2 . The following are recommended picks from NPR staff and trusted critics.

Good Night, Irene

by Luis Alberto

It’s historical fiction based on Luis Alberto’s mother, who served as a Red Cross volunteer in World War Ⅱ. These so-called Donut Dollies made doughnuts and served coffee in a truck, providing comfort to the soldiers. They also drove to the front lines during the battle. This novel is a comedy featuring characters that present friendship and courage in tough circumstances.

Homestead

by Melinda Moustakis

Homestead is a tale of what it was like to be brave enough to build a life and survive in rough Alaska. Melinda also excellently captures the complexities around a moment in American history that is reduced to a line or two in schoolbooks. The characters in Homestead are escaping troubled pasts tied to forces out of their control.

The Great Escape

by Saket Soni

The Great Escape begins in 2006, when Soni, a labor organizer, receives a midnight phone call from a Mississippi number. The caller is one of 500 foreign workers who paid $20,000 to a firm that promised green cards if they would help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. But the green cards were a lie. There’s a daring midnight escape of the men from camp, then a march to Washington, D.C.

The Porcelain Moon

by Janie Chang

Set against World War I in France, it tells the story of two women, who break general expectations and restrictions to find their love and lives. Camille, raised outside Paris in poverty, and Pauline, who works for her uncle at his Paris shop, are trying to avoid an arranged marriage. It’s a richly researched historical fiction book.

China’s online literature industry is making an increasing impact overseas with some even     1     (say) that it can compare with U. S. and Korean films and TV shows. By the end of 2022, more than 16,000 Chinese online works of literature     2     (export) abroad, including over 6,400 physical book authorizations and over9,600    3    (translate) online works.

Overseas readers of Chinese web novels exceeded(超过) 150 million in 2022, mainly Generation Z born between 1996 and 2010. Among 15 major     4    (category), urban, western and eastern fantasy, gaming, and science fiction emerged as the five most popular types among overseas readers.

In June, Wang Xiang,     5     member of the online literature committee at the China Writers Association, told domestic media Chinese web novels are often similar to Hollywood movies in terms of their storytelling methods and focus     6     superhuman abilities. “Chinese online literature has become a     7     (globe) cultural center compared with Hollywood movies in terms of     8     (it) reach and influence among the worldwide audience,” said Wang.

Last year, 16 Chinese online works of literature were included in the British Library’s Chinese collection for the first time, all of which were first published on digital reading platform Qidian     9     readers can read kinds of Chinese online literature. According to data released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in April, the revenue(收入) of the domestic online literature market reached 38.93 billion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year     10    (grow) of 8.8%.

7 . The books written and published in the 1920s remain on the “best ever” lists. Here are 4 books that everyone should read.

The Great Gatsby

The themes in the novel reflect the sudden change in the character of America itself, and in some ways it’s among the first major modern novels produced in this country. The novel also makes a new and powerful concept clear at the time: The American Dream, the idea that self-made men and women could make themselves into anything in this country.

A Farewell to Arms

The story is one of a love affair interrupted and dogged by events beyond the lovers’ control, and a central theme is the pointless struggle of life — that we spend so much energy and time on things that finally don’t matter. Hemingway masterfully combines a realistic description of war with some abstract literary techniques, which is one reason why this book endures as a classic.

Ulysses

When people make lists of the most difficult novels, Ulysses is almost certainly on them. The one thing almost everyone knows about Ulysses is that it employs “stream of consciousness”, a literary technique that seeks to show the inner monologue of a person. James Joyce wasn’t the first writer to use this technique, but he was the first writer to attempt it on the scale as he did.

Mrs. Dalloway

It takes place on a single day in the life of the main character, and it employs a dense and tricky stream-of-consciousness technique, roaming (漫游) around to other characters and point of view. Mrs. Dalloway is concerned with using these techniques to make the characters clear and definite. The use of stream of consciousness is deliberately disorienting in the way it skips through time.

9 . The hustle and bustle(喧嚣)of life, walking back and forth from the ideal to reality, and the inner confusion hidden behind a social mask-these daily experiences are recorded by Chinese youths in lines of poetry online. Recently, 124 Bilibili internet users shared their works in a poem collection.

One blogger on Xiaohongshu who goes by the nickname Gehuaren is one such poetry lover. The twenty-something girl not only writes poems as a form of entertainment in her spare time, but also improvises(即兴创作)poems for others at night markets in Yunnan. As a street-stall poet, Gehuaren often writes pieces of poetry quickly based on themes from customers. Once the poem has been completed, she refuses to change her work because she feels her poems reflect her first reaction. For her, everything in the world, no matter trivial or significant, can serve as her poetic inspiration. “A glass, a tree in the dawn or a person who once talked with me…these all could become themes for my poems,” said Gehuaren.

With free writing with a regular rhythm and broad themes, her poems strike a chord with many young people online, helping her gain over 190, 000 followers. Many have made comments “I feel healed by your poems because I can find beauty from unnoticeable things and in turn, slow down to reflect on my life.”

Apart from poetry, various means such as vlogging and photosharing can be used to record moments of daily life. But young people consider poetry to be the best way to express them. “Taking photos or vlogging can just show the object or emotions in real life. Yet poetry, which can be used to excite the imagination, shows the beauty of daily life, ”an 18-year-old said. So when he is inspired by the beauty of daily life, the boy writes it down into lines of poetry and then shares them with his friends on his WeChat Moments.

No matter why young people write their unique brand of poems, they are attempting to take every moment in lives seriously, face their lives bravely and actively express themselves.

10 . San Francisco Park ranger Amanda Barrows, who registered in City College of San Francisco (CCSF)’s Poetry for the People class, began to place a nightstand (床头柜) in Golden Gate Park with a note “take a poem, leave a poem” in December 2022. Since then, over 100 handwritten poems have been placed in the nightstand. “It’s completely unexpected,” said Barrows. “I’m really taken aback by the outpouring of support.”

Park ranger by day and poet by night, Barrows said she began writing and attending poetry workshops in 2020. The poetry course she attended was founded by Leslie Simon in 1975. The class advocates for a focus on the neighborhood, and the cultivation (培养) and public presentation of new poems. For Barrows, the idea that she could combine her job and her hobby by bringing poetry into parks was an inspiration. Barrows asked her friends to contribute their favorite poems to the nightstand as poems that could be taken.

Armed with an old nightstand, Barrows filled the stand with pens and paper. An added drawer at the bottom holds the poems that people “donate”. The concept reminded her of Little Free Libraries, which are fixtures across the city. “I was having anxiety. I had no idea what I was going to do; then it sort of just came to me,” said Barrows. “I was inspired by the little free libraries you see in SF, where you ‘take a book, leave a book’, and thought, ‘Maybe I could do this with poetry.’”

One of the teachers at the CCSF poetry course, Lauren Muller, told The Washington Post that “people need poetry now”, which she suggested as the reason for the success of Barrows’s project.

Past student projects included writing poetry on sidewalks in chalk and placing poems on the windshields (挡风玻璃) of cars. “It’s exciting to see the work that students are doing,” Muller continued. “My hope is that this will happen across city parks… elsewhere.”