
See also:
This may be the most 80s of all the 80s books on this 80s list (though it's a foot race against White Noise), which is not a particularly novel point. "So regularly is Tom Wolfe's brash 1987 tome described as 'the quintessential novel of the 80s' that you almost feel the phrase could be slapped on as a subtitle," Hermoine Hoby wrote in The Guardian. "But the ability to 'capture the decade' isn't the only measure of a writer's ability, and like a hot-pink puffball dress, this story displays a blithe disregard for nuance." Indeed-though un-nuanced as it is, it's a riot, a satirical novel about money, clothes, success, greed, racism, and corruption in New York City, an absolute nonsense whirlwind that turned into a major best-seller.

"Now comes Tom Wolfe, aging enfant terrible, with his first novel, (his first novel!), six hundred and fifty-nine pages of raw energy about New York City and various of its inhabitants-a big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go," Pat Conroy wrote in the New York Times. "As in much of his other work, such as The Right Stuff, Mr. Wolfe's strategy is to somehow batter the reader into submission, using an incantatory repetition of certain emblematic phrases, (HIS FIRST NOVEL!), detailed description of people's clothing, hyperbole, interior monologue whenever he feels like it, and various other New Journalism devices he is apparently too fond of to give up. What is amazing is that he gets away with it." Great, now I have to say "indeed" again.

Again, there was some argument in the Literary Hub office over whether it was more important to include this volume or Carl Sagan's Cosmos (1981), so I'd say that all things being equal, Hawking has had the greater cultural influence. After all, Hawking's plain-language explanation of the universe has sold more than 10 million copies since it was first published-spending 147 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and an astonishing 237 weeks on the Times of London bestseller list-and been translated into some 35 languages. It's more or less the reason why the average American has any idea about space, or black holes, or quantum mechanics, or the theory of relativity-despite the theory that it is "probably the least-read, most-bought book ever."

Midnight's Children (1981) is probably the better book, but it was The Satanic Verses that kicked off the largest literary controversy of the 1980s. The book, based in part on the life of the Islamic Prophet Mohammad, was vehemently protested by some Muslims, and on February 14th, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against Rushdie, calling for his assassination. "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death," he announced, and the Iranian government offered $6 million to anyone who killed Rushdie. The author apologized, but to no avail. Bookstores carrying the book in the US and UK were bombed, and so was at least one newspaper that ran an editorial supporting the book. Rushdie's Japanese translator was murdered, and his Italian and Norwegian translators were attacked and seriously injured. Protests were held all over the world, and Rushdie spent the next nine years in hiding-until September 1998, when the new Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said he would not uphold the fatwa. (Though it is still in effect.)

Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline (1980), Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (1980), J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), Carl Sagan, Contact (1980), Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (first English translation, 1981), Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class (1981), Stephen King, Cujo (1981), Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (1981), Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981), Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban (1982), W. P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe (1982), Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List (1982), Raymond Carver, Cathedral (1983), Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (first English translation, 1983), Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983), Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon (1983), Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale (1983), Susan Hill, The Woman in Black (1983), Stephen King, Pet Sematary (1981), Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City (1984), Primo Levi, The Periodic Table (first English translation, 1984), Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1984), Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School (1984), Martin Amis, Money (1984), Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (first English translation, 1984), Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (first English translation, 1985), John Irving, The Cider House Rules (1985), Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero (1985), Patricia MacLachlan, Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985), Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game (1985), Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Laura Numeroff, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (1985), Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985), Lorrie Moore, Self-Help (1985), Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Richard Ford, The Sportswriter (1986), Brian Jacques, Redwall (1986), Stephen King, It (1986), Art Spiegelman, Maus I (1986), Alan Moore, Watchmen (1986), Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (1987), James Ellroy, Black Dahlia (1987), Stephen King, Misery (1981), Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On (1987), Gary Paulsen, Hatchet (1987), Mary Gaitskill, Bad Behavior (1988), John Grisham, A Time to Kill (1988), David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988), Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library (1988), Roald Dahl, Matilda (1988), Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (first English translation, 1988), Martin Amis, London Fields (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989), Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life (1989), Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989), Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (1989)

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A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1980s

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Some books are flashes in the pan, read for entertainment and then left on a bus seat for the next lucky person to pick up and enjoy, forgotten by most after their season has passed. Others stick around, are read and re-read, are taught and discussed.

