Category: Books

  • Required Reading: Volume Thirteen

    Required Reading: Volume Thirteen

    This post is part of our “Required Reading” series, in which we share some of our favorite tales and tomes of New York and the South — classic and contemporary, fiction and nonfiction, short form and long. These are the stories that open our eyes to other walks of life, that shape who we are,…

  • Required Reading: Volume Twelve

    Required Reading: Volume Twelve

    This post is part of our “Required Reading” series, in which we share some of our favorite tales and tomes of New York and the South — classic and contemporary, fiction and nonfiction, short form and long. These are the stories that open our eyes to other walks of life, that shape who we are,…

  • Zelda’s 2018 Summer Reading List

    Zelda’s 2018 Summer Reading List

    It’s technically spring here in Brooklyn, but the mercury has been yo-yoing so much lately we’re not entirely sure what season it actually is. We’ve ricocheted from the cold and the damp to the sweltering and the sunny again and again, but the one thing we seem to have skipped is spring itself. While I’m…

  • GRITS: Jesmyn Ward

    GRITS: Jesmyn Ward

    This article is part of our series “GRITS: Girls Raised in the South,” in which we profile some of our favorite Southern ladies and the things that make them awesome. Got an idea for a fabulous femme we should feature? Shoot us an email at zeldaandscout@gmail.com! (Alliteration optional.) Name: Jesmyn Ward Hometown:  DeLisle, Mississippi Profession: writer,…

  • Required Reading: Volume Eleven

    Required Reading: Volume Eleven

    This post is part of our “Required Reading” series, in which we share some of our favorite tales and tomes of New York and the South — classic and contemporary, fiction and nonfiction, short form and long. These are the stories that open our eyes to other walks of life, that shape who we are,…

  • Required Reading, Volume Ten: Love Stories

    Required Reading, Volume Ten: Love Stories

    Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! I know this holiday can be controversial, whether you’re aggressively single and feeling lonely, or in a relationship and resentful of the capitalist complex that compels you to drop wads of cash on flowers, chocolate, stuffed animals, and more on an arbitrary February day. But personally, despite my usual status among…

  • Required Reading: Volume Nine

    Required Reading: Volume Nine

    My mother collects cookbooks. It started (she thinks) with the Moosewood Cookbook, purchased in March of 1983. She had always loved to cook, and to bake especially, learning hamantaschen and icebox cookies in her mother’s Pittsburgh kitchen. From one book, her collection grew, adding Jewish Cookery and Cookie Cookery (related in name only). When my…

  • Southern Summer Reads

    Southern Summer Reads

    Summer is upon us, those hazy, humid days when the very air seems heavy and time oozes by like molasses. More than any other, this is a Southern season to us, made for iced tea and lemonade, juleps and swimming holes, lightning bugs and thunderstorms. And what does summer demand if not a summer read…

  • Required Reading: Volume Eight

    Required Reading: Volume Eight

    A couple months ago, I shared with you my wish/to-do list of Southern works of literature I needed to get my hands on. From fiction to nonfiction, classics to recent debuts, they ran the gamut of the Southern experience, chronicling the rich tapestry of characters and places that make the region so uniquely fascinating. But…

  • Required Reading: Volume Seven

    Required Reading: Volume Seven

    Happy Friday, and welcome to a (slightly different) edition of Required Reading! We’re still at the beginning of this year of 2016, and so in the spirit of resolutions and goal setting, I thought that this week instead of sharing some of my favorite works of Southern or New York literature that I’ve already read,…