Nothing about this book was easy. It was written in a very different era, and if my aborted attempts at reading Feminist literature have taught me anything, it's that there is nothing more difficult than reading dated social science. That being said, The Souls of Black Folk is still and probably always will be a hallmark of American Civil Rights literature, and I'm glad I struggled through it.

I was motivated by the Library of Congress' 'Books That Shaped America' list; I'm not necessarily interested in reading every book on the list ( I feel no need to read anything by Ralph Nader, for example), but there is a lot of important American literature and non-fiction on the list that I feel a sense of obligation to read. Plus, after Uncle Tom's Cabin, everything feels like a breeze.

Many folks are thinking about writers of color and the #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement; I've seen so many literary blogs resolving to bring greater diversity to their reading habits this year and while that's not officially one of my reading resolutions this year, it's certainly on my mind, and I'm happy to say that there are much more contemporary and relevant books on Civil Rights that I'll be posting about in the coming weeks.

There was a great piece by Michael Harris at Salon about reading and distractions, which everybody should be able to relate to, even the most hardcore readers among us.

Everybody (except me, who hasn't yet read it) has been loving Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life, and this week it was announced that she's writing a sequel.

Teju Cole is an excellent Nigerian-born novelist who I've endorsed on the blog before (if you loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) and he wrote an essay for The New Yorker on re-reading James Baldwin, another author I really admire. In light of recent events in Ferguson, good writing about race in America is clearly as important as ever.

The #WeNeedDiverseBooks has been gaining a lot of momentum this year, especially among librarians, and it makes a good companion to #ReadWomen2014. NPR has been doing quite a bit of coverage on the topic this week, but I especially enjoyed this story about how to sell diverse books, as the lack of market is often cited as the primary reason for the lack of diversity in serious literature.

Finally, Roxane Gay is recapping the entire Outlander series for Vulture, episode-by-episode, so you have yet another compelling reason to get into this show/book series.