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Although Genre fiction is generally distinguished from literary fiction, a number of major literary figures have also written genre fiction, for example, John Banville, publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black, and both Doris Lessing, and Margaret Atwood have written science fiction.

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21 of the Most Popular Book Genres, Explained

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Read Harder 2018: Genre Fiction Classics

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Read Harder 2018: Genre Fiction Classics

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A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1980s ‹ Literary Hub

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A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1980s ‹ Literary Hub

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some books are flashes in the pan, read for entertainment and then left on a bus seat for the next lucky person to pick up and enjoy, forgotten by most after their season has passed. Others stick around, are read and re-read, are taught and discussed. sometimes due to great artistry, sometimes due to luck, and sometimes because they manage to recognize and capture some element of the culture of the time.

In the moment, you often can't tell which books are which. The Great Gatsby wasn't a bestseller upon its release, but we now see it as emblematic of a certain American sensibility in the 1920s. Of course, hindsight can also distort the senses; the canon looms and obscures. Still, over the next weeks, we'll be publishing a list a day, each one attempting to define a discrete decade, starting with the 1900s (as you've no doubt guessed by now) and counting down until we get to the (nearly complete) 2010s.

Though the books on these lists need not be American in origin, I am looking for books that evoke some aspect of American life, actual or intellectual, in each decade-a global lens would require a much longer list. And of course, varied and complex as it is, there's no list that could truly define American life over ten or any number of years, so I do not make any claim on exhaustiveness. I've simply selected books that, if read together, would give a fair picture of the landscape of literary culture for that decade-both as it was and as it is remembered. Finally, two process notes: I've limited myself to one book for author over the entire 12-part list, so you may see certain works skipped over in favor of others, even if both are important (for instance, I ignored Dubliners in the 1910s so I could include Ulysses in the 1920s), and in the case of translated work, I'll be using the date of the English translation, for obvious reasons.

For our ninth installment, below you'll find 10 books that defined the 1980s. (Head here for the 1910s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s).

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Raymond Carver has a fair bid for being the most iconic and influential American short story writer ever-but he's certainly the most iconic and influential American short story writer of the 1980s, due to this collection (just think of how many times you've seen the title construction parodied and reused) as well as Cathedral (1983) and Where I'm Calling From (1988). "Carver stands squarely in the line of descent of American realism," Marilynne Robinson wrote in a 1988 review of the latter.

His weaknesses are for sentimentality and sensationalism. His great gift is for writing stories that create meaning through their form. Much attention has been paid to his prose, and to his preoccupation with very ordinary lives and with disruption, divorce, displacement, sadness, the thankless business of cadging income from small and unlikable jobs. He should be famous for the conceptual beauty of his best stories, and disburdened of his worst, which could then pass into relative neglect. The narrative foreground in Mr. Carver's fiction is typically muted or flattened. The stories have in common a sort of bafflement, justified in the best ones by the fact that their burdens are truly mysterious. Anecdotes - for want of a better word - looming and untranslatable like remembered dreams (which they sometimes are) figure so largely in these stories as to suggest that they are analogues to fiction itself, and also to consciousness, specifically to consciousness as it is shared, collective or bonding. It has been usual for a long time to lament the absence of myth in modern life, as if intuitions of the primordial and essential were the products of culture and would be dispelled with the loss of certain images and illusions, as if the forces myth describes were not real or powerful enough to impose themselves on our attention all unbidden. The bafflement in the best of these stories does not render an absence of meaning but awkwardness in the face of meaning, a very different thing.

His work sold exceptionally well ( for short stories) in his lifetime and is still a staple of contemporary literary culture, taught widely at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and copied everywhere. Even whispers that his editor Gordon Lish had too much of a hand in his stories have not much tarnished his legacy-or appeal.

