Sponsored by our Robyn Carr Prize Pack giveaway, courtesy of Harlequin.com.
We’re teaming up with Harlequin.com to give away a prize pack which includes the following Robyn Carr titles: Four Friends, The Life She Wants, The Summer That Made Us, The View from Alameda Island, and Virgin River. Enter now!
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed. Well sh*t, friends. A couple of you got me in my feelings this week with your sweet emails! Thank you for reaching out, truly. It was such a nice warm hug to my bookish heart to know that my little ramblings on books, club business, and tasty things are a source of comfort and entertainment for you (and not just me nerding out by myself in cyber space). You’re simply the best and I appreciate you. Sending virtual hugs to you and everyone else reading this newsletter.
Whew! Enough feels. To the club!!
Nibbles and Sips
So this Portland weather cannot make up its mind, a thing I was warned it was prone to do but keep forgetting nonetheless. It will *allegedly* be over 80 degrees and sunny mid week and I plan on packing up a little picnic to go sit in a park. I’ll be making my favorite quick chicken salad and thought I’d share it with you today- I love using this recipe for sandwiches in an afternoon tea and at book club gatherings in general.
Ingredients: shredded chicken, greek yogurt*, fresh chopped rosemary, golden raisins, salt and pepper
Instructions: Mix that ish up and enjoy! This is one of those recipes you just sort of need to eyeball and season to taste. Enjoy on its own or on bread!
*I use Greek yogurt because mayonnaise is my personal hell, but you do you, boo. When someone first made this chicken salad for me, she used one part Greek yogurt for every one part mayo. Vaya con dios.
Talkin’ Bout Mental Health
May is Mental Health Awareness month and I totally slacked on recommending this as a book club topic! May or not, anytime is a good time to better understand (and work on!) mental health.
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang – This is one of my five-star reads of 2019 and I wish more people would pick it up. It’s a very personal account of Wang’s diagnoses—schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and late-stage Lyme disease—told through a collection of essays, one that asks readers to understand that schizophrenia in particular is not a single, unifying diagnosis. I know I’ve probably read several candid portrayals of mental and chronic illness, but this one stands apart. Maybe it’s the clarity of the writing, the honesty, the care with which Wang addresses both her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” and those of us who just want to understand it better. So moving, so educational.
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan – Hello, ol’ reliable! I used to tell people that I wanted this book shoved into the hands of my physicians if I ever displayed symptoms of an undiagnosable mental illness. Susan Cahalan was 24 years old and life was swell: she was in a promising new relationship, had just begun an exciting career in journalism, and was overall living the New York dream. Almost overnight and with no clear explanation as to why, she found herself tied down to a hospital bed in a psychiatric ward. She was labeled violent, psychotic, a threat to both herself and others, but her diagnosis was unclear. The eventual what, why, and how of her final diagnosis are at once a riveting page-turner and a maddening (maddening, I say!!) peak into the pitfalls of the US healthcare system.
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella – This work of fiction is a very recent release that I highly recommend on audio! Cady is (maybe not?) processing her brother Eric’s recent death by suicide when she begins her freshman year at Harvard. Eric himself attended Harvard and was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his final year, and now Cady is hearing voices too. Does she share her brother’s mental illness, or are the voices she hears ghosts from Harvard’s unsavory past? I’ve seen some people give it a negative review because it wasn’t quite the mystery or ghost story they thought it was going to be. While I don’t know that I would quite call it a thriller in the “traditional” sense, it is definitely both psychological and suspenseful. It’s also a compelling reflection on the devastating effects—especially of the mental health variety– of unprocessed grief. (TW: discussions of suicide throughout, attempted sexual assault, off-page violence)
Suggestion Section
Some more tips for organizing a virtual book club and getting your friends in on the fun
The LA Times Book Club will discuss a book I’ve had my eye on for weeks: The Compton Cowboys by Walter Thompson-Hernandez! Did you know about this community of Black cowboys in Compton, one that still exists today? I lived in LA for almost a decade and half my extended family still lives there, yet I still knew nothing about this fascinating piece of LA history.
Catch up on week three of Vox’s discussion of The Secret History
A book club in the Colorado Springs area turned to mask-making to help fill a community need. I love this idea and encourage all my craft club people to try it!
Thanks for hanging with me today! Shoot me an email at vanessa@riotnewmedia.com with your burning book club questions or find me on Twitter and the gram @buenosdiazsd. Sign up for the Audiobooks newsletter, catch me once a month on the All the Books podcast, and watch me ramble about even more new books every Tuesday on our YouTube channel.
Stay bad & bookish, my friends.
Vanessa