As we close the curtains on the first month of the new year and step into the second, here at Star Books and Literature,  we are thinking back on the year we had. More particularly, we are looking back on the books we read, the ideas that shaped us, and the concepts that challenged us. One notion we are constantly confronted with is the ethics of representation—whether in terms of whose voices our pages represent and the ideas those voices supply—we remain alert about our responsibility to offer perspectives that are multidimensional and more importantly, ethically articulated. Since October, for instance, we have talked ceaselessly about the genocide in Palestine for the alternative to remain silent is frankly, unacceptable. Our two children's literature themed issues investigated the politics of telling children's stories, and our Royeka Sakhawat Hossain issues debated the enduring legacy of the thinker's influence in contemporary feminist thought. Elsewhere, we were confronted with the quandary of ideas as diverse as ghostwriting, voices of propaganda, Bangladesh's conflicting relationship with secularism, monsters and heroes, being an Anglophone writer in English, and the sometimes torturous, other times poetic marriage between words and music.

Reading is political. Here as well as well elsewhere, as nations and peoples are increasingly retreating inwards, reading remains one of the mediums through which we can examine and hopefully, critique existing structures of power. Here's to reading with intention, reading with joy, and reading with the commitment to reconceptualise the old and revive the new.