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Walker's most famous novel was a critical hit upon its release, winning the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer (she was the first black woman ever to win it). It was a groundbreaking work and remains an essential womanist text, hailed for its literary excellence as well as its frank portrayal of impoverished black women, domestic abuse, and lesbian relationships. The 1985 film adaptation made it a full-blown sensation, for all Americans, but particularly for black women. As Victoria Bond put it in The New Republic, " The Color Purple lingers as perhaps the cultural touchstone for black women in America, a kind of lingua franca of familiarity and friendship." As far as the controversy, she goes on:

Spike Lee said that the Steven Spielberg-produced film was "done with hate," and that the Mr.- character was a "one-note animal." The Coalition Against Black Exploitation protested The Color Purple's 1985 Los Angeles premiere for its depiction of black men abusing black women. The novelist Ishmael Reed called The Color Purple "a Nazi conspiracy," and even suggested that both the novel and the film were critically acclaimed expressly because they slam black men.

Reed was wrong then and he's wrong now. The popularity of The Color Purple has very little to do with besmirching black men. Instead, it has everything to do with black women's rejection of respectability politics: from the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug, Mr.-'s ex-lover; to the representation of traditional Christianity as small-minded and stifling; to the narrative's assertion that domestic violence arises from patriarchal hysteria about women's strength, not our weakness.

Black women turned out in droves to see the film. We continue to reference it today because it breaks a certain cultural silence about abuse. Respectability politics imperil black women by demanding we stay mute; they insist that black people are a monolith whose reputation must be protected and preserved, whatever the cost. This extends to art, which appears only to be acceptable if black characters are struggling to "get better," to put checkered pasts firmly in the past. But the truth is obvious. We aren't interested in stories about the perfect; we're interested in stories about the real.

"There is no way to overstate how radical Gibson's first and best novel was when it first appeared," Lev Grossman wrote in TIME. "Violent, visceral and visionary (there's no other word for it), Neuromancer proved, not for the first or last time, that science fiction is more than a mass-market paperback genre, it's a crucial tool by which an age shaped by and obsessed with technology can understand itself."

The book, Cory Doctrow told The Guardian, "remains a vividly imagined allegory for the world of the 1980s, when the first seeds of massive, globalised wealth-disparity were planted, and when the inchoate rumblings of technological rebellion were first felt."

A generation later, we're living in a future that is both nothing like the Gibson future and instantly recognisable as its less stylish, less romantic cousin. Instead of zaibatsus [large conglomerates] run by faceless salarymen, we have doctrinaire thrusting young neocons and neoliberals who want to treat everything from schools to hospitals as businesses."

In it, Gibson popularized the term "cyberspace" (this is the 80s, remember) and predicted the internet, that "consensual hallucination" that we're all now plugged into at all hours. He also more or less invented "cyberpunk," an aesthetic system that has had untold influence on all the SF and fantasy since. It was, after all, the first novel to win the "holy trinity of science fiction": the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award, and it is still read and lionized today.
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
A coming-of-age classic, a staple of middle and high school reading curriculums, and a classic of Chicano literature that by 2002 had sold two million copies in 11 languages, "making Ms. Cisneros one of the best-selling Hispanic authors in the United States." Critic Lorna L. Pérez called the novel "perhaps the most widely read and taught text in Latina literature" and highlighted its "striking revision of the Western literary and theoretical canon."

Her appropriation of the form, style, and philosophical complications of her literary predecessors reveals profound and entrenched assumptions about subjectivity, class, and ethnicity, categories that historically and contemporarily marginalize individuals like her protagonist Esperanza Cordero. In engaging-both explicitly and implicitly-the literary predecessors that haunt the house on Mango Street, Cisneros is able to alleviate what Harold Bloom calls the "anxiety of influence" not by attempting to overshadow or destroy her predecessors, but by revealing the ideological constructs that lay in the foundations of their writing, thereby redefining the grounds of subjectivity and revealing the unhomely-or that which remains hidden-in the work. By engaging her literary influences in this way, Cisneros offers a revision to their assumptions, and as such lays the foundation for a radical literature that can encompass positions that have been relegated to the margins.
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (1985) Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
This last, of course, being something we gratefully see more and more every day.

