The Best Book Club Books of the Year, Part 2

I came across this soup when I started watching a Christmas food from around the World Series. I love soup and this one sounds delicious. Here’s another recipe if you’re like me and like to compare different recipes when trying something new.

It’s 1990 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Maali Almeida is a photographer and a closeted gay man. He’s also just woken up in a celestial visa office and found out he’s dead. His body is dismembered and sitting in Beira Lake, and if he’s to find out who among the country’s many death squads and goons killed him, he’ll have to do so before the seventh moon.

Ray wants to make a life out of playing classical music on his inherited violin, despite his mother’s “advice” to get a “real” job and the racism he experiences within the world of classical music. As he looks forward to performing in the Tchaikovsky Competition, his violin — which he discovers is an ultra rare Stradivarius — gets stolen. He knows he will get it back, but first he’ll have to wade through claims of ownership of the violin coming from his family as well as the family who enslaved his great-grandfather.

The title of this surprise breakout had everyone and their mom (ha) gagging this year, and for good reason: McCurdy recounts her experiences as a child star, revealing some truly terrible details from her childhood. She describes eating disorders, addiction, child abuse, toxic relationships, and a lot more, all with an endearingly sharp sense of humor.

Okay, so I thought the women in my family could keep a secret, but Byron and Benny’s mom Eleanor really takes the cake (lol). The inheritance she leaves behind consists of a black cake and a recording that tells the story of a young woman who flees the island she called home because of a murder. The siblings try to piece together the truth of their mother’s life, even as their own relationship is at stake.