There was considerable dissent in the Literary Hub office over this book-or, to be precise, over whether we should replace it with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is also a western published in 1985, and which most of our staff (yours included) prefer, as a novel. But Cormac McCarthy, for me, is on the whole more a writer of the 90s and 00s, and unlike Blood Meridian, Lonesome Dove was loved and appreciated in its time as well as afterwards. And honestly, the literary 1980s was all about Lonesome Dove. It was a stupendously reviewed bestseller, and went on to win the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The New York Times called it the first "Great Cowboy Novel" and the LA Times called it "Larry McMurtry's loftiest novel, a wondrous work, drowned in love, melancholy, and yet, ultimately, exultant." Then, of course, there was the miniseries, which premiered in 1989, and as with Roots, cemented the legacy of its source material (not to mention brought back the miniseries format, which had been considered increasingly unprofitable). It is now a canonical pillar of the American western, perhaps the most uniquely American of all genres-and no more so than in Texas, where it ranks with the Bible and the Warren Commission Report.

This is an essential novel of 1980s America not only because it was written then, and not only because it was popular and acclaimed then (it won the National Book Award), but because it hacks directly at the culture of that time. " White Noise finds its greatest distinction in its understanding and perception of America's soundtrack," Jayne Anne Phillips wrote in The New York Times.

White noise includes the ever-present sound of expressway traffic, "a remote and steady murmur around our sleep, as of dead souls babbling at the edge of a dream." Television is "the primal force in the American home, sealed-off, self-contained, self-referring . . . a wealth of data concealed in the grid, in the bright packaging, the jingles, the slice-of-life commercials, the products hurtling out of darkness, the coded messages . . . like chants. . . . Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it." Television, Murray Siskind asserts, "practically overflows with sacred formulas." White noise includes the bold print of tabloids, those amalgams of American magic and dread, with their comforting "mechanism of offering a hopeful twist to apocalyptic events." Fast food and quad cinemas contribute to the melody, as do automated teller machines. Nowhere is Mr. DeLillo's take on the endlessly distorted, religious underside of American consumerism better illustrated than in the passage on supermarkets.

As Lev Grossman put it in TIME: "Though it's pitched at a level of absurdity slightly above that of real life, White Noise captures the quality of daily existence in media-saturated, hyper-capitalistic postmodern America so precisely, you don't know whether to laugh or whimper."

The book was precise about the anxiety, self-absorption, and alienation of the '80s-which, what do you know, hasn't exactly let up. "This turning inward was happening across America in 1985," writes Nathaniel Rich in The Daily Beast.

Exhausted by the paranoia of Watergate era, and the panic of the oil embargo and the Iran hostage crisis, the nation sought the comforts of old-fashioned Hollywood movies, delivered by an old-fashioned Hollywood actor. White Noise was published two months after Ronald Reagan's second inauguration, which followed the most effective marketing campaign in American political history, sounding visceral notes of hope ("It's morning again in America") and terror ("There is a bear in the woods"). In "Supermarket", the narrator asks Americans to judge the state of the country by the contents of their local supermarket-a tactic, incidentally, followed by DeLillo, who ends White Noise with a nightmarish scene inside of one. Walter Mondale, who had tried to make the election about the budget deficit and interest rates, soon realized his mistake, releasing ads with horror-movie music and images of nuclear warheads, but it was too late.

White Noise even eerily presaged the Bhopal gas leak with his airborne toxic event. "In light of the recent Union Carbide disaster in India that killed over 2,000 and injured thousands more," Phillips notes, " White Noise seems all the more timely and frightening-precisely because of its totally American concerns, its rendering of a particularly American numbness."

If you're reading this space, I probably don't have to expound on the importance of Toni Morrison to you. But just to cover all our bases, Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award-though lost out to something called Paco's Story, which rankled then and rankles now. In 2006, the editors of the New York Times asked "a couple hundred" writers, critics, and editors to vote on "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years," and the winner-by a relatively large margin-was Beloved. "Any other outcome would have been startling," wrote A.O. Scott, "since Morrison's novel has inserted itself into the American canon more completely than any of its potential rivals.

With remarkable speed, Beloved has, less than 20 years after its publication, become a staple of the college literary curriculum, which is to say a classic. This triumph is commensurate with its ambition, since it was Morrison's intention in writing it precisely to expand the range of classic American literature, to enter, as a living black woman, the company of dead white males like Faulkner, Melville, Hawthorne and Twain. When the book first began to be assigned in college classrooms, during an earlier and in retrospect much tamer phase of the culture wars, its inclusion on syllabuses was taken, by partisans and opponents alike, as a radical gesture. (The conservative canard one heard in those days was that left-wing professors were casting aside Shakespeare in favor of Morrison.) But the political rhetoric of the time obscured the essential conservatism of the novel, which aimed not to displace or overthrow its beloved precursors, but to complete and to some extent correct them.
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)
In Slate, Stephen Metcalf agrees. "Like two other American novels devoted to race, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved exists wholly beyond its own artistic merits and demerits," he writes.

These books have become something more than mere literature; they're homework, with an afterlife guaranteed by their place (or in the case of Huck Finn, its embattled absence) on the high-school and college syllabus. ("Only Shakespeare rivals her in the number of senior theses devoted to her work," Harvard English professor Barbara Johnson has said.) Were it simply a matter of social redress, we could all go home now, the Dead White Males having been forced to cocktail with a Living Black Woman. But Beloved isn't solely a work of protest and advocacy, as Morrison herself has insisted, nor solely a symbol for the progress and virtue of the prestige-granting institutions in American letters. It's a serious novel and a work of art, and it deserves to be accorded the highest respect. It deserves, in other words, to be asked, Yes, but are you any good?

Reader, it is.
See also:
This may be the most 80s of all the 80s books on this 80s list (though it's a foot race against White Noise), which is not a particularly novel point. "So regularly is Tom Wolfe's brash 1987 tome described as 'the quintessential novel of the 80s' that you almost feel the phrase could be slapped on as a subtitle," Hermoine Hoby wrote in The Guardian. "But the ability to 'capture the decade' isn't the only measure of a writer's ability, and like a hot-pink puffball dress, this story displays a blithe disregard for nuance." Indeed-though un-nuanced as it is, it's a riot, a satirical novel about money, clothes, success, greed, racism, and corruption in New York City, an absolute nonsense whirlwind that turned into a major best-seller.

"Now comes Tom Wolfe, aging enfant terrible, with his first novel, (his first novel!), six hundred and fifty-nine pages of raw energy about New York City and various of its inhabitants-a big, bitter, funny, craftily plotted book that grabs you by the lapels and won't let go," Pat Conroy wrote in the New York Times. "As in much of his other work, such as The Right Stuff, Mr. Wolfe's strategy is to somehow batter the reader into submission, using an incantatory repetition of certain emblematic phrases, (HIS FIRST NOVEL!), detailed description of people's clothing, hyperbole, interior monologue whenever he feels like it, and various other New Journalism devices he is apparently too fond of to give up. What is amazing is that he gets away with it." Great, now I have to say "indeed" again.

Again, there was some argument in the Literary Hub office over whether it was more important to include this volume or Carl Sagan's Cosmos (1981), so I'd say that all things being equal, Hawking has had the greater cultural influence. After all, Hawking's plain-language explanation of the universe has sold more than 10 million copies since it was first published-spending 147 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and an astonishing 237 weeks on the Times of London bestseller list-and been translated into some 35 languages. It's more or less the reason why the average American has any idea about space, or black holes, or quantum mechanics, or the theory of relativity-despite the theory that it is "probably the least-read, most-bought book ever."

Midnight's Children (1981) is probably the better book, but it was The Satanic Verses that kicked off the largest literary controversy of the 1980s. The book, based in part on the life of the Islamic Prophet Mohammad, was vehemently protested by some Muslims, and on February 14th, 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against Rushdie, calling for his assassination. "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death," he announced, and the Iranian government offered $6 million to anyone who killed Rushdie. The author apologized, but to no avail. Bookstores carrying the book in the US and UK were bombed, and so was at least one newspaper that ran an editorial supporting the book. Rushdie's Japanese translator was murdered, and his Italian and Norwegian translators were attacked and seriously injured. Protests were held all over the world, and Rushdie spent the next nine years in hiding-until September 1998, when the new Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said he would not uphold the fatwa. (Though it is still in effect.)

Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline (1980), Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping (1980), J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), Carl Sagan, Contact (1980), Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (first English translation, 1981), Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class (1981), Stephen King, Cujo (1981), Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories (1981), Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981), Rachel Ingalls, Mrs. Caliban (1982), W. P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe (1982), Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List (1982), Raymond Carver, Cathedral (1983), Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (first English translation, 1983), Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983), Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon (1983), Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale (1983), Susan Hill, The Woman in Black (1983), Stephen King, Pet Sematary (1981), Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City (1984), Primo Levi, The Periodic Table (first English translation, 1984), Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (1984), Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School (1984), Martin Amis, Money (1984), Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (first English translation, 1984), Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (first English translation, 1985), John Irving, The Cider House Rules (1985), Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero (1985), Patricia MacLachlan, Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985), Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game (1985), Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Laura Numeroff, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (1985), Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985), Lorrie Moore, Self-Help (1985), Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), Richard Ford, The Sportswriter (1986), Brian Jacques, Redwall (1986), Stephen King, It (1986), Art Spiegelman, Maus I (1986), Alan Moore, Watchmen (1986), Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (1987), James Ellroy, Black Dahlia (1987), Stephen King, Misery (1981), Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On (1987), Gary Paulsen, Hatchet (1987), Mary Gaitskill, Bad Behavior (1988), John Grisham, A Time to Kill (1988), David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988), Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library (1988), Roald Dahl, Matilda (1988), Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (first English translation, 1988), Martin Amis, London Fields (1989), Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989), Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life (1989), Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989), Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (1989)

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A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1980s

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Some books are flashes in the pan, read for entertainment and then left on a bus seat for the next lucky person to pick up and enjoy, forgotten by most after their season has passed. Others stick around, are read and re-read, are taught and discussed.

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Read Harder 2017: Books Featuring POVs from People of Color

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Read Harder 2017: Books Featuring POVs from People of Color

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Read Harder 2017: It's Time To Talk About Micro Presses

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Read Harder 2017: It's Time To Talk About Micro Presses

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Read Harder 2017: Poetry Collections in Translation (Not Above Love!)

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Read Harder 2017: Poetry Collections in Translation (Not Above Love!)

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Read Harder 2017: It's Time To Talk About Micro Presses

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Read Harder 2017: It's Time To Talk About Micro Presses

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In Search of Bi Women in Earth-Based Cis-Het Romance

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In Search of Bi Women in Earth-Based Cis-Het Romance

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Read Harder Recommendations: A Character of Color Goes on a Spiritual Journey

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Read Harder Recommendations: A Character of Color Goes on a Spiritual Journey

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Best female superheroes of all time | GamesRadar+

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Best female superheroes of all time | GamesRadar+

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(Image credit: Adam Hughes (Wizard World))

Superheroines are a rising force in pop culture, with Black Widow and Wonder Woman both headed for high profile movies and many more female superheroes appearing in their own shows, films, and comic books every day.

A new Batwoman is about to be introduced in both comic books and television, with new character Ryan Wilder scheduled to take up the mantle from Kate Kane in season 2 of CW's Batwoman show and in the upcoming Batgirl #50 comic book.

With that in mind, here are our picks for the 10 greatest female superheroes.

10. Supergirl

Supergirl may have started out as a spin-off character from Superman, but for many fans, she' become so much more than that. DC's Maid of Might represents a certain element of femininity that is often glossed over in fiction - the balance of girlish glee and emotional exploration with confidence and physical power.

Too often female characters must be one or the other, ultra-feminine or super-powerful, but Supergirl - who possesses all the strength of her cousin Superman while facing all the issues of a young woman - is at her best when writers strike a true balance between both sides of that coin, letting her be a real Super girl.

That dynamic plays an important role in the CW's Supergirl, a show that places a slightly older Kara in the central role and embraces her femininity without shying away from her ability to kick ass.

9. Black Widow

Black Widow has been around as a character since the '60s, but it's only recently that she's become a particularly prominent heroine in the Marvel Universe, thanks in large part to her role as a founding member of the cinematic Avengers.

But the fact that her recent success has mostly been due to her onscreen adventures doesn't discount her role in comic books, either. Though she started out as a villain, it wasn't long before Black Widow became an Avenger, a career she's balanced with her black ops work alongside SH.I.E.L.D. and on her own, even leading the team for a time.

Black Widow is finally getting her own solo film in the MCU as well, currently scheduled for a May 7, 2021 theatrical release. While you wait, why not learn how to watch the Marvel movies in order in preparation?

8. She-Hulk

To some, She-Hulk is the ultimate expression of feminine power. She's indestructible, super-strong, and without inhibition - all of this with the mind of a high-powered attorney wrapped inside those unparalleled green muscles.

And while she may seem like a typical spin-off character (obviously riffing on her somewhat more famous cousin Bruce Banner), She-Hulk takes the concept of a gamma-irradiated hero to a totally different level, embracing her alter ego and living life to the fullest.

In some ways, She-Hulk also broke other boundaries - her John Byrne-penned ongoing series introduced an indestructible, fourth-wall-breaking hero with a sense of humor years before Deadpool grew a similar schtick.

She-Hulk was Deadpool before there even was a Deadpool.

She-Hulk is a core member of the current Avengers, and she's getting her own MCU show on Disney Plus.

7. Wasp

Janet Van Dyne was not only the first female Avenger, and a founder, but also the hero who named the team when they first formed.

Though she started out as something of a sidekick to her on-again-off-again (currently off-again) paramour Hank Pym, Janet quickly became a hero in her own right, leading the Avengers several times, and often acting as the team's moral center.

Wasp's arc has consistently projected upwards, quickly leaving behind any semblance of being a 'damsel in distress,' and progressing to the top levels of Marvel's heroic roster. Add to that her historical significance, and it's easy to see why she's one of the greatest female heroes ever to grace the printed page.

And while viewers got a glimpse of Janet Van Dyne in action in Ant-Man, she took on a much larger role in the sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp - in which her MCU daughter Hope Van Dyne took on the mantle of the winsome Wasp.

6. Jean Grey

Jean Grey was the first X-Woman, and even bore the name of her publishing company as Marvel Girl before transitioning to her Phoenix identity in the '70s. But she's more than just the first female mutant superhero - she's also emblematic of the entire X-Men franchise, and one of the most complex, well-developed characters in comic books.

She may have started out in the typical Marvel superheroine model, but later adventures saw Jean develop a level of depth that many ensemble cast members never achieve. Between her ever-developing relationship with Scott Summers, her vast and terrifying power levels, her descent into madness as the Dark Phoenix, and her penchant for self-sacrifice and redemption, Jean experienced more in her tenure as a hero than almost anyone.

Of course, the Phoenix always rises from the ashes, and the resurrected Jean is a key character in the current 'Dawn of X' X-Men era.

5. Batgirl

Barbara Gordon is unique among female heroes, and superheroes in general, for having not one but two vastly different and very successful superhero careers.

Barbara started out as Batgirl, using her wits, her incredible intelligence, and her physical capabilities to earn Batman's trust as an ally and protégé. However, after years of fighting crime on the streets of Gotham, a violent encounter with the Joker left her paralyzed - but not deterred.

Now using a wheelchair, Barbara turned to her intelligence to make a difference (while maintaining a peak physical condition to boot). Taking on the mantle of Oracle, Barbara became the information hub for Batman's entire network and lead the all-female superhero team the Birds of Prey.

These days, she's back in action as Batgirl, her spinal injuries having been healed as part of the 'New 52' reboot. She's remained in her reprised role as Batgirl for nearly a decade now - though her current ongoing series is about to wrap with #50.

4. Captain Marvel

Carol Danvers is just about the most powerful woman in the Marvel Universe, and is arguably the publisher's top female hero.

With cosmic powers, a background as a fighter pilot, a high profile movie, and that crucial Avengers membership, she's everything great about superheroes wrapped up in one sleek package.

It's no wonder the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will likely put Carol front and center, as one of the pillars of the most popular superhero brand in the world.

3. Storm

Storm started as the X-Men's ingénue, a young heroine who was one of the rookie mutants recruited when the original team went missing.

Alongside other X-Men mainstays like Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus, Storm rose through the ranks becoming not just a seasoned hero, but a mentor to her fellow mutants, and now serves as the headmistress of Xavier's school, and the leader of the X-Men.

Storm is also the first major Black woman superhero - a distinction that shouldn't be overlooked, especially considering how important she's remained in both X-Men and Marvel lore.

2. Invisible Woman

Marvel's first superheroine may not have the highest profile of the characters on this list, but Sue Storm set the pace for modern female heroes - and still occupies a fairly unique place in comic books.

While its true that early stories didn't exactly serve Sue particularly well, she developed into the heart and soul of the Fantastic Four, serving as Marvel's first family's de facto - and literal - mother. And that may be one of the most crucial aspects of her character.

While Sue Storm is powerful in her own right - many writers have said she's got the most raw power of anyone on the FF - she also represents an important aspect of womanhood that many female heroes have sacrificed or had used against them - motherhood.

That Sue can serve as one of the most respected heroes in the Marvel Universe (and its first female hero) while simultaneously raising two children and shepherding the growth of many more through the Future Foundation can't be understated.

Plus, it takes a pretty amazing woman to stand up to a blowhard like Reed Richards.

1. Wonder Woman

Diana of Themiscyra represents the best of mankind, and of womanhood. Strong, compassionate, fearless, and independent, as Wonder Woman Diana is a pillar of the Justice League and one of the greatest heroes and warriors in the entire DC Universe.

And though her real world origins are complex, William Moulton Marston and his collaborators Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne created an equally complex character who would grow to become a feminist icon and the character that almost anyone in the world thinks of when you say "female superhero."

She's got a sequel to her blockbuster 2017 film scheduled for a December 25 theatrical release. Make sure you check out all of the new superhero movies in the meantime.

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(Image credit: Adam Hughes (Wizard World)) Superheroines are a rising force in pop culture, with Black Widow and Wonder Woman both headed for high profile movies and many more female superheroes appearing in their own shows, films, and comic books every day.

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Read Harder: A Superhero Comic With a Female Lead

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Read Harder: A Superhero Comic With a Female Lead

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Whether it was a scandalous story of sex or simply taking issue with a talking pig, many people have found reasons to ban some of the world's best and most famous books. Court cases have been fought, books have been burned, and fatwas have been issued. Discover the fascinating histories of 12 famous books that have been banned in countries from the USA to the former USSR.

'Sexual intercourse began / in nineteen sixty-three / (which was rather late for me) / Between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban / and the Beatles' first LP.' - Philip Larkin, "Annus Mirabilis"

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Whether it was a scandalous story of sex or simply taking issue with a talking pig, many people have found reasons to ban some of the world's best and most famous books. Court cases have been fought, books have been burned, and fatwas have been issued.

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List of books banned by governments - Wikipedia

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List of books banned by governments - Wikipedia

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Frequently Challenged Books | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues

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Frequently Challenged Books | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues

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Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues

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Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues

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The American Library Association condemns censorship and works to defend each person’s right to read under the First Amendment and ensure free access to information. Every year, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles a list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books in order to inform the pub…

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Frequently Challenged Books | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues

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Frequently Challenged Books | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues

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Banned & Challenged Comics – Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

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Banned & Challenged Comics – Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

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Comics Get Challenged, Too: Banned Books Week

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Comics Get Challenged, Too: Banned Books Week

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Coming Out and Coming of Age: YA LGBTQ Books

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Coming Out and Coming of Age: YA LGBTQ Books

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Coming Out and Coming of Age: YA LGBTQ Books

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8 YA books by trans and nonbinary authors - OverDrive

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8 YA books by trans and nonbinary authors - OverDrive

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Meet the LGBTQ+ Authors Who Are Revolutionizing YA Literature - B&N Reads

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Meet the LGBTQ+ Authors Who Are Revolutionizing YA Literature - B&N Reads

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Meet the LGBTQ+ Authors Who Are Revolutionizing YA Literature

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Queer YA is having a moment. Walk into any Barnes & Noble and you'll find an array of bestselling LGBTQ+ novels on the shelves.

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Genre Kryptonite: Women Who Write About War

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Genre Kryptonite: Women Who Write About War

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100 Must-Read Civil War Books About The Historic Era

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100 Must-Read Civil War Books About The Historic Era

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Read Harder 2017: Nonfiction Book About Technology - Waukegan Public Library

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Read Harder 2017: Nonfiction Book About Technology - Waukegan Public Library

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10 Non-Fiction Books about Science & Technology that are must read for Tech Enthusiasts

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10 Non-Fiction Books about Science & Technology that are must read for Tech Enthusiasts

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45+ of Your Favorite Books About the Evolution of Technology

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45+ of Your Favorite Books About the Evolution of Technology